So, keeping it very simple, even though this is a deep and contested issue in philosophy, your example there is of the "correspondence theory of truth". Your statement is true under that theory if it corresponds to "objective" fact(s) in the world - in this case the fact that you are wearing black pants. This theory is rejected by pragmatism for various reasons which we can get into some more later if you want (related to whether the objective world is actually comprised of 'things' like "black pants" or rather functions/meanings in relation to agents with goals).
For now, we can just try to understand the "pragmatic theory of truth" and how it applies - a conceptual scheme is true under this theory if it is useful to achieve the goal one is aiming at. Here we are aiming at figuring out what can explain the existence of consciousness and its dynamics (that is generally what BK is trying to do). The hypothesis that we are living in a virtual simulation of some computational device gets us absolutely no more closer to resolving our question. We are no more closer to explaining the existence of consciousness. Therefore, the hypothesis is untrue.
@AshvinP thanks for clarifying. Based on this definition of truth, does it follow that explaining the existence of consciousness must be within our reach and anything that suggests that it might be out of our reach has to be false?
I don't think that follows from the pragmatic definition of truth by itself. It is possible that some goals are completely out of reach. But I do think that the fact it is within our reach follows from our experience and reason. At least, it is within our reach to gain a much deeper understanding of our consciousness than we currently have.
@AshvinP
Thanks. This is helpful. I will give it more thought,
isaac_hagoel wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:05 pm
@Martin:
it might be pointless (I'm not sure it is) but that is not a basis for dismissing it. If it is true and doesn't tell us anything - what's the justification for making up some other false story instead? Isn't it more reasonable to say something along the lines of "if it is true we are kind of stuck, so we'll assume it is not true and go from there" instead of calling it "idiotic" (as Bernardo does)?
The key is to realize that what is True under pragmatic idealism cannot possibly be useless, i.e. not tell us anything of value to our lives. BK is aligned with pragmatic idealism as far as I can tell. None of us start from a completely "neutral" metaphysics when evaluating other perspectives. Most here are at least assuming conscious activity is a real phenomenon which cannot be reduced to physical stuff. And if go one step further to say conscious activity is all there is (ruling out dualism), then a world-conception that reflects true ideal relations will always be useful. In fact, that is the only sort of conception that is useful under idealism. So BK is essentially saying simulation theory's metaphysical uselessness renders it untrue in the most real sense.
@Martin_
I get that this is the key but I don't get why truth and uselessness are the same thing. usefulness is very context related, as in a true fact might be useful in one context or for one person but not for another. If I tell you the true fact: "I wear black pants", it is not useful for you or for anyone really, yet it is still very much true.
Bernardo isn't saying that simulation theory is false. He's saying that it doesn't matter whether it's false or true, since we're interested in the nature of the base, not how many layers there is between us and the base.
"Is there an apple or an orange inside this box"?
"that depends on whether there's another box you need to open inside this one in order to get to it."
@AshvinP @Martin_
Do you agree with him on it not mattering?
If this is a virtual reality and "you" are both a player of some unknowable origin that is wearing the VR headset and an avatar within the virtual world that the player has some control of - it has huge implications.
This situation still allows one to know something about the players consciousness because "you" have access to it or as @AshvinP puts it
it is within our reach follows from our experience and reason. At least, it is within our reach to gain a much deeper understanding of our consciousness than we currently have.
Same goes regarding trying to figure out upper layer/s. It will change how one goes about attempting it and it might impose some strict limitations on what is knowable when it comes to "base layer".
isaac_hagoel wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:11 pm
@AshvinP @Martin_
Do you agree with him on it not mattering?
If this is a virtual reality and "you" are both a player of some unknowable origin that is wearing the VR headset and an avatar within the virtual world that the player has some control of - it has huge implications.
This situation still allows one to know something about the players consciousness because "you" have access to it or as @AshvinP puts it
it is within our reach follows from our experience and reason. At least, it is within our reach to gain a much deeper understanding of our consciousness than we currently have.
Same goes regarding trying to figure out upper layer/s. It will change how one goes about attempting it and it might impose some strict limitations on what is knowable when it comes to "base layer".
That is already the world idealism suggests we live in, if we understand experiences in the "virtual reality" to be ideal manifestations of real idea-beings. Basically, simulation hypothesis is used to get some benefits of idealist thinking, for ex. its ability to encompass QM experiments disproving "local realism", without accepting that ideational activity is fundamental. It takes abstract concepts of VR scenario and makes them even more abstracted from experience, when we should be moving in the opposite direction.
So yes, I agree with BK that it does not matter and further claim it is pragmatically untrue for the reasons posted before.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Eugene I wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:01 am
Possibly the MAL tried these ideastions of the world google times before and they did not work because they were too loose and indeterministic and because of that they fell apart, but he found that the more deterministic they are, the more stable and able to survive and self-sustain they become, so the MAL developed that "computational" faculty to maintain the mathematically deterministic ideation process running and that is how he was able to get the world to evolve up to the point of the conditions for conscious life forms to develop.
The trouble is distinguishing what is falling apart in this scenario, without introducing a duality. Of course I know in my theistic version there is a duality, but not in terms of what the universe is. I guess you have a formless mind making different ‘attempts to represent’, but it seems far more fundamental than that to me. It also seems to me that it started as it had to be at the start, so you have to do the same as the multiverse crowd do, and invent billions of separate universes purely to avoid the other conclusion.
I’m not sure where these constructor theories will go, but it does look a bit like the laws of physics are rooted in limits, where the limits result in the laws -> https://www.quantamagazine.org/with-con ... -20210429/
Ideas are certain original forms of things, their archetypes, permanent and incommunicable, which are contained in the Divine intelligence. And though they neither begin to be nor cease, yet upon them are patterned the manifold things of the world that come into being and pass away.
St Augustine
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:57 pm
Got it. I would offer two things here:
1) As Cleric has referred to in several essays, the Mandelbrot fractals are decent analogy in so far as they show that simple mathematical 'rules' can give rise to never-ending complexity and novelty of representational forms.
2) There is still an element missing, which is that of self-reflective thinking. It allows the Spirit to explore the complex forms in a manner that merely instinctual processes could not, and to further transform such forms in the processes of abstract reasoning and imagination.
Yes I agree that the likes of the Mandelbrot set gives a clue to the way nature is, I would put it as the process of forms rising from ideas. On the second point I mentioned this in my reply to Eugene, but if you look at the science of the formation of the universe, it doesn’t look like a gradual learning process. Of course physics and cosmology have many assumptions about the process being ‘unconscious’ which could contribute to this, but some of it is fairly firm science. So you have a beyond-meta-consciousness starting off with everything set exactly as it needs to be for biological life to ever be possible (at least). This seems different from a gradual learning process.
Ideas are certain original forms of things, their archetypes, permanent and incommunicable, which are contained in the Divine intelligence. And though they neither begin to be nor cease, yet upon them are patterned the manifold things of the world that come into being and pass away.
St Augustine
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:57 pm
Got it. I would offer two things here:
1) As Cleric has referred to in several essays, the Mandelbrot fractals are decent analogy in so far as they show that simple mathematical 'rules' can give rise to never-ending complexity and novelty of representational forms.
2) There is still an element missing, which is that of self-reflective thinking. It allows the Spirit to explore the complex forms in a manner that merely instinctual processes could not, and to further transform such forms in the processes of abstract reasoning and imagination.
Yes I agree that the likes of the Mandelbrot set gives a clue to the way nature is, I would put it as the process of forms rising from ideas. On the second point I mentioned this in my reply to Eugene, but if you look at the science of the formation of the universe, it doesn’t look like a gradual learning process. Of course physics and cosmology have many assumptions about the process being ‘unconscious’ which could contribute to this, but some of it is fairly firm science. So you have a beyond-meta-consciousness starting off with everything set exactly as it needs to be for biological life to ever be possible (at least). This seems different from a gradual learning process.
I am unsure of what you mean my "gradual learning process". If you mean the 'physical' parameters were finely tuned for complex life, then yes I agree. But we clearly also see a development from relatively unconscious to self-conscious and "beyond-meta-consciousness" Spirit over the course of human history, which is the topic of my essay posted earlier today. Although I did not get into much of the evidence for that, which I will discuss in the next part.
