stratos wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 5:05 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:10 am
stratos wrote: ↑Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:35 pm
Some things i know, some things i don't know. And the fact that i do not know the solution to the hard problem doesn't mean that i don't know the solution to all other problems too.
It does mean that, because if you cannot get around the hard problem, then you have no explanation for how conscious experience occurs, and all other "problems" are only solved through that conscious experience which you cannot explain the existence of.
So because i don't know the solution to the hard problem of consciousness i cannot know that earth is round? I cannot know that Santa Claus is imaginary? That's some deep philosophy here... And how you deal with the problems of hard problem?
You cannot explain
how you know that the Earth is round. That is what philosophers and metaphysicians try to do... explain how these things are known. And yes, eventually, without knowing how we know things, we end up in a relativism where we question whether there is any such thing as true and
objective knowledge... whether one person's claim that the Earth is round can be deemed any more objectively valid than another person's that the Earth is flat. That sort of relativism has already taken root in much of the Western world.
stratos wrote:AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:10 am
stratos wrote:
Oh nice... at first you said "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."i responded with the example of NN that DON'T experience anything but STILL are able to talk about triangles and build bridges, then you said "but it is MAN that instilled all these to them" and after my last response that man did NOT instilled anything to them, other than letting them survive in a death and fitness process, you come and say that even these basic rules are inputs with meaning and not only that,
but natural laws in general are meaning and every activity is meaningful. So give me an example of input that is NOT meaningful
In other words, how to say much and say nothing... If every natural phenomenon has meaning apriori then how you define meaning in the first place? And why did you exclude Neural Networks from having one by their own? Considering they can in principle be product of natural laws which they are meaningful as you said... You lost your track of reasoning resorting to meaningless generalities.
Exactly! That is
idealism in a nutshell - nothing (no-thing) and everything is meaningful, and actually all is
process rather than 'things'. There is no experience without meaning. So actually if we speculate there are natural processes without meaning, we are adding assumptions which cannot possibly be verified, because all experience is meaningful (if you can think of an experience that is not meaningful, please share... and take your time, I can wait). The only reason you find this hard to accept, despite all of your experience verifying it, is because, in the last few hundred years, the "common sense" of abstract intellectuals has declared the mind is an illusory product of "matter" and the former has no role to play in the world you perceive around you. That simple yet flawed assumption is unconsciously influencing all of your arguments.
You said NN operate as they do because we instilled them our shared experience. This is something specific about NN, and it is wrong, and i correct you on this. Then you changed your argumentative narrative and resorted to the view that NN operate as they do because they are in... nature. If you said it from the beginning i wouldn't disagree (it would still be a useless truism though). Therefore I ask you again: WHY you mentioned at the beginning that
"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" ?
It doesn't follow.
It is not wrong, rather it is plainly obvious. Instilling something with natural "rules" that allow for recognition of meaningful patterns is quite obviously
our meaningful agency acting through a technological tool for expressing
our agency. One must do all sort of unwarranted mental gymnastics, like you are doing, to avoid this simple truth. My bolded assertion holds true in your NN example.
stratos wrote:AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:10 amIf we arbitrarily divide up the world into this "thing" and that "thing", like NNs, we reach all sorts of absurd conclusions. No "things" exist isolated from contiguous processes which give rise to all of our experience. Modern physics, biology, psychology, cognitive science, etc. have definitively confirmed that conclusion, and so does our everyday experience. NNs are engaged in meaningful processes by virtue of their
continuity with the rest of the meaningful Cosmos. So, yes, of course "basic rules" of natural selection inputted into NNs are meaningful. Evolutionary systems are actually a very complex network of meaningful activities if you reflect on it for a bit. We have no basis to deny meaning to such inputs.
There is nothing to say about these kind of statements because they are all over the place. It sounds like word salad to me. So we are supposed to not differentiate between things now?...
And again claims about specifically NN (that they divide up the world etc). I guess, if i press you will follow again with a statement about how... "actually everything (and not only NN)" divide up the world?
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Well if you come on this forum with absolutely no intention of learning anything about why your materialist-dualist worldview is wrong, then obviously everything will "sound like word salad" to you. Soon, when you look out at the natural world, if this has not happened already, all its forms will look like word salad to you. That is because we have forgotten how to read the language Nature is written in. The first step to overcoming that is recognizing it is true, and you have not yet made it to that first step and refuse to consider any helpful advice on how to take it. The very fact you feel compelled to join a forum where you know everyone disagrees with you means you are searching for meaning you cannot find in your natural experience. A world of 'things' is a world which lacks any
interior depth and therefore clings to only the most superficial meaning which can evaporate at a moment's notice. I will make one last attempt by quoting my most recent essay:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=419
Ashvin wrote:It is seldom considered in the modern era how every form in Nature we can perceive arises from imperceptible activity related to our practical aims in life; our missions and journeys. Those meaningful aims, in turn, also enrich the meaningful aesthetics of Nature. Much of what we call "objects" in the physical world are mere pixelated icons of this hidden depth of meaning residing in the World Soul. What we see in the world around us is nothing like what gives rise to what we see. In fact, every modern science has realized, in its own way, that the "boundaries" of these various "objects" in the world are completely arbitrary. They do not reflect any similar boundaries in the realm from which they travel to our sense organs.
For some, that underlying realm consists of inconceivable mindless fields of "energy", for lack of a better word, and for others that realm consists in psychic processes not unlike the inner processes we always experience. Everyone must admit, though, that "everything flows" - we are always dealing with ceaseless processes in Nature. Quantum mechanics, at the turn of the twentieth century, led to the dematerialization of physical matter, as atoms could no longer be construed as particle-like objects. This resulted in the demise of Newtonian physics, which had been one of the pillars of substance metaphysics since the scientific revolution. What had been considered "matter" then became "statistical patterns" of quantum activity. Similar metamorphoses in our conceptual space have since occurred in most other fields of 'hard' science, such as biology, and it would be very foolish to consider all of these changes occurring at the same time a mere coincidence.
Living beings are no longer thought of as isolated 'entities' but rather densely interconnected communities which, in theory, can provide all that is necessary for the existence of its "members". Science has been steadily progressing towards this processual, meaning-based outlook for many years now. A further step is taken towards the spiritual essence of Nature when we systematically investigate it and derive its "laws" - the underlying principles of natural processes which make sense of why they appear to us in the way specified ways that they do. "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" - this principle of Nature makes sense of why the billiard ball on the pool table moves in a certain direction and with a certain velocity when hit by another billiard ball. Yet what it means, in its essence, is more along the lines of, "each person's deeds which impress into another person's soul-life will likewise impress into their own soul-life at a later time" At very low resolution, that is what we spiritual types call "Karma".
Just as the modern age of nominalism leads people to consider the physical ball more "real" than the overall process it is involved in, it also leads them to consider the specific manifestation of a principle more "real" than the principle itself. We, however, should remember that, even more real than the principle is the meta-principle which encompasses it and other related principles, or what is frequently referred to by scientists and artists as "archetypes". We must do a 180-degree reversal from the modern fragmenting habit of mind if we are to begin penetrating into the essence of art we seek. We cannot stubbornly resist the progression of philosophy, science, and art, but rather we must flow with it wherever it leads. Bergson intuited this progression as well when remarking, "the more the sciences of life develop, the more they will feel the necessity for reintegrating thought into the heart of nature."
We must now begin to uncover these things from within if we do not want to end up like Sylvia Plath writing,
"O God, I am not like you
In your vacuous black,
Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.
Eternity bores me,
I never wanted it.
What I love is
The piston in motion . . .
My soul dies before it."