Mr. Sammi

Theli,

I have a response. The depth and breath of comprehensibility starts at perception is retained as data then jumps to information with the help of the understanding.

I can only percieve what I percieve, the rest, if there is a rest, to this I am blind.

Once I am not(blind), I have achieved the premier level of comprehensibility, perceptive comprehension. AH I have data. Is this data foreign data OR will the data make the jump to information.

Something completely foreign, I may as well be blind to this...


Sammi Na Boodie ()

Theli

Keith Russell...

This is part of my point... why isn't it 2 "smokes" or 3 "smokes"?
The reason why we cannot use smoke in plural form is that we have no way to tell the "smokes" apart, just as we cannot say "1 smoke". Only when we comprehend a shape of the smoke can we call it 1 object/thing. A cloud of smoke. Until that, it is only smoke, not a thing.
We seperate objects through simple recognition, shape, color, size and so on... But there is no objective method to equate an object to a recognizable "thing".
Every single atom is unique in it's position in spacetime, if they were equal they would be the same 1 atom. The only way to seperate things is to ignore most differences and recognize the few.

But how do you discern a thing if it's specifics is unknown to you? as in 100% incomprehensible.



Mr. Sammi...

Yes, and "understanding" is primarally based on finding similarites and recognizable patterns.

In the sense we are discussing, if the data is comprehended by you, then it is not foreign.
Again you ignored my question, what defines a "thing"?

jofo

In order to discuss this, I'll have to think about what it means to "comprehend".

Does understanding something mean that you must "know" it all? In order to understand electricity, do you have to know all electrically charged particles everywhere? No, that's unreasonable, nobody can do that and the word then would be useless.

Understanding usually somehow refers to a model, an idealised mental picture of something. Basically, if you can make some kind of predictions (whether good or bad) based on your knowledge of a system, then you have yourself a model. And if these predictions are consistent, deterministic, etc, then you might say that you understand the model.

However, can you understand the corresponding ("real") physical system? I think this is a pretty meaningless question, since the model is our only representation of how the system works. We can never be 100% sure that it's consistent with the behaviour of the system; we can't even know if our observations of the system are consistent with it. Maybe we can say that "comprehending" (physical system) really means something like "understanding the currently most promising model that science has made of" (it).

That would mean that no physical system can really be "incomprehensible", because it seems absurd to say that humanity could produce a model that it cannot possibly ever understand. Of corse, there may also be systems that are beyond the scope of human model-making, but that's pure speculation.

On the other hand, according to this line of reasoning, a model that is inconsistent with itself, or incomplete, is "incomprehensible", because it can't be used for prediction, not even theoretically. But then it's hardly a model at all, is it?

Maybe I'm just playing around with definitions here.

Theli

jofo...

No, ofcourse not. You only need to know enough about it to create a concept on wich you can base identification and perhaps application. As you mentioned electricity, we need only know enough to identify it. But electricity (like water and air) is not a thing, for electricity to be a thing we must have a shape, form or amount to limit it to. Like water (a waterdrop, a gallon of water).

I agree... I think that to avoid falling into a circular argument, reality cannot be objectivly defined, only subjectivly. Take for instance 2 chairs. One existing in our reality, and one existing inside a matrix-like reality. The difference between the both would be insignificant.

Ofcourse systems can be identified as things aswell, and they would require an observer to identify them. All in all, the universe is very turbulent (everything floats into itself), and "thing" is just an invention in the minds of humans to help them understand their surroundings. I think that's something that can be difficult to understand. I had abit of headache trying to identify "me" in the Life after Death? thread.

Keith Russell

Theli:

Electricity is limited; it is not infinite.

We measure electricity--and I've got the bills to prove it!

Keith.

Theli

What are you talking about?
If you want to accuse me of making a false claim, then I would appreciate it if you provided a quote from my post.
If you are not, then I seriously question the relevance of your post.

Mr. Sammi

Mr. Sammi here.

Theli, sorry for ignoring your question. I think you are reading too strongly into my use of the word thing. Anything is a thing. I use the word thing loosly as the instantiation of the placeholder when it has a hard representation.

In my mind a thing is a representation. We do not have great need for understanding to have things. Foreign data is a thing. Foreign data is obtained by an unconscious process delivered by what I term LowerBeing. LowerBeing as opposed to ThinkingBeing. Yea I am all for dualism. Descartes is my hero.

On one level foreign data is comprehensible to LowerBeing, which is the being which is connected to sensory apparatus and the early representation mechanisms. Without connection to the representations the foreign data remains foreign data and never makes the next step towards recognisable representations.

On the next level up foreign data is incomprehensible because it has no representational equivalent.


Back to thing. I have no philosophical connotation for the use of thing, at least not at this time. Perhaps you can convince me to appropriate your definition of thing as a philosophical connotation.


Back to foreign data. We need this foreign data to learn about the world. Babies recieve foreign data all the time on the tabula rasa of their minds, except within the apriori schemes of the baby's LowerBeing. This includes handling of foreign data. Which midly if I may smirk here, includes the incomprehensible...


Sammi Na Boodie (no thing like the best thing)

Keith Russell

Theli:

Gosh, you had just posted this, I didn't think quoting it back to you was necesary.

Theli:
"But electricity (like water and air) is not a thing, for electricity to be a thing we must have a shape, form or amount to limit it to."

OK, Theli, now does my response make any more sense to you?

Keith:
Theli:

"Electricity is limited; it is not infinite.

We measure electricity--and I've got the bills to prove it!"

Keith.

Theli

Keith...

It was very neccessary, especially since I never even used the word infinite in regards to electricity. And to respond to your post, for you to call electricity a thing, you must limit it to a certain amount/shape/measurement. For instance "one MWh", or "one electron". I never said anything about infinity.

Theli

Mr. Sammi...

That depends on how you pronounce "anything". If you mean anything, as in whatever that exists at all (including concepts) then I would have to say no. As "A thing" refers to an unspecific speciment/instance of a specific type/concept. Like "a carrot" does not specify wich carrot, only that it can be called carrot. While "anything" refers to something of both unspecified instance and type, as in "could be anything".
On the other hand, if you mean "any thing", then you are refering to an unspecified instance of a thing, very much like "a thing", and then I would say yes.

Yes, that's right.

I'm not sure where you are going with this, is it something like this?
"Foreign data" (not 100% incomprehensible in this case) can be detected through sight, smell, hearing or touch, and can be refered to as sensory data. Yet, the data does not carry any patterns recognized by the observer and can therefore not be identified as a "thing".

As I see it, the universe (including us) is very turbulent, and it doesn't take any heed to "things". There is no objective method for dividing our surroundings into things. For instance, if 2 people are talking to each other - the first person's words and gestures determines the second person's words and reactions, wich makes it perfectly clear that they are not seperated from eachother. The only seperation we see is based on the different positions of thier bodies (aswell as the data interpreted by seeing them) and our own concept of a "human". Yet, in many ways they are at that moment the same "thing". On another note, I'm getting inceasingly uncertain about the existence of matter.
If you are asking for a definition of "thing", I would have to say recognizable pattern/attribute based on sensory data. I'm not sure how a dictionary defines it, but I bet it's completely different.

Ofcourse, most of the information we recieve from our senses get ignored by the brain because it's not necessary to identify and interact with our surroundings. For instance, if we look at an ocean we usually don't remember the shape and hight of every wave we see. We possess neither the mental capacity or the vocabulary to descibe actual reality, so we will have to settle with "things".

Thanks for replying.