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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I use "..." when there is some part of the quote I did not use, so as to alert the reader that they might want to learn what is in those omissions.
It is the most intellectually honest way I know to indicate I have paraphrased from the author.
I don't use all Wiki articles, but when they are written well I would cite them instead of essentially reproducing their work. I'm not looking for a grade on a report to my high school teacher here... but an efficient way of communicating a set of ideas.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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talk about being romantic...
I don't have a problem with Romanticism. Some of the greatest works of art and music are a direct result of that sensibility. I have a problem with Romanticism used as an ethic that declares the insignificance of human achievement as seen in the posts of many of those declaring their own science bona fides on this and other threads. I'm sure you would agree.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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on this thread I don't have a problem with anyone's opinion...
that's what makes it interesting to me.
The ideas of the "new mysterians" brings up the interesting issues regarding knowledge, and the limits of purely rational thought in seeing beyond what is currently known. Classical philosophers rationalized, and got it badly wrong with science, why would we assume the did any better with anything else they considered?
It is purely a speculation that human intellect might be insufficient to comprehend that very intellect, and Godel, who famously disliked the notion of a "mechanical" explanation and thought it most likely wrong, allowed that some empirical evidence might just piece together an explanation.
Godel was no slouch on the issues regarding these speculations.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Its strange so many just don't seem to get it ... you taste chocolate.
It's strange that so many just don't seem to get it, that almost everyone seems to taste chocolate, but so many (other people) just don't seem to "get it" the way that you, a lord of chocolate, "get it".
We're each the lord of chocolate in our own minds. If that seems strange to you, if you don't get that, then you don't get it.
Somehow even the things that seem strange to us - the things that we know we don't understand - end up seeming to us to be things that other people don't get, rather than things that we don't get.
So if we need to believe that we humans are the greatest lords of chocolate in the universe, or I individually am the greatest lord of chocolate, then that's what we believe.
I guess that beats the alternative. But hard for us survivor biased humans to say, since the alternative doesn't seem to have survived evolution's chopping block.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle...
Scientific method earns a lot to philosophers - Popper, hypothetico-deductive method and falsification, as example.
Chemistry was in many ways born from alchemy (the use of reactive quicksilver to make gold) and surgery from superstition leading to bloodletting and knifecutting doing more harm than good.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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not so sure it is "fate"
Popper has been instrumental in describing sciences in a manner, but I don't think it is "the last word" in scientific method, a notoriously plastic notion that morphs from time to time. All of these are contributions, none of them are definitive statements encompassing "all of science for all time."
Science is changing.
The instances that our understanding leads to predictions that are then testable, related to the instance that observables are understandable, really underlies the modern scientific process.
Alchemy fails to be predictive, as does astrology, ancient medicine, Aristotle's physics, ideas that lead, successfully to predictions of outcomes are their successors.
For better or for worse, science is the prevailing explanation for how the universe works.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Alchemy is nonsense, but the nonsense of alchemy resulted in chemistry which is scientific.
The problem with much of metaphysics is that it can be compared to ending up where you started - in speculation - insisting to try to make gold -
instead of learning from failure and creating the science of chemistry.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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And wiki is a reliable source along with ethos, pathos, logos (touted by ancient philosophy) rarely used as rhetorical devices to persuade today
If one of your HS students wrote this sentence, how would you grade it?
Having grown up in the 1950s, I continue to marvel at Wikipedia. So much information - a substantial amount of it correct - at one's fingertips. In mathematics alone there are more than 30,000 pages (an insignificant one I contributed). Each page is a portal providing an introduction to a topic and citing sources one can use for greater, in depth knowledge.
I recall taking the bus to downtown Atlanta on Saturdays to visit the library and search for information, sometimes finding scant little about topics that were then relatively new. Works by the classical philosophers were in abundance, however.
I predict that JL's philosophical commentaries will lead back to no-thing. And I have wondered from time to time if he is shifting genre and writing a philosophical book, and trolling for arguments on this thread in that effort. Interesting notion.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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It's strange that so many just don't seem to get it, that almost everyone seems to taste chocolate, but so many just don't seem to "get it" the way that you, a lord of chocolate, "get it".
It's not about the "taste" of chocolate as a reaction of chemicals in the brain, it's about the experience of that taste by an entity that stands apart from that taste. And that's what you don't seem to be able to understand. Lord of Chocolate? Really?
With regard to the scientific method and prediction: prediction is a function of expectations based on the understanding of an ordered universe in which the laws of physics are certain. Science is a result of that certain order and that order has produced life and consciousness.
In the Bible that order is referred to as the logos, not a bad deduction for 2000 years ago. The implication in the biblical text is that order comes first and material nature follows something like the form/content distinction in art. A chicken/egg problem that is fascinating.The questions become: why is there anything, why is it of an ordered nature, and what came first order or nature or did they appear simultaneously?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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. . . what came first order or nature or did they appear simultaneously?
This has been briefly discussed here but it didn't take traction. A modern notion is the idea of a mathematical universe in which that structure somehow both precedes and frames natural phenomena. "Precedes" of course assumes a temporal environment providing a conduit for what "followed."
All very puzzling and possibly useful in buttressing an argument for the limitations of human comprehension. Interesting.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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:-) Thanks Paul.
Right, the problem is that I don't understand.
You can taste chocolate, I can taste chocolate. So many people can taste chocolate. Each of us is a mighty lord of chocolate, experiencing the wonderful sensation of the taste of chocolate. When it comes to experiencing the taste of chocolate, we can all do it.
But so many people can't understand the difference between tasting and experiencing, the way that you can understand. When it comes to understanding, to believing the truth, it seems to you that you can do it where so many others can't.
And that seeming seems strange to you.
That's ok.
To me, the fact that you seem your seemings, and what your seemings seem to be (eg that you can understand what so many other people can't, or that our ignorance of other intelligences/achievements in the universe is proof to us of the lordliness of our own intelligence/achievements) doesn't seem that strange.
To each of us, our beliefs are deep and well informed, where others are "shallow and ill informed". But, in our defense, what are we lords of belief to do? A belief isn't much good to us if we don't believe it.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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The internal experience of being thirsty is like the internal experience of being in my car and the gas gauge light goes red to tell my meat brain its thirsty. No one outside my car sees red, or feels thirsty. Its an internal experience and inherently private, unless shared. But it is 100% physical. There is no magic involved, unless and until you can prove it. Word parsing is not convincing.
DMT
After having run out of water near the top of Wash Column on July 4th and not getting off that night. I would say my experience is not like seeing my gas gauge on empty. Based on experience. Maybe you have never been thirsty ?
They are both experiences ; more importantly is how you work with the experience and look at why do we work with experiences the way we do? Is our reaction based on past conditioning (labeling it good or bad) or can I let go of the conditioning and experience it for what it is?
Why the hell would that be of any concern? To look deeper is like climbing you genuinely have to be very interested; it's hard to fake for very long.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jgill: Interesting notion.
I think everyone says this about their own thoughts.
There are two opposing views about what constitutes “what’s interesting.”
1. One that denies certain assumptions of audiences (versus others that affirm audiences’ assumptions): see, MS Davis: “That’s interesting! Towards a phenomenology of sociology and a sociology of phenomenology.” Philosophy of the social sciences, 1971. (findable on Google scholar).
2. Another that believes that theories that are “interesting” (as above) lead to nonreplicable findings, fragmented theory, and irrelevance. Science would be better off if it reverted to its traditional primacy toward problem-solving than over novel theory development: see, Pillutla & Thau: “Organizational sciences’ obsession with “that’s interesting.” 2013. Organizational Psychology Review. Also on Google scholar.
Although both articles are found in or around my domains of study (business studies), they might well articulate the issues in question here in this thread, even in more materialist and physical sciences.
Do folks want to add to the accretion of knowledge (incremental, almost trivial, and dubious as it seems to be in complete and final form), or break through the bounds of current paradigms in search for what could possibly be?
Be well,
.
P.S. My last question should not be read as though I denigrate one decision and favor another. I see both as choices that don't need to be made.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Hmm, interesting...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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... but stupid"
Arty Johnson
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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To me, the fact that you seem your seemings, and what your seemings seem to be (eg that you can understand what so many other people can't, or that our ignorance of other intelligences/achievements in the universe is proof to us of the lordliness of our own intelligence/achievements) doesn't seem that strange.
Often what "seems" to us is in fact objective reality. When you visit the dentist for tooth pain he/she doesn't say well how can I really know you feel pain after all it's simply subjective experience and each of us experiences things in our own way. No, your dentist wouldn't do that he would fix the tooth.
All experience must ultimately be subjective but we can comprehend its universal nature through the communication of consensus as in chocolate tastes good.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Just who are you debating here, Paul. I don't think anyone here really disagrees with your most basic points. Eg, latent in the universe was the evolution of consciousness, check; latent in the universe was the evolution of H. sapiens and the birth of Adolf Hitler, Neil Armstrong and Elvis Prestley, check.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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If we form a consensus that tasting and experiencing the taste are the same thing, will that then be your objective reality? If only humans were lords of confirmation bias, then our seemings would more often be objective facts! Maybe that's why the neanderthals fell, or maybe it was because they couldn't distinguish tasting from experiencing the taste. Thanks Paul, I just believe different things.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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To me, the fact that you seem your seemings, and what your seemings seem to be . . .
Seems you are on to something that's not as it seems. Good luck.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Just who are you debating here, Paul. I don't think anyone here really disagrees with your most basic points. Eg, latent in the universe was the evolution of consciousness, check; latent in the universe was the evolution of H. sapiens and the birth of Adolf Hitler, Neil Armstrong and Elvis Prestley, check.
And just what are the implications of the latent nature of consciousness in the universe? Can we then say the universe favors consciousness? How is consciousness not an inevitable and therefore favored consequence of the laws of physics? What is consciousness if not a consequence of the logos, or the predicate structure that all matter, all physical action must obey? How is it that the structural potential for consciousness exists as a predicate to its actual existence? Where does that predicate come from? How can it be latent as a potential without some pre-existent form or probability, that is, isn't its latency tantamount to its pre-existence if that potential is really inevitable?
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