# Garry Kasparov might be good at chess but...



## Michel Delving

Click here: Don't bother reading it all. just the bit that starts:- _As a big fan of Tolkein I believe... _ 

Do you agree with him?

I do not. 

There is absolute evil and absolute good and both were created by man. Good and evil are concepts created in the mind of man.

Outside of here (our perceived universe) Good and Evil do not exist.

The Lord of the Rings reflects this.

It is the internal world of Mankind born as a New Myth.


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## YayGollum

No, I don't agree. I'd think that there's absolute good, but not absolute evil. There's Eru, then there's everyone else. All of the little imperfect people.


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## Gandalf White

> There is absolute evil and absolute good and both were created by man. Good and evil are concepts created in the mind of man.....
> 
> The Lord of the Rings reflects this.



No, I don't agree with what you're saying here. In Lord of the Rings Iluvatar created everything absolutely good. This dismisses what you say about man creating good and evil. The elves, men, or dwarves did not 'make up' good or evil, it was already determined. All they had to do was choose which way to go. Melkor, of course, took some of the good and created absolute evil.

Also, could you please define your term 'perceived universe'?


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## Michel Delving

Me and Garry or Garry and I (we don't know each other) are actually talking about the real world not Middle Earth. Sorry to be unclear (not something I usually am ). 

I didn't mean man as in Man, Elves, Dwarves and the various races of Middle Earth. I meant Man as in you and me: Mankind (and Womankind!  before you start).

Perceived Universe, as in what you see through your eyes and interpret with your brain.

A Philosophical Question reflected by and within Lord of the Rings rather than the other way round.


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## YayGollum

Got it. Why would someone be offended by people not putting down the word ---> womankind? Mankind would work for both because 'man' is in the word ---> woman. oh well. Nevermind. I'm just crazy. Anyways, sorry for thinking that you were talking about LOTR. Maybe it's just because we're talking about it in a LOTR type are. Silly me. Well, I still don't agree with either of you people. As far as I know, LOTR is the same as the real world in that Eru (God) is all good and everyone else is imperfect. Noone but that guy is pure anything.


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## Gandalf White

Heh, my bad. *Gandalf feels embarassed*  



> As far as I know, LOTR is the same as the real world in that Eru (God) is all good


 Yes, so far I agree with you YayGollum. However, I believe that Satan is absolute evil. 

God created Man perfect. Man fell. Man is imperfect. Man, by his own power can only go down, to the evil. Do I believe someone can be absolutely evil? Probably, yes. However, he still has a chance to be freed from it. To sum it up we have.....

Iluvatar (God) (absolute Good)

| Man (who tends downward)
| 
\ / 
_________________________
Satan (absolute Evil)




> Perceived Universe, as in what you see through your eyes and interpret with your brain.


 Let me use Lord of the Rings to discuss this. In it, Iluvatar (God) is beyond all races 'perceived universe.' Does this negate that fact that he Exists and he is Good? No. Meaning, Good and Evil exist outside of our perceived universe.


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## YayGollum

Well, no. I don't see how anything can be pure evil. God tossed free will at everybody and started them all off on the right foot. They got to decide if they'd get greedy or whatever. Sure, people can become pretty bad, but that's their choice. They have the choice to be good, too. Which makes them not pure evil. Yay!


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## Gandalf White

> _Originally posted by YayGollum _
> *Well, no. I don't see how anything can be pure evil. God tossed free will at everybody and started them all off on the right foot. They got to decide if they'd get greedy or whatever. Sure, people can become pretty bad, but that's their choice. They have the choice to be good, too. Which makes them not pure evil. Yay! *


 Hmmm, I will have to agree with the conclusion you just came to. However, are you also saying that Satan is not pure Evil? Do you believe he can become good?


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## YayGollum

Sure, I guess he could, but from what I hear, he won't.  You gots to admit that he started off on the right foot. You agreed that regular old people were just imperfect because of that. God gave Lucifer free will, too. I don't get why he'd make somebody just to be evil.


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## Mithlond

Gandalf White:

Eru states very clearly to Melko that *everything* that transpires within Ea from beginning to end does so according to his own design, and that for everything Melko tries to ruin, it will not matter as Eru planned it to happen.

Therefore i cannot believe that Eru is _absolute_ good. He is good yes, but it would appear he has a slight touch of a dark side within him, or Melko would not have even rebelled in the first place.

However, when free will comes into the picture it complicates things a little.. but since the Ainur were the offspring of his thought, i think they should pretty much follow in his ways..


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## YayGollum

So, what? You think that those Ainur type things were all just a bunch of brainless robots? That's sad. But then, if that's so, none of them could be pure anything, either. Anyways, I don't see why him tossing free will at people can make him evil in any way.


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## Gandalf White

> _Originally posted by Mithlond _
> *Gandalf White:
> 
> Eru states very clearly to Melko that everything that transpires within Ea from beginning to end does so according to his own design, and that for everything Melko tries to ruin, it will not matter as Eru planned it to happen.
> 
> Therefore i cannot believe that Eru is absolute good. He is good yes, but it would appear he has a slight touch of a dark side within him, or Melko would not have even rebelled in the first place.
> 
> However, when free will comes into the picture it complicates things a little.. but since the Ainur were the offspring of his thought, i think they should pretty much follow in his ways.. *


 If what you say is true then that's where the comparison with real life breaks down. There is no 'evil side' to God. However, what you say is not true. Ainur were the offspring of his thought, meaning he made them. _With their own free will!!!!_ Each one could choose what he wanted to do without any intervention from anyone else. Melkor became jealous and wanted to make his own creation, apart from Iluvatar's. In no way was Iluvatar responsible for the sin of Melkor. 



> Sure, I guess he could, but from what I hear, he won't. You gots to admit that he started off on the right foot. You agreed that regular old people were just imperfect because of that. God gave Lucifer free will, too. I don't get why he'd make somebody just to be evil.


 I agreed for the moment because I had to think it through. There is no "grey" zone in life. There is good and evil, nothing in between. You are either going to heaven or not. There is no in-between. Erm....Now I can't remember where I was going with this....    sheez..... let me think


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## YayGollum

Yikes! No gray area? That makes no sense to me. The free will thing. Everyone's gray. Including Lucifer.


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## HLGStrider

I believe in absolute good and absolute evil. I believe that evil is corrupted good, and that God gave free will. Satan made the choice to be evil, to defy God. I think he could repent because I believe anything is possible with God. I don't believe he will because it would be totally against his corrupted nature. 

I don't usually believe in a gray area, but it is a very gray term. I don't believe right and wrong is always easy to see. I believe that some things are morally nuetral (What we eat for breakfast, for instance). I believe anything besides God can be corrupted. God is all powerful and incorruptable as such. . .

This is more philosophy than "tolkienology," however.


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## Gandalf White

> This is more philosophy than "tolkienology," however.


 Yes, we really need a Guild of Philosophy. It would be rather interesting.


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## YayGollum

Ack! Crazy lady! How can there be pure evil if everything can be corrupted? If it could be corrupted, then it must have been good at some time. Which makes it not very pure evil.


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## Gandalf White

What about Melkor? What possible little bit of good could there be in him?


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## HLGStrider

Pure evil does not mean to me created evil. It means to me an abscence of good. If something can change its character so that it becomes devoid of good, it has become pure evil. . .Which is quite an oxymoron, if you think about it.

I believe that some actions are bad. I don't believe that a human being can be all bad, but I believe it is impossible for them to be good in themselves. They need God for that. If God is pure good, and Satan has rejected God and all that is good, yes, he is pure evil. If he would repent (which has to be possible, if you believe that with God all things are possible) he could become good. 

The question is whether a human being can totally reject good and become depraved enough to be pure evil. I truly don't know. 

In the Lord of the Rings, we could see good in Gollum, but we were never shown any good in Sauron, who was once good, or at least fair. Sauron had completely rejected all good. Gollum had not. Melkor had rejected all good as well. If Eru is all powerful there was hope for even Sauron and Melkor, but that is sort of a moot point, considering they aren't in the mood to repent.


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## Gandalf White

Very well said Elgee. 

In answer to you YayGollum, just because Satan had the choice to be evil didn't make him evil, so the free will to do good cannot make him only partially evil. First he must exercise his free will to do good. And we all know he won't do that, making him purely evil.


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## Michel Delving

God is a word. Good with an _o_ missing.

Devil is a word. Evil with a _d_ added.

In the beginning was the word.

In the beginning was J R R Tolkien.

Man created God, not the other way round. Man wrote God down. That is why the beginning was the word.

Eru, Iluvatar, Melkor & Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf et al were created by Tolkien. He wrote down a Creation Myth and a History.

I could just as easily believe in Lord of the Rings as the Bible. Only Faith makes these things real.

It is an elitist Western assumption that our God is the only God.

From China to the North American Indians or from the Middle East to Ancient Greece, throughout Time and Infinity, Man has created stories to explain the insanity and beauty of existence.

Tolkien told us a new story.

And, as God was created by Man, so were Good and Evil. They exist within us and are given names like Aragorn & Jesus or Sauron & Satan, respectively.

They do not exist outside of us.


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## Eriol

*This sounds like a good spot for me to get into the conversation...*

If a Guild of Philosophy is ever established I will belong to it!

Regarding this debate, and as is common with philosophic debates, I see a lack of definition that is beginning to cause trouble. I would encourage us to define "existence". When you say Good and Evil do not exist, you have to explain what this mean. They do not exist "outside of us", you say. Therefore something exists "outside of us", otherwise the distinction would not make sense. And how can a deed be evil "inside of us" and not evil "outside of us"? An example: If I kill an innocent child, I am evil "inside of me", or "outside of me"? This must be addressed. 

(In technical terms, does morality have _ontological_ existence, or is it merely a _psychological_ fact?)

This, of course, is a completely unrelated question to the origin and cause of mythologies throughout the world and whether the Christian story is a true story or not.

Michel Delving, you are right that the word was created by man, up to the fact that I call God "Deus", in my own language. Different sounds, different languages. But this does not prove that the concept being addressed does not exist. The whole question of the relations of words to reality is a very interesting matter for debate.

Finally, my own opinion about "absolute" Good and Evil (even the use of this adjective is interesting in itself, apparently relating the expression in use to a concept "outside of us" -- otherwise it would not be "absolute", meaning, presumably, "objective").

"Existence", in itself, is a good. It is better to exist than to not exist. Everything that exists is, therefore, good in some measure. It may have fallen in such an enormous extent that it is very bad indeed compared to what it could be (Satan is the prime example), but while it exists, it has at least this "good" characteristic. I believe "existence" has such a connotation because it is allowed by God -- another big debate in the womb.


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## Gandalf White

> I could just as easily believe in Lord of the Rings as the Bible. Only Faith makes these things real.


 Except the fact that Jesus actually walked the earth, that the Bible coincides with archeological finds, etc. Have we any proofs of elves or dwarves? No. Please note the difference. LotR was written by a Christian, the Bible is the inspired word of God. 

Do you need faith? Yes, but it is not a blind faith, not one that makes you take a blind leap. 


> It is an elitist Western assumption that our God is the only God.


 This is actually more of a Christian view, and a correct one in my opinion. "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father but by Me."



> In the beginning was the word.


 If this was an attempt at quoting Scripture to back yourself up, please try again. Actually, it is "In the beginning was the *W*ord. It comes from the Greek 'logos', and in the Gospel of John (where the quote is found) is used to mean Divine Expression, i.e. Christ.


> Man created God, not the other way round. Man wrote God down. That is why the beginning was the word.


 With the above explanation the "beggining was Jesus"

As to the rest of your statements. We could debate this until we go silly, grow beards to our knees, or give up. But if that happens, I know I am going to be proved right in the end.


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## Gandalf White

> If a Guild of Philosophy is ever established I will belong to it!


 Yes, Eriol, I thought of you as I wrote those very words. I was also wondering how long it was going to take before you found this thread. I'm really looking forward to hearing your continued arguments and opinions.


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## HLGStrider

I believe in concrete reality. 

MD, I don't think you could use the Bible to back up your quotes. It doesn't make sense because in other places the Bible directly contradicts you. . .so if you want to find a book to use, find one that supports your views. Otherwise you are going to get into a sort of circular reasoning. You say that it is wrong, yet you take a part of it and say that that is right. Why? Because it backs up your theory. Why are the other parts wrong? Because they don't back up your theory.

I think it is arrogant for man to assume that he made God. I think that God laughs at that and doesn't take it all too seriously. I think God made the world for men, and they are very important, the most important thing in this world. (I hope no one minds my use of men to mean human. I'm female myself, so I think that gives me the right to use "sexist" language). However, if the world were to blow up taking all men with it, God would exist. (In fact, if men have souls, men would still exist.). 

God existed before men. He spoke and it happened, that part of how I interpeted the word, though GW has a more scholarly answer.

God invented a world and made it run under certain rules. He made certain things good and the corruption of those good things is bad (Corruption sometimes manifests itself in opposites. Hate is the opposite of love. Jealousy is a corruption of love.). 

The idea of one God is fairly Western, I would admit, but it isn't elitist. Now adays most of whom I would consider the elite carry the opposing views and look down upon those who carry the idea of absolutes.

Try saying that certain sexual behaviors are immoral sometime. You will be labeled a bigot or a fundementalist. Try saying that there is absolute right or wrong. You will be labeled old fashion. Make statements such as you made (which I have heard often), and you will be hailed as a great thinker and philosopher.

I'm thinking of a quote I read from a retelling of a conversation between Tolkien and Lewis. . .about a tree. I'll try to remember it.

Tolkien: Look at that! It's feet are in the ground! It's crown is in the air! (Goes on for awhile about the awesomeness of this thing), and yet we call it a tree! A tree!

Lewis: Of course. That is just a word. . .a classification given to the solid by men.

Gosh. . I wish I remembered this. The point was that men name and tell stories that are real. The point is which storys are real.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Gandalf White _
> *Yes, Eriol, I thought of you as I wrote those very words. I was also wondering how long it was going to take before you found this thread. I'm really looking forward to hearing your continued arguments and opinions. *



Er, thanks! I'm flattered!

*Eriol shifts his feet awkwardly and blushes at the nice compliment*

I guess we must wait for the good MD to defend his position...

*Emboldened by GW, Eriol ventures a sarcastic comment, especially as Elgee's words were a kind of 'general statement', pointing at no one in this thread, or so Eriol thinks*:



> Try saying that there is absolute right or wrong. You will be labeled old fashion.



This is (or rather, should be!) the easiest-to-avoid mistake in philosophy, the self-contradicting statement... It is really shocking that so many people state "there is no absolute truth" as if it were an absolute truth  .


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## YayGollum

Yikes! If you get to decide if you're going to do good things or bad things, you are not pure evil. The way you're talking about it, HLGStrider person, it seems to me to be that everyone is pure evil at some point. Know what I mean? Or do you just get to say that Satan is pure evil because he's been evil for longer than anyone else?


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## Gandalf White

YayGollum, do you believe Satan started out purely good?


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## Confusticated

> Surely even a boy must understand that fruit is fruit, and does not reach its full being until it is ripe; so that to misuse it unripe is to do worse than just to rob the man that has tended it: it robs the world, hinders a good thing from fulfilment. Those who do so join forces with all that is amiss, with the blights and the cankers and the ill winds. And that was the way of Orcs.'


Hinders a good thing from fulfilment, does it? Good for what? How is a ripe fruit better for a tree or the Earth than an unripe fruit? Nay, it is better for men. 



> 'And is the way of Men too.' said Saelon. 'No! I do not mean of wild men only, or those who grew "under the Shadow", as they say. I mean all men. I would not misuse green fruit now, but only beause I have noo longer any use for unripe apples, not for your loofty reasons, Master Borlas. Indeed I think your reasons as unsound as an apple that has been too long in store. To trees all Men are Orcs. Do Men consider the fulfilment of the life-story of a tree before they cut it down? For whatever prupose: to have its room for tilth, to use its flesh as timber or as fuel, or merely to open the view? If trees were judges, woud they set Men above Orcs, or indeed above the cankers and blights? What more right, they might ask, have Men to feed on their juices than blights?'
> 'A man' said Borlas, 'who tends a tree and guards it from blights and many other enemies does not act like an Orc or a canker. If he eats its fruit, he does it no injury. It produces fruit more abundantly that it needs for it's own purpose: the continuing of its kind.'
> 'Let him eat the fruit then, or play with it,' said Saelon. 'But I spoke of slaying: hewing and burning; and by what right men do such things to trees.'
> 'You did not. You spoke of the judgement of trees in these matters. But trees are not judges. The children of the One are the masters.'



A man who tends a tree and guards it from blights and many other enemies does not act like an Orc or a canker?... And why is that? Because he acts out of love of the tree? Or.. maybe it is because he acts out of selfishness, wanting the tree for his own.

If he eats fruit he does it no injury? Then picking and throwing, and "wasting" of unripe fruit does no harm to the tree or the Earth. It takes only from the man who would have otherwise eaten the ripe fruit.

You tell him Saelon!

That is what I think of mankind, and its so called good and evil.
if there is a universal good and evil, even if we are not aware of what it really is, then men are evil. So I think.

I used to wonder often about good and evil, and generally decided that it is all relative and can be looked at countless ways. I do not care to bother with wondering about it anymore, since I think the answering can not be known, or if it can be, thinking about it is no way to look for it... the answer may find someone, but will anyone find it? Some will think they have, but I will doubt them until I know better.


That text is from _The New Shadow_, and can be found in History of Middle-earth 12.


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## Eriol

I suppose Nóm's first quote was defending the idea that killing an unripe fruit was evil _for the fruit itself_, since it prevented its development. Not just for the tree, or the Earth... or men. The same argument could be applied to the killing of trees, animals... and men. (This can easily become a debate about abortion).

The main point is Nóm's question, "good for what?" It assumes that something can have no goodness in itself, only goodness for some purpose. This is open to a reductio ad absurdum, in which every purpose must be judged by some later purpose and finally we get dizzy and lost. No, surely some things are good in themselves -- such as "existence".

As for our inability to find out the true nature of good and evil, it is a valid point. But we'll never know unless we search for it. This point does not rule out that there _is_ a true nature of good and evil, only that, perhaps, it is beyond our frail abilities to discover it. But this must not stop the search.

And even if this hypothesis is proven true and we cannot really discover by ourselves the true nature of good and evil, (which I do not grant, this is for the sake of argument), it does not rule out that we can find about it by being told about it by someone who is not as limited -- such as God.

(I think, in fact, that our ability to discern the true nature of good and evil is one of the main arguments for the existence of God!)


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## YayGollum

Sure, I'd say that Satan started out good. Why not? Well, maybe I'd just say that he was imperfect. He had free will and decided to be evil. He was the first evil that ever showed up, but when Adam and Eve showed up, they were just plain good until Satan messed with their brains. Okay. Got it. Satan and Adam and Eve all started out good, but as soon as they did something evil, everybody else got to start out imperfectly. Isn't that the subject here? Is there pure good or pure evil? Why would we get into abortion and eating fruit?


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## Michel Delving

As I was reading Eriol’s first post I could feel my mind elevating above my own ideas. This is always a good sign. Then, however, it seemed to go downhill and started to get into the I’m right/you’re wrong style of debate, so common on the Internet. A style I tried to highlight in the infamous (to some) _Balrog Thread_. Then there was some stuff about fruit up a tree and I started getting lost in the woods.

To begin at the beginning:

Existence = The centre of your own Universe. You and I alive within the second it took me to type the full stop at the end of this sentence and the same moment it took for you to see it.

Outside of Us = Everyone else’s own personal Universe. Everything that is not you or I and the moment we are in.

You can’t prove God exists you can only have faith that _it_ does. And faith is the point. Without faith you’d curl up and wither. And faith can be as basic as desire (for material things) of as lofty as Faith in Reincarnation, God or life after death.

You also can’t prove Jesus was real. You may speculate through archaeological research (and the only example I know of is the Turin Shroud – but I’m sure you can tell me lots more, Gandalf White) that a prophet called Jesus existed and did everything he was said to have done in The New Testament. You could also equally say, that the whole thing is allegorical fiction about a way to live for the good.

If Divine Expression is the Word, Gandalf W, then I take that to mean Born of the Imagination. The Inspiration to create the Word. Just like Tolkien created LotR. You can call this inspiration God if you like, or Jesus, or Buddha, or Allah, whatever you like.

I hope the Bible does contradict me HLGStrider, I think the Bible contradicts itself. In contradiction and opposites lies the core. All the opposing ideas of this thread, for example, point to a whole, continually in conflict and harmony, simultaneously. As for God speaking (just as Eru sang) and creating the world have a word with Charles Darwin about that. I admire the fact that you have the Faith to believe it but I don’t.

A Philosopher (whom I’m sure Eriol can name – because I can’t remember) said the Universe was a circle that was so big that it’s circumference was a straight line. Think about it. How hard is that to comprehend? A circle that is a straight line! That’s how difficult all our ideas are. Ideas of Good and Evil included. You can never resolve it.

Rather, than this being a source of misery we should celebrate the fact that we know nothing. Nothing except what we perceive as individuals and share in our human consciousness; nothing except what we label with words, in the hope that they will turn a straight line back into a circle that we can see.


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## Gandalf White

> If Divine Expression is the Word, Gandalf W, then I take that to mean Born of the Imagination. The Inspiration to create the Word. Just like Tolkien created LotR. You can call this inspiration God if you like, or Jesus, or Buddha, or Allah, whatever you like.


 Please note Michel, that John specifically uses Divine Expression to mean Jesus. He does not leave it to doubt or guessing as you suppose. "In the beginning was Jesus" Period. 



> I hope the Bible does contradict me HLGStrider, I think the Bible contradicts itself. In contradiction and opposites lies the core. All the opposing ideas of this thread, for example, point to a whole, continually in conflict and harmony, simultaneously. As for God speaking (just as Eru sang) and creating the world have a word with Charles Darwin about that. I admire the fact that you have the Faith to believe it but I don’t.


 I think the sky is green. Prove it.

Actually both theories for the beginning of the world take faith. In my opinion Evolution just takes a lot more. I can't prove that God created the world, but neither can you prove Evolution is responisible for where we are today. So we both have Faith, there's no need to admire me. 




YayGollum: "And God saw that it was good." He made everything perfect. Thus, even though Lucifer had free will, he was not imperfect, nor did it 'make' him evil. So then neither can his free will 'make' him good, or not absolutely evil _until he exercises it to do good._



Oops, I nearly forgot to address this point.....


> You also can’t prove Jesus was real. You may speculate through archaeological research (and the only example I know of is the Turin Shroud – but I’m sure you can tell me lots more, Gandalf White) that a prophet called Jesus existed and did everything he was said to have done in The New Testament. You could also equally say, that the whole thing is allegorical fiction about a way to live for the good.


 You misunderstood me. I was in no way implying that Jesus was real because of certain archeological finds, merely stating that the Bible coincides with them. There is really no debate as to if Jesus walked the earth. The ancient historian Josephus recorded His life, I believe. Also, please explain to me why the Gospels aren't accurate history.


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## YayGollum

You crazy. just because God saw that it was good in the first place doesn't make it perfect. Or am I just crazy for thinking that having all kinds of potential to be all kinds of evil isn't a very good thing? oh well. I'm not saying that free will makes you good or evil. It gives you the choice. But since you can go either way whenever you think about it, you're never pure anything.


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## HLGStrider

Without choice there is no good, and while choice does leave room for choice to bad, good cannot truly exist without it.

For instance, let's say we have a poor child who needs money. It is good to give him something to eat. Let's say a person has food and is near the child. That person has a choice: give or not to give. If he choses one he has done a good thing. If he choses another he has not.

Let's say a man comes up to the man before the man even knows about the child and takes the money by force and gives it to the child. The same results, but no choice, and therefore the first man has done nothing good. 

Good isn't possible without choice. Whether or not bad is is awhile other question.

I once read there was more proof that Jesus lived than that Shakespeare did. I think any historian who denied it would be generally scoffed at. 

Evolution is just a theory, and Darwin wasn't perfect. There is cause for doubt, and when there is cause for doubt, I think faith can win over it. Eriol, I know, believes in evolution. I don't. I think that there are enough scientists who don't (not a majority, but enough) that I, as a nonscientist, can doubt with them. 

In general, things like this will degenerate into "I'm right, you're wrong" because we are dealing with things that cannot be proven, only rhetorically debated. If there is something that is true and something that is false in this debate, someone is going to be right and someone is going to be wrong. What else can you do but state it?

I've heard a lot of people tell me that the Bible contradicts itself. I've never seen anyone give me proof. I don't believe the translations we have nowadays are perfect, however. They are very good, but not perfect. I believe the Bible to be perfect in its originallity and very little unchanged. It is a very whole book archelogically.

I know nothing but God knows everything and lives inside me, and when He manifests himself, I can do anything.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Michel Delving _
> * As for God speaking (just as Eru sang) and creating the world have a word with Charles Darwin about that. I admire the fact that you have the Faith to believe it but I don’t. *



Charles Darwin never said a word about the creation of the Universe... I invite you to my thread on Darwinian evolution in the GoP to discuss that .

As for your definitions, let's take a look on them. Existence = the centre of your own universe. I suppose you mean the individual. But this seems (to me) to say that anything else does not exist. If existence = the centre of your own Universe, then the periphery of your own Universe is not existence. And this is another way of saying that the Outside of Us does not exist (see your own definition of the Outside of Us to check on that).

Now, if you believe that, why are you arguing? Why are you typing? Why do you eat? Why do you... You get the point, surely. The existence of other things outside of us is not liable to proof by logic, since logic can only work on the perceptions of reality, it does not create reality itself. So it is a logical path to disbelieve everything. Descartes tried that.

Logical, yes, but not reasonable. Everybody (the arguer included) acts as if other things existed. Sure, it can all be a big dream, but it can also be real. And we all act as if it were. It is more parsimonious to assume it is real.

I realize this is a plea for common sense in a philosophical discussion, and therefore unlikely to be accepted . But I can rephrase the point in a more technical language if you want. The point is that the agent, by showing volition, accepts the existence of the patient. As soon as you want something, you accept that this something exists. (Note I am addressing volition, not thought. You can think about something without accepting its existence. But you cant want something without accepting its existence).

Now if you are an agent and have volition you prove this point by your own actions.


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## Michel Delving

What a mishmash this is turning into!

Just been to the Guild of Politics and started reading, Eriol. My ideas are crumbling, I must build them back up. I'm off to compose something more concrete. I'll be back later than now.

Just a few Questions.

How can Divine Expression be Jesus? It doesn't make sense. Surely it should be Jesus was the Expression of the Divine. 

Does everyone think Jesus really did _walk the earth_?

Does everyone labor under the impression that their views are right and other opposing ones are wrong? Or can we all see that they form a whole were nobody is right or wrong?

And this,Eriol:




> The point is that the agent, by showing volition, accepts the existence of the patient. As soon as you want something, you accept that this something exists. (Note I am addressing volition, not thought. You can think about something without accepting its existence.



has me completely baffled. Could you expand, it sounds fascinating but I don't understand it.


With this resolved I can prepare a more detailed response if nothing new comes up first and the ideas get lost. Then we can try and define good and evil which are beginning to exist even though they don't.


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## Gandalf White

> How can Divine Expression be Jesus? It doesn't make sense. Surely it should be Jesus was the Expression of the Divine.


 John was using the language artistically to state that Jesus was with God from the beginning.



> Does everyone think Jesus really did walk the earth?


 As Elgee said, the vast majority of historians believe he did. All they question was whether he was right or wrong. 



> Does everyone labor under the impression that their views are right and other opposing ones are wrong? Or can we all see that they form a whole were nobody is right or wrong?


 I know that some of my views are unshakeably right, and others are probably very wrong and I need someone to reveal this to me. That's what I love about this forum. 

I can't seem to grasp your theory of no right or wrong. Is everything just "blah" (for lack of a better word)? We all have opinions which we believe to be right, but there is no right, so it doesn't matter? Perhaps you could expound more.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Michel Delving _
> *
> Does everyone think Jesus really did walk the earth?
> *



Why wouldn't we think that? Do we think that Julius Caesar walked the earth? Isaac Newton? George Washington?

I find it interesting that the reasoning used to deny that Jesus existed is quite parallel with the one used to deny evolution, but of course people who use the first do not accept the second, and vice versa. If we trust the historical evidence (witness accounts and documents on one side, fossils and the molecular evidence on the other), we believe in both. Or at least we see that both are lively possibilities. 

I'm not sure of what you mean about the Divine Expression, we can delve further into that if you want. (But we'll need definitions ).

You ask a very important question, MD. Is it possible for everybody to be right and wrong, or, in other words, that we are all right and all wrong? To say yes would be a denial of one of the two following things: 

(a) absolute truth
(b) our ability to grasp truth

These two lines of inquiry can be called _ontological_ and _epistemological_, respectively. The first one examines what _is_, the second one examines what _can be known_. 

That there is no absolute truth was shown previously to be a self-contradicting statement. So what, one may ask? Well, this may be a defect in our brains, and we would then be attacking the epistemological problem, but as it is _we can't conceive_ a world in which a self-contradicting statement is true. If we are not to trust our brains without any compelling reason, we will be doomed to inaction. For the fact is that we do trust them daily, when we wake up, put on our clothes... IN REAL LIFE, we don't act is if A could be A and not-A simultaneously. So the hypothesis "our brains are defective" defeats itself, for it dooms everyday life. Not to mention that it is also self-contradicting, since how could we find out that the brains are defective if they are defective? The "we" that finds out something, in the sentence, can be substituted by "brains". And then we have: "our brains found out that our brains are defective, and this conclusion is absolutely right". The conclusion negates the premise.

This may be a bit confusing. But the conclusion is simple, since we follow it without second thought: our brains are, in fact, equipped to deal with the universe. Accepting that, we accept the law of non-contradiction as something real, not a simple delusion. And accepting that, we reject the "there is no absolute truth" hypothesis. 

(Note I am not bringing God into it, not yet. It is quite possible that our reasoning equipment is a product of the blind forces of evolution, at this stage. My reason for doubting it is not related to what has been said so far).

So, there is truth "out there". That there is _something_ "out there" is quite obvious, for our logic can only work with the data from the senses -- the very words we use for thinking are derived from data from the senses. And the data come from "outside". Since we think (or we could not be arguing), we get data from outside. But what does it mean to say that there is "truth" out there? It means that our reasoning equipment can detect laws of how the universe works. "2+2=4" -- this is a conclusion that was derived from observation. But our mind "sees" why it is so, and it would not understand if, suddenly, "2+2=5". This is a very important point. If someone "proved" that 2+2=5, out idea of the Universe would crumble, and we would be forced to admit that everything we ever thought and did is a product of luck. And that there is no reason to believe that our luck will hold. We will not be able to get up tomorrow, for "up" may become "down" in a moment. The light of our reason has detected a pattern in the Universe that is _independent_ from ourselves. We can't force it to change with our wishful thinking. 

Mathematics is just a very old example of absolute truth. There are others. And people who believe in God think that the fact that God is absolute truth, just as 2+2=4. In fact, they believe that God _is_ absolute truth -- that the truth in 2+2=4 is derived from God. I am one of these believers... but this lies a long way down our road.

Finally, about the passage that baffled you. Pure Thought can work in the abstract. You can imagine, for instance, a computer "thinking". (Though this would bring a big dispute about the definition of this word...). But no one can imagine a computer "wanting" something. Volition, will, is a very important part of our beings, of our humanity, and it disproves the idea that there is nothing out there. For if we want something, it is clear we don't have it. And if reality is simply a construct of our imagination, and therefore nothing is out there, then there can be no wanting -- everything would be "inside us". We would have everything.

I hope this helped .


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## Gandalf White

> I hope this helped .


 Yes, but I'll need to read it over numerous times in order to completely grasp the full content. (And I mean _numerous_)


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## Aiwendil2

Eriol wrote:



> I find it interesting that the reasoning used to deny that Jesus existed is quite parallel with the one used to deny evolution, but of course people who use the first do not accept the second, and vice versa.



I have never heard any scholar seriously suggest that Jesus never existed. Whom do you have in mind when you say that evolutionists argue against his existence?

Of course, there is always the possibility of error with regard to information on the lives of historical figures. We have significantly less hard evidence concerning the life of Jesus than we do concerning Julius Caesar, or George Washington. But the evidence for his existence seems to me to be quite strong, if not as strong as the more empirically confirmable matter of evolution.



> So the hypothesis "our brains are defective" defeats itself, for it dooms everyday life.



Not necessarily. It is quite possible to know a thing and yet not to act under the influence of that knowledge. Suppose I _knew_ my understanding of logic to be flawed. What would I do? What could I do? Surely I would simply go on living as I live (though perhaps more uneasily). So certainly the mere possibility that the rules of logic are not universal is not ruled out by the fact that our actions seem to be based on those rules of logic.



> since how could we find out that the brains are defective if they are defective?



But you very rightly pointed out the distinction between ontology and epistemology just before. Certainly our brains could be defective, regardless of whether or not that fact is epistemologically accessible to us. And even that need not be the case: a defect in my brain could take any number of forms, only a small subset of which would entail that I not be able to conceive of the defect.



> our brains are, in fact, equipped to deal with the universe.



How can we know that when we don't even have any way of knowing that there _is_ a universe for our brains to deal with?



> So, there is truth "out there". That there is something "out there" is quite obvious, for our logic can only work with the data from the senses -- the very words we use for thinking are derived from data from the senses.



The fact that we experience sensory data does not entail that there is an external world. I can imagine a perfectly coherent universe that consists of nothing but a sequence of states of consciousness/sensory states, with no ontological entities apart from that sequence.



> If someone "proved" that 2+2=5, out idea of the Universe would crumble, and we would be forced to admit that everything we ever thought and did is a product of luck.



You seem to be assuming that there are two separate processes here: 1. our intuition, which says things like "2+2=4" and 2. mathematical proofs, which prove that "2+2=4". Your argument seems to be that 2, the proof, confirms that 1, our intuitions are correct. But surely there is no real distinction between 1 and 2. That is, surely our intuition that 2+2=4 is merely a very simplistic proof. Conversely, complex mathematical proofs are merely extensions of the "intuition" used to obtain 2+2=4. So you cannot argue that mathematical proofs confirm our intuitive understanding of mathematics - that is tautalogical.



> The light of our reason has detected a pattern in the Universe that is independent from ourselves. We can't force it to change with our wishful thinking.



But our reason has not confirmed (nor can it) that such a pattern is outside of ourselves. What we have epistemological access to is only the sense data pattern itself. We have no epistemic access to "the real universe" beyond that sense data. Note that the mere fact that we cannot control the sense data through an exercise of will in no way indicates that the data must have a source outside of our consciousness. There are many cognitive processes that we do not control; and even were this not so, there would be no proof that such a process cannot exist.



> But no one can imagine a computer "wanting" something. Volition, will, is a very important part of our beings, of our humanity, and it disproves the idea that there is nothing out there.



I can imagine a computer "wanting" something to exactly the same extent that I can imagine another human "wanting" something. That is, I cannot actually experience the desire consciously, but I can certainly imagine either the person or the computer (if it were provided with the physical means of acting) acting toward the desired end. That is, to be more precise, I can imagine personal sense data corresponding to the thing in question, whether human or android, seeking the desired object (or expressing a desire for it, etc.).



> For if we want something, it is clear we don't have it.



Not necessarily. I want a pepsi right now. I also happen to have one right in front of me. This is a fortunate situation, and I am of course less likely to become distressed by my desire, or to make my desire apparent. But the desire remains, just the same.

But even supposing that we can only want things that we do not have: this still does not prove the existence of an outside world. In fact, it would seem that what we want is not some actual external thing, but rather a certain sensory state. If I want a pepsi, what I want is not an external thing in itself; what I want is the sensory state corresponding to having the pepsi in front of me, to drinking it, etc. Indeed, we _could not_ want an external thing, since we have no epistemic access to such a thing. Moreover, if desire did have some external thing as its object, no desire could ever be fulfilled, again because we have no epistemic access to such a thing.



> And if reality is simply a construct of our imagination, and therefore nothing is out there, then there can be no wanting -- everything would be "inside us". We would have everything.



We could (and do!) desire sensory states.

Sorry to jump into the middle of this conversation in such an argumentative mood, but I've been working on a paper on positivism for a class and thus this topic rather piqued my interest.


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## Eriol

You're welcome! I wonder if you really believe in what you are saying or if you are just playing Devil's Advocate for strict positivism .

Sure logic can't get us out of the problem. (I thought I said that somewhere -- if I didn't I am saying it now  ). Pure reason, without some belief, reaches a dead end. The problem with pure, radical rationalism is precisely that -- it cannot work without data, and it can not draw data except from some dubious source such as our senses and our intuition. So it disproves itself and stands paralyzed as the proverbial deer in the middle of the road. Your objections are a very good example of the dead end reached by pure reason. Most of them are rationally correct, but are existentially wrong -- we _know_, by some strange faculty that we could explore further, that they are wrong. I called it "common sense", above, but it can also be called "intuition", "individual human experience", etc. It is a leap of faith, if we examine it closely -- but a very natural, intuitive one, and people do not usually attach the word "faith" to something like it.

"Faith" in everyday speak is related to a belief that is "optional", that is, not forced by data. But if we examine the source of data -- the senses + intuition -- it is clear that they are not forced by data, and therefore are in the terrain of faith. In plain words, we have to believe that what we see is the truth. If "seeing is believing", prior to "seeing" the individual must believe the assertion itself. Sure, we all believe it without much speculation, and that is why the use of the word "faith" in such a context can be misguiding.

The way out of the conundrum is "existential". It is derived from our experience as human beings. And this is also the refutation of your assertion that the computer can "want" as we do. Sure, I can program a computer to act "as if" he wanted something. It can be a perfect masquerade. But the experience of the programmed computer is not akin to that of a human being. For the computer is programmed to want some things, and not others, while human beings want different things at different moments, following no program.

The main difference is that human beings want to question the program itself. Think about that sentence and you will see the amazing gap between humans and computers. What we are doing right now is this, questioning the program. Not accepting the assumptions in our program -- instincts, senses, etc. Show me a computer that can do that and I will be forced to retract my views.

Look at your example of the pepsi. When you want a pepsi, you do not want it "by your side", you want to gulp it down. To say that your want is satisfied by having it at hand is simply saying that you wanted to look at it, or perhaps to feel it in your hands, but not to gulp it down. Wanting is always of something we don't have, or it wouldn't be wanting. If you desire a sip of pepsi, and you have one in front of you, you take a sip. If you don't, then you don't want it. (Assuming free agency -- that there is no one with a gun in your head daring you to take a sip, for instance  )

Each one of your objections is worthy of a detailed study, but I'm not sure this is the right place to do it... and surely not the right time (I'm quite sleepy  ). I'll look at the first and the last then (Skipping the Jesus bit -- I never claimed any scholars disbelieved in Jesus's existence, I was answering MD, who _did_ question his existence).

How would you _know_ your logic is flawed? Surely you would apply a logical test to this conclusion to chech whether it is correct or not, right? How can you do that with flawed logic? When you _know_ something (I liked your emphasis, the argument is especially convincing with this emphasis), you have tested it with your logic. Remember, we are talking about relations between concepts here, not the concepts themselves. Reasoning, not perception/apprehension. You may have a very misguided idea of concept A, completely different from what A is in reality, but as soon as you look at your concept of A, in your mind, you see that it can't be non-A at the same time. This is a relationship between A and non-A that is immediately grasped by the mind, what you called the rules of logic. And these can't be disproved by logic -- or we would have a self-contradiction, logic being disproved by logic. And self-contradictions are impossible because of the rules of logic... and so on... this is how our minds work. It is a given. If we _really_disbelieve that (for sure we can), we stop functioning and die. There is a strong distinction in what I am saying between a carefree "disbelieving", that is said in an hypothetical way, and _real_ disbelief, one which entails a proportional shift in our actions. 

The mind and the individual can't really be detached... though this is the result of "pure" rationalism. But the individual knows best, and it knows that it can follow reason and get to a good result, as long as reason's rules are not questioned _existentially_. We can play around with the idea that they are not true, but if we BELIEVE that, we stop any and all reasoning and function immediately.

And the last objection, about sensory states. Of course we desire sensory states. But my argument rested on the point that we desired other things besides that... Things outside ourselves; as well as sensory states. A prime example is the difference between memory and actual experience. We want to experience a good thing, not just remember it. The memory of a pepsi is not the same as a pepsi. Why is that so? Why shouldn't it be the same if it's all "inside"?

*yawn* Sorry to stop here... I hope to hear more from you .


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## Flame of Udûn

> _Originally posted by Michel Delving _
> *Click here: Don't bother reading it all. just the bit that starts:- As a big fan of Tolkein I believe...
> 
> Obviously not a big enough fan to spell his name correctly.*


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Nóm _
> *How can we know that this isn't a part of us... we each know two kinds of Pepsi... the "real" and the imagined or memory. Assumng neither realy exists, we can still explain this ability for one to seem real and the other not, by saying that the reasons for the same mechanisms that allow us to perceive a real Pepsi, must be doing it for our own enjoyment. What would be the use of all of these senses... our life... if a memory was as a real thing.
> 
> Our selfs could well do this for their own enjoyment, just as they want a Pepsi for our own enjoyment.
> I might even say that getting a thing one wants is good to us because it fulfils that want, if memory were as the "real" thing, this would not be so. It would leave us with no reason to have the real thing. Having no real thing, we would not know a thing in memory or make things with imagination.
> But, could we get satisfactions from a Pepsi if we didnt want it first?
> *



I'm not sure I understood this correctly... but surely you see that we do not create our own memories. The use of all these senses, and life, as regards memory, is to provide data. We do not remember jumping off a cliff and surviving. We may imagine it, but it is not the same thing. Memory of a given thing is not something we are born with, it is something we acquire. From where? From ourselves? Then why can't we acquire the memory of being rich, of winning the Olympics, of a life together with our true love... Even if we forsake "real life" to live dreaming of that, we would -- still -- want to see this really fulfilled, as opposed to fulfilled in a dream. This word "really" in the sentence makes a big difference for us.

As you said, Nóm, you tinkered with the idea of logic being false. This "tinkering" was done logically. Or it was no tinkering. You thought "what if... then" propositions. This is something within our grasp (and the major difference between us and computers as regrads thought), but to accept that logic is false with all of your being, and not only with a portion of your mind, would take you to a world in which you could not even type your farewell to us .

As a second line of argument, I offer words, themselves. Where do they come from? We are not born with words. Yet we think with them. (I know there are spatial thinkers and word-based thinkers, but I am aiming at another level of "thought". Spatial thinkers "translate" their thoughts into words, automatically.)

Words, the very fabric of our thoughts, are not something that we create. They are given to us from the "outside". 

Keep in mind that these arguments in favor of real life, of a real outside, and of real logic are not foolproof. Pure logic can always reach a state in which it denies that. These arguments are of a persuasive nature, an almost probabilistic nature. They are appealing not to logic, but to another part of ourselves which I called common sense. The option of refusing common sense and accepting only pure logic is always open.

But it's not forced upon us -- it's not logical . Neither one of the options is logical, in th sense of forced upon us as "2+2=4". A choice is imposed upon us, a choice of what to believe: reality or insanity. (These are words that describe the two states, with no judgment of value imposed on them. Insanity might well be better or more true than reality).

But I do say that there is no middle ground. If you believe in insanity, you are insane (again, just a convenient word to describe your status). If you don't, you are a reality-based person. But toying with the idea of insanity, while using the rules of logic, is something a reality-based person does. That's what I want to emphasize: THINKING about the possibility of no reality out there is something that a real person does. ACTING as if there were no reality, well, that's a different story.


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## Michel Delving

This is turning into a game of cerebral chess! 

Either I’m being overly simplistic or your all being overly intellectual but my ideas seem very basic next to the mind bending barrage of observations you are all pouring into the mix.

I think a summary is in order before and if we move on. No doubt my breakdown of points will produce another glut of responses saying I’ve mistaken what you’ve said. Lets hope so!

The story so far…

I said: Good and Evil do not exist except as concepts created by Man.

Then Gandalf White, YayGollum, Mithlond and HLGStrider brought the Christian God and LotR’s Characters into the discussion. They felt the world of LotR was reflected in the real world and that Good, God, Evil and Satan existed as a force outside of us, supernatural if you like. Then much debate ensued regarding the nature of Man and Evil, Eru and Good, God and Good, Melkor and Evil etc.

I then reiterated my point that God, Good, The Devil, Evil are creations of Man. Words used to define the internal conflicts of a Human Being. As words, ideas and concepts they do not exist outside of our perception and creation of them.

Eriol then said this idea did not prove that these things don’t exist. Eriol also believed in a force outside of us named God that did exist.

We then went off on Jesus tangent and a God dead end. Nobody seems to want to entertain the idea that God (a jolly yet vengeful, all knowing, all wise man with a big white beard in the sky) doesn’t exist, or that Jesus might just be a character in a story.

We were then directed back to Tolkien by Nóm who used a good quote to say that Good and Evil are relative, up to the individual.

I then said that existence is what we perceive as an individual. Outside of us is everyone else's existence. I used the image of the Universe as a circle whose circumference is so large it becomes a straight line. This was Nicholas Cusa’s idea. He used it to describe infinity (The Universe). He also said the centre of the infinite circle is everywhere. Everyone is the centre of their own Universe and the boundaries of this universe are infinite and unknowable. 

HLGStrider then said Darwin was as equally theoretical as the Bible if you wanted to look at like that, which she didn’t (in relation to God, not Darwin).

Eriol then disagreed with my idea of existence. I still stay Existence is only what you perceive, everything you don’t perceive is everybody else’s perception of reality. How can two people's view of the world be the same when they exist independently, it’s impossible. Two people looking at a tree won’t see it the same tree because they will see it with their own perception of a tree. It may invoke memories that the other person doesn’t have, be viewed at a different angle, be viewed by a mind talking to itself in a different language, be viewed by a carpenter, be viewed by an ecologist, be viewed by a child, be viewed by Tolkien who calls it an Ent. The tree is a different tree to every one of them. The tree itself doesn’t know it’s a tree. It may exist as a physical entity but it doesn’t exist as a tree.

Gone off summary mode there, sorry.

Then we agreed that Jesus existed as a person though I would argue that it doesn’t matter if he did or not.

I can _conceive a world in which a self-contradicting statement is true_, Eriol. You hit the nail head of my idea. I also believe everything is _inside us_ and that is how we understand ourselves and the world. Everything outside is reflected inside but the outside is an illusion created by us because it is multi-formed by millions of minds. It may exist in itself but it does not exist as we perceive it. We can’t grasp what it us because it’s as big as a circle that’s a straight line.

Then Aiwendil2 succesfully argued an oppsing point to Eriol. This was great argument against the existence of Outside of Us and its illusory nature, even if it did exist. 

Eriol then said Aiwendil2’s argument was too based on reason alone and that humans are far more complex, self aware and self-questioning. Humans are the only self-conscious being.

We then discussed real and imaginary Pepsi.


So overall - God may or may not exist. Reality may or may not exist. Good and Evil may be just words created to define and create the stability inherent in a civilized society; or they may be graceful angels and demonic horned beasts. Humans believe whatever they like. People may be right or wrong in their opinions; it doesn’t matter because it’s all relative. 

I think we had also better mention Lord of the Rings again before we get exiled for being off the topic appropriate to this area of the forum.

So, here goes: THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

That’s better.


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## Aiwendil2

Eriol wrote:



> I wonder if you really believe in what you are saying or if you are just playing Devil's Advocate for strict positivism



I'm actually not a positivist. Well, not _exactly_. I do think that positivism offers some very convincing arguments, and that there is much to be learned from it.



> Pure reason, without some belief, reaches a dead end. The problem with pure, radical rationalism is precisely that -- it cannot work without data, and it can not draw data except from some dubious source such as our senses and our intuition.



I agree, pure reason does not allow us to make any interesting statements or claims about the world. But that fact is far from a directive to start making leaps of faith. It's true that pure reason doesn't get us much of anywhere - but before we go any further, we must acknowledge, clearly and honestly, that we are no longer working with pure reason. That is, when we start admitting things like sensory data and trying to work out patterns and laws, we must always remember that we are not on firm ground in doing so. And, most importantly, we can limit the number of such guarded leaps of faith. It is one thing to cautiously assume that I can trust my own sensory data, and start looking for patterns in it. It is quite another thing to make a further leap of faith and say that my sensory data corresponds to actual ontological entities that are distinct from me. And it is yet another thing to transmute these assumptions into certainties and claim that there _must_ be ontological entities outside of me.



> we _know_, by some strange faculty that we could explore further, that they are wrong.



I think not. We _know_, in the strictest sense, nothing apart from "Cogito, ergo sum."



> In plain words, we have to believe that what we see is the truth.



Again, we don't have to believe it. We can certainly work based on that assumption, but we must not forget that it is just that - an assumption which is possibly in error. And we certainly cannot make the claim that what we see is _certainly_ the truth.



> And this is also the refutation of your assertion that the computer can "want" as we do. Sure, I can program a computer to act "as if" he wanted something. It can be a perfect masquerade. But the experience of the programmed computer is not akin to that of a human being. For the computer is programmed to want some things, and not others, while human beings want different things at different moments, following no program.



On this point I must rather strongly disagree. Humans _are_ computers. Human desires are explicable in terms of neural processes. A sufficiently sophisticated computer could easily want different things at different moments. Any claim to the effect that human brain activity is not a function of neural impulses goes rather against all that is known about neural science. Moreover, it is an unprovable, even unconfirmable and untestable, claim the acceptance of which involves a leap of faith far beyond the one we were discussing above.

It would be quite a separate thing to argue that computers, unlike human brains, are not _conscious_ of their own activity. Note that here "conscious" is not synonymous with "cognizant" - a computer could certainly be cognizant of its own activity; that is, the facts regarding all of its activities could be stored in its memory and made available to it in the future. By "consciousness" is meant that profound asymmetry that I observe between my own mind and everything else. It is quite possible to imagine that a computer, though it acts to the contrary, is not conscious. But it is possible _to exactly the same degree_ to imagine that other humans, though they act to the contrary, are not conscious.



> The main difference is that human beings want to question the program itself.



A computer could certainly be constructed that questions its own programming. It would have to be quite complex, but, as I said above, the human brain is an example of such a computer.



> Look at your example of the pepsi. When you want a pepsi, you do not want it "by your side", you want to gulp it down.



I was being vague and careless in my language. Substitute "drinking the pepsi" for "having the pepsi in front of me" in my example. That is: even as I am experiencing the taste, I still desire the taste. It is precisely that combination that makes the experience satisfying.

But that is beside the point. The main point is that what I desire is not the pepsi in itself; what I desire is the sensory experience of tasting the pepsi. In fact, I would be completely unable to distinguish the mere sensory experience from the sensory experience plus the actual fact of consuming the drink - because my only epistemic access to the actual fact is the sensory experience.



> How would you know your logic is flawed? Surely you would apply a logical test to this conclusion to chech whether it is correct or not, right? How can you do that with flawed logic?



You're right, I can never know that my logic is flawed. But no more can I know that it is not flawed. 



> If we reallydisbelieve that (for sure we can), we stop functioning and die. There is a strong distinction in what I am saying between a carefree "disbelieving", that is said in an hypothetical way, and real disbelief, one which entails a proportional shift in our actions.



I'm a little confused about your insistence on the word "disbelief". I am not talking about believing or disbelieving anything, if "believing" is understand (as it usually is) to mean "accepting unquestionably as true". But what I am saying is also not your "carefree disbelieving"; that is, just sort of saying something without really meaning it. What I am saying is that neither absolute belief nor absolute disbelief is possible. To decide that no external world exists and stop acting at all would be just as absurd as deciding on the truth of any proposition and then acting as if that proposition were known to be true. Remember, we cannot know _anything_ other than "I think, therefore I am" - we can neither know that logic _is_ flawed nor that it _isn't_.



> But the individual knows best, and it knows that it can follow reason and get to a good result



No, it does not know that it can follow reason and get a good result. I have no way of _knowing_ that reason will not suddenly stop working tomorrow.



> We can play around with the idea that they are not true, but if we BELIEVE that, we stop any and all reasoning and function immediately.



Again - I am not proposing that we believe anything absolutely. But I am also not proposing that we merely "play around" with ideas about skepticism.



> But my argument rested on the point that we desired other things besides that... Things outside ourselves; as well as sensory states.



I don't see how we possibly could desire things besides sensory states (by which I include thought and emotion states - all purely internal, conscious states). How can I desire a thing in itself if I have no epistemic access whatsoever to that thing? It is _impossible_ to distinguish between a sensory state without an ontological entity behind it and a sensory state with such an entity. This seems self-evident, since our only epistemic access to _anything_ is through sensory states.



> A prime example is the difference between memory and actual experience. We want to experience a good thing, not just remember it. The memory of a pepsi is not the same as a pepsi. Why is that so? Why shouldn't it be the same if it's all "inside"?



The mental state of a memory is quite different from the mental state of an actual experience - and in a way completely explicable through neural science. That is, a memory and an actual experience simply represent two distinct sensory/conscious states. But both are conscious states.

Michel Delving:

To address your original point, I agree that good and evil, God and Satan, are inventions of humans. 

Of course, this does not _prove_ that they don't exist (remember, we can't prove anything). But it does mean that we really ought to stop blindly insisting that they do exist, and being intolerant of each other because some people don't choose to blindly accept these propositions, or (even worse) choose to blindly accept propositions that are slightly different from ours; and maybe we should even be openminded and willing to assess other people's ideas based on their own purely rational merits rather than based on these blindly irrational convictions.

Seriously, though - I think that whether good and evil (or right and wrong, if you prefer less melodramatic terms) actually exist outside of human invention is still up in the air. The fact is that even people who claim that there is no such thing as good or evil still _act_ as if there are. Most of us, even those who think that good and evil are nothing more than human conventions, are still perfectly willing to condemn Hitler and Osama bin Laden on purely moral grounds.

Of course, the argument I just made has no actual rational force.

Nonetheless (and perhaps I am being naively optimistic) I still hold out some hope that there are grounds for a purely rational moral system.


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## HLGStrider

Don't have time to read this now, so I'll do it later, but I just had a quick comment. . .



> Either I’m being overly simplistic or your all being overly intellectual but my ideas seem very basic next to the mind bending barrage of observations you are all pouring into the mix



The way I think it is is you are making a statement and we are argueing over the statement, so it is reasonable that we are longer and more "intellectual."

For instance if I were to make a statement:

Bush is a good president (I'm using this one because of the differing views on the forum. I don't want to discuss it here).

What would the replies be?

VERY few would be simply,
Bush is not a good president. That isn't debate. Debate is where someone makes a statement and people pick it appart or support it with lots of differing things. 

Just imagine how complicated that discussion would be about a man. . .and we are talking about something a lot bigger then men.


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## Eriol

I will address some side issues before getting back to business. First, to our newest moderator: How do we direct people to such a specific portion of a thread as you just did? You can answer that by PM, I think...

The thread itself is very intriguing, and it helped me to understand what Aiwendil2 is saying -- or so I _believe_ (hehe).

Now, back to business:



> Eriol then disagreed with my idea of existence. I still stay Existence is only what you perceive, everything you don’t perceive is everybody else’s perception of reality. How can two people's view of the world be the same when they exist independently, it’s impossible. Two people looking at a tree won’t see it the same tree because they will see it with their own perception of a tree. It may invoke memories that the other person doesn’t have, be viewed at a different angle, be viewed by a mind talking to itself in a different language, be viewed by a carpenter, be viewed by an ecologist, be viewed by a child, be viewed by Tolkien who calls it an Ent. The tree is a different tree to every one of them. The tree itself doesn’t know it’s a tree. It may exist as a physical entity but it doesn’t exist as a tree.



Posted by Michel Delving.

I could almost clap when I read that. It is very much what I believe too. And this is very intriguing, since it begins with "Eriol disagreed". This is a very difficult topic, and I probably did not express myself correctly.

Sure the concept "tree" is something that exists in minds, not in nature. But I am not defending the real existence of concepts. I am defending the existence of the object, of the thing that produced the sensory response that our minds, which is translated as "tree". 

MD, to say that good and evil are "just words" is begging the question. What is a word? Is it a thing that does not exist? Sure they are words, but do they refer to something else? The denial of the referent is quite fashionable in some linguistic philosophies, that say that language is either scientific or tautological, but the "tautology" to which they refer is very important (Check Wittgenstein if you are really interested on that, though I do not recommend it ).

I'm not talking about signs in writing, or the sounds we use to transmit sound. I am talking about the Word, the Logos in our own mind. When we think (and out thought must be taken as a given, check Descartes and Aiwendil2), we think _in_ words. Please note, I'm not saying we think _with_ words, we think _in_ words. And these words, called by some philosophers The Word (and it is in this sense, as an analogy, that Jesus is the Word -- God "thought" the Universe _in_ Jesus), are real things in our thought. We have to explain their origin and their relation with sensory data before doing away with the outside reality. Indeed, we could not do away with outside reality without words! And it is also in this sense that I say that denial of logic and reality is the end of life and function -- for it forcefully means the end of the Logos. That is why I don't believe you (sorry) when you say that you can, indeed, conceive of a world without logic. For "conception" itself, even of this non-logical world, uses logic. It is as you said that, using the rules of logic (for conceiving necessarily does that), you discovered that 2 plus 2 equals 5.

If you really believe that, as opposed to just saying that, then you are a wonderful creature, for I can't understand it. And for sure I can't argue with you regarding that. It may be (and probably it is) my own fault, but as certain as 2 plus 2 equals 4 I will never understand it. I can only wish you well, then.

Now, Aiwendil2, as I said above that other thread helped me understand your point better. And I think we are really debating over words and not concepts. For you say that you are "so sure that reality is a good gamble that you act as it is apodictically true" (I am paraphrasing -- apodictically true means "true without any doubt whatsoever"). And I talk about a "leap of faith". I really don't see much of a difference. As I emphasized (or so I thought  ), there is no logical reason for us to make this leap of faith, or as you said, we don't stand in firm ground when we do so. We might as well not make it -- and enter what I called the world of insanity. There is no logical, a priori reason for us to choose one world over the other.

This is reflected in many of your objections. So, I say that we must "believe" that seeing is believing, that what we see is the truth, and you say "No, we must not believe that, but we can work on that assumption". This is pretty much what I meant by the word "believe". Sorry if it was misleading. When I said we "must" believe, this is not apodictical "must", nor logical "must", but rather existential "must" -- if we don't do that we fall outside of human experience.

The bulk of my arguments was not intended to prove by force of reason that "reality" is better or more logical than "insanity", as I put them in one of my posts. Rather, it is intended to show that the alternative to "reality" is "insanity". To show, fully, what it means to deny reality. When we are debating it is very well to toy with the idea, but in life we do not do that, rightly or wrongly. "Insanity", the world I am attempting to describe, is so alien that we have an innate rejection to it (and this is very interesting when you examine the idea that man was created by God -- He did not give us reason alone, he gave us other things, without a proper name perhaps. And it is one of those things that rejects "insanity").

About computers x humans. Do you really think you can program a computer to question his program? Wouldn't it be following the program if it did that, then? I assume, of course, that this activity we are engaged in -- philosophy -- is in fact questioning the program, and not simply a pleasant pastime. We all must answer this question, inwardly.

About desiring sensory states x desiring things. The source of confusion here is the pair "things : concepts", as well as "perceiving : conceiving". Refer back to the discussion of the tree, so well written by MD. We do not wish the pepsi "in itself", we desire the concept of drinking a pepsi. In this concept there is A LOT of other concepts included -- thirst, cold temperature, sweetness, and perhaps other thing such as "being fashionable" (if we believe the ads ). But we desire the unique mix of concepts involved in drinking a pepsi. This mix of concepts changes with the individual and the situation. No one can describe the taste of pepsi, any more than he can describe "blue". The first apprehensions are undefinable. 

I have already written a lot, otherwise I would discuss what I think is the prime example of the interaction between the individual mind and reality: a rainbow. If you want to indulge in that...

Finally, about the "Cogito". I think a better translation of that word in Descartes would be "Doubt": "I doubt, therefore I am". For he was founding his philosophy in the doubt of every other concept, and the root of his doubts was himself -- this is the context of the phrase. I have always thought Descartes used a little sleight of hand there. For we cannot doubt without having the options in front of us. In this thread, for instance, there have been two main point of views defended: The ontological character of reality (mine) and the epistemological character of reality (yours). But one can't have a doubt between this two points of view before perceiving them, and even more, without conceiving them in our own minds. And therefore "I doubt, therefore I am" can't be the first sentence in the epistemological journey -- it presupposed "yes", and "no", as well as the thing being doubted.

Doubt is not a permanent state. It keeps coming back and forth between two options.

This is just a side note in the issue being argued...


----------



## Beleg

> The bulk of my arguments was not intended to prove by force of reason that "reality" is better or more logical than "insanity", as I put them in one of my posts. Rather, it is intended to show that the alternative to "reality" is "insanity".




Can you clarify the point a bit more? 



> How can two people's view of the world be the same when they exist independently, it’s impossible. Two people looking at a tree won’t see it the same tree because they will see it with their own perception of a tree.



Two things come in this point. 
A general view and an individual view. 
I feel that the general view of two people can be the same, like two people can admire a "golden cup", that's the general view, while both of these people have different things to admire about the "golden cup." Each of them being their own individual views. 
I statement can be agreed upon by everyone, because everyone has various or sometimes same motives which cause them to believe that the statement is correct. 
And the minds of two people can work upon the same line but that doesn't always happen and depend upon the situation... 
Every person precives very differently, not exactly the same, it is not possible, yet the result of their preciving can be the same, and thus they can agree on a matter. 
i know this is not exactly contradicting your point before the mention of trees, since you only said that two people precieve differently, perhaps your motive in saying that was something else, but i felt from it that perhaps you were implying that two men cannot bring forth same idea's because there preciving of a matter might be different, they might take different ways to achieve a motive. 

And their are things who points are so singular, so individual, so clearcut that they instantly bring the same point in the mind of every person. People precieve it the same way. 
2+2=4. Everyone will precieve it the same way. 
By My statement "He was a fool" everyone will get an impression that i dislike the person, and that would be their precieving in the general sense. 
Two people can't think exactly alike, in everyway, that's physically and mentally impossible, so we have to take what can be possible, and I think that if two people take the same view about something, we can say that their preception was common, for the results they achieved were the same and they were thinking along the same lines. 



> Sure the concept "tree" is something that exists in minds, not in nature. But I am not defending the real existence of concepts. I am defending the existence of the object, of the thing that produced the sensory response that our minds, which is translated as "tree".


I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence or defence thereof. 
But
The real existance of the "tree" is but what we see it as. It is nothing different from what we think of it in our mind. Existance o anything is what our mind see it as. And minds work differently. A person might completelyt overlook the existance of a small thing lying on the road while another person might pick it up and examine it for he might believe it is important while the former might be completely oblivious to it. It is what our mind thinks. The existance of the substance is based upon our mind, the existance of a substance will be presented to us as our mind takes it. 
For example a person might scold the child who had hit him with a ball and another person might laugh and shake off the matter. 
The fact was that the matter existed, that the ball was hit at us, but our minds precieved it the different way, because according to the knowledge stuffed in them, they were meant to give different decisions. 




> And it is also in this sense that I say that denial of logic and reality is the end of life and function





> The bulk of my arguments was not intended to prove by force of reason that "reality" is better or more logical than "insanity",



Somehow I think that these statements contradict eachother. Believe it or not, our principal aim in this world is to live and if denial of logic and reality which in other words is insainty is the end of life, then how could Reality _ not_ be better then insainty? 

P.S: Thanks a lot Nom! That thread also answered some of my questions about another topic that i brought up in the Silmarillion thread!  



> The way I think it is is you are making a statement and we are argueing over the statement, so it is reasonable that we are longer and more "intellectual."
> 
> For instance if I were to make a statement:
> 
> Bush is a good president (I'm using this one because of the differing views on the forum. I don't want to discuss it here).
> 
> What would the replies be?
> 
> VERY few would be simply,
> Bush is not a good president. That isn't debate. Debate is where someone makes a statement and people pick it appart or support it with lots of differing things.
> 
> Just imagine how complicated that discussion would be about a man. . .and we are talking about something a lot bigger then men).



People will also argue whether Bush is a good president or not. It would also be a debate. People would try to reason out why Bush isn't a good president or vice-versa. So saying that people won't argue whether Bush is a good president or not, IMHO is not exactly correct.


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## Eriol

I think Elgee was trying to explain why the posts in this thread are so long and complex, for MD was saying that he felt he (MD) was being overly simplistic while people were saying a lot. She was saying that since it is MD's propositions are under dispute, it is natural that other people's posts are bigger. If he had said "Bush is a good president", his post would be short, and ours would be also big... Her example had nothing to do with Bush himself, only with the nature of an argument.

About insanity x reality. One of my main points that I should explain more is that our relationship with reality (be it a construct of our minds or a "real" reality) is not a simple thing. There are several steps in, for instance, our observation of a tree:

1) Sensory data. We are bombarded by sensory data constantly. I will restrict the argument to sight, but it happens with all senses. Our eyes have no discrimination about what they see or not. They see everything in their sight. And this means Everything. Which takes us to our second point.

2) Discrimination. This is one of the brain's functions, and a very important one. There are people with cerebral defects (usually as a result of accidents) who lose this ability. The result is permanent confusion. For instance, as I type here, my eyes focus mainy on the keyboard and screen. A person without discriminating ability would see disjointed keys, and not "a keyboard", for his eyes would wander from one key to the other; he would have great difficulty in following the screen, for what appears on it would have the same "weight", in his mind, as the monitor, or the mouse... I think "discrimination" is clear enough.

3) Perception. This is a feature that unifies the senses, in the identification of "something". Take our tree. When we see, with all the senses, that it is a single object, we perceive _it_ -- as opposed to perceiving it's size, color, leaves, etc. 

4) Conception. This is the last step. When we _create_ an idea corresponding to that particular tree, so that we can "access it" in years hence, we have conceived of it. This is a very active step, as opposed to the first one. We create the idea. The first tree we ever saw was an idea created as this. Later, we create another idea, the idea of the general "tree", so that we can draw general "trees", and identify a drawing that, in the face of it, is COMPLETELY different from a tree with a "tree". 

A mark of conception is that it is accompanied by a word. It need not be the word used by people. But you can't conceive anything without having a word for it, even if it is your own, private word. Language as a means of communication appears only later, when you learn that what you had called, say, "hexterabonto" is called by other persons "a tree". 

Of course, you conceived many more things than just "tree". Probably you conceived of "bark", "leaf", "high", and created your own words before learning the proper ones. You could say, approaching another tree, 'the "skin" of this tree is different!' (But only if you already had the concept of skin). The use of a metaphor goes to show that you not only conceived of "bark", but that you also saw its analogy with "skin". 

Later on, as you become endowed with a huge store of concepts, you can play around with them and conceive of things that are not. But to do that you must have, not only the concepts, but the words that signify them.

My point about reality x insanity is that steps 4 and 3, and in a sense 2, are completely dependent on logic. There is no compelling logical reason for us to accept logic, but if we don't, then we have to doubt everything we have achieved under steps 4, 3 and 2. I think "insanity", in the current usage of the word, describes the situation accurately.

Finally, I agree with you Beleg when you conclude that reality is better than "insanity". But this judgment of ours is not a logical one. You say that life is our main goal in this world. This is not a logical proposition, as much as I agree with it. My point in comparing reality x "insanity" is that the choice is not logical, it is existential. You see in this thread MD, Aiwendil and perhaps Nóm defending the idea that since the rules of logic are not liable of logical proof, we may as well not believe in them. Their conclusion is a logical one. But if they take it seriously, they will have to face "insanity". 

Simply, the word "better" in the beginning of the last paragraph is a matter of opinion, and if we try to convince other people that it is logically better, we will fail. The choice is open to all of us, reality or "insanity". And this is not the first instance of "choice" as an important feature in the philosophical journey... Logical Positivism has almost to deny the existence of "choice", since it accepts only logic as a standard, and there is no choice where logic is involved. We can't choose the result of 2+2, it is 4 whatever we think of it. But there is choice involved in our lives in (at least) three major spheres: aesthetical, ethical, religious. A Vulcan must also choose in these spheres. (But this is off the subject).


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## Aiwendil2

Eriol wrote:


> MD, to say that good and evil are "just words" is begging the question.



I think the point here is not quite that good and evil are "just words" as it is that they are "just inventions". The relevant question is whether good and evil have some existence outside of our invention of them.



> So, I say that we must "believe" that seeing is believing, that what we see is the truth, and you say "No, we must not believe that, but we can work on that assumption". This is pretty much what I meant by the word "believe".



Ah, I understand. There is an unfortunate double meaning to the word "believe"; it might be characterized as the difference between "believing that" and "believing in" - that is, one can "believe that" a certain proposition is true and still leave room for doubt, but if one 'believes in" the truth of that proposition, one generally accepts it absolutely and to the exclusion of any evidence to the contrary.



> When I said we "must" believe, this is not apodictical "must", nor logical "must", but rather existential "must" -- if we don't do that we fall outside of human experience.



I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "human experience". Surely, regardless of what we believe or don't believe, our sensory data and fundamental drives will remain the same. But perhaps you mean that if we don't act as if logic is valid, we will be unable to function in society. And that would seem true to me.



> Rather, it is intended to show that the alternative to "reality" is "insanity".



If you mean that the alternative to an ontologically realist view is insanity, I must disagree. One could easily take a positivist view and continue to function normally. All we are able to experience is our sensory states, so whether those states correspond to an external reality or not should not affect our actions at all. To use the Pepsi example: even if I'm a positivist and really believe that there is no actual can of pepsi in my hand, I'll still drink it. From my point of view, it doesn't matter whether the pepsi is real or not, since either way, my experience is exactly the same.

Rejection of logic is different, though; if one rejects this (including the logic of confirmation), then one will cease to function well. So in our actions, it is best to assume that logic and reason hold, and even best to assume that our process of confirmation is justified. But if we are talking philosophically, if the very question we're interested in is whether such things are rationally justified, then we must not make that assumption. One cannot that because we make the assumption, it is true.



> About computers x humans. Do you really think you can program a computer to question his program?



Quite certainly. We are such computers. If we were to make a normal computer of sufficient complexity, there is no reason it could not do _anything_ that the human brain can do.



> In this concept there is A LOT of other concepts included -- thirst, cold temperature, sweetness, and perhaps other thing such as "being fashionable"



Yes - I don't see how this goes against anything I said. As I understood it, you were arguing that we _do_ want the pepsi in itself, not the mix of concepts you describe here. I was simplifying when I said it is the taste we desire; of course it can be any mixture of sensory data (though I think the taste is in this case quite clearly the most important one).



> No one can describe the taste of pepsi, any more than he can describe "blue". The first apprehensions are undefinable.



Perhaps; but I don't see what this has to do with the previous discussion.



> I have already written a lot, otherwise I would discuss what I think is the prime example of the interaction between the individual mind and reality: a rainbow.



Interesting, though I'm not sure what exactly you mean.



> Finally, about the "Cogito". I think a better translation of that word in Descartes would be "Doubt": "I doubt, therefore I am". For he was founding his philosophy in the doubt of every other concept, and the root of his doubts was himself -- this is the context of the phrase.



I think Descartes's "cogito" is often misunderstood. But what matters here is not what Descartes meant by it, but what I mean by it. And the way I understand it, "cogito" refers simply to the activity of consciousness. "Thinking" is one part of this activity, and is a decent translation. "Doubting" is a type of thinking. "Perceiving" might work also. But the point is simply this: the one type of universe there cannot be is one in which there is nothing, for there is at the very least my consciousness. One could very well say "there is at the very least my thought" but "consciousness" works just as well and is more fundamental. So I don't think that there is any trickery going on here.



> A mark of conception is that it is accompanied by a word. It need not be the word used by people. But you can't conceive anything without having a word for it, even if it is your own, private word.



I'm not so sure about that. What about young children that have not yet learned any lingual skills, and yet have very clear conceptions such as mother, pain, hunger, etc.? These are not merely transitory sensory perceptions, since the child is able to retain the concepts. Or what about animals that don't have any ability to form words (even internally) and yet seem to be able to understand certain concepts? For example, a dog that demonstrates loyalty to its master. Sure, that loyalty is instinctual, but it requirese that some concept of the master be formed and retained out of the transitory sensory impressions.

But perhaps you are right in that words, or something very much like them, are needed before abstraction is possible.



> And this is not the first instance of "choice" as an important feature in the philosophical journey... Logical Positivism has almost to deny the existence of "choice", since it accepts only logic as a standard, and there is no choice where logic is involved.



Wait a minute - first of all, I don't think that logical positivism insists that logic is the only way of determining anything. It seems quite clear that logic is unable to tell us anything about the world. And what do you mean by "there is no choice where logic is involved"? Logic is unable to tell us anything about the world, so it would seem that if logic is the only standard, then all decisions about what the world is like are mere "choices". I'm also not happy about the word "choice" in this context. I don't "choose" to believe anything; I believe (in the non-absolute sense) whatever reason tells me to be most likely. I think it likely that logic is correct; that is why I try to use logic to help me to know things. I do not merely choose logic because I like it.

Also, the word "choice" connotes action. It is not really necessary to make a choice in internal (and non-absolute) beliefs; I can quite easily hold both positivism and realism in mind as possibilities without choosing between them. "Choice" in the sense of choosing what to do is quite another matter. I do indeed choose to act in accordance with logic and reason, in part because I think it probable that logic and reason are valid and in part because that is the way my brain is programmed to work (and thus the way I am programmed to act). But this kind of choice has little to do with philosophy.



> But there is choice involved in our lives in (at least) three major spheres: aesthetical, ethical, religious. A Vulcan must also choose in these spheres. (But this is off the subject).



I will perhaps grant you ethics, of those three. See above for my view of the state of ethics/morals. I agree that a purely rational being must at the least choose what to do, and that would seem to be the definition of ethics.

Religion? I see no need for a Vulcan to choose it. The rational thing to do is not to choose some religion, but simply to assess the probabilities of any metaphysical statements as well as possible. Since religion is fundamentally an internal decision, there is no need for "choice" - a rational being will simply hold whatever relevant probabilities it perceives in mind.

Aesthetics? Surely aesthetics are neither the result of choices nor of philosophy, but merely of one's internal nature. Things that are thought to be beautiful are thought to be beautiful simply based on the particular consitituion of the human brain. I have never chosen to perceive something as beautiful; it simply happens. Moreover, conceptions of aesthetics have no bearing on philosophy; they lie purely within the realm of psychology and neurology.

This has been a rather enjoyable debate thus far. Thanks!


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## Michel Delving

I'm about four post behind on the reply front but I'll catch up...

I took the trouble of e-mailing _an expert in the field_ regarding the phrase _In the beginning was The Word_. Here’s the reply:

_ The Word generally speaking is the name of God. Which is Yod Hau Vau Hau. In 
English the name is Jehovah but in Hebrew there are no vowels.
The quote in the beginning was the word comes from the gospel of St. John. 
There are 72 names for God this is called the Shem Hem Foresh. So the whole 
thing becomes a study in itself. But it is said that if the name of God were 
pronounced the whole world the whole of the Universe would be destroyed and 
begin again. In Poland in the 16th century there was a Jewish Rabbi who made 
a man out of clay, the name of God was inscribed upon the man of clay, on his 
forehead, he then proceeded to bring him to life, the beast that resulted, you may be surprised to know, was called Golum. _


________________________________


Aiwendil2, mentioned Bin Laden and Hitler, whose names always pop up like bad pennies in these kind of discussions. Of course, we all agree that these people personify evil because they are opposed to our moral ideas of a civilised society. However, they completely believed that they were right in what they did and did not see themselves as evil. Therefore Good and Evil are in the mind of the beholder and as a result do not exist.

As for a non-logical world were a self-contradicting statement is true, Eriol. How about the world of the Imagination? How about a world made entirely of emotion. The first is a completely illogical world where anything can become everything. How about this for a self-contradicting statement that’s true: It is the it that it is not.
The second is a place were reason loses all balance and pours forth in liquid emotion. Have you ever seen a Talk Show were everyone criticises the actions of a guest entirely based on the logical approach. It’s easy to talk and judge but very hard to apply reason to someone who has been overcome by emotions.

_I doubt, therefore I am_. What a fantastic concept!

And finally: 2+2 = 4. Two symbols joined by a symbol reflect (via another symbol) and further symbol; but it equally is x + x = y. Once we’ve been taught mathematics we can recognize the symbols. For example, the symbols of this year (2003) we all recognize and live by but as we know it’s not really 2003. It’s possibly 2003 years after the death of a possibly fictitious character called Jesus. More accurately the symbols for the year should be in the multi billion mark and even then they wouldn’t be accurate. So anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus doesn’t believe it’s 2003 by default, but if they didn’t their cheques would all be returned, they would always be late for appointments and be shunned by their relatives for forgetting birthdays, not to mention Christmas! So we have applied these rules in order to maintain the fabric of Civilization; so 2 + 2 = 5 would collapse this structure. 

My 2+2 = 4 also comes with a whole host of connotations too – memories of an unpleasant maths teacher, eating Jelly Beans and watching Sesame Street, two fat ladies, clickety click - or is that 88!. So 2+2 as symbols may equal 4 but I see and different 2 + 2 than you. So I could if I wanted say 2 + 2 = 9. It would be wrong but I might perceive it to be right.


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## Eriol

Don't worry about "getting behind", MD... each response is so "full of meat" that even for me, who am not "behind" in the sense you used, will have to do a lot of work to keep up!

And that's how it should be... I agree with Aiwendil, this is very interesting and fun! 

So, answering MD first. About the Word. I really don't see what is the connection between the opinion you quoted and the subject at hand  . But my single allusion to Jesus as the Word, as the way in which God "thought" the Universe, is the interpretation of this passage by St. Thomas Aquinas, which built on the interpretation of St. Augustine regarding this subject... they're experts too .

Perhaps you are alluding to GW's comments, in which case I am intruding in something that is not related to me . 

As for non-logical worlds, the world of Imagination is a very logical one. I think the difficulty here is that you take "logic" to mean "perception", while I take "logic" to address the relationship between concepts. Sure this computer in front of me can suddenly become another thing. This does not break the rules of logic. It would break the rules of reality as we suppose them, BUT (and this is an enormous but) the rules of reality are in the realm of "reasonable gambles" (to use Aiwendil's terminology). Gravity may end or double tomorrow, and this won't break the rules of logic.

However, if this computer becomes a non-computer, it can't keep on being a computer. This would break the laws of logic. And this is unconceivable. Try to conceive it. A computer being a computer and _at the same time_ a non-computer. This can also be applied to your emotional world. Emotions do not defy logic, they change the terms of the reasoning. Behind every bewildered act, even behind serial killers, even behind Hitler and bin Laden (your examples -- I would not go to such an extreme, there are examples closer to common life), there is always logic. 

And about symbols and 2+2=4 -- I think you are beginning to explore, perhaps by yourself, what I alluded to in a previous post: linguistic analysis, following the path of Wittgenstein. I think this road is a dead end, and perhaps we could talk some more about it, but it would take even longer posts than are seen in this thread  -- perhaps we could open another one just for it. I will say just one thing regarding it therefore: I think this road confuses symbols with meanings, the symbol "2" with the concept of "twoness". 2+2=9 is acceptable if we change the meanings of the symbols, but if we take the concepts themselves being symbolized by these 5 symbols, and accept them for what they mean in everyday speech, then it is NOT acceptable. You might perceive "2", "+", "=", or "9" with a different meaning than I see in these symbols -- but if you agree with me in their meaning, then "2+2=9" is simply false. For you and for me. The confusion of symbols and meanings is the ban of this road...

Now, I'll check Aiwendil's post...

What I mean by "human experience" is somewhat more than "life in society", though it includes that. "Human experience" is for me the life of the intellect. Please refer to my post about sensory input, perception and conception to see what I mean by "without logic, life and function would cease to be". It means, simply, that we would not be able to even form any concept in our minds, we would certainly not be able to become aware of our selves (since this is a VERY LATE concept in the evolution of our minds). There is a huge amount of background before "I think, therefore I am" can be formulated in a brain. 

Also, the word "believe" is not simply a good gamble as I see it. I think our major difference, Aiwendil, is that for me the concept of "I" includes more than my mind. So when I say "I believe in the reality of this can of pepsi", I am really saying "My mind, my heart, my body, my soul, my ego -- they all believe in the reality of this can of pepsi". (There is probably a lot more included in "me"... but these are the easy concepts -- I'm sure this sentence will beget a lot of criticism, hehe).

About computers x humans. You say that we are such computers, computers who question their own programs. I don't quite understand that. Is there no difference in your mind between computers and humans? How do you define a computer? Please relate your definitions to actual, existing computers, and not imaginary ones . Or, in other words, do not _assume_ our status of "computers" in your definition -- you have to _prove_ we are such computers. Or to _prove_ your rather reckless )) assertion that if we build a sufficiently complex computer it will be undistinguishable from a human being. Isn't that a leap of faith?

About the mix of concepts involved in "pepsi". What I am trying to say is that the concept of pepsi is something created by our minds, encompassing all the sensory and non-sensory data involved. When we want a "pepsi", we are addressing this concept, not the "ontologically real" pepsi. But (another big but) this does not mean that our concepts are completely detached from the "ontologically real" pepsi, for they are built from the sensory data that came from that "ontologically real" pepsi. Again, I refer you to my post about how we create concepts. 

It's interesting that you brought up the example of young children, for it is precisely the evolution from non-consciousness to consciousness in young children that shows very clearly how the mind builds concepts. Are you interested in child psychology? This is a rather fascinating subject, I could recommend a few good books...

Finally, about choice. This is also related to my definition of "I-ness", including more than the mind. You say:



> Rejection of logic is different, though; if one rejects this (including the logic of confirmation), then one will cease to function well. So in our actions, it is best to assume that logic and reason hold, and even best to assume that our process of confirmation is justified. But if we are talking philosophically, if the very question we're interested in is whether such things are rationally justified, then we must not make that assumption. One cannot that because we make the assumption, it is true.



And it seems you make a distinction between life and philosophy. This is a distinction of the mind, surely. YOU, the individual Aiwendil, have chosen reality, and logic. Your mind may explore other options, but as your ordinary life shows, the rest of your being is quite content with logic and reality. This is philosophy also, my friend! There is no clear boundary, philosophy is not something you indulge as a pastime. (Though this misconception is very widespread, and "philosophy/philosopher" has even become a common term for dilettantism in language). Philosophy is about how we are going to live... as that wise old man (Socrates) said, "the unexamined life is not worth living". So, action, will, emotion, they are all a part of your being as much as your intellect, your mind. And they have chosen. 

(The mind is used to think of itself as "king of the hill"... and IMHO -- I hate this acronym, everything I have said so far is clearly only my humble opinion -- well, IMHO the first step towards a real philosophy is accepting the limits of reason. It was with that beginning that I, eventually, accepted God...).

This divisionism between life and philosophy, psychology and philosophy, aesthetics and philosophy, is really a reflection of a divide between mind and self. The mind throwing the light of reason upon everything else, except itself -- and therefore not seeing that it is grounded in other things. For me, each and every one of these subjects is very much under philosophy -- love of wisdom.

And in these subjects choice is quite common. Not choosing is also a choice, Aiwendil. 



> Religion? I see no need for a Vulcan to choose it. The rational thing to do is not to choose some religion, but simply to assess the probabilities of any metaphysical statements as well as possible. Since religion is fundamentally an internal decision, there is no need for "choice" - a rational being will simply hold whatever relevant probabilities it perceives in mind.



"Probabilities", in this sentence, is a major metaphysical concept. How can you assess "probabilities" with no sample, no repetition? You can't. So our hypothetical Vulcan would be simply following some prejudice (and worse, unexamined prejudice) in "assessing the probabilities of any metaphysical statements". And as for it being an internal decision, this is precisely what makes it a choice. "Choice", as I use the word, is related to the free will of the agent. It is very much external decisions that are subjected to coercion, be they coercion of other persons or "coercions of logic". But when we choose to accept logic or not, there is no coercion at all. It is an internal, free decision, and this is precisely why it is a choice. The same goes for accepting reality, or a God (for there are several to choose -- the Prime Mover, the Ultimate Goodness, and the Father are just three examples; I believe in all three, but each one of them are a result of choice. Aristotle would probably believe only in the first two...).

Once again, this is fun, I await your answer eagerly... see ya!


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## Gil-Galad

Well,I've said many times perfection is impossible.It can be only a dream.Having that in mind I would say that there aren't "absolute things".If there is absolute good it will be a kind of perfection,perfection of good.If there is absolute evil,it will be a kind of perfect evil,perfection of evil.but there is no perfection.Now matter how good something or someone is there is a grain of evil in him that is waiting to be awakened.In every evil creature there is a grain of good,because nobody was born evil and there is a small part of good that is somewhere in his heart.


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## HLGStrider

In humans I don't believe "perfect" is possible. However, in spiritual, yes.

It all depends on your concept of God, your concept of good and evil. If you believe in God as all powerful he is powerful enough to be perfect. If you don't believe in God (or a god of some sort), I have a hard time in seeing how you can believe in good or evil at all. 

I think whether or not God exists is the gist of most arguements like this, which is why it is sad that we cannot prove or disprove his existence. The entry of a god, especially a powerful one (I believe in an all powerful one, but a God with any degree of power) changes the entire model of the universe. If he is, one thing is true. If he isn't another is. That's why there is sometimes almost a futility to these arguements, if there are differing views. 

I personally don't believe in greater evil or lesser evil. In a human world, some kinds of behavior, such as murder, appear more evil than others, such as lying. I contest that they are all evil and it doesn't really matter which is more evil (Legally, yes, because there are certain things which hurt more people so they need to be discouraged more, but morally, no).


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## Aiwendil2

> It means, simply, that we would not be able to even form any concept in our minds, we would certainly not be able to become aware of our selves



But suppose someone decided one day that logic is defective. Surely that person would not suddenly cease to be conscious. I think we must distinguish between the (probably logical) activity of the brain that is the precondition for consciousness and the rational/irrational activity of that consciousness.



> I think our major difference, Aiwendil, is that for me the concept of "I" includes more than my mind. So when I say "I believe in the reality of this can of pepsi", I am really saying "My mind, my heart, my body, my soul, my ego -- they all believe in the reality of this can of pepsi".



Your heart can scarcely believe anything; it's far too busy pushing blood through your arteries. But I suppose you mean "emotion", which is surely part of the mind. Your body cannot believe anything; it is unconscious and has no capacity to process information. Your soul, or what you are calling the soul, is either a metaphysical entity for which we have no evidence or an emergent property of your neural network; in either case, it is certainly one with the mind. Your ego also is part of your mind.

So perhaps we mean "mind" in slightly different ways.



> I'm sure this sentence will beget a lot of criticism, hehe



Good guess. I'm sure some of mine above will do the same.



> Is there no difference in your mind between computers and humans?



Humans are a very sophisticated type of computer.



> How do you define a computer?



I would say that a computer is a network of components capable of transmitting signals to each other, and capable of processing and manipulating information.



> Or to prove your rather reckless assertion that if we build a sufficiently complex computer it will be undistinguishable from a human being.



I'm not sure how my assertion was reckless. The human brain is a network of neurons that exchange impulses and thereby manipulate information. That's what a computer is. In principle, there is no reason we could not make a map of a human brain and create a computer (i.e., a network of neurons/chips/whatever) that can perform exactly the same functions as the brain. 

I think the burden of proof here rests on you, to show some activity of the human brain that could not be reproduced by the appropriate exchange of impulses. I can think of one candidate - consciousness; but that will scarcely avail, since I can neither prove nor even detect consciousness in any other humans any more than I can in a computer.



> What I am trying to say is that the concept of pepsi is something created by our minds, encompassing all the sensory and non-sensory data involved.



Okay. As I think I said somewhere, I really should have written "mental states" rather than "sensory states", since a "mental state" can include sensory activity as well as emotional activity, rational activity, etc.



> . But (another big but) this does not mean that our concepts are completely detached from the "ontologically real" pepsi, for they are built from the sensory data that came from that "ontologically real" pepsi.



In a realist's view, yes the sensory data comes from the ontollogically real pepsi. But there is no way of distinguishing sensory data coming from an ontologically real pepsi from the same sensory data without any ontologically real pepsi behind it. You cannot prove the assertion that sensory data comes from external ontological entities.



> Are you interested in child psychology?



I never really was before, but now that I give some thought to it it does seem a fascinating topic.



> And it seems you make a distinction between life and philosophy.



It would be more accurate to say that I make a distinction between thought and action. Note: I say a _distinction_ not a _disjunction_. Of course there is a relationship between thought and action. Yet the two are distinct entities. My point was that it is possible to hold two contradictory thoughts in one's mind without necessarily choosing between them, but it is not possible to take two contradictory actions.



> Philosophy is about how we are going to live...



But that is not all that it is about; and it is incorrect to demand of all philosophy that it relate to our actions. It is perfectly valid to wonder whether logic might be flawed, and to do one's best (as difficult as it is) to assess that possibility. This line of reasoning should be attacked with rational arguments, not with critiques about its usefulness. 



> the first step towards a real philosophy is accepting the limits of reason. It was with that beginning that I, eventually, accepted God...



I hope you don't find this insulting, as that is not how I intend it - but it would seem to me that your "accepting the limits of reason" is really "deciding to believe (in the absolute sense) something with no reason at all". You can do this if you want, I suppose; but you cannot bring it into philosophical discussions, because you have no rational way to support it.



> Not choosing is also a choice, Aiwendil.



Quite. Where have I said otherwise?



> "Probabilities", in this sentence, is a major metaphysical concept. How can you assess "probabilities" with no sample, no repetition?



I assume you are referring to the difficulty of assessing the probabilities of such statements as "God exists". It is indeed difficult, and a good Vulcan would acknowledge that. It is, in fact, precisely for that reason that he would need to stick to mere probabilities. Note that I do not mean he should come up with some exact number! I merely mean that he should keep both possibilities in mind, and adjust his beliefs (non-absolute, that is) based on whatever evidence he is presented with. Of course, that evidence will be quite scarce in such a case. But the one thing he should _not_ do is arbitrarily (or even non-arbitrarily) choose to believe or disbelieve it to the exclusion of any other view.



> But when we choose to accept logic or not, there is no coercion at all.



But are our brains not pre-programmed for logic? Surely they are. Surely the monkeys whose brains exercise reason and decide that since there were bananas in that patch of jungle yesterday and the day before and the day before that, and thus there will probably be bananas there today are the ones that survive and become our great-great-great-etc.-grandparents; and the ones whose brains tell them that since there were bananas there on all previous occasions, there will be none there on this occasion are the ones that perish. Of course, the process would have started much farther back than with monkeys, but you get the idea. The point is that we are born with the disposition to perceive the world in rational ways (and also with contrary dispositions). True, not choosing is still a choice, and so not choosing to abandon logic is still a choice in favor of logic. But it is a choice toward which we are pushed, "coerced", as you say is possible for external actions.

But once we start thinking philosophically, and once we acknowledge the possibility that logic is flawed - then no amount of psychology or neurology or any such thing avails to prove that logic is sound; and so, we must entertain the possibility _in our philosophical thought_ that it is flawed.

How did we get so deeply entrenched in this discussion of the possibility of logic being flawed? We began by discussing the existence or non-existence of external things (I think, a much more fascinating topic).

Michel Delving wrote:



> Aiwendil2, mentioned Bin Laden and Hitler, whose names always pop up like bad pennies in these kind of discussions. Of course, we all agree that these people personify evil because they are opposed to our moral ideas of a civilised society. However, they completely believed that they were right in what they did and did not see themselves as evil. Therefore Good and Evil are in the mind of the beholder and as a result do not exist.



Okay, that's a perfectly reasonable view. My point was that a lot of people don't seem to realize what exactly it means to say that there is no such thing as absolute good or evil. It means, for example, that you have no justification whatsoever for condemning Hitler, other than expressing a mere personal dislike. A lot of people who claim not to believe in absolute morality nonetheless feel justified in passing moral judgements on Hitler. As for myself, I'm ethically agnostic. I would very much like there to be absolute morality, because I would very much like to be able to condemn Hitler. But of course, the mere fact that I want something doesn't make it true.


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## Eriol

Let's see...



> But suppose someone decided one day that logic is defective. Surely that person would not suddenly cease to be conscious.



That person would most definitely cease to be conscious, if he had truly decided that. There is no way a brain can continue to be conscious and not function by logic. So the "decision" of that person would be a good example of "the light of reason being thrown upon everything -- but mind itself". This is a crucial point. If you "decide" you are not going to believe (or act as if, or take for granted -- choose your wording) in logic, you can no longer form concepts, nor work with the concepts you have already.

Another way to say it would be that "the 'working hypothesis' of non-logic is disproved by the very activity of the brain formulating it".



> Your heart can scarcely believe anything; it's far too busy pushing blood through your arteries. But I suppose you mean "emotion", which is surely part of the mind. Your body cannot believe anything; it is unconscious and has no capacity to process information. Your soul, or what you are calling the soul, is either a metaphysical entity for which we have no evidence or an emergent property of your neural network; in either case, it is certainly one with the mind. Your ego also is part of your mind.



You brought a smile to my lips (in a good sense -- I found that funny). I could talk about how the word "heart" was, from the beginning of its etymology (and I see no reason why it would not have followed the path of its Latin/Portuguese counterpart, cordium/coração), referring to "emotion", and how only in the last 2 or 3 centuries it acquired the meaning you take for granted -- the pumping organ in our chests. Sure heart means "emotion" -- you even agreed with it with no explanation. 

Also, I don't think you realize the huge amount of metaphysical assumptions (for which you have no evidence  ) in your sentence. "your body does not believe anything"; but you equate mind with brains and neurons, with are part of the body. It would be more accurate (for you) to say "the mind does not believe anything". "Your soul (...) is an emergent property of your neural network"; again we are reduced to the body. "your ego is part of your mind", which I guess would make it part of my body.

Unless you believe that the words "emergent property" mean a qualitative jump from mere materiality, and that the mind is qualitatively different. Now, this would seem to be just a fashionable way to say that the mind is "a metaphysical entity for which we have no evidence". I don't see the difference between that expression and "emergent property". They both mean "something we can't quite explain in materialistic terms".

Even attacking the problem from a purely materialistic stance you get into dead ends, Aiwendil, such as : what do you mean, emotions are part of the mind? Emotions are very much the result of the interaction between hormones, neurotransmissors, and neural pathways. Hormones are something outside of our control, as well as neurotransmissors; neural pathways are formed without our conscious knowledge as we develop. And yet, we can control our emotions. (Or I would not be able to go to the beach with a lot of half-naked women around me). We can even turn a raw emotion into pure aesthetical contemplation (which is what I do at the beach). How can we do that? Who is the "we" in the sentence? If it is all reduced to hormones, neurotransmissors, electrical charges, atoms, who is "acting"?

To name the "I-ness" something such as "an emergent property" is simply to avoid looking squarely at it. 



> Humans are a very sophisticated type of computer.





> I would say that a computer is a network of components capable of transmitting signals to each other, and capable of processing and manipulating information.





> The human brain is a network of neurons that exchange impulses and thereby manipulate information.





> I think the burden of proof here rests on you, to show some activity of the human brain that could not be reproduced by the appropriate exchange of impulses.



Are you sure you don't see the unwarranted jump in your premises? The first sentence is what you have to prove, yet you state it as fact (_petitio principii_, assuming the conclusion as a premise); the second sentence is the definition of computers (a good one, by the way); The third sentence defines the brain, and yet from a cursory exam of "emotion" we saw that the mind is more than simply the "brain". And the fourth sentence equates the mind with the brain with no good reason, addressing the brain as if it were the same thing as the mind.

To say that the mind is a computer is both unwarranted and against the definition of computer, for the mind does much more than what you stated in the definition -- for instance, it changes its own program. We are "programmed" to get aroused and jump over a half-naked woman. Yet I never did that .

In no part of the computer definition you said that the computer could change its own components, or change the _way_ in which it processes and manipulates information. Yet our mind does precisely that, while the computer can only process and manipulate information according to a preset program.

And, perhaps more important, saying that the mind _is_ the brain is perhaps the greatest metaphysical assumption (for which we have no evidence; quite the contrary) in this thread so far.



> But that is not all that it is about; and it is incorrect to demand of all philosophy that it relate to our actions. It is perfectly valid to wonder whether logic might be flawed, and to do one's best (as difficult as it is) to assess that possibility. This line of reasoning should be attacked with rational arguments, not with critiques about its usefulness.



I do not criticize its usefulness, I criticize its "workability". Quite different. "Usefulness" is a cost/profit assessment; "workability" is about the sheer ability of something to function. And yes, I think our philosophy should be relfected in our actions, or it becomes dilettantism. Nothing against that, for sure. But the philosopher should explore all avenues, as you seem to agree; and having decided something is correct, he must act as if it is correct. If you decide something is correct but in your real actions and deeds you go against it, then you are lying to yourself, one way or the other. Either the decision or the action is wrong.



> hope you don't find this insulting, as that is not how I intend it - but it would seem to me that your "accepting the limits of reason" is really "deciding to believe (in the absolute sense) something with no reason at all". You can do this if you want, I suppose; but you cannot bring it into philosophical discussions, because you have no rational way to support it.



Believe me, it is VERY hard to insult me . Especially in a great thread such as this... And:



> Not choosing is also a choice, Aiwendil
> 
> Quite. Where have I said otherwise?



Another smile in my lips (I hope you're not offended by that). It seems you said otherwise in the next-to-last quote. It seems to me that you are arguing for non-choice. But it is a choice, and not simply "the safest road", as you imply in your last sentence in that quote. And, of course, I did not wake up one day and "decided, with no reason at all", to believe in God. I have plenty of reasons. We could discuss that. (Though it seems off-subject).

Note especially how you assume (with no evidence) that I have no rational way to support it. I think this is the product of a recent dichotomy between faith and reason (recent as in having just a few centuries) -- for which you have no evidence . I would rather take St. Augustine's motto -- _crede ut intelligas_ (sp?), Believe and Understand. But recent philosophers readily assume that if faith is involved there is no room for reason. Not so.

What accepts the limits of reason is reason itself, working reasonably. And accepting that, and accepting that some things may fall outside its jurisdiction, is what I meant by the first steps in philosophy. It seems to me that you think this is the end of philosophy, and that one who does that steps outside of philosophy . I fear we are getting to a standstill here... unfortunately. But I urge to you think about it as a possibility.


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## Eriol

> But the one thing he should not do is arbitrarily (or even non-arbitrarily) choose to believe or disbelieve it to the exclusion of any other view.



You are talking about the good Vulcan, and "it" in that sentence is God. (By the way, I think this is a very important side road in a discussion about good and evil -- as Elgee pointed out, the existence (or not) of God has huge implications in our views about that). Though for me it was the other way around... the existence of good and evil being one of the major pointers to God. 

Back to the Vulcan. Here we see the equivocal use of the word "believe" that you alluded to in a post. What is the difference between these two kinds of believing, "believing arbitrarily in God" and "believing arbitrarily in the continued existence of this computer"? My point is that there are many things that we take for granted, which are not so (and your mention of quantum mechanics -- a favorite subject of mine -- is a good example of that). This computer may, quite possibly, cease to exist now. It is an event allowed by quantum mechanics. Yet I believe, arbitrarily, that it won't. This is not a mere "working concept" -- I really believe that it won't, with every fiber of my being. Would the Vulcan criticize me for that? He might, perhaps, point out the possibility of it disappearing. But if I said that I was aware of it, but believed it wouldn't, anyway -- would the Vulcan say I am an irrational being, who can't be trusted? Would he call my belief irrational, arbitrary? I don't think so.

This is how I believe in this computer. And this is how I believe in God. Now, you can call it "arbitrary" and even "irrational", but I call it the result of considered reasoning over a period of years. Flawed, perhaps, but it was the best I could do. I am aware of the possibility of being mistaken on that. But I believe it because it seemed the best to do, in light of my considered reasoning. 
And I say that if you call the belief in God arbitrary, you should call the belief in the continued existence of the computer just as arbitrary. 

But you can do that if you want, no offense taken .

(Perhaps one should make a thread on the philosophical reasons for believing in God... where is GW to establish that Guild of Philosophy?)


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## Michel Delving

Do you think any of our ideas are new? Has anyone had a new idea since the time of Plato or have they just be variations on a theme? We seem to have covered Eastern ideas, Existential ones, a bit of Nietzsche here a touch of Descartes there and twist of Hegel and splash of Kant.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could think a brand new thought?

Are there any current Philosophers, you could name?
Is anyone thinking at the moment, in an official capacity?

Apparently we've already had the Enlightenment a couple of centuries back and according to Mystics you can't progress beyond Enlightenment without passing through Death.

So perhaphs we're floudering in a Dead Marsh of Ideas.

Let's tink a think that nobody has thunk.


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## Aiwendil2

> There is no way a brain can continue to be conscious and not function by logic.



I think we must distinguish between the higher functions of the brain, i.e. what might be called the will, which surely could reject logic, and the base-level functions from which consciousness emerges, which are pre-programmed, as it were, with logic. If the base-level elements of the brain ceased to function logically, then yes, consciousness would most likely cease. But these functions cannot be controlled in any case, any more than one's involuntary muscle actions can be controlled.



> I could talk about how the word "heart" was, from the beginning of its etymology (and I see no reason why it would not have followed the path of its Latin/Portuguese counterpart, cordium/coração), referring to "emotion"



But was it not then the case that the organ was thought to be the seat of emotion? So that when we learned otherwise, we were forced to retain the word "heart" for only one of the two now distinct concepts - emotions and the cardiac organ. But in any case, it matters little.



> "your body does not believe anything"; but you equate mind with brains and neurons, with are part of the body.



I equate the mind with a network of impulses carried out in the medium of the brain, not with the physical matter of the neurons themselves. That is, the mind is an abstract collection of information, not a physical entity in the ordinary sense. If you still want to call that network part of the body, because it operates in the neural medium, that's merely a matter of syntax. My meaning was that the physical matter of the body does not believe anything, except insofar as it constitutes a basis for a the network of impulses that constitutes the mind.



> Unless you believe that the words "emergent property" mean a qualitative jump from mere materiality, and that the mind is qualitatively different. Now, this would seem to be just a fashionable way to say that the mind is "a metaphysical entity for which we have no evidence".



No. Emergent properties do, in a sense, make a jump from mere materiality - but they are not inexplicable metaphysical entities. A simple example of an emergent property would be the criteria for good chess strategy. Here we have a world with a certain ontology (the chess pieces and pawns and the spaces that they occupy) and a certain set of logical relations among the ontological entities (the basic rules of the game). Those are the initial conditions. Note that there is nothing in those input conditions about what constitutes a good or preferrable move in relation to winning the game - that is, in the logical structure of the game, all possible moves are given equal status. Nonetheless, there are objective criteria for good play that follow from, or "emerge" from, the initial conditions and form an abstract realm of concepts above the mere "physicality" of the pieces and their allowed moves.

Similarly, the information stored in a computer is abstract and in some sense above the mere physicality of its components; but that abstract information emerges from the relations among the components.

And so it is with the mind.



> what do you mean, emotions are part of the mind? Emotions are very much the result of the interaction between hormones, neurotransmissors, and neural pathways.



So are thoughts. Here we run into a slight syntactic problem (it is nothing more) with the term "mind". By "mind" I mean the abstract information/activity of the neural network, as opposed to the "brain", the neurons and other physical matter itself. In other words, the mind has the same relation to the brain as does the information I'm typing now to the chips and circuits in my computer. Emotions are well within the realm of the mind as defined in this way.



> And yet, we can control our emotions.



We can control our emotions in 2 ways: 1. We can choose not to act on them; this involves nothing more than certain processes in our cerebral cortex gaining priority (in ways explicable by neural science) over the emotional impulses in our rational choice of action. 2. We can, to some finite extent, consciously "will" changes in our emotions; this involves certain processes in our cerebral cortex manipulating the information that makes up our emotions, sort of rewriting the data. In either case, there is a neurologically explicable process going on - the transfer of information from one part of our brain to another.



> If it is all reduced to hormones, neurotransmissors, electrical charges, atoms, who is "acting"?



The processes by which the mind elects a course of action and transmits this decision to the muscles is also explicable through neural science.



> The third sentence defines the brain, and yet from a cursory exam of "emotion" we saw that the mind is more than simply the "brain".



The mind is an emergent property of the brain, yes. If that is "more than simply the brain", so be it. But the mind arises from the activity of the brain. None of this is any different from the way in which the processes carried out by a computer arise from the activity of the chips and circuits.



> And the fourth sentence equates the mind with the brain with no good reason, addressing the brain as if it were the same thing as the mind.



Well, I have made more clear what I consider the distinction between mind and brain. Certainly there is every reason to think that the mind arises from the activity of the brain, since neural science has had such success in explaining traits and activities of the mind in terms of the exchange of impulses among neurons. So again, I say that the burden of proof rests on you to show that neural science is somehow in error; that is, to show that some aspect of the mind cannot be explained as the activity of the brain.



> To say that the mind is a computer is both unwarranted and against the definition of computer, for the mind does much more than what you stated in the definition -- for instance, it changes its own program.



Changing one's own program is a manipulation of information, which is something I made explicit in the definition of computer.



> We are "programmed" to get aroused and jump over a half-naked woman. Yet I never did that



Because we are also programmed to exercise rational thought. A "program" need not be simple.



> In no part of the computer definition you said that the computer could change its own components, or change the way in which it processes and manipulates information.



Changing the way it manipulates information is itself a manipulation of information.



> And, perhaps more important, saying that the mind is the brain is perhaps the greatest metaphysical assumption (for which we have no evidence; quite the contrary) in this thread so far.



I have now explained this a bit more clearly; but my view certainly carries less metaphysical baggage, in that it holds that every activity of the mind is explicable in terms of ordinary, physical things.



> And yes, I think our philosophy should be relfected in our actions, or it becomes dilettantism. Nothing against that, for sure. But the philosopher should explore all avenues, as you seem to agree; and having decided something is correct, he must act as if it is correct. If you decide something is correct but in your real actions and deeds you go against it, then you are lying to yourself, one way or the other. Either the decision or the action is wrong.



Yes, and this applies when a philosophical view has implications concerning what one's actions should be. But not all philosophical ideas have implications for action. Consider two possible views: 1. Logic is infallible, no questions asked; 2. Logic may be flawed, though we could almost certainly never discern such a flaw. One's actions will be based on logic if one holds either view, yet they are undeniably quite distinct views.



> Another smile in my lips (I hope you're not offended by that).



Not at all. I like to make people smile.



> It seems to me that you are arguing for non-choice. But it is a choice, and not simply "the safest road", as you imply in your last sentence in that quote.



More syntactic problems, I fear; I should be more careful. Yes, choosing not to choose between two different views is still technically a choice. But that doesn't invalidate my assertion that such a choice (the choice to hold the two contradictory views both in mind, as possibilities) is the best choice.



> But recent philosophers readily assume that if faith is involved there is no room for reason.



If what you mean by faith is choosing to abandon the probabalistic superposition of two or more views in your mind in favor of an absolute belief in one of the views, then it is certainly irrational, since even scientific propositions can never be verified, much less propositions about God. If what you mean by faith is that you think that the evidence makes it far more probable that God exists than that God does not exist, fine - that's completely rational. But it's also not what the vast majority of people mean by "faith". Most mean that even though the proposition in question is unverified (and indeed unverifiable - even, perhaps, unconfirmable), they will treat it as an absolute certainty - that is, as if it were verified.


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## Aiwendil2

Sorry for breaking up my post like this, but it was apparently more characters than the forum allows. My verbosity (and, I fear, its ratio to the substance of my argument) amazes me. Anyway, I had but one small comment left:



> It seems to me that you think this is the end of philosophy, and that one who does that steps outside of philosophy



I'm sorry if that's the way my view has come across. I don't think that this is the end of philosophy. I merely think that as one steps across, one must take note of the step and acknowledge that all further progress has that step, and any attending uncertainties, at its foundation.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *I'm sorry if that's the way my view has come across. I don't think that this is the end of philosophy. I merely think that as one steps across, one must take note of the step and acknowledge that all further progress has that step, and any attending uncertainties, at its foundation. *



RELIEF!! I thought this was coming to an untimely end, but we can continue. (I had to break my posts in two, myself -- WM should make a special 100000 character limit for this thread )



> I equate the mind with a network of impulses carried out in the medium of the brain, not with the physical matter of the neurons themselves. That is, the mind is an abstract collection of information, not a physical entity in the ordinary sense. If you still want to call that network part of the body, because it operates in the neural medium, that's merely a matter of syntax. My meaning was that the physical matter of the body does not believe anything, except insofar as it constitutes a basis for a the network of impulses that constitutes the mind.



I think you should get into more detail regarding that. As I see it, you are describing the mind, and yet you think that description explains it. But description and explanation are not the same. To use a controversial example, Sep. 11 is a very easy-to-describe event, yet very hard to explain, with explanations ranging from "they did it because they hate our freedom" to "it was a secret plot of the Israelis, Al-Qaeda had nothing to do with it".



Anyway, I still don't understand how the physical activity of the brain can become a mind that thinks about itself. I'm not a believer in a "ghost in the machine" -- sure the mind is grounded in the brain. But to say "mind = neural impulses" raises a series of difficulties which are in mi view insurmountable. Even your simple chess program analogy shows that. Could the chess computer play checkers, without a change in its programming? Can it change this programming by itself? How is it similar to our mind if it can't? 

To talk about obscure scientific history, this is the problem that led Alfred Russel Wallace (co-discoverer of natural selection) to believe in the crassest spiritualism. He was even a more strict "selectionist" than Darwin. But he could not explain how a brain generated by natural selection could be so... overdesigned, allowing for symphonies and philosophy, since the ancestral apes (and even primitive man) had no need for this complexity. Natural selection could not account for it.



> but that abstract information emerges from the relations among the components.



This sentence drew my attention. How do you think that the idea of "relation" appeared, Aiwendil? Resemblance, Contiguity, Causation; I think these are the relations classified by Hume, the ultimate empiricist. How did those ideas appear in the human mind? One thing is easily refuted (what Hume himself believed, or at least he never gave serious thought to it in his Treatise) -- they did not appear from observation. We could not even think of any object _as an object_ without those relations already present in our mind.

Needless to say, these relations are logical .



> 2. We can, to some finite extent, consciously "will" changes in our emotions; this involves certain processes in our cerebral cortex manipulating the information that makes up our emotions, sort of rewriting the data. In either case, there is a neurologically explicable process going on - the transfer of information from one part of our brain to another.



Who is the "we" willing changes? The computer reprogramming himself? This is the clearest example of the difficulty of this view. You can say that the mind is a computer, but this flies in the face of known computers. We never saw a computer reprogramming itself. We can't even devise, in theory, a computer that does that. See how you equate description with explanation in that sentence -- for sure what you said is how the process develops. But _why_ does it do that? What is the reason behind it? 

I think assuming that a computer is reprogramming itself is a huge metaphysical assertion. But I agree it is forced if we have to accept only data from the senses, and inference from current theories of matter and information. And this is the Great Questionable Premise. Why must we accept that only? Note:

1) We have seen that "data from our senses" MUST be transformed into a concept to be grasped by the mind. This is a process in which the mind has a very active role. So, to take these as absolute truths is a very risky thing. (The doubtfulness of senses and observation is a very old saying in philosophy). Of course, what is said of observation is also true of theories of matter and information.

2) From an exam of how our minds think, we see that it is "imprinted" with prior categories of relation, we can use the Humean categories if you like. This is prior to any observation, indeed we can't observe -- formulate a concept -- about anything without them.

3) These categories can't be explained by a description of neural processes. 



> Changing one's own program is a manipulation of information, which is something I made explicit in the definition of computer.



Sorry, I did not get that. Perhaps you could define "information" more clearly. But as I see it, changing one's program is changing how one manipulates information, and that is not simply a manipulation of information. For the ability to manipulate is prior to the acquisition of information. 

As I see it, we do not manipulate any information when we think about alternatives -- for anything. Not only philosophy, but whether to take the left road or the right road. When we follow one of them, a case may be made that we are manipulating information, but not when we are just thinking about it. 

We do not think as a chess computer, foreseeing all the possible moves. We do that, but we also think based on prejudices (in a good sense), aesthetic inclination, and other factors. And more important, we can change these factors with an effort of the will. This -- the effort of the will -- is, to me, inexplicable by computer theories of the human mind. For "will" is something that was never programmed in any computer, and we do not know how to program it. 

A Vulcan is the classic example of how a human would be if it were computer-like. I have never met any Vulcans...

As for faith, religious faith... most people who have it agree that it can't be acquired with sheer will, you have to have God's help. I had it. But it was not easy, I am a very rational person and had the misgivings you show in your posts. In the end, when I "arrived at the conclusion that it was far more probable that God exists" (as you stated it), the way to acquire it was praying for faith -- surely a curious thing to do. But it worked.

Getting back to the subject of the thread, good x evil (it was about time ), I think people who think that the ethical sense is a construct of the human mind, or of society, or whatever, must explain why it is so often harmful to the individual, and how it could be "established" in the human mind in the face of that. Why people do not steal, even if nobody is watching -- and more important, even if they do, they know it is wrong. "Society did that" is an easy answer... but how? when? 

More in a future post... I am approaching the dreaded limit.


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## Michel Delving

That's me squeezed out by the intellectual heavyweights! 

Oh well, back to confused happy sadness and imaginary Balrogs!

Unless...


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## Aiwendil2

Intellectual heavyweights? Not I, I fear. I think you've overestimated my mass-volume (substance-word) ratio. But anyway:

Part I - Explanations



> As I see it, you are describing the mind, and yet you think that description explains it. But description and explanation are not the same.



I think you are confusing some terms here. What exactly is an "explanation"? It can mean any of several things. In general, a request for an explanation is a request for someone to provide information in order to eliminate some kind of epistemic uneasiness. But exactly what kind of information is being requested depends upon the context. In other words, there are a lot of quite different sorts of requests that are all called requests for explanations, and we recognize what specific _kind_ of explanation is being requested depending on the context.

For example, if I ask for an explanation of the destruction of the World Trade Center, I could be told a story about the impact of the planes, the physics of the collision, the design of the buildings, and so forth - but this is clearly not what I wanted. It _is_ an "explanation"; it is simply not the explanation that I was requesting. The desired explanation would be a story not about the physics of the buildings, but about the cultural circumstances leading to the rise of terrorism, about the psychological states of the terrorists, etc., etc.

The important thing to note is that any explanation is a sort of story - it is a story of how the initial conditions (whether they are airplanes and vectors or culture and psychology) led, in ways consistent with our theories of how such things work, to the final conditions. That is, an explanation is a _description_ of how the explanans (the "explaining" facts) logically lead to the explanandum (the thing "to be explained"). Any explanation must begin with some explanans and lead to some explanandum. So, in the case of the explanation of the destruction of the World Trade Center, the explanans include things like Islamic fundamentalism, American policy, Zionism, etc., as well as cultural/psychological "laws" (or tendencies) of human behavior (like "when people are angry, they are more likely to try to hurt the objects of their anger" - but presumably a good explanation would involve much more complex psychological "laws").

So what about the brain? The explanandum here is really explananda - there are a good deal of facts that need explaining. The explanans are facts about neurons as well as physical and chemical laws. The explanation is to be deemed sufficient if and only if it shows how those explanans lead to the explananda, the observable facts about human behavior. And this is what neurology does.

If you are unsatisified with neurological explanations, it could be for any of three reasons. 1. You do not accept the explanans. But the explanans - that our brains are composed of neurons, that those neurons interact in certain ways, etc. - are well confirmed quite independently of the present explanation. 2. You do not think that the explanans lead logically to the explananda. But this is where all the neurological evidence comes in, and if you take this view then all of neural science is against you. 3. You were really asking for different explananda. But it is difficult to imagine what these might be. The explananda at hand are all the observable characteristics of human behavior. It is possible that the explanandum you have in mind is in fact not human behavior, but human _consciousness_, as I suggested a few posts back, but you did not jump at. I do indeed think it possible that consciousness is not explicable through neural science. But I can observe _only my own_ consciousness. I have absolutely no reason to think that another human is conscious, except insofar that I observe certain behavior that implies consciousness. But if such is the case, then _any_ system that exhibited such behavior would meet the criteria for such inferred consciousness. That is, I can imagine another human being conscious _to exactly the same extent_ that I could imagine a very sophisticated computer being conscious.

Hmm - I didn't intend to be so lengthy on this subject. I'll try to address the other points more briefly.


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## Aiwendil2

Part II - Computers and the Mind



> Even your simple chess program analogy shows that. Could the chess computer play checkers, without a change in its programming? Can it change this programming by itself? How is it similar to our mind if it can't?



A program specifically designed to play chess, and nothing else - no, it could not play checkers. But a computer could certainly be designed that is capable of taking the rules of a new game (like checkers) and analyzing what constitutes good strategy, then changing its program for executing its moves to correspond to the newly identified good strategy. Or, instead of rewriting the "good chess strategy" data, it could simply store the "good checkers strategy" data and select which program to use based on which game it was playing. It could also be programmed with various goals, which it tries to balance - for example (and this is in fact something that many chess computer programs can do), it could be programmed with a vendetta against a certain opposing piece, so that, while it still tries to win the game, it also is willing to make moves that are slightly worse according to the "laws of good chess strategy" in the interest of capturing the hated piece. In fact, such a goal might be formulated by the computer all by itself in its analysis of good strategy. For example, it might be discovered that going after the enemy queen is, under certain circumstances, almost always the best strategy. The computer might recognize this in its initial analysis and write its "good chess strategy" program so that certain situations toggle on the 
"capture queen" objective. This might occasionally lead to slightly worse moves, but might far more often lead to the correct move and save a very high number of calculations. This is not much different from, for example, the human "program" to enjoy the taste of fat - it sometimes leads to obesity and heart disease but, historically, is overall an advantage since having a store of fat decreases one's likelihood of dying in a famine.



> But he could not explain how a brain generated by natural selection could be so... overdesigned, allowing for symphonies and philosophy, since the ancestral apes (and even primitive man) had no need for this complexity. Natural selection could not account for it.



But evolutionary biologists are now overwhelmingly of the opinion that natural selection can account for such things - and if you are going to make arguments about evolutionary science, you cannot simply choose one now outdated view and ignore the present state of the science. Natural selection accounts for abstraction - that is the critical thing. Abstraction allows one to construct models (initially very primitive models) to predict things about the world and thus to increase one's ability to survive. And the faculty of abstraction leads to things like aesthetics and philosophy.



> This sentence drew my attention. How do you think that the idea of "relation" appeared, Aiwendil?



It matters little to the statement in question how the idea of "relation" is developed. What matters is that such a thing as a relation exists in the world. Nor is the origin of our conceptions of them much of a mystery - natural selection explains perfectly well why the activity of the human brain operates in logical ways - because those are the ways that tend to make us survive.



> You can say that the mind is a computer, but this flies in the face of known computers. We never saw a computer reprogramming itself. We can't even devise, in theory, a computer that does that.



I think my earlier discussion of computers answers this, and shows that we can in fact, and _have_ created computers that can reprogram themselves.



> But I agree it is forced if we have to accept only data from the senses, and inference from current theories of matter and information.



We can scarcely accept anything else - logical relations, I suppose. But anything else would have to be accepted non-rationally, which is to say that it could not then be used in any argument.



> ) We have seen that "data from our senses" MUST be transformed into a concept to be grasped by the mind. This is a process in which the mind has a very active role. So, to take these as absolute truths is a very risky thing. (The doubtfulness of senses and observation is a very old saying in philosophy). Of course, what is said of observation is also true of theories of matter and information.



Quite. But what you need to do in order to prove your previous assertion is not to demonstrate that we ought not to accept sense data, but rather to show that we ought to accept more than merely sense data.



> From an exam of how our minds think, we see that it is "imprinted" with prior categories of relation, we can use the Humean categories if you like. This is prior to any observation, indeed we can't observe -- formulate a concept -- about anything without them.



Indeed. Such is the result of natural selection.



> These categories can't be explained by a description of neural processes.



Yes they can. This is perhaps the most easily demonstratable matter at hand, since one way in which even ordinary computers quite clearly resemble the human brain is in the fact that they employ logical relations and logical operations. If logical categories can be explained by a description of computer circuits, they can most definitely be explained by a description of neural processes.



> Perhaps you could define "information" more clearly. But as I see it, changing one's program is changing how one manipulates information, and that is not simply a manipulation of information. For the ability to manipulate is prior to the acquisition of information.



A program _is_ information. Manipulating a program is thus manipulating information.



> As I see it, we do not manipulate any information when we think about alternatives -- for anything.



We do manipulate information in such a case. Specifically, we apply certain operations to it in order to transform it into other information - that is, in order to "analyze" it. Thinking about an alternative means taking a chunk of information and trying to logically derive further information from it, like information about how valid an alternative it is.



> We do not think as a chess computer, foreseeing all the possible moves. We do that, but we also think based on prejudices (in a good sense), aesthetic inclination, and other factors. And more important, we can change these factors with an effort of the will.



I've shown above that chess computers can do this.



> This -- the effort of the will -- is, to me, inexplicable by computer theories of the human mind. For "will" is something that was never programmed in any computer, and we do not know how to program it.



What is meant by "will"? I think that again we must distinguish between consciousness - the epistemically accessible "will" - and the perception of "will" in others. The latter, the inference of will, _must_ be made based on empirical observation of the thing in question, and therefore can be applied to a computer just as well as to a human. The former can neither be applied to computers nor to other humans.



> But it was not easy, I am a very rational person and had the misgivings you show in your posts. In the end, when I "arrived at the conclusion that it was far more probable that God exists" (as you stated it), the way to acquire it was praying for faith -- surely a curious thing to do.



It sounds like what you are talking about is rational, non-absolute belief. If such is the case, then we have no disagreement, save on the particulars of the rational analysis (and though we have a large disagreement there, that is not and never was the subject at hand). 

But, again, this is not what the vast majority of people mean by "faith". If you mean something closer to that more common definition - something like "adjusting my supposed probabilities in a non-rational way" then you must cease to argue at that point, since the minute you argue (which is a rational process) you discount non-rational assertions to the extent that they are non-rational.


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## Aiwendil2

Part III - Ethics



> I think people who think that the ethical sense is a construct of the human mind, or of society, or whatever, must explain why it is so often harmful to the individual, and how it could be "established" in the human mind in the face of that. Why people do not steal, even if nobody is watching -- and more important, even if they do, they know it is wrong. "Society did that" is an easy answer... but how? when?



There are two reasons that I can discern. First, we are programmed with a compassionate impulse by evolution. This is because a social group is in many cases advantageous to one's survival and thus reproduction. Compassion makes social groups easier to form. In other words, individuals with a compassionate impulse are more likely to form social groups, and individuals in social groups are more likely to survive in certain situations than those not in social groups. 

It must be remembered that evolution is, as it were, a blunt tool. Any first year engineering student could design a more efficient means of locomotion than our bipedal walk. But evolution does not draw up a master plan and then execute it; it merely takes the most advantageous traits around and multiplies the individuals with those traits, and kills off the individuals without them. So it is no surprise that we can concoct situations in which the compassionate impulse is _not_ beneficial to an individual's survival.

The second reason is, as you somewhat defiantly point out, "society did it". There is much work yet to be done in figuring out exactly how society institutes morals, but much is understood already. I think that there is something to the sort of Marxist/Nietzschean assertion that the ruling class tends to create a moral system that justifies and defends their rule. More generally, you might say that social groups tend to create moral systems that defend their own behaviors. But as another very general description, we might say that the individuals that are in some sense forced out of society (that is, criminals and "immoral" people) are the ones whose views are hostile to society, while those whose views are adopted by society are those whose views are benevolent toward society. In other words, succesful societies are those composed of individuals that are benevolent toward the society - that is, toward the other individuals in the society.

I fear we are starting to go over the same ground again and again. But it has certainly been an enjoyable debate thus far. And sorry for _three_ posts this time - I thought I had split it into two small enough chunks, and then found that the second part was still too long.


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## Eriol

Yes, our posts are record-breaking in length... and I fear this only draws other people away from this thread . So, I will trty to answer your points with "short punches". Perhaps this will lead to confusion and incomprehension (not from you, I believe), but so be it...

1) Explanations x descriptions. As I see it, a description is an ennumeration of the sensible, empirical facts involved in a given event. An explanation is a teleological (pointed to a purpose, an underlying reason) discourse. In plain English, a description is the answer to the question "how?", and an explanation is the answer to the question "why?". So, the search for an explanation assumes a purpose or an underlying reason. No explanation is needed for the separation between Africa and South America, a simple description does the job. While in the World Trade Center case, a description would be woefully short of the mark.

So far this seems to go against my case . Apparently the question "why?" is uncalled for in the case of the mind, a good answer is "nobody knows". Why is the mind as it is, with those properties? "Nobody knows". The trouble is, (and I am aware this is an inherent property in our minds that can be useless in this case), our minds _need an explanation_, a theory, to make sense out of things. that's how they work. And even more amazing, this "habit" of the mind was successful in "explaining" the Universe so far. Science is the result of it, as well as philosophy. Perhaps you are right and our minds are "unknowable" by themselves, but isn't it... a prejudice to affirm such an arbitrary limit tou our mind's penchant for unity, for theory?

And so far the theory of the mind as simple neural impulses is, in fact, no theory, but only a description. There is no underlying reason for the mind to be as it is, given the facts. 

2) Computers. I would like to know ONE (just one) evolutionary biologist who is "comfortable" with the idea that natural selection can account for the mind. Sure there are a lot of braggadocios who make absurd claims, Richard Dawkins being the most prominent. But I assure you that "popular evolutionary biologists" are not the leading proponents of the field... I am quite acquainted with the subject of evolutionary theory (I even gave classes about it some years ago). I am aware this is an argument from authority, and I pity the lack of space to expound further (but then again your argument was from authority also). The sentence "the faculty of abstraction leads to aesthetics and philosophy" must be much more detailed before I can accept it... and "abstraction" is still a question mark. Ultimately, the same question remains -- how can natural selection account for "abstraction"? I never heard any good explanation for that... especially when we take into account that, even in human beings, it took a great span of history to "generate" abstract ideas. It was not so many centuries ago that people used the word "heart" to describe both the pumping organs and emotions, as we saw -- and I think you are wrong when you say they used it for both concepts. I think _both concepts were confused_ in the mind of ordinary people -- just as "humors", "bile", and such. Only individual philosphers reached that level of abstraction, say, 2000 years ago. 

And most people today don't reach it. I am not being an elitist, I am just positing the problem -- how can natural selection produce something that is essentially useless for reproduction and survival?

I will quote this sentence, but to use in the next topic:



> What matters is that such a thing as a relation exists in the world. Nor is the origin of our conceptions of them much of a mystery - natural selection explains perfectly well why the activity of the human brain operates in logical ways - because those are the ways that tend to make us survive



First of all, there is no such thing as a relation existing in the world, without a consciousness to see it. This is the example of the rainbow which I alluded earlier, I will explain it further. A rainbow, as you know, is an effect of optics created by the passage of sunlight through water particles suspended in the air. It is seen only from a particular vantage point. The water is there. So is the light. But it is seen only from a particular vantage point. The question is, is the rainbow "real"? Or a product of our consciousness? I will leave it like that for you to ponder. But a relation such as "resemblance" faces a similar problem.

As for the "not mysterious" way in which our conceptions of relations originate -- since they help us survive -- see next topic.

3) Ethics.



> we are programmed with a compassionate impulse by evolution. This is because a social group is in many cases advantageous to one's survival and thus reproduction. Compassion makes social groups easier to form. In other words, individuals with a compassionate impulse are more likely to form social groups, and individuals in social groups are more likely to survive in certain situations than those not in social groups.



Aiwendil, are you aware that natural selection _could not_ fix such a trait in a population? It is quite impossible... Altruism is one of the biggest problems in evolutionary ethology. Hamilton's concept of "kin selection" helped to solve most of it, but cross-kin (and even cross-species in some cases) altruism is still open for debate. Reciprocal altruism, and other explanations, have been offered... all based on the principle that must be proven: that ethics is an evolutionary construct without real existence. In other words, _petitio principii_. but I'm not criticizing evolutionary ethology, I'm just pointing out that simple natural selection could not promote "general compassion".

Compare also this quote of yours with the other quote I posted. Are you sure this is not "having your cake and eating it too"? Selection promotes individual survival; it also promotes altruistic sacrifice. Hard to fathom. It seems "selection" is a jack-of-all-trades...

(And I'm an evolutionist!)

About ethics, for me the real distinction is that the ethical "sense" is unlike any other instinct, unlike any other selection based trait. Take the sex drive, or aggressivity, or territorialism... these can be selected. And there are situations in which they must be encouraged (as well as discouraged). But the "ethical sense" is not like it. It sits in judgment of them. It decides whether the sex drive is "good" or not. 

In fact, the definition of "good" is a major problem for me (without God, that is), and I can't really imagine how a sense of "good" could evolve, since "good" changes with the circumstances and with the people involved... I can't see how natural selection would create that. It can detect "sex", "territory", "enemy"... but "good"?

The usual argument of strict evolutionists (i.e. materialists) rests on the premise that selection "must" have done it because there is no God -- again, petitio principii. But they fail to show _how_ it did it. So, I guess I'm sticking with God .


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## Aiwendil2

I fear we that we are reaching the point where further discussion can do nothing but raise our blood pressure. Apparently, my arguments don't persuade you any more than yours persuade me. But I'll respond briefly on each point.



> An explanation is a teleological (pointed to a purpose, an underlying reason) discourse. In plain English, a description is the answer to the question "how?", and an explanation is the answer to the question "why?". So, the search for an explanation assumes a purpose or an underlying reason.



That is an anthropecentric view, and rests on a huge unproven assumption - that everything has some _telos_. You are essentially demanding that among the explanans be something like "God intended such and such". Note that by this definition, there is no such thing as a scientific explanation. Note also in what context you originally asked for an explanation - as an answer to the question "why, given physical laws, does a neural network exhibit the complex of behaviors that by which we identify a mind?"

You say that the "description" of the mind is not a theory. But a theory is just that - a description. So is an explanation, in the scientific sense. If you want to demand that theories and explanations invoke God's intent, then you can scarcely insist that your requirements be adhered to without first _proving_ the existence (and much about the nature) of God.

You argue essentially that evolution _cannot_ account for the mind. There is no reason to think that. I must admit that I am not well acquainted enough with evolutionary theorists to give you a name - but I counter your request thus: give me one evolutionary theorist, respected in the scientific community at large, that thinks that evolution is not capable of explaining the mind.

I also don't see the problems you mentioned with the mind being explained in evolutionary terms as being very serious. You say that the capacity for abstraction offers no evolutionary advantage. But I fear that we are using the word "abstraction" in different senses, since you also say that most modern humans are not capable of abstraction. "Abstraction" in the sense that I am using is something that we are all capable of. It's what allows me even to form such concepts as "computer", "chair", etc.; it's what allows me to know that because 2+2=4 and 4+1=5, 2+2+1=5. This kind of abstract reasoning offers obvious evolutionary advantages. Indeed, intelligence in almost any form offers an evolutionary advantage. The tendency to ask questions and construct theories (initially very primitive ones) offers an evolutionary advantage (it allows, among other things, for the creation of tools), whence comes philosophy.

The main point is that there is no _need_ to invoke God in evolution. The materialist intuition that evolution is capable, by itself, of explaining the mind is not simply, as you say, a result of atheism. It is a result of the attitude that the laws of physics are _true_. That is, that we will not find instances where some God interferes, as it were, with what the laws of physics predict the course of events in the universe to be.



> First of all, there is no such thing as a relation existing in the world



Do you mean that logical relations do not exist in the world? If so, then you are forced into constructivism and the notion that science is somehow a mere "invention". But there is certainly, prima facie, no good reason to think that the external world is non-logical.

As for the rainbow - sure, it exists. It is a system comprised of photons of various wavelengths that have been refracted through water droplets along various vectors. I am not being purposefully obtuse here. If the question is what a rainbow "really is", then that is the simple answer.

You say that altruism cannot be produced by evolution. I must respectfully disagree. There are any number of ways in which it could be produced. I am not an evolutionary biologist, and I cannot talk about how it probably was produced. But I talked a little about a general description before. I see no reason that a compassionate impulse could not arise, nor any reason that such an impulse could not offer certain evolutionary advantages. You criticize the conviction that evolution is capable of producing ethics, but you take the (I think) even less defensible view that ethics _must_ exist independent of us.

I also see no reason that selection could not promote both a selfish instinct and a compassionate instinct. Presumably, some compromise between these two would maximize one's advantage. Once both a compassionate impulse and the capacity for abstraction are in place, it is quite possible for abstract theories of ethics to be developed.

Again, I think we are starting to go over the same territory again and again. Before we both become frustrated and the argument becomes burdensome, perhaps we should call a truce.


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## Eriol

I'll grant you a truce if you wish . I mean, I never get tired of discussions like this, and my blood pressure is still far from high. But if you want to...

I was thinking of something to post here on my way to work, and I'll do it (not in the spirit of having the last word!). And I'll briefly address some of your concerns -- remember, my last post was quite shortened by the lack of space.

About the telos. Any and all scientific theories assume, not a telos, but an underlying reason. Why does the moon go around the earth? "God made it do it" was the first answer offered by man, but then Newton came buy and offered a non-theistic explanation -- the law of gravity. So no, an explanation does not demand a telos (unless you think that the law of gravity is teleological). Likewise for other theories. The demand for unity in our minds is translated in a demand for theories. Collection of data and "tinkering" with conditions is not enough. This is something that frustrates me a lot in my own discipline -- ecology -- for ecologists are very much "tinkerers", and lack "theories" for many important phenomena. If you read an ecological journal, you'll see a lot of papers such as "Biomass and productivity of planktonic bacteria in the North Sea" -- an observation, a datum. Not a theory. Frustrating. Compare it with you theory of the mind.

As for a name, I remember reading a lecture by John Maynard Smith about that problem of the mind... I'll try to get the full quote for you.



> The main point is that there is no need to invoke God in evolution. The materialist intuition that evolution is capable, by itself, of explaining the mind is not simply, as you say, a result of atheism. It is a result of the attitude that the laws of physics are true. That is, that we will not find instances where some God interferes, as it were, with what the laws of physics predict the course of events in the universe to be.



Sure, there's no need to invoke God at first; The "materialist intuition" is not an intuition, it's a hidden premise which makes it impossible to be verified; and sure the laws of physics are true. That is why we can demand an explanation of how the process generates consciousness instead of wishful generalizations like "it must be so, for there is no other way". If we can't explain it, then there _must_ be another way -- for consciousness is around, and has been for some time. Yet-to-be discovered laws, perhaps; who knows? But to say that we know everything we need to know to explain consciousness (i.e., simple laws of physics), and then fail to do it, while claiming to have done it, is not satisfying -- to me. At least an admission that we do not know everything would have to be proferred by those people who claim that simple laws of physics must have done it.

About evolutionary altruism. The problem with natural selection fostering altruism is that it acts on the individual. The very definition of altruism is individual sacrifice on behalf of some other being. To assume that this behavior is fixed by some gene (and it must be, otherwise it is not under selection) leads to the following situation: a population that, once, had altruists and non-altruists. The altruists sacrificed themselves for the others. The non-altruists profited. Surely you can see that the gene for altruism is not long-lived in such a scenario. The fallacy in the "evolutionary altruism" argument is that it assumes that the good of the population is a goal that may be pursued by natural selection, while it is quite clear that it can't. Any "evolutionary" altruism _must_ be translated in gain for the altruistic individual, or the behavior won't be selected. Not an easy riddle to solve, though there are some interesting approaches -- I can talk about them if you want.

Finally, my morning musings. I think it is best for me to formulate my argument in short sentences so that we can focus on each of them and look for the leak.

1) The mind uses "Forms of Perception" to generate concepts and interact with the world.

2) These "Forms of Perception" are prior to observation, for there can't be any observation without them -- it is merely a jumble of data.

3) Therefore, they are innate.

4) Being innate, the easiest explanation for their origin would be evolution -- natural selection. But it can't quite explain how it appeared, for it does not seem to be a great advantage in individual survival and reproduction.

5) If evolution is not accepted, we must look for something else.

I think (4) is your main point of attack, so I will make some "preemptive strikes" against it:

(a) The "Forms of Perception" include the ethical sense, for the sense of "good" is something innate -- even if applied to different things by different people.

(b) This is probably the hardest thing to be explained by natural selection. We can explore the our differing definitions of "abstraction", and perhaps reach something, but about the sense of "good" there is no controversy. And I believe such an spectral sense can't be selected for. When you see a kid giving his candy to a poorer kid without any suggestion from his fathers or from "society", we are watching something very hard to explain. And even harder to explain is the sense of guilt that a kid may feel when he _does not_ give his candy. Why would this be selected for?

If this is the last post, it was a good debate .


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## Aiwendil2

My time available for browsing the forums is diminishing, I fear, as the semester draws to a close. So don't expect any more three part epics. But I will respond to some of your points.

I can say little more than that I think you are mistaken in your view of scientific explanations. Explanations do not provide "reasons" if what you mean by that is "purpose". To talk about purpose is to assume that the explanandum was the desired, and achieved, goal of an intelligent being. A scientific explanation is simply a description, albeit one that must demonstrate logically from the explanans that the explanandum must follow. If you're interested in the nature of scientific explanation, I recommend Carl Hempel's "Laws and Their Role in Scientific Explanation", which is a bit outdated in many respects but nonetheless captures the basic role that explanation is supposed to play in the scientific process. For a radically different view largely in reaction to Hempel, and yet retaining the descriptive character I discussed, see Bas van Fraasen's "The Pragmatics of Explanation".

The "materialist intuition" is, I agree, a premise, though certainly not a hidden one. You say it cannot be verified. _Nothing_ can be verified. But it can be well-confirmed, if it leads to succesful theories (that is, theories that make succesful predictions); and it is well-confirmed.

That you mention the inability of science to explain consciousness makes me suspect that the whole time we have been talking at slightly cross-purposes. I said a few posts ago that explaining consciousness is quite a different matter from explaining the observable behavior of other minds. But note that there is only one consciousness that can be observed. You can certainly _infer_ that other consciousnesses exist, but any inference must be based on your sensory data. Therefore, any inferences to the effect that consciousness exists in other humans must be equally applicable to computers.

You say that evolution acts on the individual. But even Darwin noted that it may act on larger-scale units, like families - I believe it was in his discussion of sterile bees. There are several mechanisms that might explain altruism, most notably kin relations - which, it is perfectly plausible, do not build in sophisticated neurological equipment for the distinction between kin and non-kin. I also think you are a little off in calling it "altruism". Rather, it is a compassionate impulse. As for self-sacrifice, it is perfectly explicable through evolution, since often self-sacrifice can help the larger family unit survive, or, more cogently, it can allow offspring to survive. Moreover, I think there is the possibility of self-interest in the compassionate impulse, since it can minimize potentially harmful confrontations.


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## Eriol

As I take, science would be observing what happens in the world, tinkering with the conditions as well as it as possible, and getting used to it. This would be "knowledge" -- according to your definition. That's a direct offspring of Humean thought, and unfortunately widespread. But my point is that this is _not_ how human minds work, and not how science works. It devises explanations -- reasons (or purposes, _in the case of conscious agents_, but there is a difference between the two, as I showed in the gravity example. I don't think anyone believes in the law of gravity because it has "a purpose", we think it is purposeless. But it is a reason for the moon to go around the earth, nonetheless).

Our minds reach for unity in knowledge. This unity is not evident in reality, and this is the great premise of Science, with capital "S" -- that unity in knowledge is possible in spite of the apparent diversity in reality. Check Einstein's saying (I don't have it here) that the intelligibility of the Universe is a major argument for a belief in God. There is no fundamental reason why science should be so successful.

How can something be well-confirmed if it was never tested? I think you are confusing the "materialist intuition", as you call it, with something else (or I am doing that). What I am criticizing as a hidden premise is the _belief_ (and this is a "hard core belief", without a shred of a doubt) that materialistic descriptions are enough to _explain_ the human consciousness. Sure, they may be, but if you begin with this belief you reject alternative explanations. I _never_ saw any materialist trying to examine this contention. In fact, I will search for a quote that I remember from a prominent evolutionist to the effect that this premise is _needed_ for sound science. Well, if it is so, then "sound" science is built on a never-tested premise, and more, a never-tested premise that goes against the experience and knowledge of mankind, philosophers, and even scientists (as Einstein's quote shows).

I take my own consciousness as a fact -- don't you? Well, my conclusions were reached by examining my own consciousness, and not those of others. The point that we can't infer the reality of other consciousness has no bearing in an analysis of our own consciousness. And conclusions disproved by the analysis of our own consciousness are just as false as those disproved by an observation. I accept the charge of using the analysis of my own consciousness as a jumping point for making inferences about other consciousnesses and "consciousness" in general -- I just can't understand how, by _not_ doing that, can we reach a better understanding.

Finally, about group selection -- sorry, but no. The explanation of kin selection, such as the Hymaenoptera (bees and ants) was only achieved by Hamilton's theory in the mid-60's, and it is based on a calculation of individual profit for each bee. (To make a long story short, the worker bee is more related to his sister than to his mother, due to the strange methods of gamete formation in this group, and this fact leads to much easier _and profitable_ individual sacrifice. A gene that promotes sacrifice would be vindicated, with something to spare, if for each sacrificed bee 1,33 bees survived. The ratio is much higher, of course, and that is why we see major sacrifices in this group -- for each killed bee a LOT of bees survive, for instance in repelling a predator). Individual profit of the gene in question is the only consideration in this.

But the point is that this group is an exception, and a very puzzling exception until Hamilton's work. Darwin pointed it out just to say he could not quite explain it. There are several factors included, such as the close kin relationship of ALL bees in the hive, something quite rare in other animal communities -- most of them are quite mixed, a behavior which is in itself desirable to avoid the risks of inbreeding. Kin relation is a good tool for explaining some cases, not so good in explaining others. Dolphins helping swimmers, for instance (and the claim that dolphins can't tell the difference between a human and a dolphin is ludicrous in the face of our informations about the intelligence and sensory refinement of these animals). What we have here is cross-species altruism, and in favor of his major predator. I'm not saying that God is involved in that or in anything else, I'm just saying that present theory does not explain that. Unlike its sweeping claims affirm. 

As for the name of the phenomenon, "altruism" is established in the technical literature. "Perfectly explicable", you say? We can understand how altruism perseveres in a population after being established, by the mechanisms you name. But no satisfactory explanation has been offered to explain the origin of this trait, and how it became fixed in any population (with kin selection being the only exception). Altruism, by definition, involves individual loss for the gain of another. It is very hard to see how such a trait could become dominant in a population, for the "default" behavior -- egoism (also a name established in the literature) -- could only profit by it, leave more offsprings, and spread. There is a big literature about this... but no easy explanation, so far.

Good luck with your semester exams!


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## Eriol

The quote I promised, by Richard Lewontin, New York Review of Books, 01/09/1997. This was translated to Portuguese and I'm translating it back to English.



> We side with science _in spite of_ the patent absurdity of some of its constructions, _in spite of_ its failure to justify many of its extravagant premises regarding well-being and life, _in spite of_ the tolerance of the scientific community in accepting stories without real substance, because we have a prior commitment, a _commitment with materialism_. It is not that the methods and institutions of science force us in any way to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, we are forced by our _a priori_ adherence to material causes to create an investigation apparatus and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how anti-intuitive, how mistifying for the laymen. Also, this materialism is absolute, for we can't allow a Divine Foot at the door. The prominent kantian academic Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who believes in a God will believe in anything. To call for an omnipotent deity is to admit that at any moment the regularities of nature may be broken, that miracles may happen



Italics in the original.

I'm not a "layman", by any useful definition of the word. I am a scientist, in fact. But I don't see the need for this premise.


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## Michel Delving

EXILED ! (at last) into the Beggar's Canyon (back home) of _General Discussion_ 

Just look what I started, I am sooo proud.


Went looking for Wittgenstein, Eriol, but found Satre instead.

Have now found that the words Good and Evil and the concepts attached are not meaningless at all. They are just a reflection of something much much better (Beyond Good) and something much much worse (Beyond Evil).

Get off Kant!

Stop tickling me!


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## Eriol

Hehe, I think we found a good home for your thread. Who's Kant, your cat?


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## Aiwendil2

Well, I warned you that I wouldn't have as much time for this debate. But to come back and find it exiled . . .

I still think you're misunderstanding scientific explanations. Yes, they do provide a "reason" for the explicandum. What is a reason? It's only a specific kind of _description_. Why does the moon orbit the earth? Because gravity acts according to such and such a law, and the moon is such and such a distance from the earth with this velocity and that mass, and force equals mass times acceleration, so the moon orbits the earth. That is nothing more than a kind of description of the gravity and the motion of the moon.

I don't see how neural science is any different. The question is, for example, why did that person shout just now? The answer given by neural science will be a very long and complex account of which neurons are doing what, and that account will show that these complex neural processes caused the person, in the strict physical sense, to shout. Psychology may give a shorter but less accurate answer, having to do with the person being angry. This is an explanation of the same form, but of a simpler and more approximate kind. It is a sort of shorthand for the neurological answer; that is, "anger" is a term for certain kinds of neural states, which are described in the first explanation.

The materialist intuition is well-confirmed because it _has_ been tested, many times. Every succesful test of any physical theory is confirmatory of the materialist intuition. It is not a "hard-core belief". First of all, there are very good reasons for believing it. Second, most people would not continue to believe it if they were presented with concrete evidence against it.

You're right of course that I take my own consciousness as given. The point is that I cannot account for anyone else's consciousness. That is, I account just as well (not at all) for a computer's consciousness as for another human's.

I obviously haven't studied evolution to the extent you have, and thus, whatever I might say, it will seem less reliable. But I simply must disagree with you. There are ways in which altruism can be explained. But I have already made all the arguments I have to that effect.

But perhaps you could try to posit an alternative? You say you don't think that the laws of physics were broken by God at some point. Then how _do_ you account for altruism? For if a thing is not explicable, even in principle, through physical science, that entails that at some point in the process the laws of physics have not applied. Either the laws of physics are capable of explaining everything or they have been broken. Such is their nature.


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## Eriol

And still the question "why" remains unanswered... Why does gravity exist? This does not assume any telos, it simply inquires into the nature of the Universe. The chief criticism of Newton's theory when it was formulated was that it involved "spooky action at a distance". You can call that the search of a more accurate description, but the question behind it is still Why. This is how our minds think. They want reasons, not descriptions. 

Laws of physics are not completely deterministic according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (an interpretation I abhor, and I much prefer other interpretations offered, such as the one Feynman proposed). This is the mainstream of physics. So the laws of physics are not supposed to explain all and every events, they are probabilistic and not deterministic. And even if they were, the sad fact is that we do not know everything there is to be known, and there are some things that are not _explained_ by them, as yet. Such as consciousness. Now, the belief that we will be able to explain it simply with materialistic data, or perhaps with new laws yet to be discovered, is very sensible -- my main point is that it is _a belief_. Much as believing in God to explain it. 

I account for altruism because I believe in a supernatural dimension in man. "Supernatural", here, means outside nature. No need for any physical laws to be broken -- they do not extend to the supernatural nature of man. Gravity has no pull on thoughts.

Aiwendil, you surely see that absolute materialism is the end of free-will, right? If we are conditioned by X, we do not have free will. X may be neural pathways, childhood mistreatments, society's pressure, genes, or all of the above. My simple question is this -- if we are conditioned by X, how can we become aware of it? It seems you believe that I am not aware of it, but you are. Examine your consciousness, as you said it is the hardest piece of data you have in this matter. How can you explain that you rose over your conditioning, over X, and "saw the light" if you are _absolutely_ conditioned?

It seems to me that any people rising above the conditioning is an example of free-will, and therefore a denial of the theory of absolute conditioning in the first place.

How are you going in the exams?


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## Aiwendil2

> And still the question "why" remains unanswered... Why does gravity exist?



This question does remain unanswered, in part because it is hard to know what to make of it. There certainly is an intuition that something must explain why the fundamental laws are the way they are. But an intuition is not a guarantee. There is no reason that there has to be something behind, as it were, the fundamental laws of physics. Of course, Newtonian gravity is far from being a fundamental law of physics - but the actual law in question is immaterial. At any rate, no scientific explanation could explain things all the way back. There will always have to be some given in the explanation, from which the explanation proceeds. You might explain the fundamental laws of physics by saying that God created them. But then I can ask for an explanation for God's existence. You may reply that God is foundational, the prime mover, and no explanation is needed. But then I will say that if God is allowed to exist without an explanation, why are not the fundamental laws of physics?



> The chief criticism of Newton's theory when it was formulated was that it involved "spooky action at a distance". You can call that the search of a more accurate description, but the question behind it is still Why. This is how our minds think. They want reasons, not descriptions.



I do call it the search for a more accurate description. I have no problem with the question "why?" But any answer to the question is a description.



> Laws of physics are not completely deterministic according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (an interpretation I abhor, and I much prefer other interpretations offered, such as the one Feynman proposed).



I never said that the laws of physics are deterministic. But they do project definite probabilities. I'm not sure what point is in question here.

By the way, I am also not fond of the Copenhagen interpretation, which I think is only so widely accepted because it was championed by Niels Bohr, with whom few dared to disagree. But there seems to have been a resurgence of interest in other interpretation lately.



> and there are some things that are not explained by them, as yet. Such as consciousness.



Consciousness. I think we are arguing at cross purposes. My impression was that you thought that neural science could not explain human behavior, thoughts, emotions, etc., as perceived in other people. Consciousness is quite a different matter. I don't know whether neural science will be able to explain consciousness. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But the thing about consciousness is that _I observe only my own_. I have no more reason to think that another human may be conscious than I have to think that a very advanced computer may be conscious.

I think that if one were to break down your idea of a "supernatural dimension" in humans, it would be found either to violate the laws of physics or not to be supernatural at all. The laws of physics make definite predictions about how a given human will behave, based on the configuration of neural impulses in his or her brain. For the human to act consistently in ways other than that predicted, the laws of physics must be wrong/broken.



> Aiwendil, you surely see that absolute materialism is the end of free-will, right?



Unfortunately, it looks like that may be true. But I will never choose what to believe based on what view I would prefer to be true; rather, I will choose it based on what view seems most likely to be true.



> if we are conditioned by X, how can we become aware of it?



Not at all. You are certainly aware of "X" to the same extent that I am; you merely think it likely that X is not a complete description. I do not claim to have any mystical insight into this.



> How can you explain that you rose over your conditioning, over X, and "saw the light" if you are absolutely conditioned?



No one rises over his or her "conditioning" (whatever that may be). I think you are taking the physicalist view too simplisticly. There are many, many factors that go into determining behavior. Among these factors are intelligence, the capacity to exercise reason, and the ability of certain parts of the mind to control other parts. Attacks upon physicalism based on the argument that there is some aspect of human behavior that runs contrary to some aspect of the "conditioning" are mistaken, for they assume that the "conditioning" is simple. It is not. And it is not all conditioning. On the contrary, many or most of the actions of humans have more to do with complex rational processes in the cerebral cortex than with instincts and emotions. Human behavior is so varied, so unpredictable, precisely because it is, to a very large extent, governed by immensely complex neural behavior.

I'm glad to be able to continue the debate for the time. Finals haven't started yet (they start later this week), but I've been very busy with a final paper for one class, and now I must invest some time in studying.


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## Eriol

Listen to yourself. You say consciousness is proven to exist only in yourself; yet you take part in a debate, assuming therefore that I am conscious (no one ever debated with a computer). You say that 'unfortunately physicalism is the end of free-will, but if it so, then I must believe in it' -- yet your own behavior proves free-will and disproves the assertion, every day of your life. This is what I mean when I say that 'reason throws her light upon everything -- but herself'. Running in circles. You are getting yourself to a position in which arguing is useless, since we can never take the consciousness of the opponent for granted; and conscious choice is useless, since it is conditioned by material forces outside your power. For if they are not outside your power, then you have just posited a 'something' that you control, the 'your' in the sentence. To say that they are 'complex', as opposed to 'simple', is begging the question. Either they are under 'your' control, and therefore there is free will and materialism is disproved; or they are not, and therefore everything we may think and dream to explain them is useless and it is no use arguing about it. Our behavior in this thread disproves it. Why do you argue if not to convince me, Aiwendil? And how could I be convinced if I had no consciousness? Likewise: Why do you come here, is it some complex of forces that makes you do it, or is it your free choice? 

Free choice, Consciousness, Absolute Truth, Reality -- Ethics, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ontology. Each of these fields supports the other with a similar _reductio ad absurdum_ argument in which their denial leads us to a position in which we would not do what we actually do. There is a grand scale view in philosophy. They are all connected. You can't deny one without toppling the others, and if you affirm one the others come together. 

(Now I'm rambling. But I'm rambling about something very clear and real for me. These subjects were food for my thoughts for several years. It is hard to explain it in words, at least in just one thread!)

The point in calling up the indeterministic nature of the laws of physics was in answer to your question about altruism, and the very last sentence of your next-to-last post, 'either the laws of nature explain everything or they are broken'. This sounded deterministic, sorry if my assumption is wrong. If you agree with indeterminism, this sentence is of questionable value, for I never said that actual _breaking_ of the laws of physics was involved in any of these processes. (Though that does not mean that they can't be broken, by the way -- I believe in the theoretical possibility of miracles -- and therefore in many of the miracles described in literature. Probably a question for another thread...)

Good luck with your studies!


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## Aiwendil2

> Listen to yourself. You say consciousness is proven to exist only in yourself; yet you take part in a debate, assuming therefore that I am conscious



Not true. First of all, if I do assume that you are conscious, that is an _inference_, not an _observation_. I can literally observe nothing save my own mental states. I can only infer that, since you act in ways similar to me and since you claim to be conscious, you are conscious. If a computer exhibited the same behavior, I could make the same inference about it.

But I need not even infer that. From my point of view, it's completely possible (though it would, I admit, be pretty strange) that you are not conscious in the same way that I am. I could still talk to and interact with you, because all that I can ever interact with is your behavior, not your consciousness _in itself_.



> You say that 'unfortunately physicalism is the end of free-will, but if it so, then I must believe in it' -- yet your own behavior proves free-will and disproves the assertion, every day of your life.



No mere behavior could ever possibly prove free will, since behavior is predictable by physics.



> You are getting yourself to a position in which arguing is useless, since we can never take the consciousness of the opponent for granted



The consciousness of the opponent could never be a prerequisite for an argument, since I can never have epistemic access to your consciousness. I certainly don't mean this as a disparagement, but if your posts had appeared due to random computer glitches (incredibly unlikely, but allowed by quantum mechanics), the debate would be just as valid, just as interesting. Debate depends not upon the consciousness of the entity that produces the arguments, but rather upon the arguments themselves, as cognized in my mind (because that is the only one that I can observe).



> For if they are not outside your power, then you have just posited a 'something' that you control, the 'your' in the sentence.



I think you are mistaken in making the ego, the "I", distinct from the choice, the something that it controls. The ego _is_ the sum of my mental states, including my rational thoughts and decisions.



> or they are not, and therefore everything we may think and dream to explain them is useless and it is no use arguing about it.



I don't understand. What makes it useless? Again, I think your Cartesian distinction between the thought and the thinker is getting in the way. In order to determine whether the locution "I control my thoughts" is true or not, we must know what "I" refers to. It can only refer to the sum of my thoughts, emotions, sensations, and so forth. So the locution equals "The sum of my thoughts, emotions, sensations, and so forth controls my thoughts." That is true analytically, just as "The motion of a particle controls the motion of that particle".



> And how could I be convinced if I had no consciousness?



Your behavior could be observed to change such that the content of your statements agrees with my views. No consciousness need be involved.



> The point in calling up the indeterministic nature of the laws of physics was in answer to your question about altruism, and the very last sentence of your next-to-last post, 'either the laws of nature explain everything or they are broken'. This sounded deterministic, sorry if my assumption is wrong. If you agree with indeterminism, this sentence is of questionable value, for I never said that actual breaking of the laws of physics was involved in any of these processes.



Ah, I see. This is interesting. What it seems you are saying is that God ensures somehow that all the little quantum processes that constituted the evolution of the human brain came out in just such a way that humans turn out to have an altruistic impulse. But in such a case, what God was effectively doing was altering the probabilities associated with those events - in other words, changing the laws of physics.

But if you're not trying to say that the quantum results were skewed, then you have a problem. For natural evolution must supervene on natural physics. So if the human brain and its altruism evolved via normal, non-skewed quantum mechanics (that is, the results of the processes were not far from those predicted, probabilistically, by quantum mechanics), then the human brain and its altruism evolved via normal evolution - which is just what I claim.


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## Eriol

Are you defining free will as something that breaks the laws of physics??



> No mere behavior could ever possibly prove free will, since behavior is predictable by physics.



We come back to the distinction between description and explanation. Behavior may be 'describable' by physics, but it is certainly not 'predictable', otherwise there would be no such thing as deception, the stock market, terrorism... 

Perhaps you are taking the word 'prove' in your own sentence to mean apodictical proof. But to search for that outside of pure logic and mathematics -- outside of an abstract world -- is vain. If you take the word 'Proof' to mean that, you freeze thought on the real world. The same reasoning applies to your word 'prerequisite' as applied to consciousness in arguments -- sure it is a prerequisite, since people don't go around arguing with unconscious beings -- or answering machines, who are quite similar to human beings on the phone. People _assume_ consciousness when arguing, whether by inference or (mistaken) "observation". 

How could the sum of your thoughts control the sum of your thoughts? This is not a facetious question. It is human experience. WE control our thoughts. You say that the ego is an illusion, simply the sum of our thoughts, but this is contrary to human experience (including yours, I bet). So the burden of proof is on you, my friend. Perhaps you are right, but you are going against mankind with little evidence besides your strong conviction that particles explain everything. I am showing you a concrete phenomenon -- consciousness -- that is not explained by particles in the current state of science. You tell me that it will eventually be explained by particles. Who has the strangest faith?

If we could examine almost every sentence of your posts, we would see the premise of an independent ego behind them, greater than the sum of your thoughts. Luckily! for you are a human being, and even if your reason is blind to it, there are other parts of your mind that resist it and insist on saying "I". 

As for quantum mechanics, I was just addressing determinism. As far as is known it has no bearing on natural selection and therefore no amount of 'tinkering' with it could produce evolution of altruism in a large scale. Your point would be a good one if I said that God's _only_ way of interfering would be tinkering with quantum mechanics -- but I never said that.

Sorry if I am cranky, I am very worried about something close to my heart right now. It is quite possible that I won't be able to post here for a while.


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## Aiwendil2

> We come back to the distinction between description and explanation.



A distinction that I still don't think exists.



> Behavior may be 'describable' by physics, but it is certainly not 'predictable', otherwise there would be no such thing as deception, the stock market, terrorism...



All you are saying here is that deception, the stock market, and terrorism are incredibly complex. Of course they are. It would be insane to actually try to use quantum mechanics to predict things like that - there are so many little quantum processes going on that it would take billions of years to make all the necessary calculations. Even a single human brain is incredibly complex by quantum standards.

But my point was that you cannot "prove", in any sense of the word, free will, through studies of behavior. Of course, it's difficult even to define "free will". But if you are going to empirically prove, or confirm, free will, there must be some differences between what one would expect to observe according to the laws of physics and what one would expect to observe if free will exists. In other words, a universe with free will would not follow the laws of physics. Another way of putting it is this: you can point to any facet of human behavior and say "that's evidence of free will". But I can easily reply: "no, such and such a neural process caused that behavior". If you disagree and try to prove that the neural process in question did not cause the behavior, then that is simply an indication that neurology needs to build a better model of neural processes. There is no way you can show that "free will" is at work rather than causal science.



> The same reasoning applies to your word 'prerequisite' as applied to consciousness in arguments -- sure it is a prerequisite, since people don't go around arguing with unconscious beings



First of all, I don't know that you are conscious. I can't ever possibly know that. So clearly people do at least go around arguing with beings that they don't know to be conscious.

Second, the reason people don't go around arguing with computers and rocks and televisions and whatever else you mean by "unconscious beings" is that these things tend not to produce intelligent arguments in the way that humans do.



> How could the sum of your thoughts control the sum of your thoughts?



This is a matter of how you define "control". Take, for example, the velocity of some object and the question "does the velocity control the velocity?" I would say "yes", since whatever the velocity is at time t determines (trivially) what the velocity is at time t. If you prefer to answer "no", that's fine; it's merely a matter of definitions.



> WE control our thoughts.



Give me some concrete evidence of the existence of "us", distinct from our thoughts.



> You say that the ego is an illusion



No, merely that it is not distinct from thought.



> but this is contrary to human experience (including yours, I bet).



How? When I try to figure out what it is that is thinking, I can put my finger on nothing substantial. I don't see how I am distinct from my thoughts at all.



> I am showing you a concrete phenomenon -- consciousness



I have agreed again and again that consciousness is a very strange thing, _possibly_ not explicable by neurology. But any attempt to deal with consciousness must come to terms with the fact that I observe only one consciousness. I have no reason to think that other humans are conscious, save by inference from their behavior. But if I allow myself that inference, then I must also allow it, to the same degree, if I am confronted with a computer that mimics that behavior.



> If we could examine almost every sentence of your posts, we would see the premise of an independent ego behind them, greater than the sum of your thoughts.



No, we wouldn't. We _could not_ possibly see such a thing in mere external communication.



> there are other parts of your mind that resist it and insist on saying "I".



I have no problem with saying "I" (evidently!). By "I" I mean the sum of my thoughts, memory, emotions, etc.



> Your point would be a good one if I said that God's only way of interfering would be tinkering with quantum mechanics -- but I never said that.



But any such interference either breaks the laws of physics or is already taken into account in the laws of physics.



> Sorry if I am cranky, I am very worried about something close to my heart right now.



I hope things go well for you. If this is the last post, thank you for such an engaging debate.


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## Eriol

Not the last post; at most, the last in which some degree of thought has been poured into. But I will probably get back to it eventually.

Thanks!


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## Eriol

*"Eventually" is at hand *

Kasparov is back .

I think there is an underlying thread in our debate, Aiwendil, that perhaps can be clarified by exposure. I accept "existential" evidence -- evidence drawn from my own existence as a human being -- as good. In this field are free will, consciousness, ethical conscience, etc. You, on the other hand, have a stricter standard for "evidence" -- you only accept evidence that is observable and testable independently. The "scientific" criteria (as opposed to "existential").

Do you agree with this diagnosis?

We could discuss the adequacy of each standard.

But more interesting is the question of whether your personal, "existential" evidence agrees with mine as regards free will, consciousness, etc. Does it? Even if it is not independently observable and testable?


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## Aiwendil2

It's good to see you again.

I will certainly agree that I accept only scientific evidence as valid.

But I'm not sure what to make of your "existential evidence". I think that if you unpack the term and clear up the terminology, you will find less substance here than one might think.

If what you mean by existential evidence is that you accept your own consciousness as evidence, then I accept existential evidence as well. This is, in fact, the starting point of my whole view.

You also mention free will and ethical conscience.

As for free will, I certainly agree that there is a strong a priori intuition that free will not only means something but also that I actually have it. But when one tries to define it, one must either retreat into mysticism or acknowledge that free will cannot be quite what the a priori intuition is. One might say "I have free will if I control my own decisions". But this is based on a false distinction between "I", the ego, and "my own decisions". In fact, my decisions are part of that "I". When you clear up that confusion, the claim becomes true but trivially so: "I have free will if my conscious decisions control my conscious decisions".

Ethical conscience: Certainly I have certain ideas about morals. If this is "existential evidence", then let it be so. But as I see it, these ideas of mine are no more sacred or justified than other ideas I have. Nor can I think of any evidence that these morals are somehow inherent in a way in which other ideas are not. Of course, I cannot distinctly remember ever learning them. But I also cannot distinctly remember learning the word "blue" and certainly that doesn't mean that that word is inherent in humans.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> * ... this is based on a false distinction between "I", the ego, and "my own decisions". In fact, my decisions are part of that "I". When you clear up that confusion, the claim becomes true but trivially so: "I have free will if my conscious decisions control my conscious decisions".*



Well, this is then a point in which our two "experiential evidences" are contradictory. For I don't see this merging between decisions and ego in my own case. I am always conscious that I am the one making the decisions -- I, the personal ego. Why did I study biology? Because I chose it. I could have chosen law, or engineering. But *I* chose it. 

If I said "I chose biology because I chose biology", it would be nonsensical, because of the first word in the sentence, "I". It comes in the "package of consciousness", at least in my case, to assume an identity. I. 

Are you sure you don't perceive a distinction between the decision-maker and the decisions? Or perhaps you think that this distinction is an illusion. But what I understood from your post is that you see no distinction at all, not even the illusion of a distinction. Is that so?



> Ethical conscience: Certainly I have certain ideas about morals. If this is "existential evidence", then let it be so. But as I see it, these ideas of mine are no more sacred or justified than other ideas I have. Nor can I think of any evidence that these morals are somehow inherent in a way in which other ideas are not. Of course, I cannot distinctly remember ever learning them. But I also cannot distinctly remember learning the word "blue" and certainly that doesn't mean that that word is inherent in humans.



"Ethical conscience" is not a given set of moral codes, but the fact of having a moral code itself. It is not "certain ideas about morals", but rather the experience of a moral life. At least in my case. Why do you have the concept of "good"? Because it was taught to you, as the concept of blue? Are you sure of that? I would say that the word "blue" was taught, but not the concept of blue; and likewise, the ethical conscience was never "taught", but rather honed and trained in a given moral code. But it could not be trained if it was not already there. 

The major difference between the ethical conscience and "blue" is that we can see "blue" without any societal input -- society can change our words to denote it, or our psychological reaction to it (in Portuguese "blue" -- "azul" -- is a merry word, unlike English). But it can't really claim to have shown us "blueness". We saw that with our own eyes. And we did the same with the ethical conscience... but here lies the mystery, why did we do that with the ethical conscience if there is no clearly identifiable "goodness" without societal input? If "blueness" is independent of societal input, then "goodness" also is independent, since we are not given the ability to identify it -- the ethical conscience -- by society.

These are all existential conclusions of mine, with no scientific evidence. What do you think? How do they differ from your own reflections?


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## Aiwendil2

> Are you sure you don't perceive a distinction between the decision-maker and the decisions? Or perhaps you think that this distinction is an illusion. But what I understood from your post is that you see no distinction at all, not even the illusion of a distinction. Is that so?



If you are asking whether, a priori, before I have attempted any analysis of the situation, I observe a distinction between my thoughts and my ego, I will have to say that, a priori, I have no conception of an "I" at all - that is, not of an "I" that is distinct from other entities. The distinction seems to be something that can only be achieved _with thought_. And once I am thinking and analyzing, we are no longer dealing with a priori, existential evidence. (Sorry if my use of the term "a priori" is a little excessive - it's a habit I seem to have picked up from a professor.)

Having said that, I will acknowledge that I certainly know what you mean (or think I do). There is a sense in which it seems true, even obvious, that I am distinct from my thoughts somehow. I would not call this existential evidence, for it seems to me the distinction can only be made after analysis.

But after further analysis, this independent ego turns out not to make very much sense. Suppose you are right, and we can distinguish two parts of the mind: thoughts/decisions and the ego. Suppose further that you are right in that the ego thinks these thoughts and makes these decisions, that it controls the thoughts and decisions. We seem to be saying that the ego decides what to think and what to decide. For if the thoughts and decisions proceed from the ego, the ego must have some way of selecting what thoughts and decisions it will allow to proceed from it. How does the ego make this selection? That is, how does the ego decide what to think? We have the same situation within the ego, then, that we originally had within the mind - the ego must in this picture act as a little mind. You could say, of course, that the decisions of the ego concerning what to think come from some hyper-ego, but naturally this will be an infinite regression. And yet, if the ego is separate from the thoughts and controls the thoughts, it _must_ have some way of determining which thoughts will come to be.

This is, of course, not a new analysis and I'm sure you've heard or thought of something like it before. It's the so-called problem of the "homonculus". I can think of no solution to it save to say that the ego is not independent of the thoughts.



> "Ethical conscience" is not a given set of moral codes, but the fact of having a moral code itself. It is not "certain ideas about morals", but rather the experience of a moral life. At least in my case. Why do you have the concept of "good"? Because it was taught to you, as the concept of blue? Are you sure of that? I would say that the word "blue" was taught, but not the concept of blue; and likewise, the ethical conscience was never "taught", but rather honed and trained in a given moral code.



You're right that there are many problems with my analogy between an ethical conscience and the color blue.

I do not know whether my conscience is a result of societal training or of biology. It was certainly strengthened, if not created, through society. But I see no reason to think that this ethical conscience, if inherent, corresponds to some impersonal, abstract principle of ethics. I certainly have other inherent ideas that are simply false. For example, my pre-analytical belief would be that objects can have definite positions and momenta simultaneously, that velocities transform in a Galilean fashion, that space is Euclidean. All these things are false.

Another point - if we are to be strict about this existential evidence, we cannot admit observation and sensation into our analysis. But the ethical conscience you propose that we have a priori necessarily involves and refers to other humans (unless it's some very strange ethical impulse). I don't think this conscience could possibly be identified without any reference to sensory experience.


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## Eriol

It seems to me you are taking the expression "existential evidence" to mean "evidence gathered by the individual consciousness without any input from other sources"; in other words, "a priori" concepts. Space, quantity, relation, succession, etc. We don't "learn" these concepts; we are born with them. Or so thought many philosophers. I'm not sure about it; but what I want to clarify is whether this is the sense in which you are taking the expression "existential evidence" -- is it?

For I was not using "existential evidence" in that sense, but rather as evidence that I can draw from my own life, without being able to share it objectively with anyone. Perhaps "subjective evidence" would be a better label for that, but "subjectivity" is a word full of in-built concepts that I'd rather avoid... this discussion is hard enough as it is . 

So, the fact that I am here typing these words is "existential evidence" to me, but not to you. You only see the result; you don't know who is typing it, and indeed you don't _know_ even that it is being typed now. But I do; I can see it myself. I can't prove it to you as a mathematical theorem, but my own experience is enough for me to accept that I am, indeed, typing these words right now. 

I've thought about the problem of the homunculus, but my own existential evidence shows to me that it is an illusion, a trick being played by my mind. I sure don't know the precise twists by which my mind works, and how I decide on what I will do; but I know for a fact (existential evidence...) that I, my ego, myself, decides it. So the conclusion of the problem of the homunculus that you offered, "I can think of no solution to it save to say that the ego is not independent of the thoughts", is ruled out at the beginning. For I know (existential evidence) that my ego is indeed independent of the thoughts. This does not mean that the ego is absolutely free to pick any thought it wants; the matter of the degree of freedom is a thorny one. We are not bodiless spirits, we are constrained by hormones, bodies, wants, desires, etc. etc. We are not absolutely free; yet, we _can_ rise above all obstacles and determine what kind of thoughts we will have and what kind of thoughts we will not have; and perhaps more telling, we can determine what actions we'll do and what actions we'll not do. 

How about your own existential/subjective evidence? Would you agree with these observations?


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## Aiwendil2

Yes, it does seem that we've had a misunderstanding concerning the meaning of "existential evidence". I interpreted it as "evidence relating to the fact of existence (or of my existence) itself" (as opposed to evidence from within that existence).

But your definition is "evidence that I can draw from my own life, without being able to share it objectively with anyone".

This is what I would call _experience_, in my view the defining property of consciousness.

But I certainly would not contrast this with something like "empirical evidence" or "scientific evidence". I am in this sense rather a hard-core empiricist - I see scientific evidence as being _nothing more than experience_.

You say that your existential evidence indicates that there is no problem with the "homonculus". In a sense, there can be nothing more to be said on the matter; the nature of this type of evidence (as defined) is such that I can never dispute your claims. But of course that doesn't get us anywhere. What I _can_ do is point out incoherences in your analysis and, through comparison with _my_ experience, offer what I think to be a solution. In this sense, I still have a valid argument against your conception of the thinker as distinct from the thought. For there is still the paradox of infinite regress in your view (which, by the way, is a _logical_ problem, not a _scientific_ one). 

The solution (and one indicated not merely by this kind of investigative philosophy but also by neurology) is to view the mind holisticly. This view matches up quite nicely with all of my "existential evidence" - there is still an "I", the thinker (which is not distinct from thoughts, but contains them); moreover I control my thoughts (this is true analytically, since "I" includes my thoughts).


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *You say that your existential evidence indicates that there is no problem with the "homonculus". In a sense, there can be nothing more to be said on the matter; the nature of this type of evidence (as defined) is such that I can never dispute your claims. But of course that doesn't get us anywhere. *



You are right. But what does your own experience tell you? Does it disagree with mine? Yes, the problem of the "homunculus" is logical. But if my experience denies it, I can safely conclude that there is something wrong with the premises; for I can't doubt my own experience without putting all my knowledge in peril. For all my knowledge comes from experience, as you defined it. 

I have two choices; I either accept the premises of the homunculus problem and then I disqualify my experience, or I reject the premises on account that the conclusion disqualifies the experience too. The way I look at it, it is as if the homunculus problem was one of those math tricks to prove that every number is different from itself, or that 1 = 2, or something like that. These things have a fallacy inbuilt, but I can reject them even without identifying the fallacy proper.

Or, as Augustine says, "Truth does not contradict Truth". 



> The solution (and one indicated not merely by this kind of investigative philosophy but also by neurology) is to view the mind holisticly. This view matches up quite nicely with all of my "existential evidence" - there is still an "I", the thinker (which is not distinct from thoughts, but contains them); moreover I control my thoughts (this is true analytically, since "I" includes my thoughts).



I still can't understand how the sentence "I control my thoughts" can mean a thinker not distinct from the thoughts. Yes, the thinker contains them, but he is also more than them; or else he would not contain them, but rather be equivalent to them. And "I control my thoughts" seems to presuppose a controller apart from the thoughts.


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## Aiwendil2

> But if my experience denies it, I can safely conclude that there is something wrong with the premises; for I can't doubt my own experience without putting all my knowledge in peril. For all my knowledge comes from experience, as you defined it.



Is the impression of an ego distinct from thoughts really your _direct_ experience, though? Speaking for myself, it is not. That is, I do not experience the distinction between thinker and thought in the same direct way that I experience sense-data, or that I experience the thoughts themselves. In these two examples (sense-data and thought) the experience is direct and pre-analytical. The existence of an ego is also, I think, pre-analytical. What is not pre-analytical (and thus not the same sort of evidence as the above) is the proposition that the ego is distinct from the thought. I cannot formulate propositions about relations (such as the relation between thought and ego) without performing some analysis. But as soon as I perform analysis I am out of the domain of fundamental evidence and in the domain where I must acknowledge the possibility that I have made a mistake.



> The way I look at it, it is as if the homunculus problem was one of those math tricks to prove that every number is different from itself, or that 1 = 2, or something like that. These things have a fallacy inbuilt, but I can reject them even without identifying the fallacy proper.



I'm not sure you can reject this without identifying the fallacy. There are two reasons this is different from the mathematical tricks you mention. First, it can be easily derived that 1 does not equal 2, and moreover everyone agrees to this; so we have very good reason to suspect a fallacy in the trick. Second, in order to actually, rigorously reject such a trick, you _would_ have to identify the fallacy proper; the reason most of us wouldn't bother to do so when presented with such a trick is simply that most of us are quite content to simply assume that there is some fallacy and leave the details to mathematicians. 

Neither of these reasons apply in the present case. The first does not apply because there is in fact wide disagreement on the problem of the homonculus and there is no trivial logical proof to fall back on. The second doesn't apply because what it is to be talking philosophically is to be worried about finding such fallacies.



> Yes, the thinker contains them, but he is also more than them; or else he would not contain them, but rather be equivalent to them.



Yes, I certainly think it possible (maybe likely) that a thinker is more than the sum of his or her thoughts.



> And "I control my thoughts" seems to presuppose a controller apart from the thoughts.



What does it mean to "control" something? I would say that A controls B if and only if the properties of A completely determine the properties of B. This certainly works for most ordinary examples of control. Suppose I'm animating a puppet. My decisions and actions (which are properties of me) completely determine the actions of the puppet. Thus, I control the actions of the puppet. Or, I control the words that are appearing on my screen because the properties of my mind completely determine which words appear on the screen (or, insofar as they do not completely determine the words, I cannot be said to control the words - for example, if my keyboard malfunctioned). It works for complex systems as well. In a republic, the citizens control the government because the decisions of the citizens determine who will be in the government (provided the citizens don't live in Florida).

What each case has in common is that a complete description of A determines B. A complete description of my decisions and actions determines what words appear on the screen. A complete description of the votes in an election determines who won the election (note that who won the election is merely a property of the total tally of votes).

So, trivially, a complete description of the contents of my mind determines what I am thinking. It is my mind that controls what I think (just as it is the votes that control who won). If "I" am synonymous with my mind, then I control my thoughts, even though (or rather, because) they are a part of the "I".

This definition, like all definitions, is arbitrary; but I think it captures the spirit in which "control" is generally used and moreover I think it provides a satisfying explanation for how the thinker controls the thought.


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## Eriol

You are right that we need to pinpoint the fallacy to be sure of the error in a proposition. But as the 1=2 example shows, we can know that some proposition is erroneous without going through the motions of analysis. It is not rigorous proof, but it is still a reasonable conclusion.

The way to dispel the fallacy in the homunculus problem, in my opinion, is to accept the ego as something external to the mind, defined as "the sum of the thoughts"; it is not a resultant from the sum of the thoughts. The problem of the homunculus really rests on that assumption; that the ego is qualitatively like the mind (a similar substance, as old philosophers would say). I think it is not. And this hypothesis deals adequately with the homunculus. 

There is really not enough evidence (scientific evidence) either way; but the existential evidence (in my own case) supports it. I could discuss that in detail if you wish, but I would be more interested in what your own experience shows. 

What would be the difference between direct and indirect experience in your usage? Indirect experience comes after conscious analysis? But the formulation of concepts, even at a very basic level, includes a pre-conscious analysis. If we look at a tree for the first time, we can't really formulate the concept of 'tree'. We see an individual thing. It is only after seeing trees, and abstracting some property common to trees, that the mind really understands the concept of a tree (which is still a long way from understanding what a tree is). There is analysis in that process, even if unconscious.

What I mean is that analysis can't be the distinctive process to separate direct from indirect experience.

As your examples of control show, the controller is not "of the same substance" as the controlled. Voters are not the government; and there could be voters (people) without government. The hand is not the puppet. And there could be a hand without an active puppet. Neither the voters nor the hand is a "resultant" of the controlled activities; quite the contrary. 

The homunculus is a real problem only if the controller is an "emergent property" of the controlled; as solidity is an emergent property of a given arrangement of atoms. Then you can't really have solidity without the atoms; and analogously, you would not be able to accept an ego without a mind (defined as the sum of the thoughts).

Even if an ego is never seen in nature without thoughts, they can still be of "different substances" and so elude the problem of the homunculus; it is a conceptual, not a scientific, question.


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## Aiwendil2

> But as the 1=2 example shows, we can know that some proposition is erroneous without going through the motions of analysis.



Not quite, I think. We cannot know that the proposition is erroneous without going through the rigorous proof. In the mathematical case we can guess (and a very good guess it is), but that's not the same as knowing.



> The way to dispel the fallacy in the homunculus problem, in my opinion, is to accept the ego as something external to the mind, defined as "the sum of the thoughts"; it is not a resultant from the sum of the thoughts. The problem of the homunculus really rests on that assumption; that the ego is qualitatively like the mind (a similar substance, as old philosophers would say). I think it is not. And this hypothesis deals adequately with the homunculus.



I don't think this is sufficient. Regardless of the nature or substance of the ego, the paradox still exists. You claim that the ego controls thoughts and decisions (let's call these D). This entails that those thoughts and decisions are directly correlated to properties of the ego (let's call those properties P). This is true regardless of the nature of the ego. The question can then be asked: what determines P? One answer is simply that P is fundamental. But this merely displaces the unwanted determinism back one step - now the ego (still regardless of its nature) is a deterministic system and D are deterministic results of P. Another answer is to say that something else controls P. But this is just displacing the problem one more step and it will be an infinite regression.



> What would be the difference between direct and indirect experience in your usage? Indirect experience comes after conscious analysis? But the formulation of concepts, even at a very basic level, includes a pre-conscious analysis. If we look at a tree for the first time, we can't really formulate the concept of 'tree'. We see an individual thing. It is only after seeing trees, and abstracting some property common to trees, that the mind really understands the concept of a tree (which is still a long way from understanding what a tree is). There is analysis in that process, even if unconscious.



I would say that direct experience includes sense data and perhaps thoughts themselves. The distinction I make is that "indirect experience" (which is really not experience at all) is information (or opinions, beliefs, etc.) that I have deduced or inferred from my direct experience.

By sense data I mean, for example, the raw, uninterpreted image of a tree. I mean this quite literally - the sense data in this case is _only_ an image. The sense data does not include the tree _as a tree_, for "tree" is a concept that I must develop upon analyzing the sense data.

You might argue (as has been done) that there is no such thing as this direct, pre-analytical experience. But I think there must be. At some foundational level, the analysis must have some data upon which to be exercised. There can be no analysis without something to analyze.



> As your examples of control show, the controller is not "of the same substance" as the controlled. Voters are not the government; and there could be voters (people) without government. The hand is not the puppet. And there could be a hand without an active puppet. Neither the voters nor the hand is a "resultant" of the controlled activities; quite the contrary.



I can reply to this in three ways.

1. In my example with the election, I think the controller is "of the same substance" as the controlled. Forget the voters and the government for a moment. Take just the data. "Who won the election" is a feature of the data itself; an equivelant term would be "the candidate with the most votes" (keep in mind that "candidate" is here just a term in the statistical language-game). So "who won the election" supervenes on the data about who received how many votes. And the data controls "who won the election".

2. The examples aren't the definition. The definition I proposed was simply "A controls B if and only if the properties of A completely determine the properties of B." The examples were merely intended to show that it is a suitable definition. 

3. It's only a definition and it's therefore arbitrary. It's a definition that I think fits very well with the normal use of the word "control" as I understand it, and in that sense I see it as striking that in my view of the mind and with my definition of "control" it turns out that I control my decisions. But it's still just an arbitrary definition, so you may take it or leave it without substantive consequence.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *I don't think this is sufficient. Regardless of the nature or substance of the ego, the paradox still exists. You claim that the ego controls thoughts and decisions (let's call these D). This entails that those thoughts and decisions are directly correlated to properties of the ego (let's call those properties P). This is true regardless of the nature of the ego. The question can then be asked: what determines P? One answer is simply that P is fundamental. But this merely displaces the unwanted determinism back one step - now the ego (still regardless of its nature) is a deterministic system and D are deterministic results of P. Another answer is to say that something else controls P. But this is just displacing the problem one more step and it will be an infinite regression.*



I think you are assuming a determinism in the ego that I don't see there. You say that claiming that "P is fundamental means that it is deterministic" -- why? Can't it be fundamentally free from material constraints? For that's how I take "deterministic" to mean -- "conditioned by material constraints". So that if the mind were determined by synapses and neurotransmitters and such, it would be deterministic.

I always associate the word "deterministic" with the "clockwork model" of the Universe -- the picture that if we had all the data available at the beginning of the Universe, we could predict its future development perfectly. But this determinism is already proven to be lacking in nature itself, both by chaos theory and by quantum mechanics. Why should we then worry about the determinism of P? It can be fundamental and non-deterministic at the same time. 

Your definition of control presupposes absolute determinism. Even if we did not have any reason to be suspicious of determinism (like the aforementioned theories), it is still an unproven assumption. 

If P were deterministic, could we become aware of it? Could we realize that we are determined by some other thing? Can the controlled become aware of the controlled, according to your definition of control (complete and absolute determination of all the properties of the controlled by the controller)?

I think that at the minute we say "we are determined by such and such", we contradict ourselves; for we could never become aware of it if we were really determined by it.


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## Aiwendil2

I think that I've been unclear with some of my terminology.

First of all, I would say that a correlation between two things is deterministic if and only if the properties of one thing are sufficient information to predict with certainty the properties of the second. That is, if A determines (in the purely logical sense) B, then the relation between A and B is deterministic.

When applied to the relation between initial values and final values for physical properties (and this particular relation is called physics), it leads to the "clockwork universe" model you mentioned.

Of course it's true that physics turns out not to be deterministic. But it is not quite maximally indeterministic either. By "maximal indeterminism" I mean a relation between A and B such that the properties of A include literally no information about the properties of B.

Physics as we now understand it turns out to be somewhere between determinism and maximal indeterminism - some properties A give us _some_ information about subsequent properties B (that is, they give us probabilities).

So it still makes sense in certain situations to talk about B following "deterministically" from A, as long as we understand that this is not literal, maximal determinism - B actually follows probabilistically from A, but with exceedingly high probability.

About "control": you say that my definition of it presupposes "absolute determinism". Looking back at my definition, I suppose it does, but this is not what I meant. Here's a refinement of my definition: A controls B insofar as the properties of A determine the properties of B.

So, for example, even though my decisions cannot be said to completely control the words appearing on my screen (because the physics involved is not deterministic), it still makes good sense to say that I am controlling the words that are appearing on the screen (that is, I am partially or probabilistically controlling them).

You claim that something is deterministic if it is "conditioned by material constraints". Now I must say that this view suffers in two ways. First of all there is the extreme difficulty in defining the word "material". About most things one usually has a good intuition regarding whether to call them "material" or not (a chair is material; the number 5 is not). But there are certain entities in physics about which one's intuition tends to fail. Is a field "material"? It has no mass and cannot be directly felt. Yet it is certainly as "real" a component of the world as, say, a particle. And it turns out that on extremely small levels, all things are just entities something like these fields, things that are not intuitively "material" - but surely they are material, or else nothing is material. I guess what I'm getting at is that the only useful definition for "material" is "an entity that can affect the properties of physical objects" where "physical objects" refers to established physical things like wave/particles and chairs. In other words, "material" things are things that play a role in physics. But if the ego controls decisions and decisions control actoins, then the ego does have a very significant physical effect and insofar as any physical theory neglects it, that physical theory is simply incorrect.

The other problem with your definition is simply an incoherence in your views as presented so far. You say that something is deterministic if it is "conditioned by material constraints" - but earlier you went to great lengths to show that the physical, material world is _not_ deterministic. These views seem to be incompatible.

But let me return to the question at hand anew. The whole issue of determinism, control, and the ego comes up in the context of the following question: what controls thoughts? There are two models to be contrasted. The physicalist claims that there is only the mind (a network of impulses) and that thoughts are a phenomenon of the mind governed by the laws of physics. Call this the basic physicalist view. You object to this view (on the grounds, if I'm right, that it appears to be non-absolutely deterministic and that it does not include free will). You propose this alternative: thoughts do indeed occur in the mind, but they are controlled by the ego, which is distinct from the mind.

The trouble is that one can then say this: "Okay, suppose you're right. Let's disregard the mind for a moment. What controls the ego's decisions about what to think - that is, what controls the ego's 'thoughts'?" You have three possible responses, all of which have problems:

1. The ego has no thoughts, nor anything like thoughts, to be explained. But if it does not, it cannot control the thoughts in the mind. This is thus not a logically consistent answer.

2. The ego's thoughts are fundamental and are not controlled by anything. But now nothing has been gained over the basic physicalist view. If we have a problem with thoughts being fundamental in the mind, why is it suddenly satisfying that they are fundamental in the ego? It is exactly as if you have simply conjured up a second mind to control the first - but if something is needed to control the first, why is something not needed to control the second?

3. There is yet another entity controlling the ego's properties. This is the way of the infinite regression.

Note that when I say "mind" I mean just "an entity that has thoughts" and note also that a "thought" is just information, so that if some property determines a thought, that property must itself be a thought (indeed, it must be the same thought). Nowhere in my definition of "thought" or "mind" is there reference to anything like synapses or neurons.

Sorry for the length of this one - I had been doing admirably well, if I may say so, at keeping these short.


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## Eriol

As for the definition of matter, I suppose it is simply what is detectable by physical instruments. Light and other forms of measurable energy are "matter" according to that definition; and it is acceptable to consider energy as matter, since the Theory of Relativity was tested. Fields are usually described in modern physics in terms of particles; you can even describe gravity as particles. It is not a big deal, just a matter of the theoretical framework. "Fields" are relatively "spooky" when we are discussing matter as such, but they are simply a description of phenomena that make it simpler for us to understand it; we can describe it with particles and still be accurate.

And of course gravity can also be seen as a distortion in the space-time; which is a very "material" way of looking at it. 

"Material constraints" would then be constraints measurable by physical instruments; and the big rift between the two of us, Aiwendil, is that you assume that "material" according to that definition -- all that is measurable by physical instruments -- is all there is. Matter = Everything. Or so I understand your posts... forgive me if I'm wrong. 

Now, this is a reasonable assumption. But to assume that there are other things that are not detectable by physical instruments is also a reasonable assumption; after all, instruments are simply an extension of the senses, and just as a dog could not rule out the possibility of colors just because his eyes can't see them, we can't rule out the possibility of non-material events just because we can't detect them with the senses. And the assumption that the non-material sphere and the material sphere are completely out of touch, and never interfere with each other, is even harder to reject; for it is _exactly_ what we observe in our own minds. That is the whole point of the ego as a separate substance; in my view, the ego is non-material. And it fits the data (my own experience), much better than the alternative hypothesis, which is that the ego is determined by the thoughts; for if it were, then the ego could never become aware of the fact that it is determined by the thoughts. For this would be a thought in itself. And how could he trust his own thought to be a truth then? If I am determined by my thoughts, and "I am determined by my thoughts" is a thought, how can I trust that conclusion? It is unrelated to reality; it is related only to my thoughts.

What you called an incoherence in my thoughts is an incoherence only if we accept that Matter = Everything; I didn't. For the physical, material world can be seen as non-deterministic, or non-maximally-deterministic as you put it; but the nature of probabilities is also a touchy subject. What is only a probability before the event becomes a certainty after the event; and therefore the relation of the event to time itself makes it hard for us to claim that a probability is not set up in advance. We are not in the future to claim that it isn't, or that it is. When I said that reality is not deterministic, I was using that definition of deterministic, the "clockwork universe". But in fact it may be deterministic after all; if we accept that non-material events may influence it. Non-material events would then be influencing material events, and quite possibly they could do it deterministically. We don't know. 

And now I have to address your trilemma. I wholeheartedly accept the first option; and I really don't see why it is not a logical answer. It is only illogical if we accept a premise, "only thoughts control thoughts". Why should we? I think the ego does not have thoughts, as the mind does; but the thoughts of the mind are _his_ thoughts, because the mind is _his_ mind.

Let me try to figure out an analogy.

A mind can write a post (using some equipment such as hands, blood, etc. etc., and a computer logged on the internet). That is what my mind is doing now. Whose post is this? Mine. Is it my minds' post? What is selecting the words in my post? My other thoughts? This would be the infinite regression you are worrying about. But if I postulate an independent entity on my being that can select among the thoughts in my mind right now and write the post, then the problem disappears; IF we assume that this entity is non-material. For if it is material, we fall back in the infinite regression, and perhaps more seriously, we put the credibility of the mind in check. For if thoughts select thoughts, how can we be sure that thoughts are correct? By comparing them with reality? But if the comparer is composed of thoughts only, who checks the comparer? And so on. This is a much worse infinite regression, because it threatens to paralyze thought itself. 

I think the only way out of this is to postulate the non-material ego. It opens up a can of worms, to be sure; where did it come from, is it immortal, etc. etc. But at least by accepting that we don't fall into a self-defeating hypothesis, the "thoughts control thoughts" hypothesis. We can continue to work if we accept the ego. If we reject it, we automatically reject the validity of all human thought.


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## Ancalagon

Hmmm, I've just tuned into the 'Aiwendil2 vs Eriol show' and very interesting it is I must say! Looking forward to the next episode


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## Aiwendil2

> As for the definition of matter, I suppose it is simply what is detectable by physical instruments. Light and other forms of measurable energy are "matter" according to that definition; and it is acceptable to consider energy as matter, since the Theory of Relativity was tested. Fields are usually described in modern physics in terms of particles; you can even describe gravity as particles. It is not a big deal, just a matter of the theoretical framework. "Fields" are relatively "spooky" when we are discussing matter as such, but they are simply a description of phenomena that make it simpler for us to understand it; we can describe it with particles and still be accurate.



If we replace your "matter" with "physical entities" then I agree with you on the above (and this is only because in physics "matter" is generally reserved to describe entities that have mass).

So physical entities are things that can, in principle, be empirically detected. Note that they need not be _directly_ detectable - on the contrary, nothing is directly detectable except mental states. So, for example, fields are detected through their effects on particles within them; and this is good enough that they can be considered physical.

Now consider your "ego". I have a feeling that when you say that it is not material, you have something like this in mind: it has no mass, no energy, no momentum, no location, etc. But consider it in terms of the above definition. You seem to be deeply committed to the view that this ego has a rather significant effect on one's mental states (since you think it controls thoughts and decisions). And clearly thoughts and decisions control (to a great extent) one's actions. The ego does, then, have a physical effect. And since it has a physical effect, it must in principle be detectable by physical instruments (for obviously whether I take one action or another is detectable by physical instruments). Therefore, the ego must be a physical entity (and note that I am not saying that it must be made out of matter or have energy, or anything like that).



> much better than the alternative hypothesis, which is that the ego is determined by the thoughts; for if it were, then the ego could never become aware of the fact that it is determined by the thoughts. For this would be a thought in itself. And how could he trust his own thought to be a truth then? If I am determined by my thoughts, and "I am determined by my thoughts" is a thought, how can I trust that conclusion? It is unrelated to reality; it is related only to my thoughts.



I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here; but I think you are making a rather unwarranted assumption. You claim that if the ego were determined by thoughts, the ego would be unable to become aware that it is determined by thoughts. I simply don't see why this should be true. It seems to me that a sufficiently complex system (like the brain) would be capable of containing information about its own structure. I don't see why there is a problem with "I am determined by my thoughts" being a thought - clearly, it's one of the very thoughts I'm determined by.

Now back to the homonculus paradox.

You claim that the paradox is escaped by making the ego non-material. But as I have said already, I nowhere made any assumptions about the nature of the ego. 

You seem to be committed to these two claims:

1. The ego is distinct from the mind.
2. The ego determines thoughts.

These two premises entail that the ego, _regardless of whether it is physical or not_ has certain properties that determine thoughts. Otherwise the ego would, logically, underdetermine the thoughts. That is, if the ego did _not_ have properties that correspond _in some way_ to thoughts, the ego would fail to be a sufficient answer to the question "what controls my thoughts?" You can certainly insist, if you like, that these properties are nothing like thoughts in the mind. But these properties must _exist_ in order for the ego to determine thoughts. And these properties are what I called (rather misleadingly, as I now see) "ego thoughts". So accepting these properties leaves with you options 2 and 3 in my "trilemma" (a nice coinage, by the way). And denyinig these properties leaves you with a logical contradiction.

By the way, I should point out that I actually _agree_ with you on the fundamental point that there is something very strange going on in the mind that appears, at the very least, not to be explicable in terms of physics (though I think it may well turn out that this appearance of irreducibility is an illusion). But whereas you point to the _will_ as this extraordinary phenomenon, I point to _consciousness_.

Ancalagon: Glad we're entertaining you! Actually, it is nice to know that someone else is looking in on this debate with interest. If you ever feel like contributing to it, please don't hesitate.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *Ancalagon: Glad we're entertaining you! Actually, it is nice to know that someone else is looking in on this debate with interest. If you ever feel like contributing to it, please don't hesitate. *



Yes, this is always a pleasant surprise . I think Aiwendil would agree with me in the suspicion that no one but us was reading that... 



> I don't see why there is a problem with "I am determined by my thoughts" being a thought - clearly, it's one of the very thoughts I'm determined by.



The problems does not lie in the impossibility of the claim, "I am determined by my thoughts"; the problem is that this claim undermines itself. If our thoughts are not determined by something besides thought, why do we trust them? It is not an ontological problem; it is quite likely that we ARE determined by our thoughts alone, it is not a self-contradiction in itself to assume that. But if we assume it, then all of our thoughts lose their strength, because they are reducible to physical entities _alone_. 

In other words: if thoughts are a secretion of the mind, as predictable as a secretion from a gland, then they have no intrinsic relationship with truth. And not even with reality. This view, "thoughts are a secretion of the mind", seems to me equivalent to saying "thoughts are determined by thoughts, and these thoughts are ultimately determined by physical entities". If we accept that, we reject the validity of every thought; including, of course, the present thought, that "thought is a secretion of the mind". 

If the irreducibility of thought to physical entities is an illusion, as you put it, then why do we trust it? If in fact thought is determined by physical entities _alone_, then it is not worthy of trust, being "a secretion"; and therefore we must doubt even the conclusion, "thought is a secretion".

Of course, simply assuming a non-material ego is not enough by itself; we have to assume a non-material ego related, in some way, to truth. Whether by the socratic/platonic idea of reminiscence or by some other agency. But if we don't postulate that we have a non-material relationship with truth, that thoughts simply "happen", then all of our sciences crumble. 

The homunculus problem. If we call the ego's controlling agency by the name of "proprieties", we avoid our misunderstanding about thoughts. I agree with that. And then I accept option 2, the ego's proprieties are "fundamental". And I don't think this is a "pushing back" of the problem, because your definition of the ego as a physical entity (because it has detectable physical effects) overlooks an important propriety in my opinion: freedom from the chain of causality. That is in fact the defining propriety from the ego in my view; and it is not a "physical propriety" (ordinary sense). There are no known material entities (in the sense I used above, matter + energy) that escape from causality. It is exactly this "drag" from causality that leads to the grievous conclusions that thought is not trustworthy if it is caused by physical events; it is precisely because we assume that a thought is not "determined" (full sense) by digestion or experience or circumstances that we can trust thoughts themselves. 

To assume that our thoughts are absolutely under the effect of causality leads to disbelieving them, ego or no ego. The ego is simply a way to explain how our thoughts _could_ be trustworthy; by freeing them from causality, placing a higher agency in control of them that is free (albeit not completely; but even a slight degree of freedom from causality already knocks down the clockwork model of the mind and allows trust in it, perhaps only provisionally). 

I can agree to use "consciousness" as the name of this intriguing entity that is free from causality; though there would be some borderline cases in animals if we used that word. But the really important point is that our mind should be free from causality, or it is worthless.


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## Aiwendil2

> In other words: if thoughts are a secretion of the mind, as predictable as a secretion from a gland, then they have no intrinsic relationship with truth. And not even with reality. This view, "thoughts are a secretion of the mind", seems to me equivalent to saying "thoughts are determined by thoughts, and these thoughts are ultimately determined by physical entities". If we accept that, we reject the validity of every thought; including, of course, the present thought, that "thought is a secretion of the mind".



I'm not sure which of the following claims you're making: 1. If thoughts are determined by thoughts, we cannot know that any propositions expressed in thought are true - or 2. If thoughts are determined by thoughts, no thought can have any validity; all thoughts are either false or meaningless.

I agree with 1 but not with 2. It seems obvious to me that we can never _know_ with certainty whether any particular thought is true (save perhaps the thought "Something exists"). And I imagine you would not deny that it is possible to be mistaken about things. But none of this entails 2. Thoughts can certainly be evaluated by means of other thoughts, and within thought-space one can judge certain thoughts to be good or valid or likely to be true and others to be bad or invalid or likely to be false. 

I also don't see how your postulated ego can help the situation at all. You seem to be claiming that we can trust thoughts because they come from properties of the ego, and those properties of the ego are correlated with "truth". But how can we trust that this is the case? It is not enough simply to postulate the correlation and then use it to prove itself.



> But if we don't postulate that we have a non-material relationship with truth, that thoughts simply "happen", then all of our sciences crumble.



That's not true. Yes, all science crumbles if you insist that scientific propositions be rigorously provable from logic alone. But that is a problem in any case (for many reasons). What science _can_ do is propose explanations with predictive power and see whether those explanations tend to be consistent with empirical evidence or not. Science is based on thought, yes; but thoughts, as I've said, can be evaluated within the framework of thought. We can have various views of the universe and evaluate which hang together well and which don't. And this is going to be the case no matter what our theory of thoughts is. If thoughts come from some properties of the ego, then our pictures of the world will simply have one more class of entities in them.



> And I don't think this is a "pushing back" of the problem, because your definition of the ego as a physical entity (because it has detectable physical effects) overlooks an important propriety in my opinion: freedom from the chain of causality.



I'm not sure what you mean by this. First of all, it should be pointed out that causality is _not_ a necessary component of physical theories and whether it turns out in fact to be a component of the most fundamental theory is still up in the air.

But more to the point - how is the ego free from the chain of causality? It is certainly causally related to thoughts and the mind, for you claim that it _controls_ thought. 

So perhaps you mean that there is nothing that causally determines it. The ego is what it is; its properties are what they are - that's just the way it is. I don't see how this is an improvement in any way over saying something like "The mind is what it is; its properties are what they are - that's just the way it is." In other words, if the proposition "thoughts come from nowhere, they just _are_" is troublesome, how is the proposition "the properties of the ego come from nowhere" any better?

I could also ask what happened to free will in your picture. Your initial claim was that "I control my thoughts". It turns out that your thoughts are controlled by the properties of the ego. But wait a minute - I thought they were supposed to be controlled by _you_. You could, of course, (and I think you would) respond: "But my ego _is_ I; the properties of the ego are properties of me". But look at what's happened here - your argument is structurally the same as my argument "the mind _is_ I; the properties of the mind are properties of me". Yet you objected to this argument.

I'm also a little confused by the fact that discussion of "materials" and "matter" and things like that keep coming up in your argument. I have nowhere made use of such concepts in any of my arguments. I have been considering the mind, the ego, thoughts, and so on, in a purely logical context without _any_ reference to the correlation of these thoughts to matter. I emphasize again: the problem of the homonculus is a purely logical problem, not in any degree a scientific one.



> I can agree to use "consciousness" as the name of this intriguing entity that is free from causality; though there would be some borderline cases in animals if we used that word. But the really important point is that our mind should be free from causality, or it is worthless.



But I mean something quite different by consciousness. I mean the apparent asymmetry between me and the rest of the world; I mean the mere existence of direct awareness; I mean the peculiar relation that I observe to exist between me as the sum of my experience and me the person that plays a role in the physics of the universe. This is, I think, quite different from your "ego".


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *I agree with 1 but not with 2. It seems obvious to me that we can never know with certainty whether any particular thought is true (save perhaps the thought "Something exists"). And I imagine you would not deny that it is possible to be mistaken about things. But none of this entails 2. Thoughts can certainly be evaluated by means of other thoughts, and within thought-space one can judge certain thoughts to be good or valid or likely to be true and others to be bad or invalid or likely to be false. *



A good word, "thought-space". If thought-space is a closed entity without no relationship to truth, why should we trust the events taking place there? How can we check them? The usual answer is "by comparing our thoughts with reality"; but if we say that, then we have to postulate something different -- not a thought -- doing the comparison, or else this comparison will just be another event in thought-space. The comparer must be outside thought-space in some way.

It is the comparing entity that is the ego, in my opinion. It must be free from thought-space to achieve any comparison; it must be free from physical causes to avoid falling into the same trap as "thought-space" does, the trap of being a secretion directed by impersonal and irrational forces



> I also don't see how your postulated ego can help the situation at all. You seem to be claiming that we can trust thoughts because they come from properties of the ego, and those properties of the ego are correlated with "truth". But how can we trust that this is the case? It is not enough simply to postulate the correlation and then use it to prove itself.



I agree that postulating the ego does not help if one does not assume that it has some intrinsic relationship to truth, something like Platonic reminiscences or any other a priori relationship with truth. I said so. But remember that I am tackling the problem from its end . We think, and our thoughts are related to truth in some way; we can detect which thoughts are more related to truth and which thoughts are less related to truth. That is the fact we have to explain. If we doubt this fact, this thread (and all human activity) is pointless. But we don't doubt it in real life, and there is no reason to doubt it in theory (and if we found a reason to doubt it in theory we would be denying that theory). 



> If thoughts come from some properties of the ego, then our pictures of the world will simply have one more class of entities in them.



The ego selects and controls, but the thoughts don't come from it. More about a theory of thoughts in a minute. 



> I'm not sure what you mean by this. First of all, it should be pointed out that causality is _not_ a necessary component of physical theories and whether it turns out in fact to be a component of the most fundamental theory is still up in the air.



I don't know what you mean by "causality is not a necessary component of physical theories". I know that we can imagine theories in which there is no causality -- but are these theories real? That is precisely an example of what we are arguing about; all real physical theories have causality in-built in them. And we know that these are the "real" theories by comparing them with reality.



> I could also ask what happened to free will in your picture. Your initial claim was that "I control my thoughts". It turns out that your thoughts are controlled by the properties of the ego. But wait a minute - I thought they were supposed to be controlled by _you_. You could, of course, (and I think you would) respond: "But my ego _is_ I; the properties of the ego are properties of me". But look at what's happened here - your argument is structurally the same as my argument "the mind _is_ I; the properties of the mind are properties of me". Yet you objected to this argument.



The problem is not postulating a beginning for the chain of control; I'm sure it must begin somewhere. The problem is saying that this beginning is rooted in impersonal, irrational activities like what happens in the brain. The "theory of the ego" takes the beginning of the chain of control outside material causality. 



> I'm also a little confused by the fact that discussion of "materials" and "matter" and things like that keep coming up in your argument. I have nowhere made use of such concepts in any of my arguments. I have been considering the mind, the ego, thoughts, and so on, in a purely logical context without _any_ reference to the correlation of these thoughts to matter. I emphasize again: the problem of the homonculus is a purely logical problem, not in any degree a scientific one.



The problem of the homunculus, as I see it, is the Aristotelian problem of cause and effect, how everything must have a cause... this led him to asseverating the existence of the First Cause. A bit off-topic . But I emphasize the matter because matter can't explain matter. An apple falls; that is a fact. If "Newton formulated the Theory of Gravity" is also "a fact" caused by impersonal, irrational forces like gravity and evolution and social constraints, why should we believe in Gravity? Because we can see that it works in reality, by comparing it with reality? But if our comparison is a series of "facts" based on material forces, why should we trust that comparison? The dominoes fall; we can't draw any conclusion from that. 

It is only by assuming that our thoughts are somehow free from being caused by matter that we can accept their power to explain matter (and reality as a whole). This freedom applies especially in the selection phase; we have powerful imaginations, but when we select what we will believe in, what is more adjusted to reality, we must be free from causality -- or we'll be like clocks.

A theory of thoughts, then, in my hastily penciled opinion , encompasses this:

1) Senses: Purely material (i.e., caused)
2) Perception: The integration of the data from the senses in the mind. Also purely material.
3) Conception: The generation of something (called a concept) unifying and perhaps more importantly naming the set of sensorial data just perceived. I don't think that's purely material...

This is one of the "legs" of the theory. This is the other:

1) Forms of perception: The ideas (I almost said concepts ) of relation, quantity (i.e. space) etc. What you would probably call the "a priori" ideas. These things, being "a priori", can be considered material or not, and it does not touch the problem I see in materiality. They are simply there, whether hardwired by evolution or infused by God it does not matter. 

Unless I missed something, this is all you need to formulate a "thought": a relation between two concepts. But this is how thoughts are formed; and if there is nothing beside this, then thoughts are never selected and evaluated. So there must be an evaluating entity. If this entity is simply another thought, it can't evaluate at all...

This entity is what I called the "ego". It is not a great word for that, it is full of Freudian implications that I do not associate to it at all. Let me define a bit what is implied in my concept of "ego".

1) The sense of individual continuity, temporal and spatial. The ego is the seat of the sense of being "one", both spatially (my finger belongs in "me") and temporally ("I" am the same "I" I was yesterday). 

2) Freedom, intellectual and ethical. That is a very hard-to-define concept, because I don't think we have "absolute" freedom; the ego must work with what it has, and what it has was provided by the thinking process outlined above. Within those constraints, though, the ego is free from causality and materiality; it picks one thought over the other at its whim. The biggest constraints to this freedom are pleasure and pain, which are thoughts in themselves. (I'm not too sure of that, though; perhaps they are among the "a priori" forms...).

3) A relationship to truth. The ego must have a relationship to truth in order for us to trust our own thoughts. You are right, Aiwendil, that I am "cheating"; I am postulating this third requirement and using it to prove itself. But I don't think you have realized in what a bind we are . If we don't do that, if we say that thoughts are judged by thoughts, then we are doomed to irrationality. The third requirement of the ego is a way out; the only one as far as I can see. It's not a logical deduction; it is "cheating". But it solves the problem. If you see any other way out of the irrationality problem, I'd be very interested. 

As I see it, agreeing with "thoughts are judged by thoughts" means that every thought I ever had -- including this one -- is not proven. _Every_ thought, Aiwendil; including "2+2=4". Including "Something exists". Agreeing with my own explanation means I can still trust in my own ability to judge truth; to the point that I may reject my own explanation in the future. 

It is very unsatisfying . We would prefer a "clean solution", without "cheating". I have not found it; and the "clean solution" you offer means that I must be paralyzed forever. I reject it therefore (i.e., my ego rejects it . There are things more important than logical thoroughness, like reality; and the reality of my ego as the judge of truth is too dear to me to throw it out for the sake of logical thoroughness). 

A big post


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## Aiwendil2

I think we may finally have cleared up some of our extraneous verbiage and come down to some real issues.



> If thought-space is a closed entity without no relationship to truth, why should we trust the events taking place there?



There are two ways to take this question. The first is: "How can we trust our knowledge of thought-space?" The answer to this is that thoughts are among those entities to which we have direct empirical access. The second is: "How can we trust that propositions expressed in our thought are true?" The answer to that, I think, is simply "We can't." Ego or no ego, you must acknowledge that we can and do make mistakes; we can be and are decieved. Moreover, if thought-space is a closed system so too will be "thought and ego space". 



> The usual answer is "by comparing our thoughts with reality"



Perhaps that is the usual answer, though it's not mine. I suppose it's worth noting that this question concerning the correspondence of thought to reality is the fundamental problem behind a whole branch of philosophy: the philosophy of meaning. A full exposition of my views on the subject would take a lot of space and, as my posts tend to be overlong anyway, I will refrain from launching into them here.

But it's not quite completely accurate to call thought-space a closed system, for thoughts are only one of the kinds of entity to which we have direct empirical access. Another important one is sense-data. And while we can't compare thoughts with "reality" (whatever that might mean) we _can_ compare them with sense-data. This is what science does.



> We think, and our thoughts are related to truth in some way; we can detect which thoughts are more related to truth and which thoughts are less related to truth.



We can? This is a somewhat surprising claim. I will (predictably, I imagine) point out that we have no working definition for "truth"; so the claim is vague. But if you understand "truth" in something like the way I think you do, it seems obvious that we _cannot_ detect which thoughts are related to truth. What about hallucinations? What about mistakes? What about a thought that I am utterly convinced to be true at one point but later discover to be false?



> I don't know what you mean by "causality is not a necessary component of physical theories". I know that we can imagine theories in which there is no causality -- but are these theories real? That is precisely an example of what we are arguing about; all real physical theories have causality in-built in them. And we know that these are the "real" theories by comparing them with reality.



Strange as it may seem, causality does not play an obvious part in any of our most basic physical theories. It may well be there in a non-obvious way, but as of now it is impossible to say anything on the subject for sure. In other words, it may turn out that it is impossible to pick out two events and say that a causal relationship obtains between them. Then again, it may turn out that this _is_ possible.

It should also be pointed out that, even if one grants that we have some mysterious way of comparing theories with "reality" we can never know that any particular theory is "true". The best we can do is to _confirm_ a theory - that is, to show that it is more likely to be true than certain rival theories. Whether we can even do _that_ is actually not clear, either. But the point is: we certainly cannot _know_ that a theory is true.



> The problem is saying that this beginning is rooted in impersonal, irrational activities like what happens in the brain.



What do you mean by "impersonal" and "irrational"? As I understand what you have laid out thus far, there's no reason to deem the ego "rational" in some way that the mind is not (indeed it is hard to figure out what "rational" could mean when applied to the ego since, as you insist, the ego has not thoughts).

And what about "impersonal"? Sure, the mind could be called "impersonal" if you define the "person" as "the ego". But one could just as easily define the person as "the mind", in which case the mind would not be impersonal. And conversely, one could ask what makes the ego personal in some way that the mind is not.



> But I emphasize the matter because matter can't explain matter.



But nobody's trying to explain matter (whatever that may amount to). I have been considering the mind in a purely abstract way, as a collection of data or information. I do not think the mind is the same as the brain. The mind is an abstract entity that is (I think) encoded (for lack of a better term) in the brain. But the proposition that it is encoded in the brain is _not_ vital to any of my arguments.



> If "Newton formulated the Theory of Gravity" is also "a fact" caused by impersonal, irrational forces like gravity and evolution and social constraints, why should we believe in Gravity? Because we can see that it works in reality, by comparing it with reality?



No; rather because we can see that it is succesful in explaining and predicting sense-data. And a consequence of this is that the theory of gravity (and all theories) must ultimately be understood as theories about sense-data.



> 3) Conception: The generation of something (called a concept) unifying and perhaps more importantly naming the set of sensorial data just perceived. I don't think that's purely material...



I have not much to say about this that I haven't said already. But I feel compelled to point out here that your theory is (necessarily) a physical one; that is, makes predictions about how physical systems (humans) will behave. As such, it is subject to empirical testing. This means that your proposal about "conception" (and by extension your whole theory) hinges, in theory, upon experimental evidence. In other words, there are experiments that could be designed to confirm or disconfirm your theory.

I'm not sure why I pointed this out; it seems somehow like an important observation, even if it's not directly related to our argument.



> But this is how thoughts are formed; and if there is nothing beside this, then thoughts are never selected and evaluated. So there must be an evaluating entity. If this entity is simply another thought, it can't evaluate at all...



Sure it can. It can compare the thought with the corpus of other thoughts that have occurred and, most importantly, it can compare the thought with sense-data.



> Within those constraints, though, the ego is free from causality and materiality; it picks one thought over the other at its whim.



How can the ego have a "whim" if it cannot think? I'm sure if I pressed you on that question, you'd acknowledge that "whim" was just a descriptive phrase (a sort of low-key metaphor, perhaps) for what the ego does rather than a precise definition. But suppose I ask you to make it precise. Suppose I ask for a precise answer to the question: "How does the ego select thoughts?" I think that there are three kinds of answers you could come back with:

1. There is some meta-ego selecting the ego's selections. This is the infinite regression of the homonculus problem. I'm sure this is not what you'd choose.

2. The properties of the ego that bring about the selections are fundamental, pre-determined entities. But this does not look very much like what people generally mean by "free will". In this picture, we are controlled by these fundamental, absolute, unchanging properties. Note that here you lose one of the most desired properties of free will. For you are here hard-pressed to blame someone for some action for you cannot argue against "he couldn't help it; the unalterable properties of his ego made him do it."

3. The properties of the ego are random (or random to some degree). This is rather like 2, except that here it is not "absolute, unchangeable properties" that dominate us; it is "unpredictable, random properties" that do so.



> You are right, Aiwendil, that I am "cheating"; I am postulating this third requirement and using it to prove itself.





> I reject it therefore (i.e., my ego rejects it . There are things more important than logical thoroughness, like reality; and the reality of my ego as the judge of truth is too dear to me to throw it out for the sake of logical thoroughness).



Though you put this eloquently, I must say that what it amounts to is: "I have no grounds on which to trust my thoughts; therefore, I will just pretend that I have grounds on which to trust them." In other words, you believe what you want to believe. This is fine for you, but it is not the sort of thing that can enter into rational arguments. Philosophy is the business of trying to figure things out by rational means, not of merely choosing what propositions to accept.

Moreover, I must point out that you are being hypocritical in insisting (rightly) that "thoughts cannot prove thoughts" but then accepting that the truth-correspondence of the ego can prove itself.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *There are two ways to take this question. The first is: "How can we trust our knowledge of thought-space?" The answer to this is that thoughts are among those entities to which we have direct empirical access. The second is: "How can we trust that propositions expressed in our thought are true?" The answer to that, I think, is simply "We can't." Ego or no ego, you must acknowledge that we can and do make mistakes; we can be and are decieved. Moreover, if thought-space is a closed system so too will be "thought and ego space". *



Exactly; we can't, _if_ we rely on reason alone. At the end of your post you circumscribe philosophy to reason alone; I don't think that would be accurate. Even though that theory of thoughts may not be confirmed (and I'd love to hear your suggestion for empirical experiments to confirm it), one thing that is proven since Aristotle is that Logic, alone, does not generate knowledge. Logic only makes explicit the knowledge already contained in propositions. Where do the propositions come from? Not from a rational source. To base all philosophy on reason alone would be self-defeating; what you called "entities to which we have empirical access" is needed, and we can't use reason to prove or disprove these.



> But it's not quite completely accurate to call thought-space a closed system, for thoughts are only one of the kinds of entity to which we have direct empirical access. Another important one is sense-data. And while we can't compare thoughts with "reality" (whatever that might mean) we _can_ compare them with sense-data. This is what science does.



Hold that thought for a moment; we compare thoughts with sense-data.



> We can? This is a somewhat surprising claim. I will (predictably, I imagine) point out that we have no working definition for "truth"; so the claim is vague. But if you understand "truth" in something like the way I think you do, it seems obvious that we _cannot_ detect which thoughts are related to truth. What about hallucinations? What about mistakes? What about a thought that I am utterly convinced to be true at one point but later discover to be false?



That is a very eloquent way to put across my own point . How would you know the difference between hallucinations and non-hallucinations? Between mistakes and non-mistakes? Between the false thought and the true? This is the "comparison with truth" that is at the basis of it all. You don't ask a color-blind person which ball is the green one and which is the red; and they could not tell you. But we can. 

That does not mean that we are 100% accurate when we do that; we can and do make mistakes. But to claim that we do not compare thoughts with _something_, and then judge them to be more or less "accurate" (i.e., closer to that thing we are comparing them with), would be self-defeating. Otherwise we would not be even be able to be aware of any mistake. Just as a color-blind person by himself can't be aware of the difference between the balls. Sure, it can be dark in the room; but we still know the difference between red and green. 



> It should also be pointed out that, even if one grants that we have some mysterious way of comparing theories with "reality" we can never know that any particular theory is "true". The best we can do is to _confirm_ a theory - that is, to show that it is more likely to be true than certain rival theories. Whether we can even do _that_ is actually not clear, either. But the point is: we certainly cannot _know_ that a theory is true.



We know that it is closer to the truth; by comparing it with reality (or sense-data as you prefer; though of course "sense-data" _means_ reality for almost any individual person, he has no other channel to access reality. By the way, do you question reality's ontological existence, Aiwendil?)



> What do you mean by "impersonal" and "irrational"? As I understand what you have laid out thus far, there's no reason to deem the ego "rational" in some way that the mind is not (indeed it is hard to figure out what "rational" could mean when applied to the ego since, as you insist, the ego has not thoughts).



I would say that the sense of personality is, indeed located at the ego; but that is not an arbitrary definition. I already located at that ego the sense of temporal and spatial continuity, and the "decision agency" (or "will"). Personality flows from these; it is not a tautology. 

As for "rational", if you check that theory of thoughts I outlined above you'll see that the mind in my view is _not_ rational; it simply "thinks" (i.e., formulates concepts and propositions). Reason, the use of logic to make explicit the knowledge in a proposition, is in the province of the ego; the ego compares the thoughts and decides which one is closer to the truth, that's what I said. It uses Reason as its most important tool in this effort. Reason is then a tool; but it is not a tool strong enough that it dispenses with "reality". 



> But nobody's trying to explain matter (whatever that may amount to). I have been considering the mind in a purely abstract way, as a collection of data or information. I do not think the mind is the same as the brain. The mind is an abstract entity that is (I think) encoded (for lack of a better term) in the brain. But the proposition that it is encoded in the brain is _not_ vital to any of my arguments.



Isn't that a kind of vitalism? If the properties of the mind are not constrained at all by the properties of the brain and by the information of the senses (which are, after all, encoded _in_ the brain; how could the information _reach_ the mind in your picture?), then "mind" in your posts assumes an even more ethereal quality than you think "ego" possess in mine. 

I didn't quite understand that, therefore. Are you postulating an universal mind or minds, absolutely detached from matter? 



> No; rather because we can see that it is succesful in explaining and predicting sense-data. And a consequence of this is that the theory of gravity (and all theories) must ultimately be understood as theories about sense-data.



This is a very interesting aspect of the problem... how the universe (the _objective_ universe) seems to "agree with our reason". How we are able to "explain data" at all. I think it is a very strong argument (possibly the strongest) for my own position, that we have some "backdoor connection" to reality (and truth). Why would one expect such a striking correspondence between logical laws and reality if logical laws were not _true_? Is there any reason (cause) why we could not think in paralogical ways, with acceptable rates of success, but never quite reaching definite conclusions? Yet that's not what happens. We reach definite conclusions all the time. If A=B and B=C, A=C; that is a definite conclusion. We can't really doubt it because that's the way our minds are built; but isn't it amazing that _apparently_  reality is built like that too?



> Sure it can. It can compare the thought with the corpus of other thoughts that have occurred and, most importantly, it can compare the thought with sense-data.



Sorry for the repetition... but it can't "compare" if it does not have a standard of truth. 



> How can the ego have a "whim" if it cannot think? I'm sure if I pressed you on that question, you'd acknowledge that "whim" was just a descriptive phrase (a sort of low-key metaphor, perhaps) for what the ego does rather than a precise definition. But suppose I ask you to make it precise. Suppose I ask for a precise answer to the question: "How does the ego select thoughts?" I think that there are three kinds of answers you could come back with:



I don't think it was just a descriptive phrase, quite the contrary. It is probably the most descriptive word I could come up with. And this is the reason for me to reject your three options and choose (4), "whim" -- freedom from constraints. It's not a "meta-ego", it's not pre-determined, it's not random; it is free. 

Don't expect me to explain how that can be . I don't know. It is a mystery to me, not the first and not the last. But the ego does select thoughts on a whim (using reason as a tool, and aiming at truth). If we had already agreed on its freedom, we could argue the degree to which it is free; I don't think it is completely free. But we haven't.

Problem is, while we don't agree that the ego is free to select thoughts, using reason and aiming at truth (this "aiming" is itself a wonder and a hard-to-explain thing if we don't accept the freedom -- why wouldn't the ego aim at survival, pleasure, spreading of genes, or some other concrete propriety?), we will be dooming the mind to irrelevance.

Can you see any way out, Aiwendil? A way for thoughts to be (a) aimed at truth and (b) able to get closer to truth and (c) trustworthy, if you don't accept the transcendental ego?


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## Eriol

> Though you put this eloquently, I must say that what it amounts to is: "I have no grounds on which to trust my thoughts; therefore, I will just pretend that I have grounds on which to trust them." In other words, you believe what you want to believe. This is fine for you, but it is not the sort of thing that can enter into rational arguments. Philosophy is the business of trying to figure things out by rational means, not of merely choosing what propositions to accept.



I think you are wrong... sorry. There are a lot of thoughts that have no grounds in philosophy; a lot. You are right that it can't be explained rationally, but that does not mean that it can't enter a rational argument. _Nothing_ can be "explained rationally" if you look at it closely; Reason can only make explicit what is implicit in a proposition... and the propositions are non-logical in themselves. While we are working with symbols, like "A is within B" and "B is within C", "therefore A is within C", it's all very easy and simple. But when we move to "Socrates is a man", "Men are mortal", and "Therefore Socrates is mortal", we open up a whole can of questions. What is "Socrates", "Man", "Mortal", not to mention that little word "is" which has so many different acceptions, this is what we have to answer; logic can't help there. 

I accept your definition of philosophy, "the business of trying to figure out things by rational means". But I reject utterly the notion that you can even _attempt_ to do that without doing exactly what you denied in the next sentence, "choosing what propositions to accept". I think that is philosophical work of the highest order; choosing propositions correctly is essential to reach that goal, "figuring out things". 

Why, even "philosophy is the business of trying to figure out things by rational means" is a proposition . Why did you choose that and not another? You had your motives, I suppose. Perhaps we should not call them "reasons" without making a terminological mess. But in the end, you picked a proposition among many others because you think it is closer to the truth. It was not a logical process; you did not prove by a syllogism that "philosophy is the business of trying to figure out things by rational means". And a syllogism entails another, and another, infinitely... _if_ we ignore the very important business of choosing propositions; a non-logic business. 



> Moreover, I must point out that you are being hypocritical in insisting (rightly) that "thoughts cannot prove thoughts" but then accepting that the truth-correspondence of the ego can prove itself.



Why "hypocritical"? I think that "hipocrisy" is stating a known falsity as if it were truth; I never stated any of my views here as "truth". It is a way out of the problem, a suggestion of a solution. If it solves the problem, and no other does, we either accept it or ignore the problem; and "ignoring the problem" would be "hypocritical", perhaps . As ever in philosophy, I am ready to discard what I said if I find something better. But you have not given me that yet . I don't know if you realized "the problem" yet, my friend; but it is very, very serious. At its roots lie the foundation of all human activity and thought; to me it seems that, if I reject my solution without putting something better on its place, I will have rejected all of _my_ thoughts -- I'm not talking about science -- and therefore I will be reduced to a random blob. And even that conclusion, "a random blob", would not be trustworthy. No conclusion would be trustworthy; not even the conclusion that "no conclusion would be trustworthy". And so on... 

If I am eloquent, it is because I perceive the problem very acutely; I'm not arguing a bodiless proposition here, I am defending the whole life of the mind, mine, yours, and everyone else's. It makes for eloquence . I don't really think also that anyone _can_ ignore the problem once he becomes aware of it... at least one can't do it rationally, hehe. It entails a contradiction of all thoughts, of the basis of Thought itself. I don't think you can live with such a tremendous contradiction; I know I can't. And that is why I suspect you have not understood my words; for which I apologize. Let's hope that this post helped a bit to make what I am trying to say here, clearer. 

An even bigger post


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## Aiwendil2

> Exactly; we can't, if we rely on reason alone.



Well, naturally we could "know" quite a few things if we were to be unreasonable. That is, we could simply decide that some proposition is true. But is this really "knowing"? Certainly not in the usual sense of the word. If I ask someone whether she knows something and she replies "Well, I can't use reason to establish it as a fact, but I accept its truth." My justified response will be: "Oh, so you _don't_ know."



> That is a very eloquent way to put across my own point . How would you know the difference between hallucinations and non-hallucinations? Between mistakes and non-mistakes? Between the false thought and the true? This is the "comparison with truth" that is at the basis of it all. You don't ask a color-blind person which ball is the green one and which is the red; and they could not tell you. But we can.



But my point was as follows. You identify (correctly) the fact that in my view we cannot distinguish between hallucinations and non-hallucinations, and so forth. You propose a different view wherein we _can_ make that distinction. So we have two competing theories that make different claims about what knowledge we can have. I am saying that in actuality, as it happens, we _cannot_ distinguish between hallucinations and non-hallucinations (and therefore it must be the first theory that is correct). People _are_ deceived; people _do_ make mistakes. These are not flaws in my theory; they are facts about the world.



> But to claim that we do not compare thoughts with something, and then judge them to be more or less "accurate" (i.e., closer to that thing we are comparing them with), would be self-defeating.



This is not the claim that I make. We _do_ compare our thoughts with something - sense-data. And because sense data is in the same space as thoughts (it is in "thought-space") there is no problem of correspondence and no need to postulate some mystical, metaphysical property of the ego.



> We know that it is closer to the truth; by comparing it with reality (or sense-data as you prefer; though of course "sense-data" means reality for almost any individual person, he has no other channel to access reality. By the way, do you question reality's ontological existence, Aiwendil?)



Sense-data is different from the "reality" you are talking about in a very important way. Sense-data is something (like thought) to which I have direct empirical access. That is, sense-data is part of my experience or my consciousness. It can therefore interact with thought in a way that "reality" never possibly could.

And now the interesting question: do I question reality's ontological existence? Yes and no. My view is radically empiricist in that I claim that it is meaningless for me to talk about a "reality" that does not supervene on my mental states. It is, however, realistic in that I make the further claim that this doesn't amount to nearly as much as most people would think. I think that things are real in any way they possibly could be. But I deny the realist claim that there is some meaningful property called "actual existence" which has nothing whatsoever to do with my mental states.

This is obviously an extremely truncated account of my views, but I'm not sure how to say more without saying much, much more.



> As for "rational", if you check that theory of thoughts I outlined above you'll see that the mind in my view is not rational; it simply "thinks" (i.e., formulates concepts and propositions). Reason, the use of logic to make explicit the knowledge in a proposition, is in the province of the ego; the ego compares the thoughts and decides which one is closer to the truth, that's what I said.



This kind of talk leads back to the homonculus problem. I don't see how an entity could be reasonable without having thoughts. Even worse, I don't see how an entity can compare the thoughts and decide which one is closer to the truth without being able to think (that is, analyze). When I compare two things, or decide between two things, I think about them. You claim that when I think, there is some entity within me comparing and deciding. So how does _it_ compare and decide?



> If the properties of the mind are not constrained at all by the properties of the brain and by the information of the senses (which are, after all, encoded in the brain; how could the information reach the mind in your picture?), then "mind" in your posts assumes an even more ethereal quality than you think "ego" possess in mine.



No, I do not actually think that the properties of the mind are not constrained at all by the properties of the brain. But my point is that this seems to be a way of going about things backwards. What we have a priori, is the mind. And if we consider only the mind as a mind, without yet examining the content of the sense-data, there is no reason to think that it corresponds with objects that we can form out of the sense-data. As it turns out, there _are_ objects that can be formed out of relations among the sense-data that correspond to the functions of the mind. But this is a fact not about the mind _as such_ but about the way things turn out to work in the physical world. As far as the homonculus problem goes, I would be perfectly willing to forget about that empirical fact. In other words, I think that the lesson to be learned from the homonculus problem is something much stronger than a condition upon the physical brain.



> This is a very interesting aspect of the problem... how the universe (the objective universe) seems to "agree with our reason". How we are able to "explain data" at all.



If you are asking why we live in an orderly universe, about which predictions can be made (a "science-friendly" universe), then I agree that it is rather a mysterious state of affairs. But it is mysterious in any case. That is, there's no more reason to think that your "real world" should follow simple physical laws than that my sense-data should.

If you're asking the rather different question "how do we have epistemic access to logic?" - then I would say that while this is similarly mysterious (again, in any view), something like an answer might be this: the laws of logic that we formulate are based upon the empirical evidence. Our system of logic is precisely the system of logic that is best able to deal with the world, because it was formulated _in_ the world and specifically in order to deal with the world.



> We can't really doubt it because that's the way our minds are built; but isn't it amazing that apparently reality is built like that too?



Not really - for our minds are part of reality. It would be amazing if our minds were built in some way that was significantly different from the rest of reality (that is, from the sense-data).



> Sorry for the repetition... but it can't "compare" if it does not have a standard of truth.



It has logic. All it needs to do is to see whether the corpus of thoughts is more likely or less likely to be coherent given some particular thought as opposed to another particular thought.



> I don't think it was just a descriptive phrase, quite the contrary. It is probably the most descriptive word I could come up with. And this is the reason for me to reject your three options and choose (4), "whim" -- freedom from constraints. It's not a "meta-ego", it's not pre-determined, it's not random; it is free.
> 
> Don't expect me to explain how that can be . I don't know.



But it would seem that an explanation of how that can be is quite crucial to your argument. For it is my claim that it if you do try to define "whim" or "freedom from constraints" in precise language, you will end up either with one of the three options I gave or with nothing at all. If you can tell me in precise, rigorously defined, meaningful language how a "whim" differs from determinism or probability, then (and only then) can I be expected to consider it a viable option.



> we will be dooming the mind to irrelevance.



I apologize if I seem to be obsessed with definitions (and with picking at apparently minor details), but what do you mean here by "irrelevant"? As I see it, relevance or irrelevance can only exist for some particular _proposition_ and with reference to some other proposition. By "mind" I suppose you could mean "all those propositions that describe the mind". But with reference to what are you evaluating their relevance?


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## Aiwendil2

> I think you are wrong... sorry.



I suppose I can respond to this in two ways. First, I can point out that, while I made my point in very general terms, invoking philosophy as a whole and such things, what I meant was this: you've made a claim about the world but admitted that your reasons for doing so were irrational. By definition, then, you cannot make rational arguments in favor of the proposition. But what I am interested in is rational argument. And since much, if not all, of your theory rests upon this claim, to the extent that it does we have reached an impasse.

But a second way to answer your question is to take up your consideration of what reason is or can be.



> While we are working with symbols, like "A is within B" and "B is within C", "therefore A is within C", it's all very easy and simple. But when we move to "Socrates is a man", "Men are mortal", and "Therefore Socrates is mortal", we open up a whole can of questions. What is "Socrates", "Man", "Mortal", not to mention that little word "is" which has so many different acceptions, this is what we have to answer; logic can't help there.



In case I haven't expressed sufficiently radical views yet, let me say a little about what I think "meaning" is. You have a problem with moving from "A is B and B and C, therefore . . ." to "Socrates is a Man, Men are mortal, therefore . . ." I think this problem is contingent upon a correspondence theory of meaning, in which terms have some mysterious relation with entities that are not terms (that is, with "real" entities that "actually exist").

My solution is to say that terms do _not_ refer or correspond to entities that are not terms. The meaningful content of a term is simply the term itself. There is no distinction at the most fundamental level between syntax and semantics. So "Socrates is a Man" and "Men are mortal" are _just propositions_, no different from "A is a B" and "B is a C".

But obviously there is _some_ significant difference between "Socrates" and "A". This arises, in my view, not because "Socrates" refers to an actual entity and "A" does not, but rather because "Socrates" is a relatively complex term and "A" is a relatively simple one. A complex term is one that is already explicitly defined (that is, defined as equivelant to some other term or complex of terms) or implicitly defined (that is, used in other propositions that are held to be true or possibly true). "Socrates" is defined, for example, by a tremendously complex set of relations among things that various people say, words that I find in books, and so forth. And in turn all of these things are defined by extremely complex relations among other terms, and ultimately, insofar as a proposition is meaningful to me, its terms are defined as relations among my sense-data and thoughts. The final claim (and one that is not quite entailed by the above, but which I would make nonetheless) is that my sense-data and thoughts - that is, my consciousness - are all just syntax - that is, logical relations among terms.



> I accept your definition of philosophy, "the business of trying to figure out things by rational means". But I reject utterly the notion that you can even attempt to do that without doing exactly what you denied in the next sentence, "choosing what propositions to accept". I think that is philosophical work of the highest order; choosing propositions correctly is essential to reach that goal, "figuring out things".



I ought to have said that philosophy is "the business of trying to figure things out by rational means, not of choosing what to believe _with any criterion other than reason_." For you are right, there is a great deal of choice involved. But these choices ought to be made rationally.



> Why "hypocritical"? I think that "hipocrisy" is stating a known falsity as if it were truth; I never stated any of my views here as "truth".



It is hypocritical in that you apply one standard to one claim and a different standard to another. Call this something other than hipocrisy if you wish.



> If it solves the problem, and no other does, we either accept it or ignore the problem; and "ignoring the problem" would be "hypocritical", perhaps



As I see it, this is essentially what you are doing. Sure, you acknowledge the existence of the problem. But your solution is not really a solution. It is as though I were to ask for a proof of A and someone responded "A."



> I don't know if you realized "the problem" yet, my friend; but it is very, very serious.



Well, I've realized five problems which, I think, you are grouping together. They are:

1. We have no justification for logic (save by logic, which is circular).

2. We have no justification for accepting direct empirical evidence.

3. We have no justification for thinking that our empirical evidence corresponds to the/a "real world".

4. We have no justification for thinking that any particular thought does not contain a mistake of reasoning.

5. We have no justification for confirmation of physical theories.

I should point out first of all that I think that all of these are quite troubling, with the possible exception of number 3. But I am not willing to "solve" them by cheating.

Does this mean that I cease to function or that I am unable to think, or anything like that? No. I readily acknowledge that I act and think as if I were justified in the beliefs expressed in 1, 2, 4, and 5. But I acknowledge also that all the things that follow from these assumed justifications are only as good as those assumptions. If someone attack the whole corpus of my thought by attacking these assumptions, my response will be "You're right; all of these thoughts are only valid based on the assumptions above, and that's all I claim them to be."

Sorry for both the length of the post and (conversely) my rather truncated accounts of my views on "actual existence" and on meaning. Those are both extremely fascinating areas into which I've put a lot of thought, but they seem to be only tangentially related to the matters at hand. If you're interested in debating them, though, I would certainly enjoy it - though of course I'm enjoying the debate immensely already.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *Sorry for both the length of the post and (conversely) my rather truncated accounts of my views on "actual existence" and on meaning. *



Sorry? Not at all. I think this is the best post I've yet seen on this thread, and probably in TTF. Allow me to use one of the smilies I never really touched here:

 

You've cut through the Gordian knot. I think we can really get somewhere now, for terms and propositions are very much clearer. Let me attempt to summarize the major achievements in that last post of yours:

1) Definition of those 5 problems which I am lumping together (to which I'll add a sixth in a minute);

2) Explicitation (is that a word?...) of your Nominalism.

Let me do a bit of nit-picking before I grapple the main issue. It is not really nit-picking as in "non-important observations"; they just reinforce my point on the "irrelevancy" (which perhaps has a more technical meaning in English than the one I'm used to) of the mind if we reject the transcendental ego. I'll try to define what I meant by "irrelevant" -- useless for the purpose of living. I know it is easy to forget, but philosophy aims at better living . Love of wisdom is in-built in man, I believe; but we philosophize because we want better lives, and we think the best life is the life of philosophy. Or at least I do. That's my own reason for it. 

That means I don't want an irrelevant mind. 



> I am saying that in actuality, as it happens, we cannot distinguish between hallucinations and non-hallucinations



But whenever you say something with such definiteness, you are implying that it is not an hallucination. So you are in fact saying that you CAN distinguish between hallucinations and non-hallucinations, at least as regards the sentence "we cannot distinguish between hallucinations and non-hallucinations". 

We can't really escape that. When we try to escape it, we fall into a non-hallucination, just like what you did. We can't doubt every proposition on the basis that it does not fulfill the strictest logical requirements; and if you say that we can, then you are not doing it. This is the kind of _reductio ad absurdum_ that strikes me as a very serious problem. If you say "I can doubt every proposition on the basis that it does not fulfill the strictest logical requirements" -- you have just contradicted yourself. You do not doubt at least THAT proposition. And as any proposition, it is not really grounded in "the strictest logical requirements" -- it is grounded in other propositions, which are grounded in other propositions, and so on, until we reach the ultimate ground, sense-data: which are not logical. 

I think we agree on the nature of the problem. I don't think I need to quote other examples (like "People are deceived").

Let's face the problem then. Here are the Five Problems:



> 1. We have no justification for logic (save by logic, which is circular).
> 
> 2. We have no justification for accepting direct empirical evidence.
> 
> 3. We have no justification for thinking that our empirical evidence corresponds to the/a "real world".
> 
> 4. We have no justification for thinking that any particular thought does not contain a mistake of reasoning.
> 
> 5. We have no justification for confirmation of physical theories.
> 
> I should point out first of all that I think that all of these are quite troubling, with the possible exception of number 3. But I am not willing to "solve" them by cheating.



The "Sixth Problem" is very much like number 2; but I assume that what you refer to as "direct empirical evidence" is the concept, not the percept. (Check my post a while ago about the difference between perception and conception for a definition). We also do not have any justification for that step: from percept to concept. That is Problem 6. 

Now, I used the word "cheating" to refer to my own solution if we assumed that only the rules of logic were allowed. But as we've seen, there is no justification for doing that. If there isn't any justification for doing that, there is no intrinsic impediment in postulating the transcendental ego if it solves the problem. It is very much like the work in Science: Newton postulated Gravity to explain a whole range of problems. Did he have any logical justification to do so? No. In a sense, he was "cheating". As an interesting comment, Galileo had trouble with the Scholastics for precisely that reason: he was not empirical enough for the scientists of the day (i.e., the Scholastics). He was "cheating" when he assumed that the ball would roll on without ever stopping if there was no obstacle or drag; that had never been observed. Newton, too, was accused of invoking "spooky action at a distance" to explain away his problems.

Cheating can be fruitful .

The transcendental ego I am talking about here is not supposed to be proven beyond any doubt by logic; nothing is, in my view. We acquire our concepts in a non-logical process; how could we prove these concepts with logic? It is, as a scientist would say, an hypothesis; but it is as much an hypothesis as Gravity is an hypothesis. 

Do you subscribe to the notion that an hypothesis, if observed often enough, becomes a "Law" of Nature? Then, the transcendental ego (in my opinion) also acquires the status of a Law of Nature; it is something observed daily (we can't "observe" anything without it), regularly, since mankind appeared. It solves the Six Problems; not completely, not apodictically, but it solves them provisionally, by assuming a relationship between that ego and truth (or reality). Spooky action, hehe. 

A good definition of truth in my opinion is "conformity of the mind to real things"; a good subject to discuss since you don't accept that real things have any actual existence besides what sense-data shows us...

When you ignore (provisionally) the Five or Four Problems, you are -- of course -- solving the problem of justification in a way. I am solving it in another. And now we come back to the matter of choice. Is your way "more logical" (or less logical) than mine? I don't see how it can be. 

Choice itself is the root of a whole layer of problems just like that.

And ethics is the roots of yet another layer. 

But the transcendental ego solves ALL of these problems. It is an hypothesis, but an extraordinarily fruitful hypothesis. I can't really offer much more in its support than the ordinary human attraction for synthesis and unity (embodied in the Principle of Parsimony -- Occam's Razor -- in Science). Just as the big attraction of the Copernican model _to Copernicus_ was that it simplified Astronomy - whether or not the Earth actually moved round the Sun along with the other planets - the big attraction of the transcendental ego is that it solves three layers of extremely serious problems, and it is confirmed (in the sense of verified by experience, not of proven apodictically) daily in every human being. 

I know this is off-topic, but I can't help asking this:



> I deny the realist claim that there is some meaningful property called "actual existence" which has nothing whatsoever to do with my mental states.



Why?


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## Aiwendil2

> Sorry? Not at all. I think this is the best post I've yet seen on this thread, and probably in TTF.



Well, I guess I should have just said all that about nominalism and philosophical problems up front! Seriously, though, this is probably the best thread I've ever posted in.



> I'll try to define what I meant by "irrelevant" -- useless for the purpose of living.



Now allow me to counter-nitpick. I asked what the subject and object of your "irrelevant" were because I suspected there was something circular here. And I think I was right. You claim that the mind without an ego would be irrelevant to living. But I think that if you define "living" it will turn out that the mind could never possibly be irrelevant to living. It is hard to define "living" but I suspect you meant something like "making choices about what to do". But in any view, the mind plays a part in making choices. The mind therefore cannot be irrelevant to making choices.

I should emphasize that I feel I know what you _think_ you mean by this. But I think that when one analyzes this claim rigorously one finds that it is analytically false.



> But whenever you say something with such definiteness, you are implying that it is not an hallucination. So you are in fact saying that you CAN distinguish between hallucinations and non-hallucinations, at least as regards the sentence "we cannot distinguish between hallucinations and non-hallucinations".



Excellent point. Indeed, from my empiricist standpoint it makes no sense to talk about absolute, impenetrable hallucinations. But on the standard realist view, it does. The metaphysical realist can never escape the skeptical possibility. That is, if one accepts an external world, independent of mental states, and if one further acknowledges that we are sometimes mistaken about things, one cannot discount the possibility that we are currently mistaken about some particular thing, and that we have always been and will always be mistaken about it.

For we know very well that people do sometimes suffer from hallucinations. We can know this only because those particular hallucinations either happen to other people or are not absolute, or (and usually) both. But these hallucinations could conceivably become arbitrarily pervasive, which presents problems for the realist.



> If you say "I can doubt every proposition on the basis that it does not fulfill the strictest logical requirements" -- you have just contradicted yourself. You do not doubt at least THAT proposition.



Sure I do. I doubt it because I doubt logic (not that I believe logic not to be true, but rather that I acknowledge that I do not _know_ that it is true).



> And as any proposition, it is not really grounded in "the strictest logical requirements" -- it is grounded in other propositions, which are grounded in other propositions, and so on, until we reach the ultimate ground, sense-data: which are not logical.



I never claimed that everything is ultimately derivable from logic. This seems to be impossible (as far as I can tell). The sense-data are just terms, and as such are not true or false. Only the propositions about them (which are equivelant to relations among them) can be true or false - but you are right that these specific propositions cannot be derived from logic.



> The "Sixth Problem" is very much like number 2; but I assume that what you refer to as "direct empirical evidence" is the concept, not the percept. (Check my post a while ago about the difference between perception and conception for a definition). We also do not have any justification for that step: from percept to concept. That is Problem 6.



Naturally, this is only a problem if you believe in the three-fold sensation/perception/conception distinction that you elaborated. I find it somewhat curious that you consider this distinct from problem 3; I thought that the purpose of your "conception" stage was to get around problem 3. Or perhaps you are solving problem 3 by displacing the disjunction to the perception/conception distinction and thereby introducing problem 6 in its place. In any case, to me problems 3 and 6 both seem to be pseudo-problems.



> Now, I used the word "cheating" to refer to my own solution if we assumed that only the rules of logic were allowed. But as we've seen, there is no justification for doing that. If there isn't any justification for doing that, there is no intrinsic impediment in postulating the transcendental ego if it solves the problem.



This is a bit unfair. Certainly problem 1 is serious. But you cannot accept logic as the basis for all your arguments (which is what we are both doing; it is what all humans do when they think or argue) and then support some proposition by claiming that since logic isn't justified anyway, we can claim whatever we want.

Worse still, you can't use the lack of justification for logic to support a proposition which you then intend to use in logical arguments. The basis for the claim undermines the claim itself. And even worse than _that_, there isn't even such a thing as a basis, or reason, or proposition outside of logic. The very naming of the thing "non-logic" is logical. It is _impossible_ to solve a logical problem through the lack of justification for logic.

Of course, all this makes the philosophy of logic a baffling, rather hopeless looking endeavor. That's why I merely note the troubling lack of justification and move on.



> It is very much like the work in Science: Newton postulated Gravity to explain a whole range of problems. Did he have any logical justification to do so? No. In a sense, he was "cheating".



But the postulation of scientific theories does not require logical justification. Any postulated theory is as good as any other, prima facie. Theories only become justified to various degrees when they are compared with empirical evidence and with other theories. In other words, the "cheating" involved in postulating scientific theories is only good insofar the theory will pay us back in terms of justification when we start doing things with it.



> When you ignore (provisionally) the Five or Four Problems, you are -- of course -- solving the problem of justification in a way. I am solving it in another. And now we come back to the matter of choice. Is your way "more logical" (or less logical) than mine? I don't see how it can be.



The most obvious way in which I think my may is more rational is this: my way involves no hypotheses concerning the way in which the mind works. Your way makes claims about the way the mind works, the way the world works. So my view is, I think, superior in that I make the minimal number of unjustified assumptions. Good old Occam's Razor.



> But the transcendental ego solves ALL of these problems. It is an hypothesis, but an extraordinarily fruitful hypothesis. I can't really offer much more in its support than the ordinary human attraction for synthesis and unity (embodied in the Principle of Parsimony -- Occam's Razor -- in Science).



Hmm. It's a little disconcerting to have just invoked Occam's Razor in favor of my point only to realize that you also invoked it in favor of yours. But I'm quite convinced that my view makes fewer unsubstantiated claims. Particularly troubling to me about your view is this: it invokes a new class of fundamental physical entities that are related in rather a bizarre way to the rest of our fundamental physical theories. We have reduced our account of physics more or less down to two systems, quantum mechanics and general relativity, and we have great hopes of reducing those down to one. But your account would change all of this, for it tells us that the human brain (via the mind, via the ego) acts in a radically different way from other matter. This would be acceptable, _if_ there were some rational reason for accepting your view of the ego.


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## Aiwendil2

> I know this is off-topic, but I can't help asking this:
> quote:
> I deny the realist claim that there is some meaningful property called "actual existence" which has nothing whatsoever to do with my mental states.
> Why?



Well, you asked for it.

It has primarily to do with a consideration of meaning. What could possibly be meant by "actual existence"? 

I envision myself in a debate with a metaphysical realist. It runs something like this. It is preposterous, says the realist, to claim that reality is contingent upon your mental states, for if it were then there would be no difference between a vivid hallucination and reality. In your view, hallucinatory chair = real chair. But we do in fact distinguish between hallucinations and reality; therefore the world is not merely the sum of your mental states.

I reply: We do indeed distinguish between hallucinatory chairs and real chairs. But the distinction has nothing to do with whether the chair has some metaphysical property called "actual existence". The distinction is merely this: there are certain chairs that act in accordance with my physical theories. There are other chairs, however, that display odd qualities: they are there one minute and gone the next, or though I see them others claim not to, or they can be seen but not felt, etc. The latter I call hallucinatory chairs and the former I call real chairs. The matter of being "real" or "hallucinatory" has only to do with my mental states.

The realist then objects by enjoining me to imagine a hallucination so vivid, so complete, that all these distinguishing marks are gone - a hallucination so vivid, in fact, that it absolutely cannot be distinguished from reality. This means not only that the hallucinatory chair looks and feels real but also that other people seem to be able to see it, that there is some perfectly plausible reason for its being where it is, that it seems to fulfill the roles it should in physical theories, and so forth.

I will reply that, in the situation the realist has described, the chair is in fact real. The realist will say: "Aha! But as I said before, we can and do distinguish between hallucinations and reality." But I will reply that in this particular situation, the "hallucination" has been intentionally contrived in just such a way that we _can't_ know it's an illusion, and therefore that argument cannot be used. The realist could say that nonetheless my answer here is remarkably counter- intuitive and odd. But I will reply that the bizarre aspect of the situation is not my interpretation of things but rather the realist's premise - for the "hallucination" that the realist described is completely unlike any actual hallucination that anyone has ever actually had. If you ask a bizarre question, a bizarre answer is not so bizarre.

But the realist will still object and say that the "hallucinatory" situation he described is different from the situation wherein I see a real chair. The real chair has some property that the hallucination lacks. Suppose the realist calls this "actual existence".

Now it seems not unreasonable for me to ask for a definition of "actual existence". And there are two kinds of answers the realist could give: 1. He could tell me that "actual existence", while a meaningful term, is unintelligible. But on _any_ reasonable theory of meaning, intelligibility is, at the very least, a criterion for meaningfulness. We are not talking here about some concept that is difficult to understand, or that I simply fail to grasp; we are talking about a concept that is _in principle_ unintelligible. And that is a contradiction in terms. Further, even if the realist insisted upon some outlandish theory of meaning wherein unintelligible meaning is allowed, I would be able to point out that "actual existence" is just as unintelligible to the realist as it is to me. Therefore, any beliefs concerning it that the realist holds must be completely without a basis in reason.

2. The realist could say that "actual existence" is intelligible. That means that in principle someone could explain the idea to me in such a way that I would develop two distinct concepts: the concept of an actual chair and the concept of a hallucinatory chair (for I must _define_ any term before I employ it in thought). My definitions, in other words, of "actual chair" and "hallucinatory chair" would differ. This difference, since it is a difference in my definitions, would be a difference that supervenes entirely on my mental states. So the difference between an "actual chair" and a "hallucinatory chair" is now one that supervenes on my mental states; but this was just the thing the realist was trying to deny. Or to put it another way: I can only define a term/concept with other terms/concepts. And since these other terms must be located in my mind (if I understand them), the meaning of a term that I define by means of them must also be located in my mind.

Hmm. I intended to come at this explanation from another way also, but I've gone on about it for longer than I meant to already. My other way of explaining my view, though, may be outlined as follows. Meaning is, when you come down to it, a private thing (i.e. I don't buy Wittgenstein's private language argument). Words as such have no meaning; what they have is merely a kind of potential meaning that triggers actual meaning when the words are perceived. (An indication of this is that for any given sequence of words or symbols, one could imagine some hypothetical alien to whom the words meant any arbitrary thing.) It is therefore impossible for a term to have meaning to me if, due to the requirements imposed upon the term, it can only be defined by means of things that are _not_ part of my consciousness.

Well, may I apologize this time? I've given a whole little Socratic dialogue on a topic only indirectly linked to the one we started with.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *Now allow me to counter-nitpick. I asked what the subject and object of your "irrelevant" were because I suspected there was something circular here. And I think I was right. You claim that the mind without an ego would be irrelevant to living. But I think that if you define "living" it will turn out that the mind could never possibly be irrelevant to living. It is hard to define "living" but I suspect you meant something like "making choices about what to do". But in any view, the mind plays a part in making choices. The mind therefore cannot be irrelevant to making choices.*



But the mind's prime role is not simply "making choices", it is making _rational_ choices. And if it can't do that at all, it becomes irrelevant; we might as well indulge in a purely sensual (in the sense of non-intellectual) existence, like the animals. We become then a sort of sick animal; we can't get rid of the notion that our rationality is somehow an important tool in dealing with life, when it is not; the most rational course would be to shun rationality. To do it without reflection is one thing; to do it because we reflected about it and reached that conclusion, with the help of reason, is quite contradictory. 



> That is, if one accepts an external world, independent of mental states, and if one further acknowledges that we are sometimes mistaken about things, one cannot discount the possibility that we are currently mistaken about some particular thing, and that we have always been and will always be mistaken about it.



What does the word "mistaken" mean in your view, then? If there is no standard outside consciousness to decide what is mistaken and what is not mistaken, how can we even grasp the possibility of being mistaken?

I'll say a bit more about hallucinations when I discuss the Socratic dialogue .



> Sure I do. I doubt it because I doubt logic (not that I believe logic not to be true, but rather that I acknowledge that I do not _know_ that it is true).



And is this knowledge of yours -- "I do not know that logic is true" -- "true enough" for you to doubt logic? Why not doubt that knowledge instead?



> In any case, to me problems 3 and 6 both seem to be pseudo-problems.



This will also play a role in the Socratic dialogue...



> This is a bit unfair. Certainly problem 1 is serious. But you cannot accept logic as the basis for all your arguments (which is what we are both doing; it is what all humans do when they think or argue) and then support some proposition by claiming that since logic isn't justified anyway, we can claim whatever we want.



I didn't quite claim that... just as Newton didn't quite claim that his theory was good _because_ illogical. I was trying to say that logic can be used to discuss the propositions and not the terms (to use your language  ). We can concoct (I do not know a good verb for this...) a theory without recourse to logic, and then logic is brought to test it. This is not a special prerrogative of Science or of the transcendental ego theory; it is how we think. As I understood you, you agree with that. 



> Of course, all this makes the philosophy of logic a baffling, rather hopeless looking endeavor. That's why I merely note the troubling lack of justification and move on.



It's troubling... but unless we want to become paralyzed and not act at all, we have to overcome it, by accepting that our terms (what I call "concepts") are not logical in their origin. Logic only plays a role when we study propositions. 



> But the postulation of scientific theories does not require logical justification. Any postulated theory is as good as any other, prima facie. Theories only become justified to various degrees when they are compared with empirical evidence and with other theories. In other words, the "cheating" involved in postulating scientific theories is only good insofar the theory will pay us back in terms of justification when we start doing things with it.



Exactly . And the big problem of justifying logic's worth is solved by the ego theory. 

1) We have logic; we can't avoid having it;
2) Logic can't prove its own validity;
3) Logic can't prove its own usefulness as a tool, _unless_ we postulate that the world -- the mental states -- is inherently logical. But logic can't explain that either;

Why should we trust logic, then? Because we can't avoid doing it? But that is illogical . Postulating an ego that is the agent of logic, and has an independent relationship to reality (independent as in "not related to the material components of our being") is a solution. It is a logical solution; no logical laws are broken by it (unlike "we must follow logic because we can't help it"). It is true that it invokes a not-observed entity; though "not-observed" here has a very techincal meaning, of "not-observed in physical, testable, objective observations", because we observe the ego's operation all the time, most of all in ourselves, but also in other minds (which is a very interesting problem in itself -- do you believe in the existence of other minds besides your own? A follow-up question to the matter of "actual existence"...)



> The most obvious way in which I think my may is more rational is this: my way involves no hypotheses concerning the way in which the mind works. Your way makes claims about the way the mind works, the way the world works. So my view is, I think, superior in that I make the minimal number of unjustified assumptions. Good old Occam's Razor.



Your way is simpler, but it does not solve the problem; or so I think. For if your way does not involve any hypotheses concerning the way the mind works, it does not address the fact (not the hypothesis) that the mind _works_. That's a fact we have to explain and explore. This is why I said a while back that it is not a matter of scientific observation, but of "existential" observation. Our mind works; no scientific theory in the word can prove that, but we know it without any proofs. And therefore we have direct access to another kind of data, a non-scientific kind of data which demands explanation.


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## Eriol

Let me try to fill in the shoes of the metaphysical realist then. I'll attack the problem from another way -- from how we formulate terms (concepts). We began to discuss that many posts back, in this thread's first incarnation . I'll work through examples.

1) A rainbow. We know what is a rainbow -- an effect of the refraction of light through a medium that scatters the wavelengths. We see a rainbow, and we know that water particles in the atmosphere are refracting the sunlight and producing the effect. We can create "artificial rainbows" with prisms and other stuff, by following the rules for rainbow formation that we have detected with science. 

However, all that is implied in that paragraph above -- every single word -- is not an explanation of the rainbow _itself_, but only of the effect "rainbow + eyes" (to make it simple, I won't go into detail of neural pathways). What _is_ the rainbow? Is it anything when there is no one looking at it? There was an old philosophical question aimed at that, "does a tree make a sound when it falls if no one hears it?" To that question I answer _no_. And the rainbow does not exist when there is no one looking at it. 

Up to that point I sound like the nominalist 

Let's go further then. What would you say if I said to you that last night I saw a rainbow in the sky? You would surely think that I was mistaken. There are no rainbows at night. You would class this as "hallucination"; but it is a mental state just like the "real rainbow". However, you know that a "real rainbow" needs "real water" and "real light"; and all of these things are just as "real" as the rainbow when it is not seen... just mental states. 

So strictly speaking we can't differentiate between the night rainbow and the "real rainbow". Both are mental states. 

2) Another example then, a chair . A chair has several properties, but I'll focus on a "solid" property -- its solidity . A chair is a solid object, whatever that means. We can feel its solidity with our sense of touch. 

Is there any solidity when there is no one touching the object? Again, my answer is "no"; because "solidity" is a word denoting the pair "chair + touch" in that instance. 

3) But now we turn to physics. Just as physics explained the rainbow, it also explained the solidity of the chair, an object which is 99% vacuum . The "atoms" of the chair are not solid objects themselves; and the solidity that we "feel" is a result of the interaction of electrical charges between our sense-organs and the object.

And here we begin to get somewhere. What is an "electrical charge"? We never saw it, we never touched it, we never tasted it, we never heard it; we see some dots in experimental conditions and we say "this is the result of electrical interactions". But we do not apprehend the charge itself; we can't. Our senses are not built for that. A "charge" is a theory to explain the world; as such, it is even less "real" than the rainbow, for it exists _only_ in the human mind, while rainbows (and chairs) are detected by other beings. 

But behind the "charge theory", and the "chair theory", and the "rainbow theory" -- all of them things made in our minds to "explain" (which is another word without "intrinsic reality" -- as any word...) the world around us -- there is a huge assumption, one that is corroborated by physics and science in general; and philosophy: that there is "something out there". It's not a charge, or an electron, or an atom, or any of the words we use to talk about it; words are made when mind touches [/i]it[/i]. The ground of reality; what our words represent, but what can't ever be apprehended. The "unrepresented". This unrepresented is not nonexistent, even though we can't represent it; it is what allows us to say that a rainbow at night is a hallucination, that a chair without solidity is a hallucination, and so on. 

And so we get here:



> 2. The realist could say that "actual existence" is intelligible. That means that in principle someone could explain the idea to me in such a way that I would develop two distinct concepts: the concept of an actual chair and the concept of a hallucinatory chair (for I must define any term before I employ it in thought). My definitions, in other words, of "actual chair" and "hallucinatory chair" would differ. This difference, since it is a difference in my definitions, would be a difference that supervenes entirely on my mental states. So the difference between an "actual chair" and a "hallucinatory chair" is now one that supervenes on my mental states; but this was just the thing the realist was trying to deny. Or to put it another way: I can only define a term/concept with other terms/concepts. And since these other terms must be located in my mind (if I understand them), the meaning of a term that I define by means of them must also be located in my mind.



It is not a difference between the concept of an actual chair and the concept of a hallucinatory chair; when we talk about "concepts", or "terms", we already are infusing our own mind into the subject. When we use words at all we are forced to do it. It is the difference between the presence or absence of the unrepresented reality. You can't "define it"; as you said, we need terms to define it. But you can't disregard it either; or you will be forced to abstain from all judgment of veracity of observations. 

A whole different way of tackling this would be to note that "reality" is defined by _shared_ observations... this is the everyday criterion for looking at it. But this also touched upon that question I asked you in the last post, "do you believe in the actual existence of other minds?"

It is agreement that defines what is real or not as it regards _perception_. Concepts can't be really validated by agreement, since they differ from mind to mind and are built anew by every mind (surely my own concept of "chair" is different from yours, even if it differs only in the connotation of the words used to define it -- after all we use different languages (English x Portuguese) to do it ). But perception -- the reaction of sense organs to the unrepresented reality -- is shared with others.


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## Aiwendil2

> But the mind's prime role is not simply "making choices", it is making rational choices. And if it can't do that at all, it becomes irrelevant; we might as well indulge in a purely sensual (in the sense of non-intellectual) existence, like the animals. We become then a sort of sick animal; we can't get rid of the notion that our rationality is somehow an important tool in dealing with life, when it is not; the most rational course would be to shun rationality. To do it without reflection is one thing; to do it because we reflected about it and reached that conclusion, with the help of reason, is quite contradictory.



It sounds to me like what you're saying is this: there are two ways to live - rationally and irrationally. If one lives irrationally, then the rational capacities of the mind are irrelevant to one's actions. This is true enough, but the fact is that we do act rationally, whether that is justified or not. So regardless of the justification, or lack thereof, our rational capacity is relevant to the way we do in fact live.



> What does the word "mistaken" mean in your view, then? If there is no standard outside consciousness to decide what is mistaken and what is not mistaken, how can we even grasp the possibility of being mistaken?



Here's an example of how I can be mistaken. Suppose I think that Faulkner wrote _Ulysses_. This will of course affect the way I designate terms/concepts such as "Faulkner" and "_Ulysses_". It will also entail certain predictions - I predict, for example, that if I purchase the book Faulkner's name will be on the cover. But in actuality, if I purchase the book it will turn out to say "by James Joyce".

Moreover, I can be mistaken about something even if I never realize it. Though I may think that Faulkner was the author, the relations among my sense-data will be just the sort of relations that ought to come about if my theory were adjusted such that Joyce was considered the author. In other words, a complete theory that accurately predicted my sensory states would necessarily be one wherein James Joyce wrote _Ulysses_. I'll come back to this in a few moments.



> And is this knowledge of yours -- "I do not know that logic is true" -- "true enough" for you to doubt logic? Why not doubt that knowledge instead?



I do. I doubt _all_ my knowledge - in that I do not claim to be one hundred percent certain that any of these propositions is true. That is, I _think_ that I doubt all my knowledge. For I _think_ that I could be mistaken about anything, including the proposition that I could be mistaken about anything.



> I didn't quite claim that... just as Newton didn't quite claim that his theory was good because illogical. I was trying to say that logic can be used to discuss the propositions and not the terms (to use your language ). We can concoct (I do not know a good verb for this...) a theory without recourse to logic, and then logic is brought to test it. This is not a special prerrogative of Science or of the transcendental ego theory; it is how we think. As I understood you, you agree with that.



I agree with it except that I maintain that a theory cannot be concocted entirely without logic. Certainly a theory can be constructed without it being logically rigorous; but without logic we cannot even formulate propositions.



> It's troubling... but unless we want to become paralyzed and not act at all, we have to overcome it, by accepting that our terms (what I call "concepts") are not logical in their origin. Logic only plays a role when we study propositions.



I'm not sure exactly what to make of this. If you mean that the terms are not entailed by logic alone, then that is certainly true but trivially so. Terms are not the sort of things that can be entailed. Terms alone have no truth-values. Only propositions constructed out of terms have truth-values and only these can be entailed. But logic certainly plays a role in our _definition_ of terms, for the definition of a term is a proposition.



> And the big problem of justifying logic's worth is solved by the ego theory.



But (as I thought you admitted), the ego theory is not really a solution. You _postulate_ the ego; you _postulate_ that it allows us access to logic and that this makes logic valid. But mere postulates such as these could not possibly justify logic. I could just as easily postulate "logic is valid."



> Why should we trust logic, then? Because we can't avoid doing it? But that is illogical



We run a grave risk here of terminological confusion. If by "illogical" you mean "not entailed by logic," then yes, this is merely a restatement of the problem. But "illogical" is frequently used for something quite different - that is, a proposition is often called illogical if logic entails that it is false. 



> Postulating an ego that is the agent of logic, and has an independent relationship to reality (independent as in "not related to the material components of our being") is a solution.



But again, since this is just a postulate, not entailed by logic, it cannot possibly be a satisfactory justification.



> It is a logical solution; no logical laws are broken by it (unlike "we must follow logic because we can't help it").



You here seem to contrast the "illogical" solution I offer with the "logical" solution you offer. But they do not actually differ in this regard. Neither is rigorously justified. Nor is either rigorously falsified. With regard to these propositions, logic alone can do nothing to establish a truth-value for either.



> which is a very interesting problem in itself -- do you believe in the existence of other minds besides your own? A follow-up question to the matter of "actual existence"...



Let me return to this question in a minute.



> Your way is simpler, but it does not solve the problem; or so I think.



Neither of our ways solves the problem.



> For if your way does not involve any hypotheses concerning the way the mind works, it does not address the fact (not the hypothesis) that the mind works. That's a fact we have to explain and explore.



Hmm . . . perhaps you've misunderstood my view of the mind; or perhaps I misunderstand your critique. My view does explain that the mind works. It explains thought in terms of the manipulation of information. It may not be capable of explaining consciousness. This is something I am acutely aware of. But in my view _no one_ has ever come close to giving a satisfactory account of consciousness.



> And the rainbow does not exist when there is no one looking at it.



Well, this is merely a matter of definition. By "rainbow" one might mean the visual image (which is what I think is most commonly meant); but one could conceivably refer to the actual light waves as the "rainbow". Clearly, the latter can be said to exist when there is no one looking at it and the former cannot.



> Let's go further then. What would you say if I said to you that last night I saw a rainbow in the sky? You would surely think that I was mistaken. There are no rainbows at night. You would class this as "hallucination"; but it is a mental state just like the "real rainbow".



There is a complication arising here in that the situation as you described it involves me relying on your report of a rainbow. I may very well believe that you experienced a brain-state corresponding to having seen a rainbow, but I will call it a hallucination because according to my physical theories the physical situation that gives rise to the image that I call a "real rainbow" (which is just an arbitrary term) could not have obtained. 



> So strictly speaking we can't differentiate between the night rainbow and the "real rainbow". Both are mental states.



Suppose I see a rainbow at night. My decision regarding whether it is to be deemed real or hallucinatory is not solely based on the image itself as found in my sense-data. In this case I deem it a hallucination not because of any property of the _particular_ sense-data pertaining to the image. I call it a hallucination because the perception of that rainbow does not agree with my physical theories (theories which, presumably, have been well corroborated). In other words, my definition of a "real rainbow" is not just the perceived image; it is, rather, built out of physical theories. That is, "real rainbow" means such and such an image perceived in such and such circumstances. Because I have a theory that claims, among other things, that real rainbows only occur in the day, when I come across an image that is similar but that occurs at night, I call it a hallucination.


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## Aiwendil2

> Is there any solidity when there is no one touching the object? Again, my answer is "no"; because "solidity" is a word denoting the pair "chair + touch" in that instance.



And again, I say this is only a matter of definition. There are really something like two terms that I call "solidity". Let's say these are solidity1 and solidity2. An object has solidity1 if and only if I am touching it and experiencing a certain sensation. This is the definition you employ above. But there is another term, solidity2; an object that has solidity2, according to my theories, is just the sort of object that when I am touching it always has solidity1.



> What is an "electrical charge"? We never saw it, we never touched it, we never tasted it, we never heard it; we see some dots in experimental conditions and we say "this is the result of electrical interactions". But we do not apprehend the charge itself; we can't. Our senses are not built for that. A "charge" is a theory to explain the world; as such, it is even less "real" than the rainbow, for it exists only in the human mind, while rainbows (and chairs) are detected by other beings.



Yes, "electrical charge" is just a term we employ in our theories in order to make predictions (including predictions about solidity). So is a "chair", in my view. And I do not know what it could possibly mean to "apprehend the charge itself". Perhaps you mean what I would call "observing the charge directly." But I am quite convinced that we can observe nothing directly save mental states.



> there is a huge assumption, one that is corroborated by physics and science in general; and philosophy: that there is "something out there".



What is meant by "something out there"? For I would agree that there is something out there - by which must be meant "something some distance away from me in some dimension". But distance is just another concept invented for use in theories. 

You are trying to formulate the realist's ontological claim but you have not formulated it. For "something out there" literally means "something at some distance away from me", and that is simply built out of the theoretical objects which in turn are built out of mental states. It is my conviction, moreover, that this is not merely an artifact of your particular phrasing, but rather that this claim _cannot_ be meaningfully formulated.



> The "unrepresented". This unrepresented is not nonexistent, even though we can't represent it



You claim that there is such a thing as the "unrepresented". Then what is "unrepresented"? It's a term - representing the thing you're trying to talk about! By calling this thing "unrepresented" you are representing it. "The unrepresented" is a meaningless contradiction, no different from a "round square" or "true falsehood".



> or you will be forced to abstain from all judgment of veracity of observations.



Not true. Propositions can still have truth-values as long as the terms that they employ are constructed out of my mental states.

Let me try to explain again why my view is not quite so radically anti-realist as might be thought. At first glance, one might think that my view entails that, for example, there is no fact about whether some given star in a far off galaxy has a planet orbiting it. For this planet is something that I will never, it seems, directly observe; nor will I even designate a term in my theories with which to refer to it.

But I claim that there _is_ a fact about whether or not that planet exists. Moreover, there are all sorts of facts about its size, composition, velocity, and so forth - all the things that a realist would claim there were facts about. This can be shown as follows. My mental states follow certain patterns; theories are the things I construct to describe these patterns and to predict future mental states based upon them. In these theories there are terms such as "velocity", "size", and so forth. There are also terms such as "planet". For "planet" is undeniably a term that has to do with my mental states - it has to do with what I will see if I look at certain points in the sky, it has to do with what astronomy professors will tell me if ask them certain questions, and so on. Now there are three possibilities with regard to the existence of that distant planet. The first is simply that my theories are incorrect and that, as it turns out, my "planet" concept (or some other of my concepts) is not one out of which accurate theories can be built. But these basic theories have been incredibly well confirmed (provided that we are provisionally ignoring problem 5, which is a problem for science in the realist case as well). The second possibility is that the total pattern of my mental states accords closely with all of my theories in conjunction with the proposition that the planet exists. The third possibility is that my mental states accord closely with all of my theories in conjunction with the proposition that the planet does not exist.

That is - if you ask me whether this distant planet is "real" or "really out there" or something like that, I will say _yes_. It is real because it plays a real role in the theories which accurately predict my mental states. It does not matter that I do not _know_ about the logical role it fulfills. My view does not in any way equate existence with knowledge. Even if I do not know about that planet, it exists just in the case that my mental states follow the pattern one would predict given my theories and given the truth of the proposition that the planet exists.

One could object here that the existence of the planet seems to hinge upon the claim that my theories are true - that is, that my theories make exactly accurate predictions about me mental states. But this is not the case. The existence or non-existence of the planet will be a meaningful question given any true theory in which "planet" is meaningful (and means something like what I think it means). In other words, though it may turn out that, say, quantum mechanics is not quite exactly a true theory, it will almost certainly not turn out that there is no such thing as a "planet".

Now, concerning other minds. This is the one key piece of my view that I have not yet said anything about. This is a question concerning which I have not come to anything like a satisfactory conclusion (but then, it is my view that no one has ever come to anything like a satisfactory conclusion here). To put this as radically as possible: I do not believe in other minds. That is, it follows from my claims about meaning that any claim to the effect that there is another sequence of mental states that has nothing whatsoever to do with mine must be meaningless to me. It is tempting to say that "meaningless to me" is not the same as "meaningless". But this is not quite true, for if I use the term "meaningless" then I _must_ mean "meaningless to me".

One could then say that I am a solipsist. But there is solipsism and then there is solipsism. Note first of all that my foundational postulate is not expressed in the negative but in the positive. I say not that "other minds do not exist" but rather that "the universe is equivelant to my consciousness." This seems like a bizarre and problematic viewpoint, but it is my belief that this view only brings out and makes more explicit a certain oddness and certain problems that are inherent in any metaphysical doctrine whatsoever. The problem I refer to is that of consciousness - how can I account for the peculiar asymmetry which I observe between my mind and other minds?

At the very least, I believe in a profound kind of epistemological solipsism. That is, even if I could be convinced that some trick existed whereby one could make sense out of a claim that had nothing whatsoever to do with one's mental states, I would still believe that the limits of knowledge, and therefore of science also, are the limits of my one's own consciousness.

But perhaps there is hope. For as I have discussed, the pattern of my mentals states gives rise to emergent logical objects (the concepts or terms we have been discussing) like "planet", "chair", "rainbow", and so forth. Among these emergent objects are such things as "neurons", "brains", and so forth. Now if science should in the end prove capable of explaining consciousness in purely physical terms (and I admit that it's hard to see how this could be done) then it may turn out that there are indeed other consciousnesses that do in fact supervene entirely on my mental states. But I can say little more about this possibility, for it would depend entirely upon the precise manner in which consciousness was in fact explained scientifically.


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## Eriol

Doesn't your explanation of the meaning of "mistaken" demand that we postulate something like what I called the "unrepresented", Aiwendil? I know that the word "unrepresented" is a bad word, because it represents it . But our mental limitations -- the fact that we can't really think about anything without representing it with a concept in our mind -- does not entail an ontological limitation. The unrepresented can still exist, and it can exist without being represented. Or is the Universe only endowed with existence when we think about it? From your example of the planet, it seems you don't think so; apparently you agree that there is something out there, but you make the distinction that this "something" is completely out of our reach, therefore irrelevant. I would be able to agree with that irrelevance; but it does not entail its inexistence. We don't know whether the planet is there or not, but our knowledge does not limit the universe. I think I can prove that last sentence, if you want to explore it. 

In the Ulysses example, the book itself is the standard, the "unrepresented". And it shows this nature quite exemplarly. For instance, I (Eriol) am aware that such a book exists, and was written by James Joyce, etc. I am aware of that because of information conveyed to my mind through mental states like my perception of other books, of what other people said to me about the book, etc. But I never saw the book itself. Does that mean that the book does not exist at all? And is the lack of my own first-hand knowledge about it reason enough for me to claim that all of my notions about it were never established through direct empirical observation, and that therefore _whatever propositions I formulate about the book are true_? No. The book is "out there", even if I never saw it before. If I think that Faulkner wrote it, there is no logical contradiction in my mind, and no paralysis of reasoning, and no grievous effect in my own life -- but even so I will be _wrong_. 

1. "Direct empirical observation" is the basis for any terms we formulate;

2. We can't ever grasp the "unrepresented", for what we _can_ grasp is the pair "unrepresented + representation" (by direct empirical observation) or "representation" alone (by memory or imagination);

These two sentences do not entail the conclusion that you draw from them, unless I understood you incorrectly: that the unrepresented has no _relevance_ for our mental life, i.e., that whether or not it has "actual existence" is a meaningless question and that therefore we should not worry about it. To adopt that stance would be to never look at the book (Ulysses) itself. 

Epistemology is at the root of our debate here; that is why a "theory of formulating concepts" is so important in my opinion. What do you think of my suggestion? Do you have anything else to offer on that account? If we don't solve the problem of epistemology with any degree of satisfaction, we will be forced to accept all of our conclusions, mine AND yours... even if they contradict each other; just because we have different opinions on how we formulate concepts. 

You said that postulates, since not entailed by logic, can't offer justification. Agreed; but are they worthless even so? Scientific theories, and every thought ever formed in a mind, was not "entailed by logic", since terms do not have truth-value and we think with terms; does that mean that logic is useless, _or_ that the terms are useless? I don't think so. There is "usefulness" outside logic; usefulness as in "helpful with the business of living". 

Logic is extremely useful with that definition in mind, because the world is very logical. Logic is then the strongest tool we have to live. But it can't rule out other tools, like sense-perception, and freedom (which is at the root of both sense-perception and logic's usefulness).



> But in my view no one has ever come close to giving a satisfactory account of consciousness.



That's what I am claiming for my own position here . Not an _account_ of consciousness, to be rigorous, but to point at an entity that can give that account. The ego is that entity; the "ego theory" points at the ego; and it fits the data, explaining much more satisfactorily than the materialist position the puzzles of intellectual inclination to Truth through logic, of ethical freedom, of volitional freedom. The materialist position results in contradictions, and the ego theory doesn't.

It's not proof, as we both know; but also as we both know, the best guess is usually enough to work with. By claiming that you doubt every thought you have, you subscribed to the "best guess" position, or so it seems to me. 

Also, I think that solidity2 is the "unrepresented" in that example of yours... and you can't know or even guess or even imagine what solidity2 is or feels like or looks like. It is a useless concept, _if_ you take the position that only mental states have "actual existence". If, on the other hand, you assume that "actual existence" is a property of the "unrepresented" generally speaking, then solidity2 (and the concurrent physical theories to explain and predict solidity2 in not-yet-perceived objects -- even without ever touching them, i.e., without solidity1) becomes a useful concept. 

In other words,



> I am quite convinced that we can observe nothing directly save mental states.



is correct in my opinion too; but I don't circumscribe the notion of "mental usefulness" to objects that can be observed directly. That would be the end of metaphor by the way (perhaps a random comment, but it just struck me). 

I don't think it is a random comment, though... metaphor is a good example of how the mind works in deducing the unrepresentable from the represented; and therefore it is a good clue for the assertion that the unrepresentable _is_ useful. All abstract concepts begin as metaphors... the utility of the unrepresentable grows and grows in my mind as I type .



> That is, even if I could be convinced that some trick existed whereby one could make sense out of a claim that had nothing whatsoever to do with one's mental states, I would still believe that the limits of knowledge, and therefore of science also, are the limits of my one's own consciousness.



But not of usefulness; and I think not even of knowledge. Science, perhaps. Our knowledge can reach out to unrepresentable things, as the metaphors show. 



> My view does not in any way equate existence with knowledge.



No, but I think your view equates relevance with knowledge. Am I right? 

If I am, then the problem of other minds becomes really acute. For your mind -- your mental states -- "brush" other things outside of your control and knowledge -- other mental states -- daily. Even if you can't ever know anything about these mental states, they are still relevant to you as you go on the business of living. Their relevance is in fact more pronounced than _anything_ you "know" (or guess). 

If you don't believe in other minds because you don't have epistemic access to them, you are following an unproven (so far) assumption, that "only objects to which I have epistemic access are worthy of belief" (to be sure, we have a lot to define in that sentence...); and turning a blind eye to the concept of relevance, or usefulness, or whatever you want to call it -- the concept that some things we don't know about but still matter . 

Since our knowledge can only grow by direct empirical observation, and our direct empirical observation is focused on "relevant objects" (we don't apprehend everything that is offered to our senses, we exercise a selection there), then to neglect relevance is in a way a self-contradiction; it means destroying the foundation of all of our knowledge. 

To summarize:

Relevance is a meaningful concept, not synonymous with knowledge;

Existence is a meaningful property of relevant objects;

Knowledge is the result of the meeting of the mind with relevant objects; it is an active mental process, unlike both relevance and existence, and therefore it is circumscribed by epistemic constraints.


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## Aiwendil2

I think you are still mistaking my view for a more radical one. The essence of my view is that the logical relations among my mental states have a real existence (i.e., there really are such relations), and that objects are just terms or concepts that encapsulate and refer to these relations.



> Doesn't your explanation of the meaning of "mistaken" demand that we postulate something like what I called the "unrepresented", Aiwendil?



No - I am mistaken just in the case that I think that some particular relation among my mental states exists when in fact that particular relation does not. If I think that Faulkner wrote _Ulysses_, I think that the set of relations meant by "Faulkner wrote _Ulysses_" is a correct set of relations. I would be mistaken because the set of relations that are in fact correct is the set that is encapsulated by the proposition "Joyce wrote _Ulysses_".



> I know that the word "unrepresented" is a bad word, because it represents it



But it's not just a matter of "unrepresented" being a clumsy word. Any way of referring to "the unrepresented" brings about a contradiction. No meaning can ever be attached to a proposition about such an entity, for some term would need to be used to represent it; and the fact that it was represented would render it meaningless.



> From your example of the planet, it seems you don't think so; apparently you agree that there is something out there, but you make the distinction that this "something" is completely out of our reach, therefore irrelevant.



This is not what I meant. The example of the planet was intended to show that even if I have no knowledge of the planet - even if I don't even have a term for it - it can still exist. Even if I am unaware of it, there is a very complex system of relations among my mental states that corresponds to "a planet being there".



> am aware of that because of information conveyed to my mind through mental states like my perception of other books, of what other people said to me about the book, etc. But I never saw the book itself. Does that mean that the book does not exist at all? And is the lack of my own first-hand knowledge about it reason enough for me to claim that all of my notions about it were never established through direct empirical observation, and that therefore whatever propositions I formulate about the book are true? No. The book is "out there", even if I never saw it before. If I think that Faulkner wrote it, there is no logical contradiction in my mind, and no paralysis of reasoning, and no grievous effect in my own life -- but even so I will be wrong.



Again, I think you have misunderstood me. You say all this as if it contradicts my views, but I agree with all that is said here. The book _does_ exist and it _was_ written by Joyce. I think the confusion may arise regarding the definition and role I ascribe to "direct empirical observation". I do not think that _any_ object can be directly observed. Only mental states can be directly observed and objects - whether they are books right in front of me or books I have never seen - are concepts (terms) constructed out of the relations among those mental states. Even if I never saw _Ulysses_, I have heard people talk about it, read about it, and so forth - thus I have empirical evidence out of which to construct the concept "_Ulysses_". And, given this concept, the concept of "author", the concept of "James Joyce", and a host of very primitive auxilliary theories, it is true of my mental states to say that "James Joyce is the author of _Ulysses_." And this relation has nothing whatsoever to do with my awareness of it.



> Epistemology is at the root of our debate here; that is why a "theory of formulating concepts" is so important in my opinion. What do you think of my suggestion? Do you have anything else to offer on that account?



Are you referring to your sensation/perception/conception sequence? I agree with your analysis of the first two steps here, but I don't agree with the perception/conception distinction and the invocation of the non-material ego. I would say that we begin with mental states (which include sense-data); these are our direct empirical observables. Out of these (and out of the relations among these) we designate concepts (or terms). I think that this process occurs solely in ways that might be described in terms of information manipulation.



> You said that postulates, since not entailed by logic, can't offer justification. Agreed; but are they worthless even so? Scientific theories, and every thought ever formed in a mind, was not "entailed by logic",



True, but scientific postulates are never simply treated as given. A scientific postulate is only retained if it agrees well both with logic and with empirical data. A scientific postulate is only as valid as it is confirmed.



> That's what I am claiming for my own position here . Not an account of consciousness, to be rigorous, but to point at an entity that can give that account.



To be blunt - I don't think your position solves the problem of consciousness at all. It merely gives new name to consciousness. What I would demand of a solution to the problem is a satisfactory explanation of the asymmetry that I observe between my own mind and other minds.



> Also, I think that solidity2 is the "unrepresented" in that example of yours... and you can't know or even guess or even imagine what solidity2 is or feels like or looks like. It is a useless concept, if you take the position that only mental states have "actual existence". If, on the other hand, you assume that "actual existence" is a property of the "unrepresented" generally speaking, then solidity2 (and the concurrent physical theories to explain and predict solidity2 in not-yet-perceived objects -- even without ever touching them, i.e., without solidity1) becomes a useful concept.



Solidity2 is certainly not "unrepresented", for it has a name. Nor does it fail to supervene on my mental states. It is most definitely not a useless concept. For to claim, for example, that a chair has solidity2 is to make a claim _only_ about my mental states - and that claim is "in all states wherein I am touching the chair, the chair has solidity1." (In actuality it would be more complicated than this, for it would make claims about what other people report when they touch the chair, etc.). Certainly, I can say that a chair has solidity2 even when I am not touching it, but this does not amount to anything, for solidity2 only refers to times when I _am_ touching it.

To put it a slightly different way: take the two claims "this chair is solid" and "this chair is solid when someone is touching it; at all other times it is immaterial". The realist would say that these are two different claims. I say that when you eliminate the meaningless elements of the two claims, they turn out to be exactly the same claim - they claim that the chair has solidity2.



> but I don't circumscribe the notion of "mental usefulness" to objects that can be observed directly.



Nor do I - and I cannot, for I do not think that an object can ever be observed directly.



> No, but I think your view equates relevance with knowledge. Am I right?



Alas, no. My view says nothing of relevance. A thing about which I know nothing could nonetheless be quite relevant to me. For there can certainly be relations among my mental states (and _important_ relations) of which I am not aware.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> * If I think that Faulkner wrote Ulysses, I think that the set of relations meant by "Faulkner wrote Ulysses" is a correct set of relations. I would be mistaken because the set of relations that are in fact correct is the set that is encapsulated by the proposition "Joyce wrote Ulysses".*


*

But if "Faulkner", "Ulysses", "author" and "Joyce" are mental states, how can any assertion about these be correct (or incorrect)? The operative word there is "author". "Author" is not a 
word denoting a mental state; it is a word related to something that took place in the world, quite independently of your own awareness of it. The other words fall into that category too, of course, but "author" especially so. Your concept of "author", if it is in agreement with mine and with ordinary usage, demands an ontological reality; else it is meaningless. 

Note the difference; "Faulkner", "Joyce" and "Ulysses" are atemporal concepts, in a way; you could imagine that the world began 1 minute ago and that these concepts were implanted in your mind. Not so with "author", which denotes an action without any reference to your own mental states. If the world began 1 minute ago, then you are deceived in thinking that Joyce is the author of Ulysses; for both concepts were implanted in your mind (as well as the concept of "author") and the relation between them was also implanted; but the concept of "author" forbids such an implant! If I deceive you that Faulkner is the author of Ulysses (i.e., if I implant that knowledge -- faulty knowledge -- in you), you would still be wrong, right? What is the difference between being wrong because someone taught you false knowledge, or being wrong because you were implanted with false knowledge (as in the example of the author and the 1-minute old world)




But it's not just a matter of "unrepresented" being a clumsy word. Any way of referring to "the unrepresented" brings about a contradiction. No meaning can ever be attached to a proposition about such an entity, for some term would need to be used to represent it; and the fact that it was represented would render it meaningless.

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Meaningless, but not irrelevant or non-existent. And I don't think that is a meaningless distinction . 




This is not what I meant. The example of the planet was intended to show that even if I have no knowledge of the planet - even if I don't even have a term for it - it can still exist. Even if I am unaware of it, there is a very complex system of relations among my mental states that corresponds to "a planet being there".

Click to expand...


But is the "existence" of the planet tied to your mental states? What exactly do you mean with "it can still exist"?




The book does exist and it was written by Joyce.

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In that 1-minute world, that assertion would be wrong; but we could never know that. You agree with that, right? Then when you assert that the book "does exist", you are at once refuting the 1-minute world and accepting the ontological existence of both "book", "Joyce", "author", etc. etc.

Another way to put it is: does Frodo exist? In what sense? Can we differentiate between Frodo's existence and James Joyce's?




Are you referring to your sensation/perception/conception sequence? I agree with your analysis of the first two steps here, but I don't agree with the perception/conception distinction and the invocation of the non-material ego.

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The non-material ego is not a part of that sequence; and I think the perception/conception distinction is quite important, for it is the "term-making process". We do not perceive "concepts"; we create them.




To be blunt - I don't think your position solves the problem of consciousness at all. It merely gives new name to consciousness. What I would demand of a solution to the problem is a satisfactory explanation of the asymmetry that I observe between my own mind and other minds.

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Surely it does not solve the problem of consciousness itself; but it solves the contradictions found in our acceptance of logic and goodness as absolute. We act as if logic were true, and as if goodness was good; I'd like to see your best shot at defining "goodness", also, Aiwendil, for it is one of my oldest insights that goodness can't be defined at all... just like "truth", some would say. What would you say? It interests me to no end. To be sure, my own attempts at defining both goodness and truth are related to a concept of ontological reality, of "actual existence" outside my mental-states. And this is why I'd like to hear your views about goodness and truth.




Certainly, I can say that a chair has solidity2 even when I am not touching it, but this does not amount to anything, for solidity2 only refers to times when I am touching it.

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I did not quite understand that. If it refers to times when you are touching it, how is it that "you can say that a chair has solidity2 even when you are not touching it?"

I think any claim about touch (and other senses as well) must be either (1) atemporal -- i.e., scientific. This is based on a "theory of reality" in which the unrepresented have "actual existence" or (2) temporally specified -- and in this case you can't make any claims for a time in which you are not touching it. Or, to be more rigorous, you can claim it, but it has no authority; it is the "theory of reality" that gives science that authority.




Alas, no. My view says nothing of relevance. A thing about which I know nothing could nonetheless be quite relevant to me. For there can certainly be relations among my mental states (and important relations) of which I am not aware.

Click to expand...


That leads me to ask, how is a new mental state generated? You have more mental states now than you had when you were 15 years old; how did this take place? I still can't see the difference between your position and the strict solipsist view in which everything is only taking place in the mind, and therefore all mental states were generated somehow in the mind without any interaction with an external reality.

Not that I'll ever be able to disprove the solipsist view . But I want to know your views about that.*


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## Aiwendil2

> But if "Faulkner", "Ulysses", "author" and "Joyce" are mental states, how can any assertion about these be correct (or incorrect)?



No, "Faulkner", "Ulysses", "author", and "Joyce" are not mental states. They are terms employed in propositions concerning relations among mental states. That is, they are terms to be employed in theories about the relations among mental states.



> Note the difference; "Faulkner", "Joyce" and "Ulysses" are atemporal concepts, in a way; you could imagine that the world began 1 minute ago and that these concepts were implanted in your mind. Not so with "author", which denotes an action without any reference to your own mental states.



No - "author" is indeed built out of mental states. Here's how. I am familiar with an object I call a "book". I notice that books typically have words like "by James Joyce", "by J.R.R. Tolkien", or generally, "by X". I call "X" an author. I further notice that those books that have the same author have certain similarities. And I notice many other things: people talk about each "author" in a certain way; there is a system of relations among the things they say about the author and the "time period" they ascribe to the author; that particular system of relations matches other analogous "historical" systems of relations. All this and more goes into my definition of "author". But ultimately, that definition is built strictly out of my mental states. The next key point, then, is that these relations among my mental states exist whether or not I am aware of them. That is, given all the relevant definitions, the correct proposition is "Joyce wrote _Ulysses_", not "Faulkner wrote _Ulysses_". And this has nothing to do with whether I believe either of these propositions, or indeed whether I am cognizant of the relations encapsulated by "author" or "Joyce" or anything else.



> Meaningless, but not irrelevant or non-existent.



"Non-existent" is a tricky word and presupposes a whole lot of things. But surely if a thing is "meaningless" we can't talk about it, or even think about it, meaningfully.



> But is the "existence" of the planet tied to your mental states? What exactly do you mean with "it can still exist"?



Yes - it is tied to my mental states. In fact, it supervenes completely on my mental states. What I mean is that the truth value of "there is a planet orbiting that star" has _some_ implications for my mental states, even though I have no idea what those implications are. A total theory plus the proposition "the planet is there" ought to correspond to one sequence of mental states and a total theory plus "the planet is not there" ought to correspond to another.



> In that 1-minute world, that assertion would be wrong; but we could never know that. You agree with that, right?



No. The time at which James Joyce wrote _Ulysses_ is just another term in the theories that describe my mental states, bearing a certain relation to all the other "time" terms in the theory. If I am correct in understanding your "1-minute world" as one which is _utterly indistinguishable_ from a 13 billion year world, I would say that they are in fact the same world. Note that this means that there can be no scientific experiments or anything of that sort that would distinguish the 1 minute from the 13 billion years.



> Another way to put it is: does Frodo exist?



Yes.



> In what sense?



In the sense that "Frodo" is a term that might be used in a description of the total sequence of my mental states.



> Can we differentiate between Frodo's existence and James Joyce's?



Yes. For "Frodo" is defined in a rather different way from "Joyce". The definition of "Frodo" involves things like "Tolkien" (who is himself a term) "inventing", "writing", and so forth. Part of the definition of "Frodo" is that "Frodo" is a fictional character, whereas the definition of "Joyce" specifies that "Joyce" is a "real person". All these things are merely terms/concepts.



> The non-material ego is not a part of that sequence



Then I've misunderstood - I thought that the non-material ego was involved in "conception".



> and I think the perception/conception distinction is quite important, for it is the "term-making process". We do not perceive "concepts"; we create them.



I would group perception and conception together, though I think there is a continuum of complexities in this category. In other words, I think that there are varying stages of "conception" (the formulation of the concept "democracy", for example, is predicated upon the formulation of concepts such as "person"). And further, I would claim that "perception" is simply the most primitive level of "conception". I don't think that I can perceive a book without at the very least formulating a concept of "physical objects".



> Surely it does not solve the problem of consciousness itself; but it solves the contradictions found in our acceptance of logic and goodness as absolute.



I don't think it really does. Again, I think it merely gives a new name to the problem. You can postulate the ego, but you still need to postulate "the ego justifies logic" - and this is no better than simply postulating "logic is justified."



> I'd like to see your best shot at defining "goodness", also, Aiwendil, for it is one of my oldest insights that goodness can't be defined at all... just like "truth", some would say. What would you say?



Goodness: I fear that this may turn out to be meaningless. I should emphasize that I would _like_ it to be meaningful; but I do not base my opinions on what I like but rather on what I think is likely. Nonetheless, I have always maintained some hope that there may be a purely rational derivation for morality. Anything short of a purely rational derivation would, in my opinion, fail to really be "morality" - it would merely be "a morality", that is, someone's opinion.

As for truth - I suspect that ultimately this is just another term. There is a certain set of extremely basic propositions that simply are true, and all truth-values for more complex propositions follow from these. This seems strange - but I think it has neither more nor fewer problems than any account of the fundamental nature of the universe. For one can always ask "why"; but there is no reason to believe that the question is meaningful.



> I did not quite understand that. If it refers to times when you are touching it, how is it that "you can say that a chair has solidity2 even when you are not touching it?"



Take the proposition "the bank is closed on Sundays, and only on Sundays." Is this true on Tuesdays? Sure it is. Similarly, "the object has solidity1 when I am touching it" (which is exactly equivelant to "the object has solidity2") is true even when I am not touching it.

In other words, solidity2 is a shorthand used to simplify things. Instead of saying "the object has solidity1 at t1, t2, t3, t4, . . ." (where t1 and so on are the times when I am touching it), I can merely say "the object has solidity2" - and everything I need is built into my definition of solidity2.

Now as it turns out, solidity2 does other things as well. Solidity2 tells me about what other people report when they touch the object, about how the object interacts with other objects, and so forth. So solidity2 actually incorporates much more than just solidity1, and it is precisely because it synthesizes solidity1 with a great many other concepts that it is very useful.



> That leads me to ask, how is a new mental state generated? You have more mental states now than you had when you were 15 years old; how did this take place?



Describing how a given mental state evolves into subsequent mental states is precisely the role of theories (and thus also of terms/concepts). That is, there are patterns to be found in the sequence of my mental states; when I formulate theories I am identifying these patterns. Presumably, a complete theory would predict my future mental states with as much accuracy as is possible (in a deterministic universe, it would be total accuracy but in a probabilistic one it is not).



> I still can't see the difference between your position and the strict solipsist view in which everything is only taking place in the mind, and therefore all mental states were generated somehow in the mind without any interaction with an external reality.



There are two distinct oppositions to be made:

1. Consciousness vs. Actual Existence: this is where I claim that there is only consciousness and that "actual existence" is meaningless.

2. My neural activity vs. external reality: In my view, both of these are contained within consciousness, for external reality is simply a system of relations that supervenes on my mental states. My neural activity is also just a system of such relations. Moreover, my neural activity is linked with external reality, for it is a part of that reality. But all of this supervenes completely on my mental states.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *No - "author" is indeed built out of mental states. Here's how.
> 
> (...)
> 
> And this has nothing to do with whether I believe either of these propositions, or indeed whether I am cognizant of the relations encapsulated by "author" or "Joyce" or anything else.*



I did not understand how this falsifies that statement of mine, that no assertion can be "correct" or "incorrect" if those relations are pertaining only to the mental states denoted by the terms. What is the meaning of "correct", then?



> "Non-existent" is a tricky word and presupposes a whole lot of things. But surely if a thing is "meaningless" we can't talk about it, or even think about it, meaningfully.



Probably not; but the premise seems to be that "what we can't talk about or think about is non-existent". Can you explain why? To me, it is clear that many things that I can't think about do in fact exist. Most commonplace are other people's minds. 

Your worldview, Aiwendil, takes no account of the phenomenon of will. Of how we want (lack) things, and how we act in an attempt to achieve them, and how we meet reality in this process. "Reality" is most clearly seen in this process as opposing minds; even if we looked at material reality as a "given", there is no physical or scientific reason why a given person should disagree with us or oppose us. 

I don't know how you interpret this thread, for instance. If other minds do not exist, who or what is talking to you? How do the mental states that this thread has (hopefully ) fostered in your mind come into being? 



> In the sense that "Frodo" is a term that might be used in a description of the total sequence of my mental states.



And then if someone says "Frodo was an elf", you can't call it correct (or incorrect) since it would be a description of the total sequence of his mental states; and the same applies to your own notion expressed by the proposition "Frodo was a hobbit". Both are sentences expressing the total sequence of one's mental states. And it is no use to claim the books as witness; for the books do not exist except as mental states, which can (and do) differ among different minds. 

What you can do is to say that "Frodo was an elf" is inconsistent with your own, personal mental states (which are all there is in your worldview); but then you could never learn anything new, and only sort out pre-existing inconsistencies. The question then is, "how did you learn what a hobbit is?" From a description based on the Prologue of FotR? But then how did you learn the meaning of the words used there? And how did you learn English?... It seems that you can't ever learn anything that is not already in your mental states. 



> Goodness: I fear that this may turn out to be meaningless. I should emphasize that I would _like_ it to be meaningful; but I do not base my opinions on what I like but rather on what I think is likely. Nonetheless, I have always maintained some hope that there may be a purely rational derivation for morality. Anything short of a purely rational derivation would, in my opinion, fail to really be "morality" - it would merely be "a morality", that is, someone's opinion.
> 
> As for truth - I suspect that ultimately this is just another term. There is a certain set of extremely basic propositions that simply are true, and all truth-values for more complex propositions follow from these. This seems strange - but I think it has neither more nor fewer problems than any account of the fundamental nature of the universe. For one can always ask "why"; but there is no reason to believe that the question is meaningful.



I don't see any strangeness... it seems quite sensible . I think that the same process is involved in "Goodness"; there are a few extremely basic propositions that simply are "good", and "goodness" flows from these. The ego would explain our _awareness_ of these basic propositions. They can't be derived from morality or logic; they can't be based on material constraints (or they will be deceptive). The only option left is some mysterious agency that explains our knowledge of the basic propositions in logic and morality. For that knowledge is a fact; we take it for granted. 

The ego is a negative theory most of all. It is not material, not absolutely constrained, not absolutely free either... it is easier to know what it is not than to know what it is. 

But negative knowledge of that sort is still knowledge...



> Take the proposition "the bank is closed on Sundays, and only on Sundays." Is this true on Tuesdays? Sure it is. Similarly, "the object has solidity1 when I am touching it" (which is exactly equivelant to "the object has solidity2") is true even when I am not touching it.



Yes, but the question "Is this true on Tuesdays" presupposes that there are such things as "Tuesdays". If we only see Sundays, we can't ever check on that question.

Likewise, solidity2 presupposes "t1, t2, t3, t4..." -- time independent of the observer, as well as actual existence of the solid2 object when no one is touching it.

Of course, being the metaphysical realist, I don't dispute the usefulness of the concept of solidity2; I dispute your use of it, under your premises. Your premises apparently claim that there are only Sundays... 



> Describing how a given mental state evolves into subsequent mental states is precisely the role of theories (and thus also of terms/concepts). That is, there are patterns to be found in the sequence of my mental states; when I formulate theories I am identifying these patterns. Presumably, a complete theory would predict my future mental states with as much accuracy as is possible (in a deterministic universe, it would be total accuracy but in a probabilistic one it is not).



That's one side of it; but another is to ask how a "given mental state" appears in the first place. Or do you think that all that takes place is rearrangement, not creation of new states? A kid of 4 already has the mental states necessary to formulate the Theory of Relativity? And what about a baby of four months? 

How do we acquire the tools to theorize -- as well as the mental states themselves? Are we born with them?

I think we are born with some tools, like the "basic logical propositions" and the awareness of their validity; but most of it comes from that work of "conception", which is individual, creative, and at the same time tied to perception. 



> There are two distinct oppositions to be made:
> 
> 1. Consciousness vs. Actual Existence: this is where I claim that there is only consciousness and that "actual existence" is meaningless.
> 
> 2. My neural activity vs. external reality: In my view, both of these are contained within consciousness, for external reality is simply a system of relations that supervenes on my mental states. My neural activity is also just a system of such relations. Moreover, my neural activity is linked with external reality, for it is a part of that reality. But all of this supervenes completely on my mental states.



I'm not too sure of what you meant by "supervene" to comment on that... can you explain further?


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## Aiwendil2

I think you are still misunderstanding me with regard to several important points.



> I did not understand how this falsifies that statement of mine, that no assertion can be "correct" or "incorrect" if those relations are pertaining only to the mental states denoted by the terms. What is the meaning of "correct", then?



I'm not sure what you mean. There _is_ a simple fact about what mental state occurs at any given time. And thus there are facts about the relations among them. A proposition is true in the case that the claims it makes about these relations are true.

For example, suppose A, B, C, D, and E are mental states and the following sequence occurs: A B D C E B D A B D. There are certain facts here - for example "State B is always followed by State D" and "State B never follows state C". Propositions such as these are propositions about the sequence.

Of course, mental states are quite different; for these letters are themselves structureless, but a mental state is likely to be quite complicated. This allows for far more complex systems of relations among those states. But the principle is the same.



> Probably not; but the premise seems to be that "what we can't talk about or think about is non-existent". Can you explain why? To me, it is clear that many things that I can't think about do in fact exist. Most commonplace are other people's minds.



If you are claiming that a meaningless thing can still exist, that is a proposition. But one cannot make propositions out of meaningless terms - for this renders the proposition meaningless. Asking about whether "a meaningless entity exists" is like asking whether five-sided squares, though meaningless, exist.

If you are claiming that these entities in question are simply things we don't know about, but that are still meaningful, that is something quite different. I agree that these things exist - for example, the distant planet that I used as an example. They exist because they are terms that go into a complete description of my sequence of mental states - that is, my consciousness.



> Your worldview, Aiwendil, takes no account of the phenomenon of will. Of how we want (lack) things, and how we act in an attempt to achieve them, and how we meet reality in this process. "Reality" is most clearly seen in this process as opposing minds; even if we looked at material reality as a "given", there is no physical or scientific reason why a given person should disagree with us or oppose us.



I don't see how any of what you say clashes with my view. I have said almost nothing about the actual contents of a mental state. My will and desires are simply be features of these states, just as are my thoughts, emotions, and sense-data. Nor is there anything in my view that entails that different people ought always to be in agreement. For thoughts, those things by means of which people agree and disagree, are further contents of mental states, concerning the contents of which I have said almost nothing. I expect there will be theories that tell us how thoughts are formulated, but the nature of these theories has nothing to do with my account.



> I don't know how you interpret this thread, for instance. If other minds do not exist, who or what is talking to you? How do the mental states that this thread has (hopefully) fostered in your mind come into being?



I must emphasize that I make no claim to the effect that the world is my conscious creation, or that it proceeds from me, or that in order for something to exist I must have thought about it.

Who is talking to me? You are. You are a term in my theories. You are Eriol, and you are also an example of a human. My theories (and these are fairly basic theories that I am virtually certain are correct) state that humans behave in certain ways. One way in which they behave is that they write down symbols in certain systems; and these symbols are interrelated, and related to the people that write them, and related to a great many other things, in very complicated ways. A deeper explanation invokes other terms, like "brain", "neuron", "synapse", and so on. But none of this is in any way mysterious or different in substance from a non-empiricist account of what is going on.



> And then if someone says "Frodo was an elf", you can't call it correct (or incorrect) since it would be a description of the total sequence of his mental states; and the same applies to your own notion expressed by the proposition "Frodo was a hobbit". Both are sentences expressing the total sequence of one's mental states. And it is no use to claim the books as witness; for the books do not exist except as mental states, which can (and do) differ among different minds.
> 
> What you can do is to say that "Frodo was an elf" is inconsistent with your own, personal mental states (which are all there is in your worldview); but then you could never learn anything new, and only sort out pre-existing inconsistencies. The question then is, "how did you learn what a hobbit is?" From a description based on the Prologue of FotR? But then how did you learn the meaning of the words used there? And how did you learn English?... It seems that you can't ever learn anything that is not already in your mental states.



I can and do say that "Frodo was an Elf" is false. For "Frodo was an Elf" is simply a proposition making certain claims about the relations among my mental states, and the claims that it makes turn out to be false. It makes no difference what another person claims, for "Frodo" is a term in the language of _my_ mental states. I can never use terms that have to do with other people's mental states, because my use of such terms would be meaningless.

It is also a little unfair, I think, to base arguments against my view of things on claims about other consciousnesses, for my view claims that such claims are meaningless. But you seem to be claiming that the term designating the book will differ from mind to mind in such a way that it would be possible for one person's mental states to be correctly described by "Frodo was an Elf" and another by "Frodo was a Hobbit". This is quite strange - for in order for "Frodo was an Elf" to be true, the proposition would have to exist in the context of a world that is radically different from mine. That is, even if I were to make an invalid "other consciousness assumption", it would be extremely hard to imagine a world in which, based on one person's mental states, it was true that Frodo was a Hobbit, while based on anothers it was true that Frodo was an Elf.

As for how I learned English - that is no different in my view than in any realist's view. I learned it by noticing correlations between the sound people made and the way people acted. Of course, it's much more complicated than that, but that's a matter for psychologists and linguists.



> I don't see any strangeness... it seems quite sensible



I'm shocked!!! Have I actually said something that you agree with?



> they can't be based on material constraints (or they will be deceptive).



I have no idea how to interpret this. What precisely are "material constraints"? How will they cause us to be deceived about what propositions are true?

I think it is going about things in the wrong direction to worry about basic truth-values being built somehow out of physical things. Rather, physical things are built out of basic truth-values.



> Yes, but the question "Is this true on Tuesdays" presupposes that there are such things as "Tuesdays". If we only see Sundays, we can't ever check on that question.



But there are Tuesdays. And we do see Tuesdays. Maybe we don't see that the bank is closed on Tuesdays; maybe we don't even see the bank. But on Tuesday, it's true that the bank is closed on Sundays.

Tuesday and Sunday - and likewise the times when I'm touching a chair and the times when I'm not - are terms. They're terms that are related in a very specific way, and that both belong to a "temporal" category. Moreover, they're terms that are used in my theories of how objects behave. It's not as though the chair does not exist when I am not touching it. For "chair" is just a term in my theories, and my theory of chairs may very well involve propositions about a chair at some specific time. That's because all that theories do is describe the patterns found in my mental states - and as long as they achieve that goal, they may employ whatever terms and mechanisms and such that they need to.


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## Aiwendil2

> Or do you think that all that takes place is rearrangement, not creation of new states? A kid of 4 already has the mental states necessary to formulate the Theory of Relativity? And what about a baby of four months?



I think it's a little misleading to talk about the "creation" of new states. There is a sequence of states. So of course there are new states; that is, there are states that occur after some given time that did not occur before that time. But it seems that again you may be confusing the mental states themselves with the terms employed to describe their inter-relations. A baby could not formulate a theory of relativity because a baby doesn't possess sufficient intelligence. There's nothing in any of what I've claimed that says anything whatsoever about intelligence. Nor have I said anything to the effect of "the existence of some relation is contingent upon my awareness of the relation". 

But are the sensory states experienced by the baby the ones that would be predicted by general relativity? Sure they are; even a realist would say that. In other words, it is absurd (in the realist's language) to claim that because the baby doesn't know general relativity, general relativity doesn't apply to the world that governs the baby's sensory states. So it is just as absurd (in my language now) to claim that because the baby doesn't know general relativity, general relativity doesn't describe the baby's sense-data.

So I agree that our understanding of the world is based entirely upon conception. But "our understanding of the world" is not the same as "the world", even in my view. What precisely that difference is I have tried to explain above and in previous posts.



> I'm not too sure of what you meant by "supervene" to comment on that... can you explain further?



The way I understand it, A supervenes on B if an only if all the facts about A are contained in a complete description of B. So thoughts supervene on the mind because a complete description of the mind will include a complete description of the thoughts; thermodynamic properties of a gas supervene on the information about the situation of each individual particle.

So when I say that "all of this" (by which I mean my neural activity and features of the external world) supervene on my mental states, I mean that a complete description of my mental states gives a complete description of all these things. In other words, any meaningful proposition that can be made about anything (which includes my neural activity as well as the external world) is necessarily translatable into a proposition about my mental states.

The realist claim, as I understand it, is that while my own terms may supervene on my mental states, there is some "actual" object that does not supervene on my mental states.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *Of course, mental states are quite different; for these letters are themselves structureless, but a mental state is likely to be quite complicated. This allows for far more complex systems of relations among those states. But the principle is the same.*



It seems them that "correct", according to that explanation, pertains only ot the internal consistency between the propositions and the terms; so that the proposition "B is followed by D" is consistent with the states observed. But then there is no way in which this "correctness" can be extended to other minds. As your explanation of the Frodo question shows, "Frodo is an elf" is inconsistent with _your_ states; it could be consistent with the speaker's states. Even if we disregard the problems of language, which are more important than we think (at least I think so), there is such a thing as madness. And there is no criterion to distinguish madness from sanity in your words; at least I see none. 

What I call "problems of language" is the fact that no word has exactly the same meaning for two persons; not even "Frodo", or "elf". It is filled with nuances and undertones from the personal experiences of the persons. The _concept_ denoted by the two words may even be similar, but it will never be exactly the same either; for it is constructed by each individual, and not received unchanged.

As for the difference between madness and sanity, ordinary usage ascribes it to shared perception; so that if you insist on the claim that you see rainbows at night, every night, people will call you "mad" because your perception and theirs is inconsistent. But if there is no contact between your mental states and other people's, there is no way to distinguish madness from sanity. And it is important to distinguish those two things. For instance, you have the concept of "mad" in your own mind as a useful term. You apply it to a given set of people. You see that this given set not only disagrees with you in their interpretation of reality, but also that it differs in performance. (The problem of will...). If you try to cross a street, you look at the lights and wait for the cars to stop. If you see one of the persons classified by you as "mad" trying to cross the same street without these basic measures, you also see that there is great danger in that. 

To make a long story short: it is important to be sane (which can be defined as "performing efficiently"); and I don't see how your view can distinguish madness from sanity.



> are claiming that a meaningless thing can still exist, that is a proposition. But one cannot make propositions out of meaningless terms - for this renders the proposition meaningless. Asking about whether "a meaningless entity exists" is like asking whether five-sided squares, though meaningless, exist.



But "meaningless" is not a meaningless term . So its presence in a proposition does not render the proposition meaningless. "Meaningless entities exist" is a valid proposition, therefore; each of the terms is meaningful. 

This means that "meaningless entities" are not quite as five-sided squares; especially because meaning is given by the mind, it is not intrinsic to the entity itself. A tree is quite meaningless for a baby with 10 days of age; but it still exists. 

A meaningless entity is simply an entity which has not been conceptualized by the mind, yet. The universality of the mind's power of conceptualization is also a strong indicator of the transcendental ego... how to account to our ability to conceptualize atoms and planets and genocide if the mind is a result of material forces in the brain? 

But as regards "meaningless entities", they can be conceptualized in their species; that's what we are doing now. We can't, of course, conceptualize an individual meaningless thing without taking it out of the set of "meaningless entities". But this is quite common in regard to our senses; why can't we make the analogy to the mind? A bacteria is "invisible"; we can only see it when we have the proper technology. Then, it becomes "visible". But it existed before we saw it, and it will exist afterwards. The same happens with meaningless things. They are out of the reach of the mind; but they can be reached in the future, perhaps, or by other minds, unlike ours. Who knows? What is clear is that we can't dismiss their existence on the grounds of their 'meaninglessness'. Note the "other minds" clause . I can state quite certainly that what I called the "unrepresented" above will never be represented in our minds; of course, I'm not sure that "represented" and "meaningful" are synonyms, but we can work based on that assumption. Even so, the "unrepresented" _can_ be represented in other kinds of minds, I believe. For the limitation is based on that sequence of sense-perception-conception, which is quite particular to our (human) mode of thinking.



> I must emphasize that I make no claim to the effect that the world is my conscious creation, or that it proceeds from me, or that in order for something to exist I must have thought about it.



If I understood correctly, you claim that all meaningful operations in your own mind are based solely on the mental states, without regard for anything "outside" it. And this is why I am focusing on the creation, generation, addition, of mental states to your collection of mental states. If a "meaningful operation" needs a set of mental states, how does this set get into place? I am Eriol, you said. You formed the concept/mental state named by the term "Eriol" through our discussions here; so that now, in your mind, the term "Eriol" denotes that mental state, which corresponds mostly to theoretical speculations about reality. You believe that I am a human, that I have two eyes and two arms, etc., based on prior relationships between "theoretical speculations" and the source of those entities in the world, which you equate with "humans"; that relationship between "theoretical speculations" and "humans" is not something that you took or perceived in the course of this thread, it was with you prior to the thread. A lot of the concepts linked to the term "Eriol" used in the sense of myself (not the mariner ) in your mind are prior concepts like these of "humanness". But there were new concepts, or at least new expositions of old concepts, involved. 

In my own case, "Aiwendil" is no longer another name for Radagast, only . There were many concepts exposed in your posts that were known by myself, but also many others that were not; and quite surely (even though we disagree on many things ) there was a change in my own mental states pertaining to these questions of ontology and epistemology in the course of this thread. Even if none of us ever convinces the other, we will both have grown in our own views through the confrontation with the opposite view; and of course there is no intrinsic limitation for a change of mind. So that at least in theory one of us can leave this thread with a completely different set of mental states; or with a rearranged relationship between the mental states already there. But if all of the input that comes from you regarding this is just a mental state *which ultimately proceeds from my own mind*, then a "change of mind" is really a change between two equivalent propositions. For I don't think either of us will be able to show a full contradiction in the other's position. So the "basic principles of truth" can't help us here. What is keeping you from agreeing with me, or me with agreeing with you, then? It becomes a matter of taste. Our own behavior in this thread falsifies that, somehow; we are both arguing "as if" it is NOT a matter of taste. We are trying to prove, to give reasons, to argue for a given position. That's not the way to solve matters of taste. 

I think the sentence in bold is the Achilles' heel. Since you ascribe meaning only to your mental states, you circumscribe meaning to your own mind, as if it generated meaning independently of other things. Thoughts supervene on the mind; a complete description of the mind will describe all thoughts, or so you said. But then the question of origin of the mind comes back. How did your own mind grow? You once had no concept except "mom"; and before that, in the womb, you lacked even that concept. What is the fuel behind the mind's fire? How can it work without external input? A complete description of your mind would describe your thoughts at 1 month old; a complete description of your mind would describe your thoughts today. But how can a complete description of your mind explain the change between the two descriptions? Don't we need other entities to explain that change? And by invoking other entities, we break the barrier between the mind and everything else... and we are left with "actual existence" to explain.


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## Eriol

> As for how I learned English - that is no different in my view than in any realist's view. I learned it by noticing correlations between the sound people made and the way people acted. Of course, it's much more complicated than that, but that's a matter for psychologists and linguists.



I think it is a matter for us, too . English is not a collection of sounds... no language is. There are intrinsic relationships between words that are quite outside the realm of inter-human communication; and the fact that you are thinking in English and I am thinking in Portuguese (most of the time  ) certainly has consequences for the results of our thinking. The meaning in your mental states must, forcibly, be reflected in a linguistic meaning; and both meanings are constructed, created, by you. Language as a means of communication is something that appears a bit later in the development of a mind... we can drop Language if you wish, though.



> I'm shocked!!! Have I actually said something that you agree with?



 If we combed our posts we'd find a lot of these... perhaps I should make a point of agreeing emphatically from now on.



> I have no idea how to interpret this. What precisely are "material constraints"? How will they cause us to be deceived about what propositions are true?



If the "basic principles of truth" are a consequence of something -- anything -- then your basic principles of truth and mine can be different. And therefore they are not "basic principles of truth" anymore. If an alien said that A = non-A, we'd not be able to disprove him. If we said that basic principles of truth disproved him, he'd reply, "what you call basic principles of truth are a result of the clash of molecules inside your organisms; they are meaningless for me". 

It is only by taking the basic principles of truth outside causality -- by assuming they are not only true but absolutely true and eternally true and free from any constraints -- that we can believe in them as true.



> I think it is going about things in the wrong direction to worry about basic truth-values being built somehow out of physical things. Rather, physical things are built out of basic truth-values.



But the basic truth-values are small in number and unchangeable. How can we then enlarge our knowledge of physical things without enlarging the truth-values themselves? Data is needed. But data is not a truth-value, and not a mental state; or at least it is something unlike a mental state before the mind builds a new mental state based on the data. 



> Moreover, they're terms that are used in my theories of how objects behave. It's not as though the chair does not exist when I am not touching it. For "chair" is just a term in my theories, and my theory of chairs may very well involve propositions about a chair at some specific time. That's because all that theories do is describe the patterns found in my mental states - and as long as they achieve that goal, they may employ whatever terms and mechanisms and such that they need to.



Yes, your theory of chairs involves solidity2, and time; two concepts. Two mental states. But if mental states are not linked to something else, both solidity2 and time -- concepts which are not related to perception -- become articles of faith. They become ways that the mind uses to simplify the world and make it comprehensible; but they also lose their authority in that process, so that anyone can claim that the chair lacks solidity2 and there will be no way for your mind to verify or falsify that hypothesis. 

In a way this is the problem of madness x sanity. As I see it, your view can't falsify or verify claims like that. But your mind still is what people would call "sane" (hopefully ); when it is not busy speculating on reality, it acts "as if" there was reality, and sanity. That is an important question. If you act as if something was true, and can't disprove it, you are in fact assuming that it is true. We can't prove solidity2, but we can and do act as if it were true. And therefore there is no meaningful difference between the two statements, "I behave as if solidity2 is true" and "solidity2 is true". But this reasoning applies to reality, and the ego, and ethics, and everything else. 



> So I agree that our understanding of the world is based entirely upon conception. But "our understanding of the world" is not the same as "the world", even in my view. What precisely that difference is I have tried to explain above and in previous posts.



What I don't understand yet is the effect that "the world" has upon "your understanding of the world". You erected a barrier of meaning, and decided that (1) only meaningful things would be of interest; and then you decided that (2) "meaningful things" are mental states, and mental states only. I agree with the last step, but not with the first; for it entails, as I see it, a closed circle of meaning, in which no new things may be added. And that is palpably false. 

I could probably turn (1) upside down, and say that things are meaningful _because_ they are interesting. And "interest" -- the inclination of the will towards something, of the intellect towards something -- is something without a clear place in your view. There is no clear path from the description of your own mind at 10 years old to the description of your own mind today without invoking "interest"; the process by which certain not-yet-conceived notions were conceived throughout that time; and how this work of conception was the result of an interaction between your mental states and "something else", which I call -- reality.


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## Aiwendil2

> It seems them that "correct", according to that explanation, pertains only ot the internal consistency between the propositions and the terms; so that the proposition "B is followed by D" is consistent with the states observed.



Yes, a statement is correct if and only if it coheres with a certain set of propositions. And that set is the set of basic truths that I mentioned.



> But then there is no way in which this "correctness" can be extended to other minds. As your explanation of the Frodo question shows, "Frodo is an elf" is inconsistent with your states; it could be consistent with the speaker's states.



You're making the same mistake here as you did in your previous post - and I probably should have objected more strongly then. That is, you are criticizing my view from the assumption othat there are other consciousnesses. But my view denies that it is meaningful to talk about other consciousnesses. Again, it would be a pretty strange world in which "Frodo was an Elf" is consistent with one's mental states. But even supposing that someone suffered from a perfectly consistent and incredibly complex delusion such that that person believed that "Frodo was an Elf", this would present no problem. The proposition "Frodo was an Elf", which only has meaning in my own mind, is still false.

Regarding the problem of language: I agree with you. As a matter of fact, this problem is one of the primary motivations for my view of meaning. Remember, I think that meaning is private. That is, words do not have meaning as such; only thoughts have meaning. Actually, only _my_ thoughts have meaning to me. The problem of language is a crippling one if one wants to claim that meaning is inter-subjective. But I do not make that claim. I _do_ claim that language has a sort of potential meaning - that is, it is a feature of the world that (according to my theories) tends to produce meaning for me under certain circumstances.



> To make a long story short: it is important to be sane (which can be defined as "performing efficiently"); and I don't see how your view can distinguish madness from sanity.



I'm not sure what exactly the problem is. But let me discuss the sanity of others and my own sanity separately. You provided a good account of what it means to say that some other person is sane or insane. That is, I observe that the great majority of people behave in certain ways and that a few people behave in radically different ways. I call the former "sane" and the latter "insane". There are, in fact, a great deal of further distinctions that can be made, and there are theories describing how sane and insane people will act in various circumstances, and there are theories describing how it comes about that some people are sane and some are not.

As for my own sanity. First of all, there are a large number of hypothetical worlds in which I could be mentally ill and aware that I am mentally ill. If I notice that I behave in strange ways, or that I frequently encounter hallucinatory objects, or any number of other things, I may conclude that I am mentally ill, for it need not be the case that all of my rational capacity is gone. There is also a large category of cases in which I am psychotic and unaware of it, but in which, given proper theories (even if I don't _know_ these theories) it would be true to say that I am insane. 
But it sounds like what you are talking about is a kind of total madness - that is, one in which my mental states are such that it would be true to say that "Frodo is an Elf". I would claim that such a world is not one in which I am insane; rather it is one in which Frodo is an Elf. For I can only look at such a world and say that the proposition that Frodo is an Elf is false if I do so from an invalid viewpoint. I would be discussing this hypothetical world but using the truth-values associated with my world.



> But "meaningless" is not a meaningless term. So its presence in a proposition does not render the proposition meaningless. "Meaningless entities exist" is a valid proposition, therefore; each of the terms is meaningful. This means that "meaningless entities" are not quite as five-sided squares; especially because meaning is given by the mind, it is not intrinsic to the entity itself. A tree is quite meaningless for a baby with 10 days of age; but it still exists.



First of all, I do not claim that "meaningless" is a meaningless term, but rather that "meaningless entity" is a meaningless term.

But I think we are suffering from some confusion over the word "meaningless" here. For you say that "a meaningless entity is simply an entity which has not been conceptualized by the mind, yet." This is not what I have had in mind. A term is meaningless, I think, if it cannot be translated into primitive terms concerning mental states. And in such a case it is not really a term; we ought to call these pseudo-terms. But I think that an object that has not yet been conceptualized (or even one that never is conceptualized) can still be meaningful. For the term, whether I know it or not, can be translated into primitive terms concerning my mental states.



> The universality of the mind's power of conceptualization is also a strong indicator of the transcendental ego... how to account to our ability to conceptualize atoms and planets and genocide if the mind is a result of material forces in the brain?



Again, I don't see what the problem is. We observe the behavior of matter, we conduct experiments, and we compute a formalism that describes the regularities we find. "Atom" is a term employed in this formalism. We look at the sky and construct a formalism that describes the regularities we find there. "Planet" is a term in that formalism. We look at human behavior and construct a formalism that describe the regularities we find there. "Genocide" is a term in that formalism.

You seem to be claiming that some step in these processes could not be carried out by means of the manipulation of information. But I don't see how that could be. A computer could, given a certain set of data, analyze the regularities found therein and compute a formalism that describes them.

Yes, a bacterium existed before we saw it - because the mental states that I experienced before I saw the bacterium followed the patterns that correspond to that bacterium existing. That is, the correct theory to describe those mental states would be one that involved the term "bacterium". _And what the correct theory is has nothing to do with what theories I have formulated_.



> If I understood correctly, you claim that all meaningful operations in your own mind are based solely on the mental states, without regard for anything "outside" it. And this is why I am focusing on the creation, generation, addition, of mental states to your collection of mental states. If a "meaningful operation" needs a set of mental states, how does this set get into place?



The set of mental states simply is the universe. It's fundamental. It's the set of primitive "true propositions". All this is in exact analogy to the scientific realist's view that the events in the universe are simply fundamental. And in just the same way that the realist claims that we develop physical laws to describe the patterns found in the events in the universe, I claim that I develop laws to describe the patterns found in my mental states.

But of course if what you want is an explanation for the sequence of mental states based on things like physical laws, then that's exactly the thing that I think theories are supposed to give you.



> A lot of the concepts linked to the term "Eriol" used in the sense of myself (not the mariner ) in your mind are prior concepts like these of "humanness". But there were new concepts, or at least new expositions of old concepts, involved.



Yes. That is, there are concepts that I had not formulated before but that I have now formulated. This is only a change in my knowledge concerning the relations among my mental states; it's not a change in the nature of those relations themselves.



> So that at least in theory one of us can leave this thread with a completely different set of mental states; or with a rearranged relationship between the mental states already there.



Yes, naturally. This sequence of mental states will be among the things predicted by a complete theory.

Perhaps I haven't sufficiently defined my use of "mental state". By "mental state" I mean all the facts about my consciousness at some particular time. (It might seem, by the way, that this puts "time" on an entirely different plane from other concepts, such as "space", in my theory, but I don't think that's the case - time is simply one dimension in the structure of my consciousness, and the division of my consciousness into mental states is done simply for convenience.) A mental state is not something I develop and then take with me; a mental state occurs and then that unique state is gone.



> But if all of the input that comes from you regarding this is just a mental state which ultimately proceeds from my own mind, then a "change of mind" is really a change between two equivalent propositions.



My mental states proceed from your mind only insofar as your mind is a term in the theories that correctly describe my mental states. 

But I'm not sure what you mean by the last part of the sentence. What two propositions are equivelant? Certainly "we have transcendental egos and ‘actual existence' is meaningful" is not equivelant to "we do not have transcendental egos and ‘actual existence' is not meaningful".


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## Aiwendil2

> How did your own mind grow? You once had no concept except "mom"; and before that, in the womb, you lacked even that concept.



Again, if you are asking for an account of the precise mechanisms by which the mind develops and concepts are formed, that will be the job of theories. These theories could be anything, though of course in actual fact we have good reason to think they will be something like our psychological and neurological theories.



> A complete description of your mind would describe your thoughts at 1 month old; a complete description of your mind would describe your thoughts today. But how can a complete description of your mind explain the change between the two descriptions?



It can explain it by setting out the initial conditions and the physical laws and showing that these logically entail (or probabilistically entail) the final conditions - just as with any explanation of anything, whether we are realists or empiricists. We certainly don't need unrepresentable entities to explain the change; in fact unrepresentable entities could _never_ explain anything, since "unrepresentable entity" is a meaningless contradiction. But if what you mean by "other entities" is something other than "unrepresentable entities", then your claim that these are outside the mind is not justified.



> The meaning in your mental states must, forcibly, be reflected in a linguistic meaning; and both meanings are constructed, created, by you. Language as a means of communication is something that appears a bit later in the development of a mind...



Sure. As with all my examples, my account of how I learned English was vastly oversimplified. I don't think my account was quite false, either - learning English undeniably does have something to do with observing people uttering sounds in certain situations.



> If the "basic principles of truth" are a consequence of something -- anything -- then your basic principles of truth and mine can be different.



I wasn't talking about basic _principles_ of truth - I was talking about a fundamental set of true propositions. And that set of propositions is independent of what anyone believes about them. And again I think you are wrong in criticizing my view by invoking other consciousnesses. We cannot compare propositions in one consciousness with those in another, for meaning is a fundamentally private thing.



> But the basic truth-values are small in number and unchangeable.



I fear you may not be in such emphatic agreement with me on the matter of these primitive truths as I thought. I do not think the number of basic truth-values is small; it would need to be quite large. For all true propositions would necessarily be derived from them. I think that facts about sense-data, for example, are included among the fundamentally true propositions.



> Yes, your theory of chairs involves solidity2, and time; two concepts. Two mental states.



I think I may indeed have failed to define "mental state" very well. It is certainly not a synonym for "concept". A mental state is the state of my consciousness at some time. A concept, being a relation among mental states, must necessarily be built out of multiple mental states.



> But if mental states are not linked to something else, both solidity2 and time -- concepts which are not related to perception -- become articles of faith.



But solidity2 and time _are_ related to perception. And they are only meaningful insofar as they are related to perception. In our simplistic model of the theory, the claim that "the chair has solidity2" means "the chair has solidity1 at all times when I am touching it" _and nothing more_. Claims about the properties of the chair at some time when I am not touching it are only meaningful insofar as they are claims (possibly very complex ones) about my perceptions/mental states. Again, these are only formal mechanisms used to describe mental states. And solidity2 and time cannot possibly require faith, for they are just arbitrary terms that I use in that formalism. The formalism is correct if it produces the correct descriptions of my consciousness; it is incorrect if it does not, _and that is all there is to be said about it_.



> so that anyone can claim that the chair lacks solidity2 and there will be no way for your mind to verify or falsify that hypothesis.



Sure there will be. If every time I touch the chair it has solidity1, then it has solidity2. It's as simple as that.

Or, in the more complicated (and more accurate) picture wherein solidity2 also involves theories about how other people act when they touch the chair, how the chair interacts with other objects, and so on, then the claim that the chair lacks solidity2 will be true if and only if the theoretical framework plus the proposition that the chair lacks solidity2 yields the correct predictions concerning my mental states.

Perhaps what we are coming up against is the fact that there seem to be infinitely many theories that can describe any particular sequence of mental states. So, for instance, my theory could say "the chair has solidity2" or it could say "the chair has solidity2 whenever any other object is within a hundred feet of it" or it could say "the chair is not solid, but every time someone touches it it generates a force field at the point where it is touched". As long as there is no way of empirically distinguishing between these theories, I think that they all have exactly the same meaning. That is, if you were to translate all the theoretical terms down into sense-data, they would look exacty the same. It is easy to see, for example, that the first claim and the second claim mean the same thing, in the simplistic model of the theory. For "the chair has solidity2" is equivelant to "the chair has solidity1 whenever I am touching it"; and from the second claim, "the chair has solidity2 whenever any other object is within a hundred feet of it" and the claim "I must be within one hundred feet of the chair in order to touch it", we can logically derive "the chair has solidity1 whenever I am touching it".



> when it is not busy speculating on reality, it acts "as if" there was reality, and sanity. That is an important question. If you act as if something was true, and can't disprove it, you are in fact assuming that it is true. We can't prove solidity2, but we can and do act as if it were true.



If you mean that I act as if my theories were true, then yes, I do. If you mean that I act as if there is some property called "actual existence" that has nothing to do with my mental states, then I don't. I could not possibly do that, because even if this "actual existence" were somehow meaningful (which would require a theory of meaning other than my own) it would be epistemically inaccessible to me.



> What I don't understand yet is the effect that "the world" has upon "your understanding of the world".



My understanding of the world is simply a feature of the world.



> You erected a barrier of meaning, and decided that (1) only meaningful things would be of interest; and then you decided that (2) "meaningful things" are mental states, and mental states only. I agree with the last step, but not with the first; for it entails, as I see it, a closed circle of meaning, in which no new things may be added. And that is palpably false.





> There is no clear path from the description of your own mind at 10 years old to the description of your own mind today without invoking "interest"; the process by which certain not- yet-conceived notions were conceived throughout that time



I think that this comes back to the confusion we had over the definition of "meaningful" above, and all I have to say on that matter was said there.


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## Eriol

> _Originally posted by Aiwendil2 _
> *Remember, I think that meaning is private. That is, words do not have meaning as such; only thoughts have meaning. Actually, only my thoughts have meaning to me. *



I agree with that; though I would have stated it differently. Certainly words can have some proto-meaning, since when I use a word I use it to signify the thought behind it, and you, the reader of the word, attach to it another thought which is probably related -- somehow -- to my own thought. But indeed only thoughts have "full meaning" -- and only my thoughts have full meaning to me. 



> A term is meaningless, I think, if it cannot be translated into primitive terms concerning mental states. And in such a case it is not really a term; we ought to call these pseudo-terms. But I think that an object that has not yet been conceptualized (or even one that never is conceptualized) can still be meaningful. For the term, whether I know it or not, can be translated into primitive terms concerning my mental states.



I like that -- _proto-terms_. I can build a picture in which a term is deduced from the relationship between a given proto-term and other terms; it is as if this proto-term had "come of age". And then we may say we have _understood_ a concept; we in fact have re-created it in ourselves. But the usage of "term" can be confusing. Let me see if I got you right; refer back to the example of the tree and the 10-days old baby. There are two ways to look at it, "from the outside" (with your own, present consciousness) or "from the inside" (trying to put oneself in the baby's shoes). 

From the outside, you see a being who has some relationship with an entity (the tree) without reaching knowledge or understanding about it. Does your worldview acknowledge the possibility of a being (as the baby) achieving knowledge or understanding? It's not too clear for me. I suppose these two terms, "knowledge" and "understanding" are quite defined in your own mind; I don't know how you relate to its usage in relationship to other beings.

From the inside, the baby (which, being human, is a "machine to achieve understanding/knowledge"; unless your view is truly solipsist) is related to the tree through his senses. He can smell the bark, identify colors (probably; I'm not sure about the color vision of babies at so early an age), touch the surface of the tree, etc. What he can't do yet is to develop the concept of "tree". He barely (if even) manages to unify his sensations in one single perception, to associate colors + smell + touch in a single concept. Later in his life he will surely be able to do so; but still he'll not have developed the concept of "tree". For that to happen he has to meet several different trees, and to somehow abstract the common properties of them all. He will have reached only the stage of identifying _that_ tree as a coherent object, limited in space and (possibly) time. 

It is only when he develops the "full concept" of tree that he will be able to, for instance, look at a Saguaro cactus (which he had never seen before) and say that it is "not quite" a tree, while an oak (which he also had never seen before) will be easily considered "a tree". He needs no knowledge of Plant biology to say that; he will have achieved a working concept of "tree", which of course will differ among children in regard to their cultures... a Brazilian child will probably draw a different object when asked to draw a "tree", compared to an American one, or a Russian one... but they will still be able to agree on what is a tree, what is not a tree, and what is "almost" a tree. 

Is that account mostly correct in your opinion?



> You seem to be claiming that some step in these processes could not be carried out by means of the manipulation of information. But I don't see how that could be. A computer could, given a certain set of data, analyze the regularities found therein and compute a formalism that describes them.



Well, yes. I'm claiming that. A computer only sees 0s and 1s, right? How can a computer "analyze" the regularities in a given set of data without a program to guide him? How can he then _write a program_ that describes it -- for the formalism that describes these regularities is very much like a program, as I see it.

I'm a bit out of my depth here as regards computer science. Perhaps my description is over-simplistic... but I never heard of a computer which could formulate theories, as you put it. 

I think the use of "mental states" is a bit clearer now, thanks.



> But I'm not sure what you mean by the last part of the sentence. What two propositions are equivelant? Certainly "we have transcendental egos and ‘actual existence' is meaningful" is not equivelant to "we do not have transcendental egos and ‘actual existence' is not meaningful".



They are not equivalent in content, but they are equivalent in validity if "validity" is only a word descriptive of "internal consistency among mental states"; especially if a mental state is something so fleeting as what you have defined it to be. I'm a bit confused about that, too; the "fleetingness" of a mental state, in regard to the "basic principles of truth", makes it hard for me to grasp what exactly it means for you to verify or falsify a given theory; a perhaps more exact wording would be that I can't see how you can trust your own validation process to be trustworthy both in the past and in the future. 



> But if what you mean by "other entities" is something other than "unrepresentable entities", then your claim that these are outside the mind is not justified.



They were outside the mind, once; or at least they outside the reach of the mind. As the baby example explores. If they can be reached by the mind as the mind develops (changes) in time, the simplest way to account for that (Occam's razor) is to assume that the mind has contacted an external object. Without that assumption, it is very hard to explain why I am thinking about what you just said _now_, and not one day ago or one year ago. And this goes for every concept. "Learning" becomes a very hard-to-explain process... and a bit random, apparently.



> I think that facts about sense-data, for example, are included among the fundamentally true propositions.



That is the old Socratic discussion about the difference between the true and the apparently true; and the consensus among philosophers, I think, is that sense-data are not apodictically true. Even if we have to base our knowledge in them (and I agree with that), we can't regard them in the same basis as the principle of identity, of non-contradiction, the perception of time and space, and other concepts which are the "basic principles of truth" for me. 

How would you account for optical illusions, mistakes, etc.? 



> Sure there will be. If every time I touch the chair it has solidity1, then it has solidity2. It's as simple as that.
> 
> Or, in the more complicated (and more accurate) picture wherein solidity2 also involves theories about how other people act when they touch the chair, how the chair interacts with other objects, and so on, then the claim that the chair lacks solidity2 will be true if and only if the theoretical framework plus the proposition that the chair lacks solidity2 yields the correct predictions concerning my mental states.



That is clear; but the sentence "If every time I touch the chair it has solidity1, then it has solidity2" can either be (1) tautological or (2) an article of faith about the state of the chair at a moment in which you have no access at all to it. In neither option it has the strength of solidity1 alone; and as soon as we move the hand from the chair, we lose that. From a purely solipsist point of view, that is; not invoking the experiences of other consciousnesses. 



> My understanding of the world is simply a feature of the world.



And what is "the world", then? It is not your understanding of it, and yet it lacks "actual existence". I can agree with both propositions, but could you explain further then what is the world?


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## Aiwendil2

> I agree with that; though I would have stated it differently. Certainly words can have some proto-meaning, since when I use a word I use it to signify the thought behind it, and you, the reader of the word, attach to it another thought which is probably related -- somehow -- to my own thought. But indeed only thoughts have "full meaning" -- and only my thoughts have full meaning to me.



I agree. Words, I would say, have a kind of potential meaning in relation to some mind; but (in a non-solipsistic view) they can have different potential meaning in relation to different minds.



> There are two ways to look at it, "from the outside" (with your own, present consciousness) or "from the inside" (trying to put oneself in the baby's shoes).



Yes, there are these two ways. But I think that the former, "from the outside", though useful in certain respects, is really an invalid way that will give rise to contradictions. For if indeed meaning and such things have to do with consciousness, then one cannot assume two consciousnesses simultaneously. If I try to pretend that another is conscious, but still analyze things from my own point of view, then in my fictitious world I have access to _two_ sequences of mental states out of which to build meaningful propositions. And, solipsist or not, no one has access to two consciousnesses and therefore the propositions built out of both consciousnesses could never exist.



> Does your worldview acknowledge the possibility of a being (as the baby) achieving knowledge or understanding? It's not too clear for me. I suppose these two terms, "knowledge" and "understanding" are quite defined in your own mind; I don't know how you relate to its usage in relationship to other beings.



Yes, I do acknowledge the possibility of another being achieving knowledge. In my view, another's knowledge is simply another object, another term (or system of terms). There are theories to describe how people gain this thing called "knowledge" as well as theories that describe the way people act in terms of (among other things) what sort of knowledge they have.



> Is that account mostly correct in your opinion?



Emphatically yes. We seem to be in agreement to a rather surprising degree.



> I'm a bit out of my depth here as regards computer science. Perhaps my description is over-simplistic... but I never heard of a computer which could formulate theories, as you put it.



I think that perhaps the mistake you are making here (and I think it is a mistake that most anti-reductionists make) is to assume that the physicalist view is more simplistic than it is. I am certainly not claiming that the human mind/brain is anything other than an _incredibly_ complex system, far more complex than any computer that has yet been built. But all the basic functions of the brain can be performed by computers, if not with the same subtlety and complexity as by the brain.

For example, graphing calculators have a "linear regression" function; one puts in a list of points in cartesian space and the calculator comes up with the equation of a line that is the best fit for the data. A calculator could easily be programmed to analyze the data linearly, quadratically, trigonometrically, etc., and determine which of these types of function yields the best fit, then determine the precise form of the equation. If the data put in does indeed follow some pattern, then the calculator would be able to predict with fair success what further data in this set might exist. This is not unlike the human ability to observe sense-data and formulate as good a theory as possible to describe the data, and to predict future data.

Part of your objection seems to be that computers must be programmed for some specific process or processes whereas humans seem to be able to generate new programs. But I think that you are exaggerating both sides of this argument. Humans do generate new programs, yes, but not from scratch. For as you have said, we seem to come into the world with certain basic principles of logic and rational analysis built in. 

And as for computers - I gave, long ago, the example of a computer that plays abstract strategy games that, when given the rules of some new game, analyzes it and formulates a "good strategy for game x" program; it stores these programs and selects whichever one it needs based on which game it is currently playing. One could imagine a further refinement whereby the computer cross-analyzes, for example, "good strategy for game x" with "good strategy for game y" to see whether any principles formulated for one game could be translated into principles that will improve strategy for the other game. Another refinement could be the introduction of categories, so that the computer recognizes which games are similar (and this could be based both upon the rules of the game and the principles of good strategy formulated for it) and puts them into groups; then it can develop "good strategy for category A" program which synthesizes some of the principles found in the "good strategy" programs for the relevant games. This list would then make easier the task of writing a strategy program for a game once it is recognized as a category A game. There could be a refinement that introduced a meta-strategy program that the computer could formulate, which would contain information concerning how to most efficiently analyze a game in order to write the strategy program.

I have gone on for some length about this, but I have done so in order to illustrate a point. With only a relatively few refinements, the computer has become quite a complex thing, capable of performing quite a few conceptual tasks and formulating theories much like humans do. It is still far from being as complex as the brain. But add not just a few refinements but rather thousands or millions, and you will have a system capable of dealing with a bewildering variety of situations and, more importantly, capable of formulating theories to account for any data provided to it. 



> I'm a bit confused about that, too; the "fleetingness" of a mental state, in regard to the "basic principles of truth", makes it hard for me to grasp what exactly it means for you to verify or falsify a given theory; a perhaps more exact wording would be that I can't see how you can trust your own validation process to be trustworthy both in the past and in the future.



I think you are referring to the problem of confirmation. How can a theory be confirmed - that is, how can we know that it will be true in the future or even that it is likely to be true in the future? My view does not solve that problem, but neither does it introduce it. The problem of confirmation (number 5 in my list from earlier) is a serious one whether one is a realist or not.


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## Aiwendil2

> They were outside the mind, once; or at least they outside the reach of the mind.



That is a critical distinction. A thing can certainly be meaningful and yet outside the "reach of the mind" - that is, outside one's understanding. But it can still be inside the mind (or rather, it can supervene on the mind). For example, the concept of a tree is outside the baby's understanding. But if the baby looks at the tree he will experience certain sense-data; if he moves a little and looks at it from a different angle, he will experience slightly different sense-data; if he touches it he will experience certain tactile sense-data; and so on. And all of these sense-data will follow a certain pattern, the pattern that you and I refer to by means of the term "tree". The baby does not recognize the pattern in his own sense-data, but that does not mean it is not there. And the baby does not refer to the pattern as a "tree", but that does not mean that the term "tree" is meaningless.



> If they can be reached by the mind as the mind develops (changes) in time, the simplest way to account for that (Occam's razor) is to assume that the mind has contacted an external object.



You seem here to be dissatisfied with my naming of mental states as "fundamental". But one cannot escape the fundamental. I say there is no "external object" (if by that you mean something with "actual existence" in the realist's sense). There are only mental states. You complain that we need something to explain why these mental states exist, so you posit something external to mental states. But the game can be played all the way down. To the realist who claims that there is a world with "actual existence" that follows certain physical laws and that those laws are what explain the existence of my mental states, I can say: how do you explain the existence of those physical laws and those external objects? And to the theologist who claims that these things were created by God I can say: how do you explain the existence of God? And to the mythologist who claims that God is the creation of some earlier God or some primordial state, I can say: how do you explain the existence of that primordial state?

Each one will insist that at his step we can stop; his answer is _the_ answer, the fundamental answer, which requires no explanation. But this claim is empty in all cases, for there is no reason that any one of these things should be granted the status of the "fundamental" while all the earlier steps are denied that status. So I say that we ought to accept the simplest possible account, with the least meaningless metaphysical baggage; and the simplest possible account is that my mental states are fundamental.

Or, I may have misunderstood you entirely. Perhaps by "external object" you were not insisting upon something outside mental states, something with the mysterious property of actual existence. For I do indeed attribute (to take an example) the changes in my mental state brought about by this discussion to what might be called an "external object" (i.e., external to my person but not to my consciousness) - you. And similarly, the changes in the baby's awareness are brought about by an external object - the tree. But the point of my theory is that the tree is _just that_. It is just the thing that describes the changes in the baby's consciousness; it is just a name for a certain aspect of the pattern of the baby's mental states.



> Even if we have to base our knowledge in them (and I agree with that), we can't regard them in the same basis as the principle of identity, of non-contradiction, the perception of time and space, and other concepts which are the "basic principles of truth" for me.



Well, I agree that the sense-data are not in the same class as the laws of logic. And the truth-values of the basic propositions are not the same as the truth-values of the laws of logic. But I think that the acceptance of sense-data is a real problem only for the true anti-solipsist (and therefore not for me). For if one means to try to take an external view of things, in which meaning is independent of consciousness, then one runs into the problem that sense-data cannot be shared _as such_. I do not run into this problem, for if meaning is private there is no need for sense-data to be shared.



> How would you account for optical illusions, mistakes, etc.?



Remember that there is in my view a distinction to be drawn between sense-data and objects (i.e., concepts). If I experience an optical illusion, it is _true_ that I am experiencing certain sense-data; and this is all required of the basic truths I am claiming. In other words, when I see the illusion, it is true that I am seeing the illusion. Propositions about concepts that I formulate out of these sense-data may be false. For example, if I suffer a hallucination and think I see a tree, it will be true that my sense-data includes what might be called the image of a tree. But if I then propose "there is a tree there", that will be false. And it will be verifiably false, for unless it is a total illusion (and therefore, in my view, not an illusion), there will be some empirical way in which this tree differs from a real tree, even if I never become aware of that difference.



> That is clear; but the sentence "If every time I touch the chair it has solidity1, then it has solidity2" can either be (1) tautological or (2) an article of faith about the state of the chair at a moment in which you have no access at all to it. In neither option it has the strength of solidity1 alone; and as soon as we move the hand from the chair, we lose that.



It _is_ tautological, but not in a bad way. That is, it is true because that is the way I have defined solidity2. It is in no way an article of faith, for it asserts nothing save things about my sense-data.



> And what is "the world", then? It is not your understanding of it, and yet it lacks "actual existence".



"The world" is my consciousness; that is, it is the total of the facts concerning my mental states. And my consciousness can certainly contain patterns and structure that I do not understand. The baby's world contains sense-data that is organized into a particular pattern; and though the baby does not understand that pattern, that pattern _is_ part of the baby's consciousness.


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## Eriol

Sorry about the delay Aiwendil, I've been lacking time to give this thread the proper attention. I'll get back to you eventually .


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## Celebthôl

> _Originally posted by Michel Delving _
> *Click here: Don't bother reading it all. just the bit that starts:- As a big fan of Tolkein I believe...
> 
> Do you agree with him?
> 
> I do not.
> 
> There is absolute evil and absolute good and both were created by man. Good and evil are concepts created in the mind of man.
> 
> Outside of here (our perceived universe) Good and Evil do not exist.
> 
> The Lord of the Rings reflects this.
> 
> It is the internal world of Mankind born as a New Myth. *



Ooooh, nice thread, i seem to have over looked this 

It has maybe been said, but i wanna say it anyways 

I dont believe it, for one, there can be no absolute evil without an opposite of absolute good, its a law of the universe, one cannot exists without the other.  He's wrong.
Also there is no absolute good or evil on this planet, everything has a good side to it, it is almost impossible to find absolute evil. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin: they all had a good vision in mind, they didnt do all the bad things they did just for the sake of doing bad things. Equally true, everything has a bad side to it, tho i cant think of examples right now. . . (of either very good people or their bad sides  ).


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## Aiwendil2

Eriol: Take your time. I've certainly noticed that posting in this thread requires a rather considerable amount of time and concentration, and of course I understand that these things are often not easy to come by. I look forward to the resumption of the debate.

Celebthol: I think you are right. Even given an absolute (rationally justifiable) system of morality, we never in practice encounter absolute examples of good and evil people. It's important to distinguish these two points, because I think that some of the motivation of many moral relativists is that they dislike the idea of calling _people_ absolutely good or absolutely evil. But an absolute system of morality does not necessitate, or even correspond to an absolutist view of people as moral agents. That is, one can believe that there are such things as good and evil without believing that all (or any) people must necessarily be classified as good or evil.


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