L&FP, 56: Can we invent or define a nine-sided hexagon?

_{kairosfocus

June 11, 2022

Control vs Anarchy, Logic and Reason, rhetoric}

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One of the many fundamental errors of nominalism is to confuse labels with logic of being substance.

To clarify the matter, let us ponder:

As was noted in the ongoing defending thread:

KF, 839: As a start point for rethinking, please, show us a nine sided hexagon.
(What, you can’t, isn’t the term hexagon just a word we can apply as we please, rewriting the dictionary at will, there is no such thing as a nature so there is no difference. So, on such radical nominalism, there is no difference between truth and error, truthfulness and willful deceit, justice and injustice, male and female, knowledge and myth, indoctrination and education, acquitting the innocent and knowingly condemning such, sound policing and the gestapo. See the nihilistic pattern?)

Believe it or not, there are many otherwise vexed issues that resolve themselves once we recognise this issue. END

Comments

KF said:
Where, there is no good reason to dismiss our senses, conscious awareness and recognition of the in common world as a Matrix like delusional dream.
Nobody is saying to dismiss any of that, only to reorganize and relabel them conceptually.William J Murray_{June 16, 2022
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SB @95, For future reference, when you're in a one-on-one discussion with someone, and they say, "Look, nobody is saying that," they usually mean him or herself, and/or they are talking about some group they are specifically including in the conversation. My apologies for not being clear. I was talking about myself and those that I am aware of, like Kastrup and Lanza, that are proposing idealistic models of reality. KF said:
WJM, we are going over and over things already addressed and known to be worldview comparative difficulties issues, on a side track.
Nobody has a gun to your head, bro. "Quantities" does not just refer to numbers; it also refers to that which the "numbers" are supposed to be quantifying. These are quantities (not just the quantifying numbers) that are hypothesized to exist as they are in the external world, such as mass, spin, charge, etc. This quantifying information about this proposed world supposedly goes through a physical interpretation into some kind of corresponding bio-electric/chemical quantities in our sensory apparatus and brain. Particular excited states of all the parts of a particular section of neurons, chemicals released, etc. However, we don't experience those quantities as those quantities. We don't see, feel or hear these bio-electric/chemical states and patterns as such. Where and how are these informational quantities turned into first-person qualia? Where and how is the excited neural pattern of chemical quantities turned into the image of a tree, or the sound of music, or the texture and weight of a piece of wood? Where and how is the gap traversed between the material quantities and the mental experience of qualities traversed? How is qualia produced from these quantifiable states? Of course you don't have an answer to that - no external realist does.William J Murray_{June 16, 2022
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I wrote, ---“Many scientists try to show that quantum physics has disproved the laws of causation, *identity,* and non-contradiction, all of which must be presupposed in order to do any science at all.” WJM responds:
Nobody has said causation has been disproved, or that any logical principles have been violated.
That claim is easy to refute. From the physicist Laurence Krauss, we get this:
The interesting thing about the universe is it’s not logical. At least it’s not classically logical….It’s [science] taught us that the universe is the way it is whether we like it or not….The point is if we continue to rely on our understanding of the universe on…classical logic…then we’d still be living in a world where heavier objects, we think, fall faster than light objects…instead of doing the experiment to check it out. We can’t rely on what we think to be sensible; we have to rely on what the universe tells us is sensible….The universe just simply isn’t sensible.” Are you not aware that Krauss wrote a book entitled, “A universe from nothing?” There can be no greater departure from the laws of logic than that. WJM responds
Did you really think I meant “nobody, not a single person in the entire world?” Do you not understand the use of colloquial terms and phrases?
I am prepared to grant you every benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you meant to say that the attack on classical logic by quantum theorists does occur but it is so rare as to be almost non-existent. If so, then that statement is equally easy to refute. Perhaps another example will help: Philosophy of Science Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 39-57 (19 pages) Published By: The University of Chicago Press Abstract
There is sufficient evidence at present to justify the belief that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so.
How many examples of non-logical scientific reasoning do you need? You can’t do science when you reject the principle of causality. Surely, you don’t want to die on that hill.
StephenB_{June 15, 2022
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WJM, we are going over and over things already addressed and known to be worldview comparative difficulties issues, on a side track. Notwithstanding, for record on several points: >>He can’t tell me how it’s done. Nobody can explain how a world of quantities produces the personal experience of qualities. >> 1: Smuggled in assumption, that the physical world effectively reduces to the abstracta we call numbers. 2: A better view is to recognise that logic of being includes as one facet logic of structure and quantity. Which does not entail that things in themselves do not have a range of intelligible properties tied to distinct identity. 3: Where also, logic of structure and quantity speaks to constraints of being that are not causal, there is not a how but rather that distinct identity injects twoness, A and ~A, thence N,Z,Q,R,C,R* etc with all that they carry by way of mere coherence and distinctiveness of entities. 4: Sufficient reason is broader than mechanical cause. >>KF has no “theory of mind” at all.>> 5: Have you been here so long and failed to notice that I do not claim intellectual property but acknowledge others? Start with Eng Derek Smith and the two tier controller cybernetic loop. Where the higher order entity effects a Turing Oracle machine that inherently is trans-algorithmic. Where quantum influence has long been on the table. And more. >>Apparently, to him, it’s just a vague, general commodity to be thought however it is convenient to fit his worldview.>> 6: We know gigo limited computation on a substrate cannot rise to rational, responsible agent freedom, where we are rational. Therefore we see the implications of the oracle approach. Single step injection of wisdom, lifting the computational substrate. >>He cannot explain how it accesses the external world he proposes. It just does. >> 7: For argument take this and ask what follows. Was Newton's knowledge of Gravitation undermined by his want of understanding of spacetime warping? No, we must never allow points of ignorance to rob us of what we can see and warrant. That was one of the key breakthroughs of the scientific revolution. 8: Further, causal frames do not exhaust sufficient reason. To ponder these we must be rational and responsibly free, that directly exposes computational reductionism. We exhibit mind, spirit, moral government on built in law. These constrain the sort of being we are. 9: Similarly, we can know from logic of being considerations as outlined. And quantum wave influence has long been on the table. >>Just like a materialist cannot explain how that same world of qualities produces conscious qualia – it just does.>> 10: The attempted comparison fails. Materialism here leads to computationalism thence massive incoherence. Observation of our behaviours shows there is more and logic of being points to answers. 11: Where, there is no good reason to dismiss our senses, conscious awareness and recognition of the in common world as a Matrix like delusional dream. KFkairosfocus_{June 15, 2022
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Quantum mechanics works primarily at the sub-atomic level.
This was nothing more than an assumption that has also been disproved.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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Relatd @88,
Quantum mechanics works primarily at the sub-atomic level.
Yes, that's how deterministic materialists typically wave it off. But it turns out, quantum superposition is fundamental to why the sun shines . . . pretty fundamental to life, right? So "reality" starts at a subatomic level and is fundamentally based on information (according to Professor Vlatko Vedral), but has consequences throughout. Your example of quantum computing is a great example.
“Chaos theory, in mechanics and mathematics, the study of apparently random or unpredictable behaviour in systems governed by deterministic laws. A more accurate term, deterministic chaos . . .
Again, a typical rationalization from deterministic materialists. It turns out that their determinism is based on INFINITE information of the initial starting conditions, so it's actually deterministic only in theory, not in practice. Take the case of the Mandelbrot set. Is it finite or infinite? The existence of truly random events is even reluctantly admitted by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, a deterministic materialist, in one of her recent videos. Even a little randomness screws up determinism. -QQuerius_{June 15, 2022
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I don't need to wait for KF to answer. He can't tell me how it's done. Nobody can explain how a world of quantities produces the personal experience of qualities. KF has no "theory of mind" at all. Apparently, to him, it's just a vague, general commodity to be thought however it is convenient to fit his worldview. He cannot explain how it accesses the external world he proposes. It just does. Just like a materialist cannot explain how that same world of qualities produces conscious qualia - it just does. Under idealism, there is no hard problem of consciousness or any issue of domain-bridging.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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SB said:
That is easy to refute. From the physicist Laurence Krauss, we get this:
Did you really think I meant "nobody, not a single person in the entire world?" Do you not understand the use of colloquial terms and phrases?William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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KF said:
There is nothing in what a quale is that requires that our inner experience or awareness is locked in and cannot access the external world.
Then as the IDist asks of the materialist: tell me how it's done. Tell me how the quantities of the external world become qualities in mind. The gap you have to bridge there is every bit as deep as the chasm that separates random, natural forces and the complex, interdependent, organized, coded nano-technology we find in living cells. Until you can provide a theory of how an external world of quantities can become an internal, conscious experience of qualities, you're just as guilty of expressing ideological faith as the materialist.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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Quantum mechanics works primarily at the sub-atomic level. While examining what goes on in the sub-atomic world, strange things have been observed. But once described, there are rules. That's why quantum computers are being developed and one has been released. "At the beginning of 2019, IBM unveiled its first commercial quantum computer. Fast forward to January 2020, and the company claimed at CES 2020 that we are now in the decade (the 2020s) of quantum computing." https://newsroom.ibm.com/2021-11-16-IBM-Unveils-Breakthrough-127-Qubit-Quantum-Processor "Chaos theory, in mechanics and mathematics, the study of apparently random or unpredictable behaviour in systems governed by deterministic laws. A more accurate term, deterministic chaos, suggests a paradox because it connects two notions that are familiar and commonly regarded as incompatible. The first is that of randomness or unpredictability, as in the trajectory of a molecule in a gas or in the voting choice of a particular individual from out of a population. In conventional analyses, randomness was considered more apparent than real, arising from ignorance of the many causes at work. In other words, it was commonly believed that the world is unpredictable because it is complicated. The second notion is that of deterministic motion, as that of a pendulum or a planet, which has been accepted since the time of Isaac Newton as exemplifying the success of science in rendering predictable that which is initially complex."relatd_{June 15, 2022
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Relatd @86,
The universe is sensible, with consistent rules.
Really? Is quantum mechanics sensible with consistent rules? And what about Chaos theory? If you answer in the affirmative, please provide support for your assertions. -QQuerius_{June 15, 2022
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SB at 85, Does anyone think that before formal experiments that people did not actually see objects of different weights falling at the same rate? Or birds flying? Before gliders and powered aircraft? The universe is totally sensible. Birds know how to bank and turn in the wind. The universe is sensible, with consistent rules.relatd_{June 15, 2022
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I wrote, ---“Yet many scientists try to show that quantum physics has disproved the laws of causation, *identity,* and non-contradiction, all of which must be presupposed in order to do any science at all." WJM responds:
Nobody has said causation has been disproved, or that any logical principles have been violated.
That is easy to refute. From the physicist Laurence Krauss, we get this:
“The interesting thing about the universe is it’s not logical. At least it’s not classically logical….It’s [science] taught us that the universe is the way it is whether we like it or not….The point is if we continue to rely on our understanding of the universe on…classical logic…then we’d still be living in a world where heavier objects, we think, fall faster than light objects…instead of doing the experiment to check it out. We can’t rely on what we think to be sensible; we have to rely on what the universe tells us is sensible….The universe just simply isn’t sensible.”
Are you not aware that Krauss wrote a book entitled, "A universe from nothing?" There can be no greater departure from the laws of logic than that.StephenB_{June 15, 2022
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WJM, no, again, anything that states, implies or invites grand delusion self-defeats. Let's start with SEP on qualia:
Qualia First published Wed Aug 20, 1997; substantive revision Thu Aug 12, 2021 Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives.
There is nothing in what a quale is that requires that our inner experience or awareness is locked in and cannot access the external world. And if that is claimed, or it is taken as default regarding the world of things in themselves and states of affairs, it is a self referential, self defeating claim to transcend locked in status. The point remains, there is no good reason to believe we are locked in so we must somehow doubt or dismiss the external in common world. Of course, we all live that way. Also, meanwhile, turning from this repeat side track, we have seen good reason to accept both abstracta and universals. KF KFkairosfocus_{June 15, 2022
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Here is the hard problem for external realists: how do the quantities (in terms of energy values, motion, etc.) that world is said to be comprised of generate qualities of experience in mind? How do the quantities that get translated from source values into bio-electric quantities found in sensory equipment and the brain become experiential qualities in mind? External realism has no answer to the hard problem; idealism has no such problem to solve in the first place.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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WJM at 80, "... it doesn’t matter if there is an external reality or not..." Please describe the interdimensional reality you live in. No one I know even thinks like this.relatd_{June 15, 2022
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SB said:
Yet many scientists try to show that quantum physics has disproved the laws of causation, *identity,* and non-contradiction, all of which must be presupposed in order to do any science at all.
This is the kind of statement people make who do not understand current theories of idealism because they are presupposing external realism. Nobody has said causation has been disproved, or that any logical principles have been violated. Nobody is saying that logical principles are not inviolable under idealism, or that causation does not exist under idealism.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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KF, yes. WJM All rational thought depends entirely on the proposition that some aspects of qualia are direct experiences of real things as they are, such as logic, math and geometry. This is why we can only discover logic, math and geometry, and not simply invent them however we want. What do we directly know these fundamental aspects of reason apply to? Other qualia, qualia that is of a different kind than those fundamental principles of thought. It doesn't take a master of logic to understand that the only thing we can be doing is applying qualia to qualia - comparing qualia, sorting qualia out into different categories of qualia, using qualia as our tools. Even if there was an external reality, all we have to work with is qualia. You can argue until you are blue in the face that using qualia as a ruler to measure other qualia is a problem, but that doesn't matter because it is an inescapable fact of sentient existence. Using the abstraction of a hypothesized "external world" only does one thing: it just adds another layer of qualia (the abstract theory) to the mix. You then apply the fundamental principle qualia (logic, etc) to the abstract theory of quantities (in a proposed external reality) as if that abstract theory has more "reality value" than the actual, experiential qualia the theory is abstracted from. It is exactly like saying the theory of gravity is what is really causing the phenomena it was abstracted to model. The theory of gravity is a model invented in qualia to describe certain aspects of qualia. Again, it doesn't matter if there is an external reality or not; the only thing we can be applying logic and science to is qualia. If qualia being used to measure and validate qualia is, in your view, "delusional," then there's no escaping that delusion by imagining there is an external reality "out there" somewhere; that would make zero difference.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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WJM, no. KFkairosfocus_{June 15, 2022
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SB at 76, Well said. Sometimes, people will invent reasons to avoid the truth. To invent complex ideas to distract from it.relatd_{June 15, 2022
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KF, Then only way one can possibly know a thing for what it is, is if idealism is true. The only way reasoning can be trusted is if idealism is true. The only way our senses can be trusted to be giving us accurate information is if idealism is true. All this is because that it is only under idealism that qualia = reality and not a facsimile or simulation of a reality beyond our reach; a facsimile or simulation we can never, even in theory, validate for accuracy.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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WJM:
You are mistaking the map (theory of external reality) for the terrain (internal, conscious experience/qualia.)
You often make this mistake by saying that those who criticize your world view do not understand it or are too invested in realism to analyze the matter on the merits. On the contrary, Idealism, which takes different forms, is not that hard to grasp and most people know what they are rejecting when they say that they don’t believe it. There is nothing sophisticated in the claim that “mind is everything.” However, you have quietly strayed from your original false claim that “scientific experimentation” has disproved realism and shifted the ground to a logical defense of idealism, which is a different project altogether. As I have already indicated, scientific models and experiments cannot make that stretch. To merely claim it be so, as your references do, will not suffice. Logical priorities matter. Scientific evidence does not inform first principles; first principles inform scientific evidence. Yet many scientists try to show that quantum physics has disproved the laws of causation, *identity,* and non-contradiction, all of which must be presupposed in order to do any science at all. Thus, skeptics tend to pervert the role of science to get it to do what they want it to do. When they analyze evidence, they often stack the deck to support a foregone conclusion rather than follow the evidence where it leads. Or, they just make stretches. In other words, they are infamously unreliable because they have no respect for truth.StephenB_{June 15, 2022
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WJM/in passim I appreciate your comments. For the time being, I will be mired in the more conventional view of the mind as the mediator between external and internal reality. To me, idealism simply doesn't provide an explanation for objects "out there." I'm not so crass and dismissive as to label idealism "delusional," as does KF, any more than any other philosophical position; it has a long and respected history in philosophy, including a huge influence on 20th century German phenomenology.chuckdarwin_{June 15, 2022
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WJM, you know what F H Bradley showed 100 years ago. That who proposes that the world of things in themselves is unknowable to us, has claimed to know what he claims is unknowable. So, by self referential incoherence, collapse. Indeed, any species of grand delusionism implies the radical unreliability of senses and reasoning so defeats itself; sawing off the branch on which we sit. The sounder view is to acknowledge the fallibility but recognise there is good reason to believe our senses in general, save where shown to be erroneous. KFkairosfocus_{June 15, 2022
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Rational thought doesn't require external realism, simply because all rational thought is necessarily about qualia and occurs in mind as qualia. Qualia is the universal currency of all experience, the only thing we directly know to be real. Everything else is hypothesis and conjecture. Not all qualia is the same. There are different kinds of qualia, as we all know, and the relationship between different kinds of qualia is what needs to be examined, identified usefully and rationally organized into a comprehensive theory of Idealism.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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KF, You're the one that believes in an unprovable, inaccessible, unnecessary domain of existence which cannot be evidenced even in theory. You're the one ignoring 100+ years of conclusive scientific evidence to maintain your belief in that hypothetical world. However, I wouldn't call your views a delusion. It's just a common error in thinking.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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WJM, it should be called grand delusionism. KFkairosfocus_{June 15, 2022
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As I've said before, one of the difficulties in understanding Idealism is that most people cannot help but evaluate it from their a priori perspective of external realism. Questions along the line of "where the experience of a definitive chair, table or tree comes from if not from an external world of things with innate characteristics," and "how is it other people agree with us," all come from the assumption of an external reality to begin with. What is interesting is that many who argue against this also believe that everything that is postulated as being part of the world of external reality, including tables, chairs and trees, began as ideas or thought in the nonphysical mind of God. If ideas of things must come from an external physical reality, where did God get those ideas from? How was God able to form images of things in His mind that did not yet have existence? The materialist/external realist argument fails because quantum physics has demonstrated that perspective false by conducting research to prove some form of external realism, local or non-local was possible, and failed every time. They failed to show external realism was even theoretically possible. However it is that our mutual experiences of tables, chairs and trees occur, it is not occurring via any external medium of inherent (real) characteristics. It is true that multiple people are having largely mutual experiences in the category of personal qualia arena we mistakenly identify as "the external, physical, real world." However that occurs, it cannot be because there is an actual, real, external medium delivering that experience to all of us. It may be difficult to imagine how mutually verifiable qualia can be occurring any other way, but IMO that is just because the habit of thinking in terms of external realism runs so deep. Understanding what the science shows, and correlating that with mutually verifiable qualia, may require rethinking what "individual personhood" is, what space-time is, the relationship of consciousness and mind to individual personhood, and why any individual is experiencing what they are experiencing and not something else. A lot of excellent minds in several different fields of study are addressing these questions and ideas wrt to idealist theory in several articles over at The Essentia Foundation website.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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StephenB said:
We can grasp the idea of a universal or a category because those concepts actually mean something.
They "actually mean something" in idealism as well. They just don't mean the same kind of thing as they mean under externalism (external realism.)
The idealist world view also has an adverse effect on our capacity to reason in the abstract. It is only because we know about the whatness of a table that we can know that it is not a chair.
The "whatness" difference between a table and a chair always resides in mind, consciousness, experience. Take that away, and there is no difference between a table and a chair. Quantities are abstract descriptions (measurements) of qualia. You are mistaking the map (theory of external reality) for the terrain (internal, conscious experience/qualia.) Qualia is everything. Nothing can be shown to exist outside of it. It's literally impossible, and science has demonstrated this conclusively, even though it didn't need to. It is an experiential absolute; a self-evident truth, a first principle nobody here can escape.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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CD @66, I'm sorry I didn't mean that it is obvious in that way. I meant that, under idealism, it is obvious because under idealism, all that is proposed to exist is consciousness, mind.
If reality is nothing but a mental construct, none of these things can happen except in my imagination, i.e., my “mind.”
Under idealism, "Imagination" is one subset of mental phenomena. It does not represent the entirety of mental phenomena.
The existence of “things,” including people is nothing but an elaborate waking dream.
Roughly correct.
If that’s the case, we should be able to alter our reality at will.
Do you regularly alter reality "at will" in all of your dreams? I don't. I don't personally know anyone who reports being able to do that in a dream. In most of my dreams, I'm just some guy doing something in what appears to be an external 3D world with other people I interact with - pretty much like my waking life in that respect. Where do you get the idea that just because all of this is in mind, we should be able to alter it "at will?" Can you change everything in your mind "at will?"
I haven’t learned that trick, have you?
if you mean, change things I can't normally effect via my body immediately upon deliberate, mental command, no. But, I think that's a false test anyway. I have conducted decades of other personal experiments to test Idealism/MRT out. I have proven it at least to myself to my satisfaction and great personal benefit.William J Murray_{June 15, 2022
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