Existentially Crisis-ing

[sidewalk]

edit

[absurdmind]

this last part seems interesting but im not familiar with peano and dont know anything about math so im not sure whats really going on

i didnt mean to suggest that theres one logical system so i hope thats not what you took away from me, i think i was referring more to certain metaphysical principles of logic, namely set theory. i know there are philosophers such as dummett who have claimed that logic entails no such commitment but that seems at least prima facie untenable, but i guess im just being ignorant since i havent read it myself. so yea, i was more looking at the basis of logic itself. i guess an alternative of logic broadly construed would be... interesting, but i dont think thats what youre suggesting. is it?

as far as different systems of logic go i still dont think its as easy as picking and choosing. we should only accept axioms that seem, well, axiomatic in the sense that they reflect the way things are in some sense. the law of non-contradiction is a good example i think. its not so much that people are saying "oh yea, i just dont like non-contradiction, im not going to use it", when graham priest puts forth paraconsistent logic he first points out problems with non contradiction "there are such and such rules that designate this variable under contradictory predicates". i like his example where he points out some international laws designating which area belongs to which country, only to find that there is some area that is supposed to belong to two different countries (maybe canada and america?), so he says that the area is C & ~C, which is why he doesnt like the law of non contradiction. its not an arbitrary choice by any means. i know you didnt outright suggest that it was i just felt like you may have been implying it. more importantly, this all still fits in with set theory and bounding (binding?) variables. like i said earlier, i think my claims had more to do with an interest in the metaphysics underlying logic.

anyways, i should probably do some actual reading on this subject. interesting topic though

[odradek]

can't tell if this belongs here or in the lol thread

http://www.obeygiant.com/articles/manifesto

[absurdmind]

so it looks like the reading group i mentioned earlier is going to happen and im very excited. i know expressed interest and if anyone else would like some questions relayed or just wants to get involved let me know and ill do what i can. i dont mean to cultivate some academia elitism but as of now we have a doctoral student from a top 20 whos going to help guide some discussions, he's also trying to get a professor on board, just thought id let you know we're in good hands and i wont just reply with my own shitty musings. we're probably going to start in a week or so so that people have time to buy "on the plurality of worlds" which is the book we've decided to tackle. in the meantime some introductory material would be quine's "on what there is" and brickers "david lewis: on the plurality of worlds" if you want to have a good start before diving into the book. we're hoping to move at a fairly good pace and might meet twice a week for july. so ya, let me know if youre interested in this and we can either do something in this thread or relay by email or whatever, just wanted to include my internet friends (love)

[sidewalk]

eedit

[absurdmind]

thats great! i was just trying to explain that the reading group has some people who are well-read on the subjects, so if you guys send me questions ill ask the question to those smarter people and wont just reply with my own thoughts (though im sure ill include them). anyways we're probably having our first meeting thursday to iron out details and then ill let you guys know what pace we'll be reading at and when you can expect answers to whatever questions.

this is supposedly a good intro that i plan on reading tomorrow https://www.umass.edu/philosophy/PDF/Br ... Worlds.pdf

this is the book

[Stingray Sam]

I'm enjoying this video of John Searle giving a lecture on consciousness

[absurdmind]

searles pretty great, wish i had time to watch that rn. on the other hand does anyone else think the chinese room thought experiment was like the most overrated argument of the 20th century? i wont pretend i have a great grasp on the debate but didnt the robot reply pretty much wrap that up? i think qualia is a much bigger problem than intentionality.

someone tell me why im wrong

[Stingray Sam]

i honestly can't say whether or not you're wrong and i don't have as much background in the subject as you seem to. However, Searle argues in the video that even if we had a robot with comparable sensory inputs to a conscious being (idk if that might be possible right now) that it would not be conscious because it would be too compartmentalized with our current programming approach and capabilities for AI. He says that a computer running multiple different processes that each connect to a sensory input is not the same as something he calls the unified conscious field. He doesn't really go into that much detail about it in the video so i should probably do more research, but he says that it is necessary for consciousness. It also seems that Searle isn't necessarily arguing that computers can never be conscious, but that we do not posses sufficient technology to currently make a computer conscious and our current approach to AI isn't going to make a conscious being. I thought a lot of what he said made sense, but i haven't really done that much in depth research. I do tend to be pretty skeptical about AI being conscious though.

[bels]

If I buy into a Russian Index because it's low due to tension in the Ukraine with the intention of flipping the shares once they stabilise, am I an evil war profiteer?

[Stingray Sam]

it depends really, is the stock your buying going to negatively impact others by you purchasing it? are you complacently supporting a regime that should not be supported by buying into a system related to it? Is buying into the stock market bad in general because you're supporting a capitalistic system? Are you intentionally harming others? Are you intentionally profiting off the suffering of others? There's a lot of aspects to ethics. I personally wouldn't do it, or if i did i would donate a large portion of any money made to charity. Peter Singer says you should donate at least 10% of your income to if you're moderately wealthy to not look like an asshole, I would also assume that's a minimum to not look like an asshole if you're war profiteering.

[absurdmind]

its hard to understand exacly what consciousness should entail sometimes. i guess what im trying to get at is that a computer can, for the correct meanings and purposes, have "understanding" or "intelligence". they can have some understanding of and about things in virtue of the fact that their inputs stem from a causal relation to these things. we latch the word "table" to things that are on four legs, and hold things up. a program with a video camera can recognize four legged objects holding things up, only its converted into binary rather than sensory inputs. i think the difference is that we have some subjective phenomenal experience that computers dont (and can't) have, but i dont believe this is necessary for intelligence or understanding.

in other news we're reading to page 27 in otpow for sunday

[Stingray Sam]

i was being less than serious

[JewTurk]

[sidewalk]

polo

[JewTurk]

[absurdmind]

last night was a 2 hour meeting, and i drank more than i probably should have, so forgive me for forgetting details, misrepresenting views, etc. we decided to go through kind of page by page, summarizing the current arguments, looking at important details, and then raising any concerns. ill try to do something similar with these notes (unfortunately i didnt write notes during the discussion, these are just from memory).

in section 1.1 lewis puts forth an argument in why we should believe in a plurality of worlds. his idea is that his thesis is serviceable/fruitful, and this is some motivation to believe it is correct. basically, he believes that this idea can make better sense of the difficulties that come from talking about possibility. it has less problems than other views, and more going for it.

initially this seems a weird case to make. why should we care that this is a "serviceable" theory? well we can look at this a few ways. its not just about being serviceable, its about making the most sense out of any other theory of possibility. this is in a similar vein to the way theoretical physics works. things like string theory which have no empirical grounding are still supported due to the fact that the idea just makes the most sense.

what if there are various theories that seem to make equal sense? well, this probably wont happen, but if it is the case we should look at this in the most parsimonious manner. this brings us back to something i skipped over that happens on page 2/3. lewis wants to be clear that he believes these worlds exist simpliciter. in other words, they exist, period. he says this and adds that hes not sure what it means for something to exist in a different manner. lewis makes this small claim for a few reasons. it shows that he doesnt want to speak of these as some abstract ersatz entities, this makes sense because lewis is a materialist. all worlds are just as "concrete" as ours. this ties in with a parsimonious view because lewis believes he is paying for "ideology with the coin of ontology". if youre not familiar with quinean terminology: ideology refers basically to "kinds of things", ontology deals with the things that exist. ex: if we believe in donkeys, god, t-shirts, whatever, these are things in our ontology, if we believe in material objects, and non-material objects, we have 2 things in our ontology.

how does this tie in? if we talk about possibility as its own irreducible kind of thing (a primitive), it seems that this gives us a larger ideology, albeit a small ontology. lewis believes its simply an obvious truth that its better to apply occams razor to ideology than ontology. in believing in many concrete worlds, lewis has an ontology of just material objects, although there are lots of them. soon lewis will discuss how belief in primitive modality gives us many more problems with ideology, and problems in general.

[absurdmind]

i cant find the edit button.. i had to go to work so ill write up some of the 1.2 convo tomorrow. also we're skipping "modality at work closeness, content, property" for the time being due to various constraints and we're skipping to the more important sections 1.6-1.9 so for anyone still interested try to have those parts read for wednesday and we can discuss 1.1 and 1.2 better when i have the day off tomorrow

[JewTurk]

I'm wanting to read some stuff on aesthetics and I'm curious if there would be a relatively safe route to go down. I got a copy of ~wabi-sabi~ but that was a really short read and much more summary/interesting read/coffee table book kind of thing.

My english prof lent me a copy of Tolstoy's What is Art? and I'm hoping to find some other books up that same vein.

[frogosaurus]

If you want the full background, you should read a bit of Plato and Aristotle, along with Longinus. Not much really happens until the 18th century, when you have Kant, Schiller, Burke, and the rest of the Romantics, followed by Hegel. That's just what I remember were the core dudes from my intro aesthetics class. You could probably find an anthology somewhere that puts all the important stuff together, but where's the fun (and pain) in that?

[klonopin]