Laurentius

Synaesthesia

I am an evolutionist, but I'm permanently questioning my own beliefs, I don't want to turn into a dogmatic. At least, not to sound like one.

In the case of the "super" monk, the self-taught software-like ability of his brain seems to me to slip away from material determinism in that the material cold and the material body are controled at will. This will is not a non-material parasite grown on the cerebellum, but a function of it integrating larger aware and non-aware areas in a process which is not non-material either but just atypical for matter to the extent that there's got to be some degree of independence in the system (mind) showing this will endowing it to respond to physical stimuli with physical reactions determinded by atypical physical qualities. This atypical quality of the matter I call Mind and find it superior to other categories of matter involved either in living or nonliving entities.

First of all there are no lines, points, plans, rectangles, cubes, spheres in real life. Moreover, there are different sorts of mathematics, euclidian and non-euclidian. Can't non-euclidian mathematics develop even if they do not describe the actual world. They can. They may not falsify the theories on reality, but they can have their independent existence, unaffected by physicality.

I doubt it. The Discovery or National Geografic documentary I watched was quite categorical about this: anyone would die of frost should they try to sleep in the same conditions. But "miracles" can happen, there are people with amazing bodies. This, however, does not falsify the fact that it is the monk's mental abilities that control the physical conditions - "the Mind keeps the Brain alive" (please, note what I mean from the paragraphs above)
AVE

Laurentius

Owleye

Yes, I mean sensations. This sense (through sensations) of space always implies movement and transformation - this implies time. Sensations themselves change in time. I really don't think any sensation can exist outside time. Space or no space, the living feeling should generate an irrational feeling that something is happening - events occur in chains, sequences, series, repetitions, cycles, days, nights - time. I must admit that I was also stupefied when I first read Kant's theory on the human in-born categorial pattern. By the way, how do you manage to harmonize his theory with the theory of relativity?
(sorry, I've got to leave now; I'll return)
AVE

excreationist

Well that's just about chaos really... there are many different variables interacting in those environments though they appear similar from a distance. And culture partly accumulates rather than just fluctuates like the wind. Basically, it doesn't sound very magical (non-physical).

Well their race of people would have bred to be used to the cold... through thousands of years of natural selection, those genes which aren't good at surviving the cold would get weeded out. In fact, the Spartans used to leave their newborn babies on a hill overnight to make sure only the strong survived.
On the other hand, Western people have very, very minimal selection pressures. We try our best to save every deformed baby and those who are fertile (which is due to genetic defects) often use technology to pass their genes on.
The Himalayas would be one of the harshest places to live so their ancestors (and even themselves) would have had very harsh selection pressures.

I don't think that has much to do with the mind at all.... BTW, the magician, [url=
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/onair/GoodMorningAmerica/GMA001127DavidBlaine.html" target="_blank">David Blaine</a>, was inside a block of ice for over 61 hours. He was breathing warmish air through a tube and there was a tube with water as well. His body was well insulated as well.

[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

owleye

Laurentius...

First, Kant's target was Newton, not Einstein. Secondly, Kant was a metaphysician, not a scientist or mathematician, though he was well aware of what was going on in science and mathematics. He saw his task as providing a foundation for the successes of the mathematical sciences. Third, he succeeded in finding a grounding of all of Newtonian physics and mathematics without having the logical tools that Einstein had available to him (from Frege), though in the end, the lack of the resources from these tools meant that he could not formulate with precision what has since been done with ease. Fourth, no one has succeeded to the extent Kant did with respect to Newton's theory, in providing a grounding of Einstein's relativity theory (much less quantum theory). We need Kant's resurrection in order to accomplish this, I think.

Actually, things are a little more complicated than this. In the above depicition, which is the version that Michael Friedman tells us, which I think is probably correct, I should add that he does have his critics. The crucial and underexplored area of Kant's thought is within the context of the schematism of the categories of the understanding and how they constrain the general to the particular. This task is known in the Critique as a synthesis in time (and space). It is also referred to as 'construction'. In any case, it is a process, which in Kant's time can only be understood as something temporal, not formal. It is only in recent history where processes fall under a formal science. In any case, some have alleged that there is enough wiggle room in Kant's notion of 'construction' to allow for non-Euclidean geometries. This key area also lays claim in subject-predicate logic as the status of the copula or link between the two and thus, in modern logic, would be associated with existence axioms.

With respect to your empirical account of space, the question has to do with how is it that sensations are ordered in time in the first place. What is it about our means of knowing that one thing follows another without our already having the notion of succession within us. Consider that when we observe a house by examining the facing side, say by scanning from top to bottom and then from bottom to top. This would not ordinarily count as a set of observations that are temporal. Our observations are combined into a unity which would tell us that the object is not moving. This is how Kant explains the temporal notion of simultaneity. If the object was moving relative to us, our perception would be of a succession of observations. From this, both simultaneity and succession are something provided by us, not by nature, though it presumably can be applied to nature. Kant, of course, is well aware of the relativity of motion and that we are never permitted to say an object is moving unless we specify what it is relative to.

"I must admit that I was also stupefied when I first read Kant's theory on the human in-born categorial pattern."

Kant's transcendental idealism provides what Allison calls epistemic conditions, not psychological or physiological conditions. I know its easy to fall into this trap. The way I've tried to consider it is how would I from basic ingredients construct a mind having the capabilities of human cognition. According to Kant, I would have to construct one having the perceptual ability to handle sensations, derivative in some way by objects so that they are ordered in space and time. Indeed, Kant's theories are a matter of some interest to current research in cognitive science.

owleye

Laurentius

Owleye
(to finish up my reply)

Why should they do it at all then? Maybe it would be more fruitful to devise something that could develop its own genuine behavior.

This distinction between purpose and intention is essential to make a point against who would imagine that the AI serving a purpose is of the same nature with an intelligent creature wanting somthing. I am afraid though that in their eyes this distinction might be easily dismissible.

Yeah, I've noticed that: I tend to become rhetorical if I can't come up with the appropriate logical argument right on the spot.

Actually, I was hoping for exactly the opposite, although your picture is more realistic. I was emotionally picturing the mankind embark on those programs that meddle with genetics in order to create the mutants that have undergone those changes necessary to inhabit locations in the outer-space. I guess I am trying to deal with my own mortality by investing unrealistic hopes in the immortality of our species or, at least, of its unique characteristics.

Okay, so that would be the Mind that my poor analytical tools fail to convincingly extract so that other materialists (other than me, I mean) won't accuse me of idealism. Perhaps in time I'll refine and enrich my skills, but that will depend on how much time I'll be able to allot to this activity.

Oh, in that case I can breath with relief, natural selection may select those characteristics once again some time after mankind's disappearance. It is like matter necessarily ends up conscious and one way or another, somewhere in the universe, there will always be some kind of brain with attributes of a mind. Would this be relevant in any way if I were to detach myself from my own ephemerality?
AVE

(I'll be back in several ours for what's awaiting)

crocodile deathroll

I too find it very difficult to decide where the line of volition or at least some belief or illusion we have some sense of volition should be drawn. (I prefer to use just a mere sense of volition and not true volition, as I think true volition is just an illusion) We usually have no sense of volition when we are dreaming, it just as though we are going some kind of virtual reality ride, but we may go through periods of lucid dreaming when we do undergo a much greater sense of volition. This is where I feel this is one place the boundary may be drawn

I feel there is an illusion of this desire and this desire emerged from preexisting subconscious processes underpinning our sense of volition. For a sense of volition we need to process thoughts and to process thoughts we need a structured language The toddler phase I think is a very important phase of our sense of volition as it is the first phase in which we can utilize language as a tool to imprint into our memories that leads us to believe at least we made intelligent choices. A baby is quite incapable of doing that and only instinctively reacts to cues in its environment and therefore has not true sense of volition

CD

Laurentius

It's been a dark day for the Internet in this area today. Two times have tried to post something, and after each of two one-hour attempts the connection has failed (in two different spots). Now I'm home and it's tomorrow already here (00:10). I pray to the Digital God to have mercy on me and let me work.

Laurentius

excreationist

You: I think babies get pleasure from newness (they are human as well) - apparently they laugh with pleasure at non-threatening surprising things.

Me: Non-threat is ensured through the participation of non-newness.

You: What do you mean?

And now me: I mean babies find newness threatening if there isn't familiarity. This emphasize the precedence of familiarity to newness.

So why do people choose newness rather than repetition?

They don't. We live in a world of pervasive sameness.

Me: However, there is a need for newness due to the presence of senses - excitability should trigger a demand for excitants.

You: But this comes from newness.


And now me: Yes, it does. I admit to a certain degree there is a natural interest in the new, but no so much for its own sake.

Excitement is about the unexpected.

This is your own perception. There can be a lot of excitment in the achievement of a goal one has anticipated and pursued for years.

That's basically what newness is about - the unexpected. And humour is in the same category really - it involves unusual things happening.

Not necessarily. A lot of laughter can be provoked by clumsy or mechanical or mindless (etc.) repetition.

And too much newness (unexpectedness) is threatening since it threatens our craving for some familiarity.

How much newness must there be for it to be too much? (You know, the "How many grains are necessary for them to form a pile?" problem)

So I think we all crave some unexpectedness and some familiarity.

Do you have only people in mind?

Of course we yearn for both, but familiarity plays the more important role by far.

And genuine unexpectedness is when something is completely new rather than a random variation on something familiar.

Absolute unexpectedness would be terrifying. A theory ranking newness over familiarity is likely to have been fostered either under the cultural influence of either progressiviness or boredom/satiation.

I'm saying that the desire for newness is the main thing driving many activities such as exploration.

Could be. But only in the case of human beings.

"Personal fulfilment" is incredibly vague!

People may run after newness, but actually they often flee from stress and fatigue.

What about how in Greek times they had plays - why did they make more than one play? Maybe the audiences got bored of seeing the same play being repeated endlessly?

But the ancient Greeks did listen to the same myth over and over again. The audience knew the characters, the story and the outcome. It was a ritualistic form a repetion.

The babies, the Greeks and the problem under discussion (the individual craving for some other) reminds me of Freud and postfreudians (Lacan, Kristeva) who insist that between the ego and the other the ego yearns for there is a permanent love-hate relationship. In fact, the other becomes an object of interest only insofar as it can be assimilated into the subject's own ego.

Well, I would start with the baby's coming in the world, who I think cries not because of pain, but because of overwhelming newness. There is a physical and psychological bond between the baby and the mother, and that is why she is the only one whose presence can form a ground safe enough for the baby to willfully come in contact with the new. Take a baby away from the ones he/she knows and place him/her in a completely new environment. I assure that the baby will be simply terrified.

Do living things (or rather animals) instinctively search for newness? No. There are a few needs to be addressed (security, food, water, mating), and an instinctive drive to reach inner balance, but once the equilibrium is achieved, the animal becomes passive.

Newness is not the standard urge for people either. In fact, we are surrounded by sameness and countless institutions of sameness, from plane flights to job briefs, from hobbies to ethics. It is only the satiated man and the educated man who can really praise the new, and favor it to the old.

For the atheist, and especially for the one who believes in progress and the bettering of man, the conscious self can even turn newness into an ideal, a valor that can confer life a meaning and a goal.
AVE

Laurentius

Owleye

With all these complicated processes I can't help wondering how one can fancy that AI could ever reach such sophisticatedly abstract apperception.

And how can the epistemic conditions exist outside or apart from the psyche that performs the act of knowledge?
AVE

Laurentius

crocodile deathroll
AVE

How do you manage to distinguish between the two? Or is it a convinction, rather than something that you menally sense? For instance, when you decide to give a reply on the forum, is something that you really want, or is it just an illusion? Or you cannot tell?

The fact that volition is not expressed does not mean that it does not exist either as a possibility; one does not make the maximum of his IQ all the time, even it is an inherent attribute of his.

The whole world may be a collective illusion. But manifests itself as if it's not. I take it that it's real. The same with volition.

Ah, the language reduction again. Here is the most beautiful reduction of the world to the word that I have ever read: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Although I am not a believer I cannot help admiring the intuition of the ancient writer - he basically says what you say: that language enacts thought, and everything derives from here. However, language is only the form in which our thoughts are molded. One cannot exist without the othere, but confusing them does not aid knowledge.

I agree intelligence must accompany volition, but other mammals are endowed with some too, and although they show only rudiments of a language, they can still prove to have some volition. You should have a pet and study its behavior closely to see this with your own eyes.
AVE