Is Consciousness Truly Outside the Physical Realm?

[Tournesol]

As Self-Adjoint mentions, Kant was clear about the incoherence of both these ways of conceiving of the origin of the universe.

And clearly wrong in some cases.

But all philosophers reach the same view as far as I know.

Nowadays, philosophers are clear that you can't reach two opposite conclusions using the same assumptions. Kant's antinomies
are not genuine dichotomies.

This is why the questions of its origin is an undecidable metaphysical question. As S-E says, we pays our money and we take our choice. Unless, that is, we modify the tertium non datur rule.

We don't need to modify T.N.D if we are not dealing with genuine
dichotomies. Moreover, where his we can find a way through
his antinomies (for instance with the finte-but-unbounded
universe) we are appealing to specific ideas, not a
vague yes-and-no.

 

[Mickey]

Simply put, the 4D conception of the universe and our place in it is our working model and provisional. It makes no difference what anyone believes. If it's true, we'll get to it through the course of our investigation.

Unless, of course, you believe that belief alone can create or somehow secure truth (a not uncommon view), in which case you'll find yourself in an epistemological quandary, and a cold and isolated one in my opinion.

 

[Canute]

Nowadays, philosophers are clear that you can't reach two opposite conclusions using the same assumptions. Kant's antinomies
are not genuine dichotomies.

I sort of agree with the first statement, but I'd rather say that we can reach two opposite conclusions from the same assumption and that when we do this shows the assumption is absurd, which to me was Kant's point.

But if this second statement is true how would we explain why metaphysics still exists as an academic discipline?

 

[Paul Martin]

Can you elaborate on the properties/abilities of this entity? What was it capable of?

The truly primordial PC has only one property/ability. My guess is that that property/ability can be approximately characterized as the ability to know, or to realize, or to experience, or as a receptive principle.

The evolved PC developed additional emergent properties/abilities which I think you characterized pretty well with your list: "it thinks, it knows, it understands, it perceives, it makes decisions, it is conscious, it has intentions and desires". In addition, I think it can be confused, surprised, pleased, disappointed, and capable of making errors.

The important issue (it seems to me) is to establish which properties/abilities are truly primordial (ie a priori, or in the boundary conditions), and which properties/abilities are emergent. If you are now claiming that all the PC’s properties/abilities are emergent and not primordial then that is worth clarifying.

I hope the above response has made the distinction clear.

I believe I can see how consciousness emerges from non-consciousness. This being the case, why posit consciousness as being primordial?

Again, I don't think we are that far apart. If you review the list above, you will see that 'consciousness' appears as a property of the evolved PC, not the primordial PC. What I posit as being primordial is that elusive property I have identified with the ability to know, etc. Whatever that property is, I would say that it is non-conscious by definition. So I agree with you that consciousness evolved and emerged from non-consciousness. But...and I think this is the difference between you and me, I think that there was a primordial constituent which provided a necessary condition for consciousness: something like an ability to know or a receptive principle.

It seems to be a matter of opinion as to whether that is a complex assumption or not. It doesn’t seem any less complex (to me) than “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God…….”

I agree. Opinions vary widely on this question.

Ahhh, now this is interesting. Which particular BB boundary conditions [for the Big Bang] are you referring to?

At least these:
1. The choice of logic system and axiomatic system used to derive the algorithms (laws of physics) which determine the geometry of the "universe" and the behavior of particles, waves, and other constituents of the "universe".

2. The choice of physical constants such as the "Just Six Numbers" described by Martin Rees.

Are you suggesting that the PC is responsible for deliberately manipulating the BB conditions such that our universe would be conducive to the emergence of biological lifeforms, in some kind of PC-managed “experiment”?

Yes. I suspect that many alternatives might have been tried "before" those of our universe were stumbled upon or otherwise figured out.

I wonder why you think it requires more than 13 billion years for such things to emerge?

Just a hunch.

It seems to me that it all comes down to definitions.

Yes. I think our differences are primarily, if not exclusively, semantic.

You seem to define music as “something experienced by a mind”, and the same with concept, and the same with consciousness. If you define these concepts in such a way then of course it follows that they require a mind. But I do not see that this is the only way such concepts can be defined.

I would be very interested to hear one of those other ways.

Perhaps we should start with consciousness. How would you define consciousness?

I made an attempt at this some time ago, and you had trouble accepting it. I defined consciousness to be an experience that I have. I suggested that you define consciousness as an experience you have and that we try to reconcile our respective definitions by engaging one or more third parties and compare reports of the experience. Thus we could make the subjective objective by noticing that when another person reports his/her subjective experience, which to us would be objective, it could be compared to other objective reports. To the extent that a consistent set of reports emerges, it could be taken to be an objective definition of 'consciousness'. Of course, if people have different experiences, for example if some are truly "conscious" and others are not, it might be difficult to infer that fact.

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness?

Good question. I have suggested that the ability to know, or to experience, or to realize is a necessary condition. As for being sufficient, I suspect that some sort of logical calculus, as employed by Spencer-Brown, might be able to demonstrate that all the features/properties of consciousness could be inferred from that one necessary condition. That's just another hunch, but it might be worth pursuing.

I believe we can explain emergent consciousness from first principles “within” the world defined by the Big Bang – whereas you seem to think that consciousness cannot be explained as an emergent process and therefore needs to be built-in to the premises.

Close. I think that consciousness cannot be explained as an emergent process "within" the world defined by the Big Bang and that it needs some initial built-in primordial condition.

I suggest you are confusing ontic with epistemic reality. The time-dependent development of concepts reflects our knowledge of mathematics (epistemic reality). The theorems that we prove true always have been true (ontic reality), even before we discovered those theorems. We do not suddenly “make something true” by proving it true – all we are doing is discovering a truth that was always there, waiting to be uncovered.

Thank you for the suggestion. But I would say that almost all ontic reality is epistemic reality. "Almost" because whatever that initial necessary condition was (the ability to know, etc.) it is the only ontic reality. From then on, the epistemic reality as developed by PC as it evolved came to comprise what we normally think of as physical reality. In a sense PC discovered the implications of consistency, which did not in itself make them true, but they did not exist either ontologically nor epistemically until the initial premises were chosen. Now, whether the implications came into existence then or waited until they were discovered, is, I suppose, an open question. But I maintain that they did not exist prior to the choice of the premises. The limitations on the movements of the bishop did not exist prior to the definition of the game of Chess.

If you are right, I'm wondering where that list was at or around the time of the BB, and wherever it was, how did it get to be there? Talk about complexity.

That complexity was always there – even in your notion of the world. Take my example again of a right-angled triangle in a 2-dimensional plane conforming to Euclid’s 5 postulates of geometry. The law that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides is a necessary mathematical law. Do you believe there is any way that the PC could have “created” a universe in which this law (given the postulates and definitions) would have been false?

Yes, I believe there is a way in which the PC could have "created" a universe in which the Pythagorean theorem does not hold. That way is to choose an initial geometry which is non-Euclidean. PC is not restricted to choosing Euclid's 5 postulates. If other postulates are chosen, different consistent geometries result in which the Pythagorean theorem does not necessarily hold. I maintain that the Pythagorean theorem did not exist, ontically or epistemically until after the postulates of Euclid were defined and considered. So in my view, that complexity was not always there, which makes your scheme more complex than mine.

It depends what you mean by “available for our use”. We “make use” of real numbers like e and Pi and 1/3 and root 2, all of which are irrational hence “infinite” in length when expressed as numbers.

You might say we make use of the notion, but I claim that we do not ever make use of the numbers, like e, Pi, and root 2. We make use only of rational approximations to those "numbers". The number 1/3 is different. It is a rational number and we can use its exact value in calculations.

We cannot reasonably define anything infinite?

That's what I am saying.

How many digits are there in the full decimal expansion of Pi, or of root 2, or of e?

"Full"? What do you mean by 'full'? Do you mean 'all'? I have already explained why the notion of "all" leads to trouble. The same trouble arises when you try to define the "full decimal expansion of Pi.

This gets back to our fundamental difference in belief in the Platonic world. I believe that the full decimal expansion of Pi exists in the Platonic world, but I guess you do not.

True, I do not. And it gets back to my question of where that expansion, or the Platonic world was at or around the time of the Big Bang. You said "That complexity was always there" which seems to be much more complexity than I posit. It seems as complex as "turtles all the way down" to me.

Good talking with you, MF

Warm regards,

Paul

 

[Paul Martin]

As I’ve pointed out earlier, “True”, “False” and “Meaningless’ are all we need.

I agree with Canute here. There is a fourth category of propositions, which, after thinking about it probably is bigger than the first two categories combined and might even be larger than the "Meaningless" category.

The fourth category is "It depends". It depends on the resolution of ambiguity.

So, I say that Canute's example of "God exists." falls in the fourth category. It depends on what you mean by 'God'. If, by 'God' you mean 'the Sun', then not many people would deny the existence of the Sun, so by definition, "God exists" would be true. Other clarifications of the meaning of 'God' would make the proposition false. And, I would suggest, a great many others would make the proposition meaningless.

Brown suggests that we use complex values in our thinking. He is not suggesting that some propositions are imaginary, he's suggesting that some questions have complex answers.

I can't speak for Brown, but I would suggest being careful in our use of words like 'imaginary' and 'complex'. Both these words have fairly well understood connotations in ordinary usage, and they both have precisely defined meanings in mathematics. It is a stretch to find cases in which both the vernacular and the mathematical definitions make sense for the same usage and where the meaning is the same either way.

Nonetheless, I think that the terms were well-chosen by mathematicians to illustrate how certain mathematical concepts were received when first introduced, and that they can still be helpful to us in pondering some new and complex ideas, as long as we are careful.

I thought we were talking about whether a proposition could be evaluated in terms of “true” “false” “meaningless” or “imaginary”. If a proposition is evaluated “true” then it would be a true proposition. Similarly, if a proposition were evaluated “imaginary” (if such a thing has any meaning) then it seems to me that it would be reasonable to call it an imaginary proposition. Would you prefer a different expression?

I think the expression 'imaginary' fits very well to my fourth category. These statements depend for their truth or falsity on someone's world-view, i.e. on their imagination. Statements in this category are true or false or meaningless only in the context of some particular imagined world-view.

It is not meaningless to ask what was prior to the Big Bang as long as we are careful not to make assumptions about what we mean by 'prior'. If we mean previous in time then I'd say that it's not a meaningless question but an irrational one. But it is possible to ask what is prior to spacetime without descending into meaninglessness as long as we accept that to do so we have little choice but to use rather inapropriate terms.

I think this is an excellent example of what I am talking about. It depends on what you mean by 'time'. I'm not sure, but I suspect that when Hawking talks about "imaginary time", he is trying to describe a notion which has a mathematical analog in the notion of imaginary numbers. I don't think he is using the term as we use it in vernacular English.

If the number line is seen as a dimension of space, then the addition of the complex numbers adds a second dimension to the number space making it a number plane. Similarly, I think that if time is seen as a dimension, then we may posit that there is another dimension of time producing a temporal plane rather than simply a line. So if we ask "What is prior to spacetime as originated by the BB?" we must be clear about which dimension of time we mean. I think that for the dimension of time marked by our clocks and calendars, the question is meaningless. But I think that if we mean a second and distinct dimension of time, then the question might very well have a meaningful answer.

If time is created along with the universe, then neither of Kant's alternatives are applicable. In such a case, the universe would not come into existence at any "moment", because the very idea of associating a moment with the creation assumes a backdrop of time against which the universe is created. Neither would there need to be an infinite regress of prior causes (since this also assumes a time prior to the creation).

I don't think Kant considered the possibility of multiple temporal dimensions. If time is created along with the universe, then it seems reasonable that this might be a new dimension of time, which does not rule out the possibility that there was at least one previously existing dimension of time, which would still exist as one axis of a temporal plane.

It is not meaningless to ask what was prior to the Big Bang as long as we are careful not to make assumptions about what we mean by 'prior'. If we mean previous in time then I'd say that it's not a meaningless question but an irrational one. But it is possible to ask what is prior to spacetime without descending into meaninglessness as long as we accept that to do so we have little choice but to use rather inapropriate terms.

I'd say it is not meaningless to ask what was prior to the Big Bang as long as we are careful to make assumptions, and to be clear about them, about what we mean by 'prior'. In particular, we need to be clear about which time dimension we are talking about.

Warm regards,

Paul

 

[moving finger]

Hi Paul

I have tried to focus on responding to the parts of your post where I believe there are issues worthy of further discussion.

The truly primordial PC has only one property/ability. My guess is that that property/ability can be approximately characterized as the ability to know, or to realize, or to experience, or as a receptive principle.

Quite a few concepts packed into here.

What is “ability to know” in this context? In the context of human knowledge we may define knowledge as justified true belief, which entails that the agent forms a justified belief about something which is also a true belief. But it seems to me that you mean something quite different when you use knowledge in the context of the PC. But what exactly?

Does the ability of the PC to “know”, “realise” and “experience” entail that the PC is conscious? I guess yes, but I would need you to confirm this.

The evolved PC developed additional emergent properties/abilities which I think you characterized pretty well with your list: "it thinks, it knows, it understands, it perceives, it makes decisions, it is conscious, it has intentions and desires". In addition, I think it can be confused, surprised, pleased, disappointed, and capable of making errors.

Most of these properties would seem to be inherent in the primordial PC. How can it know or realize, for example, without thinking? How can it realize without understanding? How can it experience without perceiving? How can it do any of these things without being conscious?

I hope the above response has made the distinction clear.

Yes, it has helped. Unfortunately it also confirms that your primordial PC possesses a lot of inherently complex properties. I know you will deny these are complex, but so too can the theist deny that God is complex.

Again, I don't think we are that far apart. If you review the list above, you will see that 'consciousness' appears as a property of the evolved PC, not the primordial PC. What I posit as being primordial is that elusive property I have identified with the ability to know, etc. Whatever that property is, I would say that it is non-conscious by definition.

That seems a difficulty to me. Any normal definition of knowledge would entail that the agent possessing that knowledge is conscious. Could you define clearly what you mean by knowledge in this context?

So I agree with you that consciousness evolved and emerged from non-consciousness. But...and I think this is the difference between you and me, I think that there was a primordial constituent which provided a necessary condition for consciousness: something like an ability to know or a receptive principle.

I cannot comment until I understand better just what you mean by “know” in this context. Clearly you do NOT mean justified true belief (the standard definition of knowledge), because belief entails consciousness.

I would be very interested to hear one of those other ways.

Music could be defined as particular vibrations which conform to certain rules.

I made an attempt at this some time ago, and you had trouble accepting it. I defined consciousness to be an experience that I have. I suggested that you define consciousness as an experience you have and that we try to reconcile our respective definitions by engaging one or more third parties and compare reports of the experience. Thus we could make the subjective objective by noticing that when another person reports his/her subjective experience, which to us would be objective, it could be compared to other objective reports. To the extent that a consistent set of reports emerges, it could be taken to be an objective definition of 'consciousness'. Of course, if people have different experiences, for example if some are truly "conscious" and others are not, it might be difficult to infer that fact.

Imho the problem with this is that it is not a definition of “what is meant by the word consciousness”, it is rather a description of “one of the possible properties of consciousness’ (viz – it is an experience one has). It seems to me to be much like defining a car as “an object combining metal, glass and rubber”.

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness?

Good question. I have suggested that the ability to know, or to experience, or to realize is a necessary condition. As for being sufficient, I suspect that some sort of logical calculus, as employed by Spencer-Brown, might be able to demonstrate that all the features/properties of consciousness could be inferred from that one necessary condition. That's just another hunch, but it might be worth pursuing.

OK. To make progress we’ll need to know how you define knowledge in this context. I’m assuming that the JTB definition is not what you have in mind.

Yes, I believe there is a way in which the PC could have "created" a universe in which the Pythagorean theorem does not hold. That way is to choose an initial geometry which is non-Euclidean.

Paul, you are not reading my question correctly. We both know that the Pythagorean theorem assumes Euclid’s postulates (as I keep saying, one cannot make any conclusions without assumptions). My question was given the postulates and definitions (which includes Euclid’s postulates) do you believe there is any way that the PC could have “created” a universe in which this theorem did not hold?

The point I am trying to get at is GIVEN the axioms (including Euclid’s postulates), Pythagoras’ theorem inevitably follows. The PC has no choice in the matter.

PC is not restricted to choosing Euclid's 5 postulates.

I never said it was.

If other postulates are chosen, different consistent geometries result in which the Pythagorean theorem does not necessarily hold.

I agree. This is not the point.

I maintain that the Pythagorean theorem did not exist, ontically or epistemically until after the postulates of Euclid were defined and considered. So in my view, that complexity was not always there, which makes your scheme more complex than mine.

The deterministic relation between “axioms” and “theorem” was there before the PC came along. The PC perhaps chose particular axioms, from which the theorem followed inevitably. Having chosen the axioms, the PC had no subsequent power to choose the theorem, because the axioms (and not the PC) determine the theorem.

You might say we make use of the notion, but I claim that we do not ever make use of the numbers, like e, Pi, and root 2. We make use only of rational approximations to those "numbers". The number 1/3 is different. It is a rational number and we can use its exact value in calculations.

When I say that the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle is Pi, or the relationship between the side of a square and its diagonal is root 2, I am making use of a real number. I may not be able to enumerate that number in its entirety, but that does not prevent me from making use of it.

"Full"? What do you mean by 'full'? Do you mean 'all'? I have already explained why the notion of "all" leads to trouble.

Certainly one could interpret “full” as “all” in this context. You have provided an explanation based on Russell’s paradox which I have shown is based on self-referentiality, and is irrelevant to the question of “all”. I have not seen any other explanation from you which shows why the notion of “all” leads to problems. Perhaps you could clarify this.

True, I do not. And it gets back to my question of where that expansion, or the Platonic world was at or around the time of the Big Bang. You said "That complexity was always there" which seems to be much more complexity than I posit. It seems as complex as "turtles all the way down" to me.

We’ll have to agree to disagree here. The complexity was there in your PC world as well, but you simply deny it.

So, I say that Canute's example of "God exists." falls in the fourth category. It depends on what you mean by 'God'. If, by 'God' you mean 'the Sun', then not many people would deny the existence of the Sun, so by definition, "God exists" would be true. Other clarifications of the meaning of 'God' would make the proposition false. And, I would suggest, a great many others would make the proposition meaningless.

As I keep saying – the first thing we must do is make assumptions. Unless we assume the meanings of terms, we cannot evaluate propositions.

I can accept this is an example of “meaningless”, if the terms being used are ambiguous then the proposition is meaningless (another way of saying this is that the terms are not adequately specified, it is open to interpretation), in much the same way that “the quantum object is a wave” is meaningless (because the measurement conditions are not adequately specified, or open to interpretation). This is not a “fourth category” – it is the category “meaningless”.

In other words – the proposition “God exists” is either true or false (if one assumes a certain meaning for the terms used), or is meaningless (if one does not assume any particular meaning for the terms used, or if the meaning of the terms themselves is meaningless).

I think the expression 'imaginary' fits very well to my fourth category. These statements depend for their truth or falsity on someone's world-view, i.e. on their imagination. Statements in this category are true or false or meaningless only in the context of some particular imagined world-view.

Again, everything rests on assumptions. Make the assumptions, and one can evaluate in terms of true, false or meaningless. If there are no assumptions, then we are left only with meaningless. Imaginary does not enter into it.

I don't think Kant considered the possibility of multiple temporal dimensions. If time is created along with the universe, then it seems reasonable that this might be a new dimension of time, which does not rule out the possibility that there was at least one previously existing dimension of time, which would still exist as one axis of a temporal plane.

It also does not entail that there was ANY dimension of time prior to the Big Bang. In such a case, asking what was prior to the Big Bang would be as meaningful as asking “what is south of the south pole”?

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

Nowadays, philosophers are clear that you can't reach two opposite conclusions using the same assumptions. Kant's antinomies
are not genuine dichotomies.

I sort of agree with the first statement,

The statement:

"you can't reach two opposite conclusions using the same assumptions."?

but I'd rather say that we can reach two opposite conclusions from the same assumption

i.e the exact opposite ?

and that when we do this shows the assumption is absurd, which to me was Kant's point.

It would be his point if he was in fact working from
the same asumption in each case, although he wasn't.

But if this second statement is true

how would we explain why metaphysics still exists as an academic discipline?

It's not using absurd premises ?

 

[Lars Laborious]

Music could be defined as particular vibrations which conform to certain rules.

Nope, that's not music. Music are the stimuli that the vibrations create, and stimuli are something experienced by a mind. This is simply not a semantic interpretation of music, but the nature of all music. And this clearly is where you and Paul (and I) differ.
The vibrations have to be experienced to stop being just vibrations.

 

[moving finger]

Nope, that's not music. Music are the stimuli that the vibrations create, and stimuli are something experienced by a mind. This is simply not a semantic interpretation of music, but the nature of all music. And this clearly is where you and Paul (and I) differ.
The vibrations have to be experienced to stop being just vibrations.

That depends on how one defines music, doesn't it. The whole point I have been trying to make.

Best Regards

 

[Canute]

The statement: "you can't reach two opposite conclusions using the same assumptions." etc...

We are at cross purposes I suspect. We should not be able to reach two opposite conclusion from the same assumption. But quite often we do, and when we do this shows that our assumption is absurd. In other words, we can reach two opposite conclusions from the same assumption, but if we do this constitutes a reductio argument against the assumption because we know we should not be able to do this.

It would be his point if he was in fact working from
the same asumption in each case, although he wasn't... It's not using absurd premises ?

I believe he was. When he assumed ex nihilo creation the result was a contradiction. When he assumed an eternal substance the result was a contradiction. In each case he reached contradictory conclusions from his initial assumption, so he concluded that both assumptions are absurd.

So it would be because both assumptions give rise to contradictions that Metaphysics exists, the study of questions that seem to philosophers to have no reasonable answers whatever they assume. In other words, we could say that Metaphysics exists because our usual metaphysical assumptions give rise to contradictory conclusions.

In short, I don't agree that we cannot reach contradictory conclusions from the same assumption, but I agree that we should not. This is why I half agreed and half disagreed.

Canute

 

[Eric England]

Canute knows how to sit on a fence, while fully realizing that he is sitting on a fence. A rare talent, indeed. :-)

 

[Tournesol]

We are at cross purposes I suspect. We should not be able to reach two opposite conclusion from the same assumption. But quite often we do,

I disagree

I believe he was. When he assumed ex nihilo creation the result was a contradiction. When he assumed an eternal substance the result was a contradiction. In each case he reached contradictory conclusions from his initial assumption, so he concluded that both assumptions are absurd.

yes but his argumetns are undermined by things like fintie-but-unbounded strucutre of spacetime, as I previouisly noted.

So it would be because both assumptions give rise to contradictions that Metaphysics exists, the study of questions that seem to philosophers to have no reasonable answers whatever they assume. In other words, we could say that Metaphysics exists because our usual metaphysical assumptions give rise to contradictory conclusions.

A priori metaphysics is one thing, analytical metaphsyics another.

 

[Eric England]

"Aristotle, author of the earliest surviving text on logic, formulated a principle that later achieved the historical distinction of being called 'the first principle' as a proper name. It occurs in those of his writings that have come to be called the Metaphysics.

For the same (characteristic) simultaneously to belong and not belong to the same (object) in the same (way) is impossible.

This principle is the first expression of consistency in western thought. Any defining and reasoning in any language on any topic assumes it a priori. It cannot be doubted, as all doubting is based on inconsistency, which assumes consistency a priori." – Wikispeedia

Does this shed any light on anything?

 

[Canute]

Yes, it does seem to. This is the underlying issue.

 

[Paul Martin]

To make progress we’ll need to know how you define knowledge in this context. I’m assuming that the JTB definition is not what you have in mind.

You are correct. I do not accept JTB.

In the context of human knowledge we may define knowledge as justified true belief, which entails that the agent forms a justified belief about something which is also a true belief.

Here you have articulated most of the difficulties I have in accepting JTB. I'll take them in the order you presented them.

First of all, IMHO, "the context of human knowledge" is too confining. Just this morning I was reading Cicero's "Scipio's Dream" in which he described how insignificant human affairs appear from the perspective of the planets of the outer solar system. He even mentioned how much less significant from the perspective of "what the Greeks call the Milky Way". But now that we can ponder the place of the Milky Way in the space-time of our physical universe since the BB, and beyond that, to the hyperdimensional possibilities for "reality" opened up by mathematics, and by the ability to review the vast amount of accumulated "human knowledge", and by the attempts by people who claim to have gained information from mystical sources to articulate what they learned from it, the realm of human affairs seems less significant by many orders of magnitude.

I think it is OK in many, if not most circumstances, to talk within the context of human knowledge. But if we take on the challenge of trying to understand all of reality, I am convinced that we need to broaden the context considerably.

Second, you say that the true belief must be "justified". The problem I have here is "Who is the judge?". Who gets the job of justifying that the belief is true? The believer? Then each believer has her/his own knowledge, and there may be vast inconsistencies among the various knowledge systems (which is the case in human affairs in spades). If the judge is not the believer, then who? The Academy of Arts and Sciences? The Surgeon General, or the National Science Advisor? I can think of no acceptable candidate.

Third, you say that knowledge consists of "true" beliefs. There are many beliefs, but which of them is true? You and I debated once whether one could know anything infallibly. We agreed that the adverb 'infallibly' was redundant because any reasonable definition of 'to know' would entail certain knowledge. I.e. you might be able to know that something is false, but you can't "know" something that is false. In that debate you convinced me to change my mind and I now accept the notion that if there is any certain knowledge at all that can be known, there isn't very much. I suspect that the only certainly true proposition is that "thought happens". And, if that proposition is not certain, then I suspect no proposition is certain. So if we limit knowledge to "true" beliefs, then I am afraid that the set of knowledge is nearly empty.

Fourth, you say that knowledge is beliefs. Yes, it is only the justified true beliefs, but it is beliefs all the same. But what, for heaven's sake, is a belief? IMHO this is such a vague and slippery concept that it hardly qualifies as the basis on which to define the concept we are trying to understand, that of knowledge. Is a belief a hunch? A feeling? By whom? Is it a brain state? A particular pattern of concentrations of various chemicals in the blood? Is it an articulated set of language statements? Is it revealed by the history of the believer's actions? What? It just seems too murky for me.

But it seems to me that you mean something quite different when you use knowledge in the context of the PC. But what exactly?

Yes, very different indeed. But what exactly is harder to answer.

In my view, the mystery we are trying to solve is that of the existence of conscious experience. I know (er...I mean that I believe) that you think there is no mystery about it and that you have a satisfactory explanation of how consciousness arose in biological organisms here on Earth some time in the past few billion years.

As with any explanation we accept, we can take one of at least four positions: We can be happy with our explanation and talk to no one about it; We can be happy with our explanation and talk to others about it with the intention of getting them to agree with it; We can try to find out about competing explanations in order to challenge them with our own; We can try to find out about competing explanations in order to challenge our own.

In my case, I have come up with an explanation for consciousness that involves a rudimentary primordial constituent of consciousness (the primordial PC) which evolved to become the "modern" PC which is the one and only consciousness in all of reality and which "drives" all organisms, including you and me, as one would "drive" a remote controlled vehicle. I am eager to hear alternative explanations which will solve the mystery of consciousness better than mine, and I am eager to hear criticisms of my explanation which show any nonsense in it. That is why I participate in this forum. I am happy to derive important side benefits, such as the sheer pleasure of conversing with intelligent people, but that is not the primary reason.

I am delighted that you asked me, albeit indirectly, what I mean by 'knowledge' in the context of PC. I hope I can make some sense in my explanation:

As you have pointed out, consciousness is, or at least seems to be, vastly complex. We can introspect on some of its aspects, such as memory, sensation, perception, logical inference, imagination, feelings, and on and on. But when I consider those things, it seems that they can all be reduced to some type of knowing. So let me take a crack at defining the verb 'to know'.

To know is to have access to information (i.e. the "known" information) at what seems to be the present moment in the stream of conscious thought. 'Information', I define (slightly modifying Shannon's) as a difference that makes a difference to the knower. The 'knower' is defined as the conscious agent experiencing the stream of conscious thought.

Thus, working from the first principle, of "thought happens", we have the inference that since thought happens, it must happen "to" some agent we call the thinker. Thoughts change, so from the perspective of the thinker, there is a "stream of conscious thoughts" which consists of thoughts which have happened and the thought currently happening. This defines a dimension of time separating past thoughts from present thoughts and it provides a category in which to place "future thoughts", should there be any. Some, if not all, thoughts may consist of patterns of differences. These are defined as information, and if we consider a difference to be the value of one bit, then information can all be expressed as sets of numbers. When a particular set of information is present in the currently happening stream of consciousness, then we say it is "known" and we define knowledge to be any set of information that can be present in the currently happening stream of consciousness.

Now, this definition is consistent with the difficulties we wrestled with concerning "certain knowledge". Let me explain how. Consider the question, "Does the thinker know that it knows?" Well, in order to know that it knows, e.g. A, it must have information available in the present which represents the proposition that it knows A. If that proposition is true, then by definition, A must also be represented by information available in the present.

For example, if I asked you whether you know the name of your fourth grade teacher, you might respond with something like, "Hmmm, let me think...I think it was...no...Oh yes, I remember. It was Miss Jones." At that moment, you could, by my definition, say that you know the name of the teacher and that you know that you know the name of the teacher. Now, if you thought about what I just wrote, you could then say that you know that you know that you know the name of the teacher. But this does not continue indefinitely. In fact it doesn't usually continue much beyond this level. Only when you expressly consider the fact that you know that you know something, can you pack your present consciousness with a long string of I know that I know that I know that I know...s.

So, what then, in this context is certain knowledge? Could we say that we know A? Or can we say that we know A if and only if we can also say that we know that we know A? Or does the chain have to extend even longer than that?

Regardless of the answer to the above questions, there is the added complexity of the case during the interval when you are trying to remember that teacher's name and you haven't yet quite got it. Could you say that you know the name but have just forgotten?

It seems that we are almost compelled to call that forgotten information 'knowledge'. Otherwise the set of knowledge would be vanishingly small. It would consist only of what the thinker was actively thinking about at the moment.

So far, I have only attempted to define 'knowledge'. Now let me try to relate it to the context of PC, as you asked. In my view, as well as in your view, the complex capabilities of consciousness emerged during a process of evolution of some parts of reality. And, we both seem to agree that at the very outset of this evolutionary process, things (or thing) were extremely simple. So in my view, I am interested in identifying the extremely simple necessary precursor to consciousness. I have guessed that it is some sort of ability to know.

Using my definition of 'to know', that means that there was some rudimentary ability to apprehend or recognize or realize the existence of some difference. That's it.

You have objected that such an ability must bring with it all the other complex aspects of consciousness. I disagree. In my view, and with my definition, a thermostat knows when a particular temperature threshold has been crossed. In fact, it reports this knowledge in certain cases to the furnace. Now is that system conscious? Hardly. I think neither of us would claim that it is. But I say that the system does contain knowledge.

I'm running short of time, and I'm probably writing too much already, but I'll summarize some thoughts I have had on this issue. I think there are two types of information: I call them 'upward information' and 'downward information'. Upward Information is coded in numbers and it informs an agent "higher" in a hierarchy of agents. E.g. the thermostat sends Upward Information to the furnace. Downward Information is not encoded in numbers, but is what we call analog information. An example of Downward Information is the position and momentum of a billiard ball. This information is communicated downward (in a sense) to the configuration of other balls on the table and it informs the future state of that configuration.

I apologize for having to run, but this will give you something to think about until I get back.

Warm regards,

Paul

 

[Tournesol]

First of all, IMHO, "the context of human knowledge" is too confining. Just this morning I was reading Cicero's "Scipio's Dream" in which he described how insignificant human affairs appear from the perspective of the planets of the outer solar system. He even mentioned how much less significant from the perspective of "what the Greeks call the Milky Way". But now that we can ponder the place of the Milky Way in the space-time of our physical universe since the BB, and beyond that, to the hyperdimensional possibilities for "reality" opened up by mathematics, and by the ability to review the vast amount of accumulated "human knowledge", and by the attempts by people who claim to have gained information from mystical sources to articulate what they learned from it, the realm of human affairs seems less significant by many orders of magnitude.

If you want to communicate with people who don't have mystical sources of knowledge,. you need to justify yourself in terms
of their understanding of knowlege.

Second, you say that the true belief must be "justified". The problem I have here is "Who is the judge?". Who gets the job of justifying that the belief is true? The believer? Then each believer has her/his own knowledge,

There are standards of justification articulated by philosophers
and logicians. and if everyone follows the standards, the
need not disagree.

Third, you say that knowledge consists of "true" beliefs. There are many beliefs, but which of them is true?

The ones that correspond to reality.

I suspect that the only certainly true proposition is that "thought happens". And, if that proposition is not certain, then I suspect no proposition is certain. So if we limit knowledge to "true" beliefs, then I am afraid that the set of knowledge is nearly empty.

True beliefs and certainly true beliefs are two very different
animals. A belief can be true for mistaken
or chance reasons -- a lucky guess, for instance.

You cannot get to "there are no true beliefs" from "there are no
certainly true beliefs".

Fourth, you say that knowledge is beliefs. Yes, it is only the justified true beliefs, but it is beliefs all the same. But what, for heaven's sake, is a belief? IMHO this is such a vague and slippery concept that it hardly qualifies as the basis on which to define the concept we are trying to understand, that of knowledge. Is a belief a hunch? A feeling? By whom? Is it a brain state? A particular pattern of concentrations of various chemicals in the blood? Is it an articulated set of language statements? Is it revealed by the history of the believer's actions? What? It just seems too murky for me.

And PC isn't slippery ?!

 

[Tournesol]

To know is to have access to information (i.e. the "known" information) at what seems to be the present moment in the stream of conscious thought. 'Information', I define (slightly modifying Shannon's) as a difference that makes a difference to the knower.

Does the information have to be accurate ? is it possible
to be misinformed ?

 

[Eric England]

What is there, that is absolutely true or absolutely false?

 

[Tournesol]

Who said anything about "absolute" ?

 

[Eric England]

I didn't make a statement, just asked a question.

 

[Paul Martin]

Paul, you are not reading my question correctly. We both know that the Pythagorean theorem assumes Euclid’s postulates (as I keep saying, one cannot make any conclusions without assumptions). My question was given the postulates and definitions (which includes Euclid’s postulates) do you believe there is any way that the PC could have “created” a universe in which this theorem did not hold?

The point I am trying to get at is GIVEN the axioms (including Euclid’s postulates), Pythagoras’ theorem inevitably follows. The PC has no choice in the matter.

I am reading your question correctly but we each want to emphasize something different. We each have been downplaying what the other wants to emphasize.

The issue is when certain concepts might have appeared for the first time. You say that certain concepts always existed, and I say that at the very beginning there were no concepts. Here's the progression I see:

First there were no concepts at all. Then there were choices to adopt certain concepts including rules of logic, axioms and the concept of consistency. Then there was the discovery that certain theorems inevitably follow and the PC has no choice but to accept those theorems, or to go back and change the set of adopted axioms and rules.

I think that in your picture, at the very beginning there were a huge number of concepts already in existence including all the implications of all the possible choices of axioms and rules. Sets of rules and axioms may be freely chosen later, but they bring along with them the constraints imposed by their implications.

The difference, again, is that I claim concepts do not exist unless and until they are conceived in a mind, and you seem to think concepts can and do exist without ever being conceived.

So, back to your specific example, I believe that "given the postulates and definitions (which includes Euclid’s postulates)", there is no way "that the PC could have “created” a universe in which this theorem did not hold." But, I don't agree with your premise. PC was not obliged to adopt Euclid's postulates. It was not a given. And the constraint you ask about does not arise unless and until PC adopts those postulates. If other postulates are chosen, which they very will could be, then the Pythagorean theorem wouldn't necessarily hold in the resulting universe.

I agree. This is not the point. ...

The deterministic relation between “axioms” and “theorem” was there before the PC came along. The PC perhaps chose particular axioms, from which the theorem followed inevitably. Having chosen the axioms, the PC had no subsequent power to choose the theorem, because the axioms (and not the PC) determine the theorem.

The point, it seems, is whether or not the deterministic relations existed before PC came along. I say no, since those relations are concepts and they can't exist without a conceiver, and you evidently say that concepts can, and do, exist without ever having been conceived. If that is your position, then I think we have found a fundamental point of disagreement between us.

We’ll have to agree to disagree here. The complexity was there in your PC world as well, but you simply deny it.

I agree that we will have to disagree. I deny that any concepts were "there" in the beginning of the PC world, thus I avoid the HUGE complexity of the existence of an unimaginably large set of all possible concepts at the very beginning. I also deny the existence of most of the complex aspects of consciousness in the PC. I think there is some simple primordial precursor of consciousness that did exist at the outset. Now, whether my denial is simple or not, I suppose each reader can judge for him/herself.

When I say that the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle is Pi, or the relationship between the side of a square and its diagonal is root 2, I am making use of a real number. I may not be able to enumerate that number in its entirety, but that does not prevent me from making use of it.

With respect, you are making use of the relationship, not the number. You frequently make use of numbers which approximate the relationship, but never the actual number itself.

You have provided an explanation based on Russell’s paradox which I have shown is based on self-referentiality, and is irrelevant to the question of “all”. I have not seen any other explanation from you which shows why the notion of “all” leads to problems. Perhaps you could clarify this.

Sorry for not being more explicit. When I answered you on this question earlier, I said that we probably wouldn't be able to go much further because we were not willing to "swallow" the other's position on whether concepts could exist without being conceived. This, I believe, is at the root of the problem of defining "all" of something. If, as you believe, all possible concepts can exist without ever being conceived, then there would be no problem of referring to "all" of something, except for self reference. But, if, as I believe, concepts cannot exist unless and until they are conceived, then the meaning of 'all' becomes time dependent. It will depend on the timing of the interpretation of 'all' with respect to the existence of concepts which might qualify to be in the set designated by "all".

For example, if the only numbers that exist are those that have been explicitly defined, as I say should be the case, then the set of "all numbers" will be different from the set of "all numbers" after some more of them have been explicitly defined in addition to the original ones.

Again, everything rests on assumptions. Make the assumptions, and one can evaluate in terms of true, false or meaningless. If there are no assumptions, then we are left only with meaningless. Imaginary does not enter into it.

Of course you can categorize propositions into those three categories if you like. But your third category, IMHO contains propositions which seem to me to be different enough that they deserve to be further split into two categories. Your "meaningless" category would include those that are pure gibberish which have no meaning whatsoever to anyone, and it would include those that have different meanings to different people. The various meanings would all be understandable, or at least parseable, to all, but just not agreed to by all.

Sorry for being so late with this response.

Warm regards,

Paul

 

[Paul Martin]

If you want to communicate with people who don't have mystical sources of knowledge,. you need to justify yourself in terms of their understanding of knowlege...There are standards of justification articulated by philosophers
and logicians. and if everyone follows the standards, the
need not disagree.

I agree that there are many different reasons for wanting to communicate with other people and that in general we needn't disagree. Most of the reasons are simply to get along with the business of living. The knowledge required for this is practical, but not very precise or even "true". If you want to communicate with scientists or with mathematicians, you need to understand their respective bodies of knowledge. Some of that scientific knowledge may not be true, and none of the mathematical knowledge is claimed to be true by the mathematicians themselves. But in philosophy, if we are trying to make sense of more comprehensive and mysterious issues, I think a different standard of "justifying" the truth or falsity of propositions is necessary. I don't think there is a satisfactory "standard" justification method.

There are many beliefs, but which of them is true?

The ones that correspond to reality.

That's easy to say, but difficult if not impossible to demonstrate.

Can you give me a proposition which you are certain corresponds to reality, other than "thought happens"?

True beliefs and certainly true beliefs are two very different
animals. A belief can be true for mistaken
or chance reasons -- a lucky guess, for instance.

You cannot get to "there are no true beliefs" from "there are no
certainly true beliefs".

I don't get the distinction. If a belief were true for mistaken or chance reasons, why wouldn't it be certainly true as well? It certainly is true, isn't it? The premise is that it is true so isn't it certainly true?

Hmmm. Maybe by 'certainly' you are referring to the believer and not to the proposition. The proposition is true. The belief in the proposition may range from weak to certain in the mind of the believer. Then to say that the proposition is "certainly true" we mean that the proposition is true and that the believer knows for sure that it is true. Is that what you mean? If so, then the question is how the believer can, in any circumstance, know for sure. What can anyone know for sure except for tautologies and that "thought happens"?

And PC isn't slippery ?!

PC is very slippery.

To know is to have access to information (i.e. the "known" information) at what seems to be the present moment in the stream of conscious thought. 'Information', I define (slightly modifying Shannon's) as a difference that makes a difference to the knower.

Does the information have to be accurate ? is it possible
to be misinformed ?

Those are both excellent questions. They get down to the heart of the matter IMHO. I'll take the second question first.

I would say that by definition, it is not possible to be misinformed unless the "access" mechanism altered the information on the way to the knower. So, if knowledge is defined as information available to the knower, then what happened to the information on the way doesn't matter. But that just puts the real question off.

Your first question is the real question. That is, must the information correspond to reality? And, if the answer is "yes", what is meant by 'correspondence'? Lots to think about.

Warm regards,

Paul

 

[Tournesol]

I agree that there are many different reasons for wanting to communicate with other people and that in general we needn't disagree. Most of the reasons are simply to get along with the business of living. The knowledge required for this is practical, but not very precise or even "true". If you want to communicate with scientists or with mathematicians, you need to understand their respective bodies of knowledge. Some of that scientific knowledge may not be true, and none of the mathematical knowledge is claimed to be true by the mathematicians themselves.

Huh ?

Can you give me a proposition which you are certain corresponds to reality, other than "thought happens"?

I don't need to. I was making a point about truth, not certainty.

I don't get the distinction. If a belief were true for mistaken or chance reasons, why wouldn't it be certainly true as well?

Because of what "certainly" means. It means "not possibly wrong".

It certainly is true, isn't it? The premise is that it is true so isn't it certainly true?

No. "X is not wrong" does not imply "X could not have possible been wrong"

I would say that by definition, it is not possible to be misinformed unless the "access" mechanism altered the information on the way to the knower.

So it is possible to be misinformed. And what if someone just lies to you ?