On treeness of Oak1, and other things

[Little Idiot]

No, normally I would call intuition by the name 'intuition.'
Metaphysics is not reason, intuition or any other way of knowing, isn't it defined in terms of the subject of study; being reality. You could say the study of the nature of reality, or the 'hidden' reality if you like.

...
The reason why I would suggest the work of Penrose crossed the boundary between maths/physics into metaphysics is that his theory reaches from our physical world in this space-time geometry outside to something outside our space-time.

Space/time is an idea from R1. A working model. Things have gone a bit beyond that in R2. It's still physics.

Not to split hairs, but...
Space and time are ideas from R1, space-time is an idea from R2.
That was one on Einsteins big ones I think.

[FedUpWithFaith]

No, normally I would call intuition by the name 'intuition.'
Metaphysics is not reason, intuition or any other way of knowing, isn't it defined in terms of the subject of study; being reality. You could say the study of the nature of reality, or the 'hidden' reality if you like.

...
The reason why I would suggest the work of Penrose crossed the boundary between maths/physics into metaphysics is that his theory reaches from our physical world in this space-time geometry outside to something outside our space-time.

Space/time is an idea from R1. A working model. Things have gone a bit beyond that in R2. It's still physics.

Not to split hairs, but...
Space and time are ideas from R1, space-time is an idea from R2.
That was one on Einsteins big ones I think.

Listen, I know I sound like a broken record, but the shit is still getting you both in trouble. Space and time are both perceptions that the mind is tuned to experience in a certain way that we largely take for granted. I think it's problmatic to talk of common sense ideas of time and space that don't address the distinction between our sense and cognition of space and time and the ideas that derive from same. I don't see a clear distinction between R1 and R2 "ideas" about space and time otherwise.

Moreover, things really start to get interesting concerning "reality" now. Is space "real"? is "time"? Most scientists would say yes in the physical sense. But even Einstein said space-time was not a physical reality (others disagree) - just a mathematical tool.

Ironically, David Mermin also has an excellent article on this topic of reality vs abstraction with respect primarily to QM, though he does mention space-time too.

Look here: http://www.ehu.es/aitor/irakas/mes/Reference/mermin.pdf

[FedUpWithFaith]

I think it's hard to conduct this dialogue without addressing the nature of reality and abstraction as I brought up in my last post. This is complicated by the nature of consciousness itself. We presume that when we see trees we are observing real objects as they "really" exist. The problem is that our mind, that is doing the observing, is not a thing or object but a process, an information process. And all information processes are abstractions. Your mind is nothing but an abstraction "made real" (in your subjective experience). And if modal realism or other forms of digital physics/philosophy are true, the universe is "made real" by an analogous process that appears solid and uniform to us due to the data compression computed effortlessly by our minds.

If we lived outside The Matrix and had to observe treeness via all those weird green falling characters on the video monitors, trees would have a completely different "reality" to us.

[Little Idiot]

You're mixing apples and oranges. I'm not arguing that trees have no existence outside the mind. But its the mind that classifies treeness.
Even your retort makes my point. Trunks and branches are words our mind has invented in "correspondence" to something it has perceived, perception being a function of the senses and cognition. You're are also taking a very classical take on "reality" where we experience "things" as observable objects, either directly or via detectors whereby we infer existence (e.g., neutrinos). It is quite possible that that form of classical realism does not govern all of reality, perhaps at its deepest essence. I think it's worth quoting Wittgenstein here:

Oh Fuck All! No I don't have a very classical take on reality. Moistly because I haven't gotten to that stage of my thinking yet. My take on treeness has to do with thalamo-cortical loops and the construction of neural nets. Nothing more and nothing less. These things aren't constructed by genes. They are constructed by experience of real patterns. No patterns, no classification. I don't give a flying fuck what some philosopher said prior to 1970 and I care not so much after that.

Your link to the PDF is most welcome. This is exactly where I am at in my middle stages of my thinking on reality.

Hehehe, welcome back old friend.

Did you ever look into digital physic/philosophys? That's where I was headed just before leaving RD and I did bring it up before i left. I'm a pretty firm believer now after exploring Gregory Chaitin's work and lots of other stuff. If you haven't checked it out you should. You might think it's bullshit, but you'll still find it fascinating I'm sure..

No. I will check it out. Can you get me that link too?

On RDF I was going on about something that I'm having trouble explaining to people about the purely informational nature of reality. I was somewhere out in Linear Algebra La-La-Land when I had to get busy with other things. I ran into the same problem with information. People wanted to bring the mind into it and I wanted to get the mind out.

The thing is, regardless of what mind is, we cant get away from the point that we know anything and everything by its mechanism. Most people, even physicalists accept that; even though they may say the mind is the brain (as you used to do).

If you were to understand the world as data, in order for a person to know the world he must interact with or be aware of the data in some way - I would say this is via the mind.
IF you were to say the reality is the data, you would need to explain the interface between me and the data. If you say my experience is my 'interpretation of' or 'reaction to' the data, appearing to me as-if it is a physical world external to my body, then you have a model very similar to me.

What I ask is why do you insist the mind be removed from the system?

Isnt it possible this is a hang up from your former position as a physicalist, now as a sceptic why do you cling to the old dogma that the mind cant possibly be required for an accurate model?

I quoted wiki earlier saying;
Pyrrhonian skeptics withhold any assent with regard to non-evident propositions and remain in a state of perpetual inquiry. They disputed the possibility of attaining truth by sensory apprehension, reason, or the two combined, and thence inferred the need for total suspension of judgment (epoché) on things.[1] According to them, even the statement that nothing can be known is dogmatic. They thus attempted to make their skepticism universal, and to escape the reproach of basing it upon a fresh dogmatism."

[SpeedOfSound]

Listen, I know I sound like a broken record, but the shit is still getting you both in trouble. Space and time are both perceptions that the mind is tuned to experience in a certain way that we largely take for granted. I think it's problmatic to talk of common sense ideas of time and space that don't address the distinction between our sense and cognition of space and time and the ideas that derive from same. I don't see a clear distinction between R1 and R2 "ideas" about space and time otherwise.

The distinction is that space/time by R2 is a mathematical model that makes predictions. It's also a model that isn't complete. Nevertheless it has a reality to it that is what I call 'as real as it gets'. It makes predictions. It tests within bounds. That's all there is to this reality thing. It is an idea from R1 that has limited use in R2. It is perfectly accurate to say that a tree exists. That it is real. Because those two words have no ontological depth beyond R1.

You can philslopisize all day long about observers and and mind and reality and you will at the end of the day do no better than to lean against a tree and take a long nap.

The only way that I see to make any progress on any thinking about our R1 ideas is to use what R2 is telling us about our biological nature. There is no slop there.

[FedUpWithFaith]

Like I said, i still don't really know what you mean by R1 ideas or exactly where they leave off and R2 begins.

Also, your response isn't completely clear to me concerning space-time. Is it as real as a tree is?

[Surendra Darathy]

People discussing the ultimate nature of reality is like engaging in a surfing contest and then discovering that the dolphins do it without surfboards. If you don't use a surfboard, you can't wipe out. Surfing and "surface" have the same root. Dolphins can surf in three dimensions.

Well, OK, enough with the cryptic shit.

Although the fact of evolution is dominantly from R2 (in this thread's paradigm), it's still a race against time. Will you get out of the microtube before the wave breaks? Whether or not you think "time" is an illusion, and lunchtime, doubly so.

Thanks for all the fishy ideas.

[Little Idiot]

No, normally I would call intuition by the name 'intuition.'
Metaphysics is not reason, intuition or any other way of knowing, isn't it defined in terms of the subject of study; being reality. You could say the study of the nature of reality, or the 'hidden' reality if you like.

...
The reason why I would suggest the work of Penrose crossed the boundary between maths/physics into metaphysics is that his theory reaches from our physical world in this space-time geometry outside to something outside our space-time.

Space/time is an idea from R1. A working model. Things have gone a bit beyond that in R2. It's still physics.

Not to split hairs, but...
Space and time are ideas from R1, space-time is an idea from R2.
That was one on Einsteins big ones I think.

Listen, I know I sound like a broken record, but the shit is still getting you both in trouble. Space and time are both perceptions that the mind is tuned to experience in a certain way that we largely take for granted. I think it's problmatic to talk of common sense ideas of time and space that don't address the distinction between our sense and cognition of space and time and the ideas that derive from same. I don't see a clear distinction between R1 and R2 "ideas" about space and time otherwise.

I would suggest space and time are mental constructions. I would suggest also SoS's R1 are things like time goes from past to future and never goes backwards. R2 would be things like the plank-time (which is suggestive of a particulate nature to time on this scale) or the reverse-causality suggested in the wheeler thought experiment, both of which are clearly distinct from our every day experiences.
Although I am not a big fan of R1, R2, I would prefere to simply say something like 'our common sense view' or our 'practical view.' This would compare to 'the scientific view' But these are just SoS's mind labeling and categorizing, as mminds do

Moreover, things really start to get interesting concerning "reality" now. Is space "real"? is "time"? Most scientists would say yes in the physical sense. But even Einstein said space-time was not a physical reality (others disagree) - just a mathematical tool.

Ironically, David Mermin also has an excellent article on this topic of reality vs abstraction with respect primarily to QM, though he does mention space-time too.

Look here: http://www.ehu.es/aitor/irakas/mes/Reference/mermin.pdf

Thanks for the links.
I would say space and time (or space-time) is/are existent, but not real; however thats using existent as what ever has being (i.e. 'is') in our universe and real as any (hypothetical?) unchanging reality which is beyond the possibility of change - I am quite vedantic in those definitions.

[SpeedOfSound]

You're mixing apples and oranges. I'm not arguing that trees have no existence outside the mind. But its the mind that classifies treeness.
Even your retort makes my point. Trunks and branches are words our mind has invented in "correspondence" to something it has perceived, perception being a function of the senses and cognition. You're are also taking a very classical take on "reality" where we experience "things" as observable objects, either directly or via detectors whereby we infer existence (e.g., neutrinos). It is quite possible that that form of classical realism does not govern all of reality, perhaps at its deepest essence. I think it's worth quoting Wittgenstein here:

Oh Fuck All! No I don't have a very classical take on reality. Moistly because I haven't gotten to that stage of my thinking yet. My take on treeness has to do with thalamo-cortical loops and the construction of neural nets. Nothing more and nothing less. These things aren't constructed by genes. They are constructed by experience of real patterns. No patterns, no classification. I don't give a flying fuck what some philosopher said prior to 1970 and I care not so much after that.

Your link to the PDF is most welcome. This is exactly where I am at in my middle stages of my thinking on reality.

Hehehe, welcome back old friend.

Did you ever look into digital physic/philosophys? That's where I was headed just before leaving RD and I did bring it up before i left. I'm a pretty firm believer now after exploring Gregory Chaitin's work and lots of other stuff. If you haven't checked it out you should. You might think it's bullshit, but you'll still find it fascinating I'm sure..

No. I will check it out. Can you get me that link too?

On RDF I was going on about something that I'm having trouble explaining to people about the purely informational nature of reality. I was somewhere out in Linear Algebra La-La-Land when I had to get busy with other things. I ran into the same problem with information. People wanted to bring the mind into it and I wanted to get the mind out.

The thing is, regardless of what mind is, we cant get away from the point that we know anything and everything by its mechanism. Most people, even physicalists accept that; even though they may say the mind is the brain (as you used to do).

If you were to understand the world as data, in order for a person to know the world he must interact with or be aware of the data in some way - I would say this is via the mind.
IF you were to say the reality is the data, you would need to explain the interface between me and the data. If you say my experience is my 'interpretation of' or 'reaction to' the data, appearing to me as-if it is a physical world external to my body, then you have a model very similar to me.

What I ask is why do you insist the mind be removed from the system?

Isnt it possible this is a hang up from your former position as a physicalist, now as a sceptic why do you cling to the old dogma that the mind cant possibly be required for an accurate model?

I quoted wiki earlier saying;
Pyrrhonian skeptics withhold any assent with regard to non-evident propositions and remain in a state of perpetual inquiry. They disputed the possibility of attaining truth by sensory apprehension, reason, or the two combined, and thence inferred the need for total suspension of judgment (epoché) on things.[1] According to them, even the statement that nothing can be known is dogmatic. They thus attempted to make their skepticism universal, and to escape the reproach of basing it upon a fresh dogmatism."

If asked I would still tell you that the mind is only the brain. The brain on R2 has all the explanatory and predictive power that it does for trees. No further search is necessary. I would be more inclined to search for the true essential nature of flameness than I would be to search for brain woo.

Your original premise and assumption about the mind being an inaccurate representation is all you need to understand that understanding will not come from mind-talk alone. It is as confused about your 'essential experience' and representations and metaphysics and 'observer' as it could possibly get.

[SpeedOfSound]

Like I said, i still don't really know what you mean by R1 ideas or exactly where they leave off and R2 begins.

Also, your response isn't completely clear to me concerning space-time. Is it as real as a tree is?

I'll try and clarify after a good nap. We have an excellent thunderstorm here that must be napped upon.

[Kenny Login]

This might be a lot more fun than chewing on LI. I need to get focused here. Post away if you have some ideas.

Well the big obstacle being the homunculus. No matter how much elaborate cognitive architecture or neuroprocessing is posited/evidenced, the question that is difficult to escape is "what does the observing?". It is possible to incorporate all rule bound cognition into a theory of mind without there being a subjective experience. Can observation take place without an observer? If it's an erroneous question to ask, as many do in fact suggest, then it's a very seductive one and it's the bane of any theory of consciousness.

Are the tools and methods of R2 enough to dispel the myth? Or is R1 a necessary condition to resolving this? It's paradoxical, and for good reason. The homunculus is a real thorn in the side in all R2 programmes because it's permanently embedded, but the same does not always apply to R1. Or, I should say, R1*.

About that time you went nuts, sounds interesting....

[FedUpWithFaith]

SoS,

I'm losing sight of what fundamental conclusion you wish to persuade us to believe. Apparently, you had some strategy I fucked up that you thought you could argue ID into a corner with and have a "ta-dah" moment. Can you just cut to the chase and succinctly state (restate?) it for me in one or two sentences? I've lost the point of this thread. If it's my fault, I apologize.

[Kenny Login]

Like I said, i still don't really know what you mean by R1 ideas or exactly where they leave off and R2 begins.

Yes, this is really important.

[Surendra Darathy]

Like I said, i still don't really know what you mean by R1 ideas or exactly where they leave off and R2 begins.

Yes, this is really important.

Parenting is often about setting boundaries with your kids. I don't really know. I'm just repeating canards I have heard.

[FedUpWithFaith]

Like I said, i still don't really know what you mean by R1 ideas or exactly where they leave off and R2 begins.

Yes, this is really important.

Parenting is often about setting boundaries with your kids. I don't really know. I'm just repeating canards I have heard.

You'll make a great philosopher then, if you aren't one already.