Philosophical Speculations

stratos wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:30 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:18 amClearly you are clinging on to the dying materialist-dualist paradigm. I am sure the unwarranted Cartesian mind-matter divide is unconsciously directing your thoughts on all of these topics. That's a whole mess of string to untangle and, normally, I would be willing to make an attempt, but it also sounds like you are engaging in bad faith and have no interest whatsoever in discussing these things rationally and reasonably. In fact, it sounds like you think philosophy and metaphysics are a complete waste of time. I have had my fill of those bad faith discussions in the past few months, so no more for me right now. Maybe someone else will pick up this thread with you. My parting advice is to pay attention and observe what happens in philosophy, the arts, the sciences, etc. in the coming years - none of these fields have any use for your sort of materialism-dualism anymore, not even the applied math-science. It has become a hindrance in all of those fields and it is suffering a rapid demise - the only question is what will fill the void.

No

An image arrises in the mind. The brain network, in an analogus way that a neural network does, identifies that image as "triangle" and bodily sensations that are interpreted as "understanding" follow *. A neural network can too generalize and identify triangles and the process can be explained without ANY mention to abstract objects. So why do you include them in your worldview?

As for the striclty phenomenal side of the matter, i don't see any doer-thinker-willer behind the experience supposdedly operating the phenomenal stream. There are just feelings arrising. The ego that you presuppose running the show and wills the wills and thinks the thoughts and feels the feelings is TOO a banch of sensations, so i don't understand why you include this in your world view?

Can you point to me something that i loose by not including these kind of platonic thinking and entities? Because it seems to me that they are unnecessery. Thank you.

*These feelings are just ordinary sensations, nothing... s p e c i a l. They are the same sensations that arrise in the dream where for example i see a dog and i KNOW it's my grandpa.

stratos wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:33 am An image arrises in the mind. The brain network, in an analogus way that a neural network does, identifies that image as "triangle" and bodily sensations that are interpreted as "understanding" follow *. A neural network can too generalize and identify triangles and the process can be explained without ANY mention to abstract objects. So why do you include them in your worldview?

stratos wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:33 am No

An image arrises in the mind. The brain network, in an analogus way that a neural network does, identifies that image as "triangle" and bodily sensations that are interpreted as "understanding" follow *. A neural network can too generalize and identify triangles and the process can be explained without ANY mention to abstract objects. So why do you include them in your worldview?

As for the striclty phenomenal side of the matter, i don't see any doer-thinker-willer behind the experience supposdedly operating the phenomenal stream. There are just feelings arrising. The ego that you presuppose running the show and wills the wills and thinks the thoughts and feels the feelings is TOO a banch of sensations, so i don't understand why you include this in your world view?

Can you point to me something that i loose by not including these kind of platonic thinking and entities? Because it seems to me that they are unnecessery. Thank you.

*These feelings are just ordinary sensations, nothing... s p e c i a l. They are the same sensations that arrise in the dream where for example i see a dog and i KNOW it's my grandpa.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:39 pm An unconscious neural network does not experience the meaning of "triangle" that it identifies. The meaning is the essence of the triangle. It's very weird that you call the immanently felt qualia of our experience "abstract entities" while the "unconscious processes" (another word for "mindless matter") which somehow derives conscious experience, and which no one has ever observed, are not abstract in your view. Yet another example of how the modern age has flipped all reasoning on its head.

SanteriSatama wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:07 am Interesting comment. I've been lately reading and listening Stephen Wolfram, and he discusses these issues with great depth.

There's a very meaningful and important difference between object oriented programming languages, and "functional programming languages". The latter can be said to consists of "abstract" or very general operators. And as Schönfinkel found out before Turing etc., robust (cf. "Turing-complete") computation can be reduced to a pair of simple operators.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/202 ... mputation/

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:39 pm
I think you already know this, but I will state it here just in case anyone else starts thinking the above is sound argument...

An unconscious neural network does not experience the meaning of "triangle" that it identifies. The meaning is the essence of the triangle. It's very weird that you call the immanently felt qualia of our experience "abstract entities" while the "unconscious processes" (another word for "mindless matter") which somehow derives conscious experience, and which no one has ever observed, are not abstract in your view. Yet another example of how the modern age has flipped all reasoning on its head.

By the way, those squiqqly red lines underneath the words are indication they are spelled wrong - you can right-click to get correct spellings.

stratos wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:51 pm(Sorry for my mispellings, but i don't see any red lines anywhere Do you know any way that i can fix it? I use chrome. Last time i tried i was not successfull.)

stratos wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:51 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:39 pm
I think you already know this, but I will state it here just in case anyone else starts thinking the above is sound argument...

An unconscious neural network does not experience the meaning of "triangle" that it identifies. The meaning is the essence of the triangle. It's very weird that you call the immanently felt qualia of our experience "abstract entities" while the "unconscious processes" (another word for "mindless matter") which somehow derives conscious experience, and which no one has ever observed, are not abstract in your view. Yet another example of how the modern age has flipped all reasoning on its head.

By the way, those squiqqly red lines underneath the words are indication they are spelled wrong - you can right-click to get correct spellings.

I never implied that i know how this("mine")-consiousness is related to the... out-of-this-consiousness world of other minds, objective reality etc. I just have reasons to use them in my worldview leaving aside the hard problem. Also i don't have problem with every abstract entity, i have problems only with those i find unnecesery. And of course i NEVER include qualia in this set. Qualia present themselves, and this presentation is undeniable. The problem i have is with the CONCEPTUAL INTERPRETATION of the qualia. For example, let's say i have an itch in my elbow. If you come and interpret this experience as the work of devil i will have my objections. And that's it.

An unconscious NN does not experience the meaning of a triangle, BUT finds it And that is the point. It does so WITHOUT any need for platonic generalised forms. Humans of course not only find the triangle, but feel too, but this doesn't change anything in what we are discussing.. Meaning as i said earlier is just some bodily sensations accompany or follow the unconscious workings of the brain (identification). There is no alien superantural MEANING that is acomplished upon the arrising of that sensations. The same goes with the feeling of free will. Free will is just sensations that are interpreted as pointing to some exotic WILL involvement. They are just sensations.

(Sorry for my mispellings, but i don't see any red lines anywhere Do you know any way that i can fix it? I use chrome. Last time i tried i was not successfull.)

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:55 pm You say meaning is "just some bodily sensations accompanying workings of the brain". I think you recognize how that explanation runs smack into hard problem of qualia and cannot get beyond it, but for some reason that does not discourage you from putting it forth as an explanation.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:55 pm Ok so we agree that unconscious networks do not experience meaning of "triangle" (meaning = the totality of its qualia).
Ok, fine. So now I say that you are simply assuming away our immanent experience of meaning and how it functions. The shared meaning of "triangle" is the only reason we can discuss it now and have a solid understanding of what sort of object the other person is referring to. It is the only reason people can employ geometrical objects to develop technology and build bridges, etc. That is our immanent experience of meaning in these objects - it is not at all personal or reducible to personal physiology, and if it were, no communication or bridge-building would be possible. I choose mathematical object partly because they are so simple that the "conceptual interpretation" of its qualia cannot be reasonably questioned. What do you think?

stratos wrote: ↑Tue Jul 13, 2021 6:30 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:55 pm You say meaning is "just some bodily sensations accompanying workings of the brain". I think you recognize how that explanation runs smack into hard problem of qualia and cannot get beyond it, but for some reason that does not discourage you from putting it forth as an explanation.

I do not agree because i refer specifically to processes that do not involve consciousness. In other words, what i say is that the act of identification of a triangle, can be done unconsciously (as NN show us). After this identification is done by the brain, bodily sensations of "aha moment" arise, and these sensations are the same kind of sensations that arise when we see a distant figure and we don't understand what we are seeing and suddenly we realize that it is our friend waving at us. You see i don't take any position as to how these sensations come to be or what is their relationship with the brain or whatever, therefore i do not hit into hard problems. I just assume that before their arising, some unconscious processes take place.

stratos wrote:

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:55 pm Ok so we agree that unconscious networks do not experience meaning of "triangle" (meaning = the totality of its qualia).
Ok, fine. So now I say that you are simply assuming away our immanent experience of meaning and how it functions. The shared meaning of "triangle" is the only reason we can discuss it now and have a solid understanding of what sort of object the other person is referring to. It is the only reason people can employ geometrical objects to develop technology and build bridges, etc. That is our immanent experience of meaning in these objects - it is not at all personal or reducible to personal physiology, and if it were, no communication or bridge-building would be possible. I choose mathematical object partly because they are so simple that the "conceptual interpretation" of its qualia cannot be reasonably questioned. What do you think?

If you define meaning as a totality of qualia then i agree that NN don't experience meaning as they don't experience qualia. But if you define it as such, then it is not true that we can discuss about triangles and build bridges only because of the "shared meaning of triangles", as we could discuss about triangles and build bridges EVEN if we where unconscious robots:

-Hey Mr Robot, i see a suitable place to build a bridge, would you like build it?
-No, Ms Robot, because it fits only a triangle bridge and i want to a square one.

This conversation can be perfectly held by robots And in any case, and to connect it with what i was saying before, the process of identifying and speaking about triangles DOES NOT involve or need the existence of some platonic trianglness in order to be described and we can relay simply on the existing phenomenal PARTICULARS and NN-like generalizations upon them. In other words there is only THIS phenomenal triangle and THIS phenomenal triangle etc, and no abstract idea of platonic triangle outside of that.

stratos wrote:However, there is a kind of meaning that may sound similar with your way of thinking but it is not, and it is essential spiritually too. It is the kind of liberation from searching of meaning that occurs when a the illusion of duality of experience is seen through, and as the saying says the "in the seen there is only the seen" is realized. But in order for this to happen, the activity of thinking has to be seen trough TOO, as consisting of impersonal phenomena arisen by themselves according to conditions and not be deceived by the story of a supposed outside observer that sits on his chair and causes or manipulates experience. In this case, phenomenal instants do not RE-present anything, either triangles or houses, and are seen to be exactly the phenomenal instants they are. The meaning is in consciousness it self, but seen clearly as it is. But ok.