Re: Behaviourism

Hi Carl,

I wondered if perhaps you were expressing behaviourism in the
sense you sometimes get that there is an impartial
objective observer, who then understands all other humans
on the basis of their behaviour but has a kind of priveliged
access to him or herself and doesn't understand him or herself
behaviouristically. That's a sort of behaviourist solipsism
really.

But no, you are going all the way and you are behaviourist
about yourself too. That's honest at least! Probably there
is quite a lot of insight in that way of looking at
things. I rather doubt too if it could be challenged
at all easily on intellectual grounds.

But if you take that to its limit one wonders why
you are having this conversation at all. Yes could
if we are all behaviourist all the way but don't know
it. But once you know it, then your aim in the
conversation is no longer to find out the truth
since there is no such in any objective sense.
It is just to achieve some behaviourist aim,
and I wonder what that aim could possibly be,
sort of by reductio ad absurdum, you seem to have
no motivation for having this conversation if
the aim isn't to find out the truth any more
except in a behaviourist sense. What could be
a behaviourist notion of truth - as understood
by someone who knows that they are like that
themselves? Sort of seems it could only work
for as long as you subscribe to the naive
view that you are not behaviourist in that
all out sense. Once you realise that you
are then you have to give up trying to find
the truth - even about whether you are
all out behaviourist :-).

BTW by using all these labels I'm not trying
to pigeon-hole anyone into particular philosopical
positions.

Maybe we don't have to choose which approach
we want to subscribe to for the rest of our
life as philosophers tend to do indeed.
In the Buddhist meditation traditions they
come across all these same kinds of issues,
but they use the various approaches as
inspiration in mdeditation if it becomes
stale. So for instance maybe some version
of this all out behaviourism might be
useful I imagine if one was tending towards
a form of mental solipsism in ones meditation
as it would wake on up from that probably
by seeing the absurdity of it. Just
a guess really, but it does have something
of the flavour of some of the teachings.

I've heard about teachings
about the nature of reality that undermine
everything. That's including notions of oneself
and others and divisions between the two
also then they take it much further
and undermine all ones conceptual structures
that one uses for thinking so that one is
left with nothing to fall back on at all,
which is a bit like the way this all out
behaviourism could end up leaving you
with no notion of what is true to
fall back on - if you kept going and
really applied that to its limit
then many other concepts might have
to go too, maybe eventually all the
concepts that one has.

But I expect the meditator
would have a strong feeling and experience
of awareness at that point first, as a result of
all the meditation they have been doing,
and if they need to think this way
then maybe it is because it has
maybe gone over-board and is too solid
for them - and maybe if you don't have
that it mightn't be so very useful, I don't
know. In the Buddhist traditions,
well Tibetan anyway don't know
about the others, philosophical
views are very pracitical in import,
as a sort of medicine for the mind.
Depending on ones ailments as it were,
one might need to immerse oneself in different
philsophical ideas. Then you have to give
them up finally because if you keep
sticking with the idea then it is like
continuing to take the medicine once
it has done its work - and giving
up the philsophical view at the end is often
the hardest part of the meditation
practice indeed for those of intellectual
and scholarly inclination. I think perhaps
it might take years sometimes for it to
wear off, if one applies oneself to it
with enthusiasm and intensely and
accompanied with meditation to reinforce
the ideas.

It is interesting though the idea that
you don't need to have a fixed
philsophical view and that it can
be interestiing to train oneself
to have different views, maybe feel
what it is like to be an all out
behaviourist, or an idealist,
or whatever, and go back and forth
between the two and maybe learn
something from that, about how
ones view of the world and others
can change as a result of ones
philosophy - so maybe ones philosophy
influences the way one thinks and
acts more than one realises
for instance. I don't know if this
idea of philosophy as medicine
could be introduced into Western
thinking. Perhaps it needs a bedrock
of meditation to apply it in, or something
to take the place of meditation, at least
some tendency to be able to contemplate
in a relaxed way about things and let
the implications of ideas soak into one, to
give it the space to work. But
certainly you get East / West
discussions of it e.g. the Dalai
Lama I believe discusses intellectual
Buddhist ideas with Western scientists
and so forth. May be that our
ways of expressing philosophies
could be useful medicine for the mind
too, rightly applied.

Robert

> But if you take that to its limit one wonders why
> you are having this conversation at all. Yes could
> if we are all behaviourist all the way but don't know
> it. But once you know it, then your aim in the
> conversation is no longer to find out the truth
> since there is no such in any objective sense.
> It is just to achieve some behaviourist aim,
> and I wonder what that aim could possibly be,
> sort of by reductio ad absurdum, you seem to have
> no motivation for having this conversation if
> the aim isn't to find out the truth any more
> except in a behaviourist sense.

It just means I judge other people by their behavior
more than by any notion of their internal state.

> What could be a behaviourist notion of truth - as
> understood by someone who knows that they are like
> that themselves?

Like what?

> Sort of seems it could only work
> for as long as you subscribe to the naive
> view that you are not behaviourist in that
> all out sense. Once you realise that you
> are then you have to give up trying to find
> the truth - even about whether you are
> all out behaviourist :-).

I always thought behaviorists were seeking the
truth as much as anybody.

> BTW by using all these labels I'm not trying
> to pigeon-hole anyone into particular philosopical
> positions.

No, that's ok. The worst that could happen is
you convince me not to use the term to describe
myself in the future! :)

> Maybe we don't have to choose which approach
> we want to subscribe to for the rest of our
> life as philosophers tend to do indeed.

Certainly not. *That* would be a rejection
of truth-seeking.

> It is interesting though the idea that
> you don't need to have a fixed
> philsophical view and that it can
> be interestiing to train oneself
> to have different views,

Maybe not simultaneously, but you've got
to be open to change.

> maybe feel
> what it is like to be an all out
> behaviourist, or an idealist,
> or whatever, and go back and forth
> between the two and maybe learn
> something from that,

Certainly when evaluating a theory,
one ought to test it.

-Carl

Hi Carl,

> > What could be a behaviourist notion of truth - as
> > understood by someone who knows that they are like
> > that themselves?

> Like what?

Oh I thought it would be understood
immediately. Seems I haven't understood
what you were saying at some point. Not much point
really in filling out the details of
what I meant since I'm obviously very
wide of the mark, would need to begin by
outlining the point of view I was addressing
which is boring to do if it isn't the point
of view of anyone in the discussion.
Sorry.

Probably needs a fresh start, the sort of picture
I was building up of the philsophical point of
view you were communicating is obviously just way off the mark.
Maybe some other time would be good to go
into it again. I'm sometimes not very good
at listening to someone else and put forward
too much in the way of hypothesis about
what they are thinking when I should listen more
and ask more and less directed questions.

Thanks for the discussion
and whether or not we've been understanding
each other well or poorly, there've been
some interesting exchanges :-).

Look forward to discussing Penrose's book
later.

Thanks,

Robert

Hello there,

> Probably needs a fresh start, the sort of picture
> I was building up of the philsophical point of
> view you were communicating is obviously just way
> off the mark.

I'm a very liberal behaviorist. :)

Seriously, I think behaviorism is one of the most
misunderstood disciplines around. But we shouldn't
get into that now.

Probably the best single summary of my position in
this thread is...

/metatuning/topicId_8042.html#8107

...if you want to skip the 'how the brain works'
section and get right to the philosophy, do a Find
for "turned" and read from there down.

Basically: If you can't measure any difference, and
there's no good theory that predicts there should be
a difference, then THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. Hence, I
like behaviorism, because it is rooted in observation.
I like the Turing Test and deny Zombies for the same
reason.

> Maybe some other time would be good to go
> into it again. I'm sometimes not very good
> at listening to someone else and put forward
> too much in the way of hypothesis about
> what they are thinking when I should listen more
> and ask more and less directed questions.

Well, that makes two of us!

> Thanks for the discussion
> and whether or not we've been understanding
> each other well or poorly, there've been
> some interesting exchanges :-).

Absolutely!

> Look forward to discussing Penrose's book
> later.

By the way, you can read Penrose's reactions to the
reactions to _Shadows_ here:

http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-23-penrose.html

-Carl

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply, and I wonder why you don't
see it. Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, you can care so long
as you don't know that that is what you are.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
the scientist. But in philosophy there
are often many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about wheter it is tenable or not.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply, and I wonder why you don't
see it. Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, you can care so long
as you don't know that that is what you are.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
the scientist. But in philosophy there
are often many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about wheter it is tenable or not.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply, and I wonder why you don't
see it. Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, you can care so long
as you don't know that that is what you are.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing. If one feels that way then
Penrose's argument has little force probably.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
the scientist. But in philosophy there
are often many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about whether it is tenable or not
because an epiphenomenon of behaviour which
denies any notion of objective truth shouldn't
care if that is what it is or not as soon
as it realises that that is what it is
- that's paradoxical, but only because
before it reached that point the epiphenomenon
thought it was more than an epiphenomenon
and thought there was a notion of objective
truth. If it never thought that then
there is no paradox, so you can just
give up those notions and continue
without them as paradoxical patterns
of behaviour to have. Or continue
with them but recognise them as
paradoxical views to have for such as you
and me.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply, and I wonder why you don't
see it. Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, you can care so long
as you don't know that that is what you are.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
the scientist. But in philosophy there
are often many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about wheter it is tenable or not.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply, and I wonder why you don't
see it. Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, you can care so long
as you don't know that that is what you are.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing. If one feels that way then
Penrose's argument has little force probably.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
the scientist. But in philosophy there
are often many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about whether it is tenable or not
because an epiphenomenon of behaviour which
denies any notion of objective truth shouldn't
care if that is what it is or not as soon
as it realises that that is what it is
- that's paradoxical, but only because
before it reached that point the epiphenomenon
thought it was more than an epiphenomenon
and thought there was a notion of objective
truth. If it never thought that then
there is no paradox, so you can just
give up those notions and continue
without them as paradoxical patterns
of behaviour to have. Or continue
with them but recognise them as
paradoxical views to have for such as you
and me.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply, and I wonder why you don't
see it. Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, you can care so long
as you don't know that that is what you are.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing. If one feels that way then
Penrose's argument has little force probably.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
the scientist. But in philosophy there
are often many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about whether it is tenable or not
because an epiphenomenon of behaviour which
denies any notion of objective truth shouldn't
care if that is what it is or not as soon
as it realises that that is what it is
- that's paradoxical, but only because
before it reached that point the epiphenomenon
thought it was more than an epiphenomenon
and thought there was a notion of objective
truth. If it never thought that then
there is no paradox, so you can just
give up those notions and continue
without them as paradoxical patterns
of behaviour to have. Or continue
with them but recognise them as
paradoxical views to have for such as you
and me.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply, and I wonder why you don't
see it. Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, you can care so long
as you don't know that that is what you are.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing. If one feels that way then
Penrose's argument has little force probably.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
the scientist. But in philosophy there
are often many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about whether it is tenable or not
because an epiphenomenon of behaviour which
denies any notion of objective truth shouldn't
care if that is what it is or not as soon
as it realises that that is what it is
- that's paradoxical, but only because
before it reached that point the epiphenomenon
thought it was more than an epiphenomenon
and thought there was a notion of objective
truth. If it never thought that then
there is no paradox, so you can just
give up those notions and continue
without them as paradoxical patterns
of behaviour to have. Or continue
with them but recognise them as
paradoxical views to have for such as you
and me.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply after all.
Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are no more than an epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, an epiphenomenon can care so long
as it doesn't know that that is what it is.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing (might be different if you
thought there is an objective truth that
is somehow accessible to epiphenomena).
If one feels that way then Penrose's argument
has little force probably.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
and that your notion of objective truth is also
an epiphenomenon as well,
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enough to satisfy
the scientist. Even there you sometimes
have many theories but there is usually
a best one amongst the ones currently
available. But in philosophy it is more
usual to have many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about whether it is tenable or not
because an epiphenomenon of behaviour which
denies any notion of objective truth shouldn't
care if that is what it is or not as soon
as it realises that that is what it is
- that's paradoxical, but only because
before it reached that point the epiphenomenon
thought it was more than an epiphenomenon
and thought there was a notion of objective
truth.

If it never thought that then
there is no paradox, so you can just
give up those notions of objective
truth about anything including whether
you are "really" an epiphenomenon, and continue
without them as paradoxical patterns
of behaviour to have. Or continue
with them but recognise them as
paradoxical views for such as you
and me to have.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply, and I wonder why you don't
see it. Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, you can care so long
as you don't know that that is what you are.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing. If one feels that way then
Penrose's argument has little force probably.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
the scientist. But in philosophy there
are often many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about whether it is tenable or not
because an epiphenomenon of behaviour which
denies any notion of objective truth shouldn't
care if that is what it is or not as soon
as it realises that that is what it is
- that's paradoxical, but only because
before it reached that point the epiphenomenon
thought it was more than an epiphenomenon
and thought there was a notion of objective
truth. If it never thought that then
there is no paradox, so you can just
give up those notions and continue
without them as paradoxical patterns
of behaviour to have. Or continue
with them but recognise them as
paradoxical views to have for such as you
and me.

Robert

Hi There,

Sorry about the repeated posts. My server is playing up
and Outlook Express keeps saying that it was unable
to complete the send message so it remains in the
Outbox. So I try to send it again.

I think they have been having some trouble at
the ntlworld servers keeping up with the recent volume
of traffic generated by the Netsky variant
viruses on so many people's computers,
so it may be to do with that.

Robert

Hi Carl,

From your other remarks, it seems what I was
saying does apply after all.
Maybe I didn't explain it as well
as I thought.

If you are no more than an epiphenomenon of a pattern
of behaviour, why do you care about whether
you are or not. It seems, an epiphenomenon can care so long
as it doesn't know that that is what it is.
Once you do, all your beliefs are also epiphenomena.
You've already said you think there is no
objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
as the real thing (might be different if you
thought there is an objective truth that
is somehow accessible to epiphenomena).
If one feels that way then Penrose's argument
has little force probably.

If you are a program for instance, whether
you believe that's what you are depends
on how your programming works. You could
be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
be anything.

So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
and that your notion of objective truth is also
an epiphenomenon as well,
you should then give up any attempt to
determine whether that is what you "really are"
as you know you can never know that for sure
just that you happen to have come to
take that point of view as part of the
current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
as an idealist does and none of it has any
significance - so you may as well give up
on the attempt to find out what is the "real
Truth" - and get on with other things.

That's the argument. Hope it makes more
sense now.

Also to say that in philosophy to establish
that a view is tenable doesn't mean it is
the only true view. It just means it is
one of many tenable views. If you want to
establish that yours is the only true view
you have to also establish that all other
views are untenable. It's not like maths
or science as that is sometimes practiced
where showing that your theory explains
everything is enough to establish it as
the true theory - in science quite often there
is only one theory that fits everything
and is also minimalist enough to satisfy
the scientist. Even there you sometimes
have many theories but there is usually
a best one amongst the ones currently
available. But in philosophy it is more
usual to have many theories with equal
explanatory power.

I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
you shouldn't care about whether it is tenable or not
because an epiphenomenon of behaviour which
denies any notion of objective truth shouldn't
care if that is what it is or not as soon
as it realises that that is what it is
- that's paradoxical, but only because
before it reached that point the epiphenomenon
thought it was more than an epiphenomenon
and thought there was a notion of objective
truth.

If it never thought that then
there is no paradox, so you can just
give up those notions of objective
truth about anything including whether
you are "really" an epiphenomenon, and continue
without them as paradoxical patterns
of behaviour to have. Or continue
with them but recognise them as
paradoxical views for such as you
and me to have.

Robert

Hi Robert,

> If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
> of behaviour, why do you care about whether
> you are or not.

Epiphenomena are people too. :)

Just kidding. I'm having a hard time understanding
the question.

> You've already said you think there is no
> objective notion of truth and that 99.999%
> probabilistic simulation of truth is as good
> as the real thing.

I said a 100% simulation is as good as the real
thing. I don't remember saying there was no
objective truth -- where did I say that (I'm
not denying it, necessarily)?

> If you are a program for instance, whether
> you believe that's what you are depends
> on how your programming works. You could
> be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
> knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
> be anything.

Good thing they don't know how. :)

> So once you know that you are an epiphenomenon
> you should then give up any attempt to
> determine whether that is what you "really are"
> as you know you can never know that for sure
> just that you happen to have come to
> take that point of view as part of the
> current pattern of your behaviour - somehow
> you have fallen into the pattern of behaviour
> of thinking that you are no more than a pattern
> of behaviour, but could just as easily fall
> into the pattren of behaviour of thinking
> as an idealist does and none of it has any
> significance - so you may as well give up
> on the attempt to find out what is the "real
> Truth" - and get on with other things.

According to Steve Grand, 1st-order simulations
of things aren't real things, but 2nd-order simulations
(epiphenomena) are. That's an interesting view that's
worth discussing some other time.

> That's the argument. Hope it makes more
> sense now.

What I believe matters to the extent that the
predictions of the beliefs differ. So I could
see you saying that it doesn't matter whether
I'm a solipsist or not, since the "dream" is
usually defined to behave exactly the same as
if it were a real, material reality. Thus,
solipsism makes no predictions.

But behaviorism matters. Claiming human minds
are Turing-computable matters. They make
predictions that are in principle testable.

> If you want to
> establish that yours is the only true view

I have no desire to do so.

> It's not like maths
> or science as that is sometimes practiced
> where showing that your theory explains
> everything is enough to establish it as
> the true theory - in science quite often there
> is only one theory that fits everything
> and is also minimalist enoughto satisfy
> the scientist. But in philosophy there
> are often many theories with equal
> explanatory power.

Then the simplest one should be called true,
and the others retired.

> I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
> Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
> you shouldn't care about wheter it is tenable
> or not.

Of course I care. I'm interested in making
models that explain/predict reality.

-Carl

Hi Carl

BTW I'm going to answer via the web for now,
ntlworld are having difficulties with their
servers right now with the huge increase in
e-mail traffic from viruses and spam
(which I expect is mainly virus relayed spam):

http://62.253.162.30/help/aup/email_alert.php

> > If you are a mere epiphenomenon of a pattern
> > of behaviour, why do you care about whether
> > you are or not.
>
> Epiphenomena are people too. :)
>
> Just kidding. I'm having a hard time understanding
> the question.

Rightio, thanks for trying :-)

> > If you are a program for instance, whether
> > you believe that's what you are depends
> > on how your programming works. You could
> > be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
> > knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
> > be anything.
>
> Good thing they don't know how. :)

Well - it is often hard modifying someone
else's code at the best of times
when well documented and commented, never
mind reverse compiled code :)

> According to Steve Grand, 1st-order simulations
> of things aren't real things, but 2nd-order simulations
> (epiphenomena) are. That's an interesting view that's
> worth discussing some other time.

Thanks. I suppose some philosophers might
go the other way and say each time you
add another layer of simulation you
get further away from reality.
>
> > That's the argument. Hope it makes more
> > sense now.
>
> What I believe matters to the extent that the
> predictions of the beliefs differ. So I could
> see you saying that it doesn't matter whether
> I'm a solipsist or not, since the "dream" is
> usually defined to behave exactly the same as
> if it were a real, material reality. Thus,
> solipsism makes no predictions.
>
> But behaviorism matters. Claiming human minds
> are Turing-computable matters. They make
> predictions that are in principle testable.

> Then the simplest one should be called true,
> and the others retired.

It doesn't work like that in philosohy.
Philosophers will argue first about whether
that is the right criterion to use,
and it isn't clear to me for one that it is.

The simplest philosophies may sometimes
be considered by other philosophers to
be over-simplified and leave out things
that most consider essential ingredients
of experience as something that doesn't
need to be explained - because they may
deny that they are anything other than
illusion and illusions don't need
philosophical explanations, just
some way of explaining them away.
So that could be a reason for
arguing that simplest isn't always
best in philsophy.

Then if two philosohpers do manage to agree on that,
enough to go on to discuss the merits of various
views as regards simplicity, they
will argue next about which view is
the simplest and will manage to convince
themselves at least that their own
view is the simplest :-)

Like the way I tried to convince you
that idealism is simpler than
scientific reductionism because
it only postulates mind(s) as primary,
which I would argue is
simpler than postulating a complex
world with complex scientific laws as
the primary thing.

You never really win in philosophy.
Old views never really get retired,
what was valid for Plato or Aristotle
or even earlier philosophes than that
(to the extent we know what they thought)
is still valid today in its essentials
though it might get presented differently.

> > I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
> > Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
> > you shouldn't care about wheter it is tenable
> > or not.

> > Of course I care. I'm interested in making
> > models that explain/predict reality.

Oh I think I begin to understand.
Sort of to aim to reduce philosophy
to science and get rid of this
troublesome renegade subject altogether :-).

Incidentally my responses are based on
trying to feel what it would be like to be
a behaviourist, and I came to the conclusion
that really I wouldn't care one way or another
whether I was a pattern of behaviour or not.
Which was quite refreshing in a way.
But I was being a kind of idealist
behaviourist if you can imagine such
a thing as I find it hard to think of
the world as primary. Always been
more attracted to mind primary philosophies.
I wonder if that is a mathematician's
tendency partly, as we spend so much time in
the realm of pure mind?

Sometimes when you think about maths
then you are hardly aware of the world
around you, all your attention is
on the maths. Same happens when reading
a book and you get immersed on it but
there you have at least that the
story is about beings in this world
or at least a world of some type
in the case of fantasy or sci fi.
But when thinking about maths e.g
when going through a proof, you can be
immersed in it in the same way, but with no
world at all as the context for the
proof, just mathematical forms.
So the physical world probably
tends to seem less primary the more
you spend hours of your time in such
activities as reading proofs in pure
maths (applied maths may perhaps be
different) and proving theorems.

Robert

> > > If you are a program for instance, whether
> > > you believe that's what you are depends
> > > on how your programming works. You could
> > > be reprogrammed to be an idealist if someone
> > > knew how to do the reprogramming, or to
> > > be anything.
> >
> > Good thing they don't know how. :)
>
> Well - it is often hard modifying someone
> else's code at the best of times
> when well documented and commented, never
> mind reverse compiled code :)

Indeed. In fact I'm far worse at reading code
than writing it. I can't even read my own damn
code!

> > What I believe matters to the extent that the
> > predictions of the beliefs differ. So I could
> > see you saying that it doesn't matter whether
> > I'm a solipsist or not, since the "dream" is
> > usually defined to behave exactly the same as
> > if it were a real, material reality. Thus,
> > solipsism makes no predictions.
> >
> > But behaviorism matters. Claiming human minds
> > are Turing-computable matters. They make
> > predictions that are in principle testable.
>
> > Then the simplest one should be called true,
> > and the others retired.
>
> It doesn't work like that in philosohy.

No? That would, in my view, throw into question
any claim of validity in philosophy.

In the Solomonoff/Schmidhuber approach, Occam's
razor isn't just a friendly neighborhood
principle, it's a law of nature.

> Like the way I tried to convince you
> that idealism is simpler than
> scientific reductionism because
> it only postulates mind(s) as primary,
> which I would argue is
> simpler than postulating a complex
> world with complex scientific laws as
> the primary thing.

Exactly what I've been trying to say!
Certainly this is the view of Fredkin
et al that I've been throwing around.

I just read the definition of
idealist last night, and it probably
applies to me.

> > > I'm not showing your view to be untenable.
> > > Just showing that on the basis of such a view,
> > > you shouldn't care about wheter it is tenable
> > > or not.
> > >
> > > Of course I care. I'm interested in making
> > > models that explain/predict reality.
>
> Oh I think I begin to understand.
> Sort of to aim to reduce philosophy
> to science and get rid of this
> troublesome renegade subject altogether :-).

I thought I said as much. With the exception,
as I said, of hortatory philosophy. Self-help
stuff, you know. Much of it, especially from
the Classical period, is really beautiful.

-Carl

Hi Carl,

> > > Then the simplest one should be called true,
> > > and the others retired.
> >
> > It doesn't work like that in philosohy.
>
> No? That would, in my view, throw into question
> any claim of validity in philosophy.

Well ok fine. Maybe you could make some
headway if you could get philosophers
to agree on what counts as simple
and what doesn't, and _also_ on what
is essential in the matters to be
explained and what can be treated
as illusion.

Look at something
one way and it looks complex,
then look at it another way and
it is suddenly simple. E.g.in
maths a proof may seem very complex
when you go through it step by step,
but then when you get it at the end
then it is suddenly a simple idea that
could only be explained in that rather
complex way. So is it simple or
complex?

The thing is that science assumes
so much that it takes for granted.
So it makes sense to compare different
scientific theories within a shared
framework in which everyone will
agree on what is simple and isn't.
At least they seem to, one could
imagine that there might be situations
even in science where scientists mightn't
always agree on which theory is the
simplest, with full knowledge of all
the details of how they work.

But the entire framework in which
you do science is up for
questioning in philosophy. So that's
why the subject doesn't work quite
the same way.

> In the Solomonoff/Schmidhuber approach, Occam's
> razor isn't just a friendly neighborhood
> principle, it's a law of nature.

Okay, maybe it is, I wouldn't know, but
it isn't a law of philosophy. Or if
you make it into a law of philsophy
then that is to take a particular philsophical
view and probably few will agree, or
agree where it should be applied.
It could be used to argue for complete
nihilism, in some ways the simplest
philosophical view of all.

Does get used by philsophers surely,
but with restraint (normally).

> > Oh I think I begin to understand.
> > Sort of to aim to reduce philosophy
> > to science and get rid of this
> > troublesome renegade subject altogether :-).
>
> I thought I said as much. With the exception,
> as I said, of hortatory philosophy. Self-help
> stuff, you know. Much of it, especially from
> the Classical period, is really beautiful.

Probably did but I missed it. Yes indeed,
beautiful like poetry some of it :-).

Robert

Howdy Robert!

> > > > Then the simplest one should be called true,
> > > > and the others retired.
> > >
> > > It doesn't work like that in philosohy.
> >
> > No? That would, in my view, throw into question
> > any claim of validity in philosophy.
>
> Well ok fine. Maybe you could make some
> headway if you could get philosophers
> to agree on what counts as simple
> and what doesn't, and _also_ on what
> is essential in the matters to be
> explained and what can be treated
> as illusion.

The razor only applies when all else is
equal. The predictions of the contending
explanations have to be exactly the same.

Then, to debate which is simpler is great.
To wantonly choose the one you decide is
more complex is insane.

> Look at something
> one way and it looks complex,
> then look at it another way and
> it is suddenly simple.

I never claimed there was an objective
measure of simplicity. In fact Kolmorgorov
tried it and wound up with an uncomputable
measure.

> But the entire framework in which
> you do science is up for
> questioning in philosophy. So that's
> why the subject doesn't work quite
> the same way.

Everything is up for questioning. But what
I've seen of supposed alternatives to the
scientific model are junk.

> > In the Solomonoff/Schmidhuber approach, Occam's
> > razor isn't just a friendly neighborhood
> > principle, it's a law of nature.
>
> Okay, maybe it is, I wouldn't know, but
> it isn't a law of philosophy.

The thing is, you can't claim different
rules of nature apply depending on what
building your office is in. Philosophy
must obey the laws of nature.

I've always viewed Philosophy as an
attempt to do science with natural language
as the primary tool. But admittedly that's
my interpretation.

> Or if you make it into a law of philsophy
> then that is to take a particular philsophical
> view and probably few will agree, or
> agree where it should be applied.

I'd love to do so. I haven't been able to
find a school that fits yet, though. Idealism
sounds close at first glance, but isn't quite
right. In fact I looked at probably a dozen
schools on Wikipedia and couldn't find any
that matched.

Talk about jargon in math! The terms in philosophy
are so overloaded it's ridiculous. Almost every
school I looked at had several completely
contradictory meanings, depending on what author
was using it.

> It could be used to argue for complete
> nihilism, in some ways the simplest
> philosophical view of all.

"We believe in nothing!"

Sorry, I couldn't resist, in case Aaron is
reading, this is a quote from the film "The
Big Lebowski".

> > > Oh I think I begin to understand.
> > > Sort of to aim to reduce philosophy
> > > to science and get rid of this
> > > troublesome renegade subject altogether :-).
> >
> > I thought I said as much. With the exception,
> > as I said, of hortatory philosophy. Self-help
> > stuff, you know. Much of it, especially from
> > the Classical period, is really beautiful.
>
> Probably did but I missed it. Yes indeed,
> beautiful like poetry some of it :-).

Quite.

-Carl

Howdy Carl!

> The razor only applies when all else is
> equal. The predictions of the contending
> explanations have to be exactly the same.
>
> Then, to debate which is simpler is great.
> To wantonly choose the one you decide is
> more complex is insane.

Why exactly? In philosophy one can ask
anything including such questions as that.

After all sometimes the more complex
hypothesis is the correct one, but
one chooses a simpler one because of
lack of information. Sometimes the
more complex one only looks more complex
because of the way one looks at it.

But even if it actually is more complex,
well if it appeals in some other way
as more in tune with the way one sees
things, what is wrong with choosing that?
You can ask questions like that in philosophy
as there are no givens that can't be
questioned. You can choose it because
though more complex you find it more
inspiring, or it just feels more right.

I don't think there is any objective
way at all to choose between philosophies
unless you manage to show that someone
else's philosophy is inconsistent with
itself or indeed inconsistent with
experience (but showimg inconsistency
with experience requires suffiient
consensus of views to be sure you
are interpreting experience the same
way first).

>
> > Look at something
> > one way and it looks complex,
> > then look at it another way and
> > it is suddenly simple.
>
> I never claimed there was an objective
> measure of simplicity. In fact Kolmorgorov
> tried it and wound up with an uncomputable
> measure.

I'm not surprised, but it is interesting
to know that.
>
> > But the entire framework in which
> > you do science is up for
> > questioning in philosophy. So that's
> > why the subject doesn't work quite
> > the same way.
>
> Everything is up for questioning. But what
> I've seen of supposed alternatives to the
> scientific model are junk.

Philosophy doesn't normally propose alternatives
to the scientiic model. It works rather on
finding out how to understand it philosophically
which normally keeps science intact as far as the activities
of scientists are concerned.

Only if you try to extend science to include
philosophy as a sub field of science - then
you will see the philosophical investigations
as attempts at alternative science.

So philosophy gives you no experimentally testable
predictions normally.

That makes scientists uncomfortable!
But it just means that there are limitations
to the scientific method; some things it
is unable to touch. Not limitations to
reason - you can reason about philosophy
and things like consistency are still
relevant, but empirical testability
not (well if your philosophy did make
an empircially testable prediction it would
be falsifiable but that isn't normal).

If philosophy made empirically testable
predictions it would then be a science,
and philsophers don't (normally) claim that their
discipline is a branch of science,
and to do so is to take a philosophical
view about the nature of philosophy.

I'm talking about Western philosophy there.
In Eastern philsophy I think sometimes
they may say that you will experience
certain things in meditation if you
immerse yourself in a particular view,
or might do so, so to that extent it is
sort of empirically testable - but in
the realm of mind rather than science as
normally understood.

> > > In the Solomonoff/Schmidhuber approach, Occam's
> > > razor isn't just a friendly neighborhood
> > > principle, it's a law of nature.
> >
> > Okay, maybe it is, I wouldn't know, but
> > it isn't a law of philosophy.
>
> The thing is, you can't claim different
> rules of nature apply depending on what
> building your office is in. Philosophy
> must obey the laws of nature.

It studies the pre-conceptions behind
laws of nature as well as other things.

> I've always viewed Philosophy as an
> attempt to do science with natural language
> as the primary tool. But admittedly that's
> my interpretation.

Yes - that is a particular philosophical
view about the nature of philosophy :-).

> > Or if you make it into a law of philsophy
> > then that is to take a particular philsophical
> > view and probably few will agree, or
> > agree where it should be applied.
>
> I'd love to do so. I haven't been able to
> find a school that fits yet, though. Idealism
> sounds close at first glance, but isn't quite
> right. In fact I looked at probably a dozen
> schools on Wikipedia and couldn't find any
> that matched.
>
> Talk about jargon in math! The terms in philosophy
> are so overloaded it's ridiculous. Almost every
> school I looked at had several completely
> contradictory meanings, depending on what author
> was using it.

Oh yes, terms don't have to be consistent
from one school to another, not at all.
It is like maths where a symbol such
as A could mean anything depending on the
paper - and even things like an integral
sign that one might hink are fixed in meaning
have quite different interpretations depending
on the field.

Also like mathematicians, philsophers
love to invent words. But they have to as well,
too because the things they are conveying
are quite subtle. One philosopher's
idea of what perception is may be quite
different from another ones idea of it
and there may simply be no suitable
distinctions in ordinary language
so they have to make up new words
or redefine existing words to express
what they want to say.

We manage to live together in the
same world with such a variety of philosophies
about it, which is quite remarkable.
Somehow it never seems to give rise
to serious issues that need to be
addressed so the many distinctions that
would be needed to describe them don't enter
into natural language. But when you
philosophise then you need to
explore what those distinctions are
so you need new language to do so.

I gather though that in some Eastern
languages (tibetan?, sanskrit?)
terms for philsophical things are much
more precise than they are for us,
as the philosohpy has entered more into
the language than it has for us.

> > It could be used to argue for complete
> > nihilism, in some ways the simplest
> > philosophical view of all.
>
> "We believe in nothing!"
>
> Sorry, I couldn't resist, in case Aaron is
> reading, this is a quote from the film "The
> Big Lebowski".

Rightio.

I think perhaps the philsophy I have encountered
that verges closest to nihilism might
be Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism
- though we hardly studied it at all
so I don't know much about it really -
as French philosophy was I'm sorry to
say in very low regard in UK universities
at the time and seldom got studied.
I don't know if the feeling there was reciprocal.

But it is interesting to recognise as
well that you get these historical
and national fashions in philosophy
and it shows clearly that
there is a strong tendency to think
that ones current nation and time
period has the best philosophy ever
as whicheve one is most predominant
amongst its thinkers.

Existentialism is quite a bleak view
though. You can feel almost suicidal
sometimes as a result of reading
their philsophies :-(.

Robert

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Walker" <robertwalker@n...>
wrote:

> It is like maths where a symbol such
> as A could mean anything depending on the
> paper ...

I was in a graduate seminar where the prof used "pi" in two different
ways *in the same formula*. In one place it meant a localizing
parameter for a completed closure of a p-adic field, and in the other
place it meant 3.14159... He apologized, but he wrote it down.
Fortunately no physicists were in attendence so that we had to argue
over what a "local field" was.

Hi Gene,

> I was in a graduate seminar where the prof used "pi" in two different
> ways *in the same formula*. In one place it meant a localizing
> parameter for a completed closure of a p-adic field, and in the other
> place it meant 3.14159... He apologized, but he wrote it down.
> Fortunately no physicists were in attendence so that we had to argue
> over what a "local field" was.

Nice one :-)

Robert

> > The razor only applies when all else is
> > equal. The predictions of the contending
> > explanations have to be exactly the same.
> >
> > Then, to debate which is simpler is great.
> > To wantonly choose the one you decide is
> > more complex is insane.
//
> But even if it actually is more complex,
> well if it appeals in some other way
> as more in tune with the way one sees
> things, what is wrong with choosing that?

What this actually means is that the
alternative breaks your existing model
somewhere else. The razor still works
if you apply it to the *whole* model,
including the bits that it has
dependencies with.

> Only if you try to extend science to include
> philosophy as a sub field of science - then
> you will see the philosophical investigations
> as attempts at alternative science.

Oh, I'm much worse off than that. I see
*everything* as a sub field of science.

> That makes scientists uncomfortable!
> But it just means that there are limitations
> to the scientific method; some things it
> is unable to touch. Not limitations to
> reason

I use the words "science" and "reason" almost
interchangeably, except that the latter is
more of a verb.

>> Talk about jargon in math! The terms in philosophy
>> are so overloaded it's ridiculous. Almost every
>> school I looked at had several completely
>> contradictory meanings, depending on what author
>> was using it.
>
>Oh yes, terms don't have to be consistent
>from one school to another, not at all.
>It is like maths where a symbol such
>as A could mean anything depending on the
>paper - and even things like an integral
>sign that one might hink are fixed in meaning
>have quite different interpretations depending
>on the field.

Yes, and it's so bad that already in Heidegger
you can switch the words around and nobody can
tell. Or you can get papers like the Quantum
Gravity of Hermaneutics paper that Gene mentioned
published in journals. Or you can observe how
close substitution systems can get to faking
things...

http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/

> I think perhaps the philsophy I have encountered
> that verges closest to nihilism might
> be Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism
> - though we hardly studied it at all
> so I don't know much about it really -
> as French philosophy was I'm sorry to
> say in very low regard in UK universities
> at the time and seldom got studied.
> I don't know if the feeling there was reciprocal.

In took a class in which we studied Sartre's
_Being And Nothingness_ and _Nausea_. The latter,
being mostly hortatory, I loved. The former, being
an English translation of French analysis, I hated.

Sartre was great for one-liners. And for
publicizing the school of existentialism and
claiming people like Heidegger belonged to it.
"Existence precedes essence" is a good
one-liner, though.

> Existentialism is quite a bleak view
> though. You can feel almost suicidal
> sometimes as a result of reading
> their philsophies :-(.

Which ones? I always found it rather uplifting!

-Carl

Hi Carl,

> Yes, and it's so bad that already in Heidegger
> you can switch the words around and nobody can
> tell. Or you can get papers like the Quantum
> Gravity of Hermaneutics paper that Gene mentioned
> published in journals. Or you can observe how
> close substitution systems can get to faking
> things...

Yes, some philosophers are notoriously
hard to read. Particularly the
German ones where it is probably partly
because of the long sentences and sstructures
you get when they are translated into
English. Kant for instance, though
one of the clearer of them is hardly
the most elegantly and most clearly
expressed writer of philosophy prose
when it is translated into English.

One of the modern philsophers I studied,
for my thesis, because he had a relevant
paper on the topic that I needed to read,
Crispin Wright, had some really interesting
philosophical ideas on my field. There
he did express himself clearly too, and
he is an English speaker so it isn't
a matter of language - but his
sentences were very long and complex
in gramatical structure, and expressing
many nuances and it was often hard
to spot the essential core element
that the sentence or paragraph
was all about.

I ended up writing a paraphrase of his paper
first in order to understand it. I showed the
paraphrase to my supervisor and by some
miscommunication he thought it was my own work
(I don't think he had read the paper
as it was very much a philosopher's
paper, he was a mathematician
with a good knowledge of philosophy rather
than a philosopher with good knowledge of maths)
and he congratulated me on it :-)
- a bit embarassing.

I heard him give a talk once as well
and his talk was just as hard to
follow, well for me anyway, I don't
know how anyone was able to understand
it! Doesn't make you a poor philsopher though
- he was an insightful philosopher and it
was well worth the work involved to unravel
what he was saying in his papers.

There was another paper on my subject - a mathematical
one this time rather than a philsophical
one though with a bit of philsophy -
and I read through because I had to
for my thesis, but I found it
almost completely unreadable.

Not the subject matter but
the way it was expressed - the author
invented a huge number of new words,
the paper was mostly in natural language
rather than symbols, and with many
of his terms I wasn't at all clear
to me what it was all about at all.
It was his only published paper on
the subject too so you couldn't
read back in earlier papers to find
out what he was getting at.

So - I read it and made the best
I could of it but I didn't understand
what he was saying. Just got one or
two points from it that I understood
that's all. It was a shame because
he seemed to have some interesting
things to say if one could only have
understood what they were. I got the
impression that I wasn't the only one
who found his work a bit unintelligible
to read.

> In took a class in which we studied Sartre's
> _Being And Nothingness_ and _Nausea_. The latter,
> being mostly hortatory, I loved. The former, being
> an English translation of French analysis, I hated.
>
> Sartre was great for one-liners. And for
> publicizing the school of existentialism and
> claiming people like Heidegger belonged to it.
> "Existence precedes essence" is a good
> one-liner, though.
>
> > Existentialism is quite a bleak view
> > though. You can feel almost suicidal
> > sometimes as a result of reading
> > their philsophies :-(.
>
> Which ones? I always found it rather uplifting!

I'm glad to hear it. Probably I took it the wrong
way somehow. It was my own private study as we
had no courses on it and I had no introduction
to it from anyone else. I think it was his
Being and Nothingness that I found so
depressing. Glad you had a class on it.
I'd have liked to have taken one just
so that I have some idea of what French
philosophy is about.

Robert

Hi Robert,

Yes, I think we agree that a lot of problems
understanding philosophy can arise in
translation out of the original language.

> Crispin Wright, had some really interesting
> philosophical ideas on my field.

I'll keep an eye out for this name.

> > > Existentialism is quite a bleak view
> > > though. You can feel almost suicidal
> > > sometimes as a result of reading
> > > their philsophies :-(.
> >
> > Which ones? I always found it rather uplifting!
>
> I'm glad to hear it. Probably I took it the wrong
> way somehow. It was my own private study as we
> had no courses on it and I had no introduction
> to it from anyone else. I think it was his
> Being and Nothingness that I found so
> depressing. Glad you had a class on it.
> I'd have liked to have taken one just
> so that I have some idea of what French
> philosophy is about.

Well there are lots of different French
philosophies -- as many as there are on the
Isles, I'm sure. Though for some reason
I think of Derrida as a central figure.

-Carl

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Walker" <robertwalker@n...>
wrote:

> Yes, some philosophers are notoriously
> hard to read. Particularly the
> German ones where it is probably partly
> because of the long sentences and sstructures
> you get when they are translated into
> English.

Germans sometimes read Heidegger in translation so as to be able to
understand what he is saying.

> One of the modern philsophers I studied,
> for my thesis, because he had a relevant
> paper on the topic that I needed to read,
> Crispin Wright, had some really interesting
> philosophical ideas on my field. There
> he did express himself clearly too, and
> he is an English speaker so it isn't
> a matter of language - but his
> sentences were very long and complex
> in gramatical structure, and expressing
> many nuances and it was often hard
> to spot the essential core element
> that the sentence or paragraph
> was all about.

For some reason philosopers often write like this.

> > In took a class in which we studied Sartre's
> > _Being And Nothingness_ and _Nausea_. The latter,
> > being mostly hortatory, I loved. The former, being
> > an English translation of French analysis, I hated.
> >
> > Sartre was great for one-liners.

"Slime is the agony of water." Beat that, baby!

> > > Existentialism is quite a bleak view
> > > though. You can feel almost suicidal
> > > sometimes as a result of reading
> > > their philsophies :-(.
> >
> > Which ones? I always found it rather uplifting!

It reminds me of the time I was discussing Beckett and mentioned how
depressing he was. My friend had always thought him uplifting!