in a way that makes sense

"What happens, happens," Carla offered gnomically. "Everything in the Cosmos has to be consistent. All we get to do is talk about it in a way that makes sense to us"-- The Eternal Flam, Greg Egan

Meanings

The discovery that the universe has no purpose need not prevent a human being from having one. -- Irwin Edman

 

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with the indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. -- Stanley Kubrick

Theories, not Truth

There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature. [...] This ‘working model’ of science acknowledges that reality-in-itself is metaphysical, that the objects of scientific study are the shadows, the things-as-they-appear or things-as-they-are-measured. It accepts that the facts that scientists work with are not theory-neutral — they do not come completely free from contamination by theoretical concepts. It accepts that theories are in their turn populated by metaphysical concepts and mathematical abstractions and are derived by any method that works, from induction to the most extreme speculation. It acknowledges that theories can never be accepted as the ultimate truth. Instead, they are accepted as possessing a high truth-likeness or verisimilitude — they correspond to the facts. In this way they become part of the authorized version of empirical reality. -- Jim Baggott

Not So Hidden Costs

I know a lot of scientists as well as laymen are scornful of philosophy - perhaps understandably so. Reading academic philosophy journals often makes my heart sink too. But without exception, we all share philosophical background assumptions and presuppositions. The penalty of not doing philosophy isn't to transcend it, but simply to give bad philosophical arguments a free pass. -- David Pearce

Inheritance

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant. -- Epictetus

Working the Questions

When people ask me what philosophy is, I say philosophy is what you do when you don't know what the right questions are yet. Once you get the questions right, then you go answer them, and that's typically not philosophy, that's one science or another. Anywhere in life where you find that people aren't quite sure what the right questions to ask are, what they're doing, then, is philosophy. -- Daniel Dennett

the switch cannot flip itself

Ultimately, all science is correlation. No matter how effectively it may use one variable to describe another, its equations will always ultimately rest upon the surface of a black box. (Saint Herbert might have put it most succinctly when he observed that all proofs inevitably reduce to propositions that have no proof.) The difference between Science and Faith, therefore, is no more and no less than predictive power. Scientific insights have proven to be better predictors than Spiritual ones, at least in worldly matters; they prevail not because they are true, but simply because they work. 

 

***

We know what rapture is: a glorious malfunction, a glitch in the part of the brain that keeps track of where the body ends and everything else begins. When that boundary dissolves the mind feels connected to everything, feels literally at one with the universe. It’s an illusion, of course. Transcendence is experience, not insight.

***

Neurons do not fire spontaneously, only in response to external stimuli; therefore brains cannot act spontaneously, only in response to external stimuli. No need to wade through all those studies that show the brain acting before the conscious mind “decides” to. Forget the revisionist interpretations that downgrade the definition from free will to will that’s merely unpredictable enough to confuse predators. It’s simpler than that: the switch cannot flip itself.

 

citações do livro Echopraxia, Peter Watts

Maps and more maps

Farewell to Reality

"[...] reality is a metaphysical concept — it lies beyond the grasp of science. When we adopt specific beliefs about reality, what we are actually doing is adopting a specific philosophical position

There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.

This ‘working model’ of science acknowledges that reality-in-itself is metaphysical, that the objects of scientific study are the shadows, the things-as-they-appear or things-as-they-are-measured. It accepts that the facts that scientists work with are not theory-neutral — they do not come completely free from contamination by theoretical concepts. It accepts that theories are in their turn populated by metaphysical concepts and mathematical abstractions and are derived by any method that works, from induction to the most extreme speculation. It acknowledges that theories can never be accepted as the ultimate truth. Instead, they are accepted as possessing a high truth-likeness or verisimilitude — they correspond to the facts. In this way they become part of the authorized version of empirical reality. Finally, the model acknowledges the important role played by the Copernican attitude. Science works best when we resist the temptation to see ourselves as the primary objective or purpose of reality" -- Jim Baggott, Farewell to Reality

Philosophy in The Flesh II

the mind is embodied, not in any trivial sense (e.g., the "wetware" of the brain runs the software of the mind), but in the deep sense that our conceptual systems and our capacity for thought are shaped by the nature of our brains, our bodies, and our bodily interactions. There is no mind separate from and independent of the body, nor are there thoughts that have an existence independent of bodies and brains. (pg.265)

the assertion that empirical knowledge of our moral cognition can have no normative implications, is based on a false dichotomy between facts and values. Owen Flanagan (Cl, 1991) has demonstrated the relevance of moral psychology for moral theory by showing that no morality can be adequate if it is inconsistent with what we know about moral development, emotions, gender differences, and self-identity. Johnson (Cl, 1993) argues that facts about human conceptualization and reasoning place normative constraints on what we can morally demand of ourselves and others. For example, any view of morality that involves absolute moral principles defined by literal concepts cannot be cognitively realistic for human beings, whose moral categories often involve radial structure, conceptual metaphor, and metonymy. Damasio's (B1, 1994) work with brain damaged patients who have lost the ability to perform certain kinds of practical reasoning because their emotional experience is impaired suggests that moral deliberation cannot be the product of an allegedly pure reason. Moral deliberation always requires emotional monitoring and an interplay of affect and reason. (pg.326)

Philosophical theories, like all theories, do not and cannot spring full-blown from some alleged pure, transcendent reason. Instead, philosophy is built up with the conceptual and inferential resources of a culture, even though it may transform and creatively extend those resources. These cognitive resources are not arbitrary or merely culturally constructed. They depend on the nature of our embodied experience, which includes both the constraints set by our bodily makeup and those imposed by the environments we inhabit. (pg.341)

It is natural to ask questions about the nature of things. As Aristotle said at the beginning of the Metaphysics, "All men by nature desire to know." We desire to know, for practical reasons, if the mushroom we are about to eat is poisonous. We desire to know, for ethical reasons, if there is some natural difference between men and women. We desire to know, for purely intellectual reasons, whether the universe will come to an end someday. 

The very project of seeking knowledge assumes that the world makes systematic sense, that it is not just a random collection of individual phenomena. It is not just determined by the capricious whims of gods who are fickle, mischievous, and cruel, but, rather, it is a "cosmos," a rationally structured whole. In other words, to seek knowledge, we must assume that the world is not absurd. It also assumes that we can gain knowledge of the world. 

These two assumptions together define what has come down to us as a commonplace folk theory that we take for granted any time we seek any kind of systematic knowledge:

THE FOLK THEORY OF THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD

The world makes systematic sense, and we can gain knowledge of it.

Thus it is natural for us to ask what things are like and why they behave the way they do. Moreover, we seek general knowledge, knowledge about kinds of things, not just particular knowledge that pertains only to a single entity. We want to know whether this mushroom is edible, but our knowledge of it depends on our knowledge of the general kind of mushroom it is. We want to know whether men and women are somehow fundamentally different and not just whether this man differs in certain particular ways from this woman. And we assume that such questions have answers, that if we can formulate such a question, there is a fact of the matter that answers it. In other words, much of the time we assume two particular folk theories about things in general:

THE FOLK THEORY OF GENERAL KINDS

Every particular thing is a kind of thing.

THE FOLK THEORY OF ESSENCES

Every entity has an "essence" or "nature," that is, a collection of properties that makes it the kind of thing it is and that is the causal source of its natural behavior.

The Folk Theory of Essences is metaphorical in two ways. First, the very idea of an essence is based on physical properties that compose the basis of everyday categorization: substance and form. For example, a tree is made of wood and has a form that includes a trunk, branches, leaves, roots, bark, and so on. It also has a pattern of change (another kind of form) in which the tree grows from seed to sapling to mature specimen. These are the physical bases on which we categorize an object as a tree: substance, form, and pattern of change. Where an essence is seen as a collection of physical properties, it is seen as one or more of these things. In the case of abstract essences, these three physical properties become source domains for metaphors of essence: Essence As Substance, Essence As Form, and Essence As Pattern Of Change. 

The second way in which the concept of essence is metaphorical concerns its role as a causal source. The intuition is this: If a tree is made of wood, it will burn. Because it has a trunk and stands erect, it can fall over. The idea is that the natural behavior of a tree is a causal consequence of the properties that make it the kind of thing it is: The tree burns because it is made of wood. We have the same intuition about abstract essences, like a person's character. Honest people will tell the truth. Their essence as honest is the causal source of their truth telling. In such cases, we are clearly in the domain of the metaphorical, because we are attributing to a person a metaphorical substance called "character," which has causal powers. An immediate consequence of these two folk theories is the foundational assumption behind all philosophical metaphysics:

THE FOUNDATIONAL ASSUMPTION OF METAPHYSICS

Kinds exist and are defined by essences.

It is important to see how a natural desire to know leads so easily to metaphysical speculation, for as soon as we believe that kinds exist, what we shall call the metaphysical impulse takes over. We can apply the Folk Theory of Essences to kinds themselves, from which it follows that there are kinds of kinds and that these kinds of kinds themselves are defined by essences. This iteration is a fateful step; it is the first step toward metaphysics in Western philosophy.

This metaphysical impulse lies at the heart not only of Western philosophy but of all Western science, leading physicists to seek a general field theory, or as it has come to he known, "a theory of everything." In biology, there is a similar quest for a theory of life. Such theories seek to find some essence that characterizes the behavior of things in some general domain of study: physical phenomena, life, the mind, language, and so on. Questions like "What is the mind?" or "What is life?" presuppose the meaningfulness of such a quest for general knowledge. 

Whether we like it or not, we are all metaphysicians. We do assume that there is a nature of things, and we are led by the metaphysical impulse to seek knowledge at higher and higher levels, defined by ever more general categories of things. Once we have started on this search for higher and higher categories and essences, there are three possible alternatives:

1. The world may not he systematically organized, or we may not he able to know it, above a certain level of generalization, which might even he relatively low in the hierarchy of categories. In other words, there may be a limit to the systematicity of the world or to its intelligibility.
2. The hierarchy of categories may go on indefinitely, with no level at which an all-inclusive category exists. In this case, the world might be systematic, but not completely intelligible. The process of gaining knowledge of the world would be an infinite, and hence uncompletable, task. 
3. The iteration up the hierarchy of categories and essences might terminate with an all-inclusive category, whose essence would explain the nature of all things. Only in this case would the world he totally intelligible, at least in principle. 

This third alternative is what we call:

THE FOLK THEORY OF THE ALL-INCLUSIVE CATEGORY

There is a category of all things that exist.

From the Folk Theory of Essences, it follows that this all-inclusive category has an essence, and from the Folk Theory of Intelligibility, it follows that we can at least in principle gain knowledge of that essence. This all-inclusive category is called Being, and its essence is called the Essence of Being.

This third alternative, that the world is completely systematic and knowable, is the most hopeful, least skeptical attitude that someone concerned with seeking general knowledge can take. However, such optimism brings with it a substantial ontological presupposition, that there is a category of Being, and that, since it must have an essence, there is an Essence of Being. As we will see below, there is a profound problem that arises from this ultimate metaphysical impulse, as defined by these four commonplace folk theories. They lead us to ask a set of questions that may not be meaningful. And they give us a view of the world and of knowledge that may he misleading.

To see why this is so, we propose to apply the tools of embodied cognitive science to the emergence of explicit metaphysical thinking in the Western philosophical tradition. The foundational metaphysical projects of Western philosophy were formulated by Aristotle. In early pre-Socratic philosophy, there are hints of this way of thinking about nature that, in Aristotle, finally and explicitly become the quest for an understanding of Being as the ultimate form of knowledge. This sets the stage both for Western science and for theological interpretations of God as Ultimate Being. (pgs 346-9)

George Lakoff & Mark Johnson - Philosophy in The Flesh (1999)

Philosophy in the Flesh I

[...] philosophers have asked whether time in itself is bounded or unbounded; whether it is continuous or divisible; whether it flows; whether the passage of time is the same for everyone and everything everywhere; whether time is directional and if so whether its direction is a consequence of change, causation, or possibility; whether there can be time without change; whether it loops back on itself; and so on. How we happen to conceptualize time has been seen as irrelevant to such questions. It is assumed that philosophical inquiry can proceed without knowing or caring about the details of how human beings happen to conceptualize what is being studied. (pg.135)

[...] the metaphorical nature of our conceptual system, if unrecognized, can lead philosophers astray. Two things lead to such philosophical errors. First, a philosopher may fail to recognize conceptual metaphor and hence may see metaphorical sentences as literal and take them at face value. Once one takes a metaphor as being literal, the second error is to assume the correspondence theory of truth and therefore to regard the objective world as structured by the metaphor. [...] Augustine dramatized these errors in the eleventh chapter of his Confessions in his discussion of what constitutes a long time. Just when, he asks, is a time long? Is it long when it is present, or when it is past or future? [...] As a literal, metaphysical question about time, there is no answer, since only a short part of a process can occur at any present time. Augustine's answer is interesting. Past, present, and future, he says, do all "exist in some sort in the soul, but otherwhere I do not see them." A cognitive scientist who speaks about minds instead of souls might echo Augustine in contemporary terms, saying that the very idea of "lengths of time" is conceptual, and indeed metaphoric. Our very notion of a "long time" or "long process" is a product of our use of spatial metaphor.

Zeno's paradox of the arrow can also be seen as pointing out the mistake of taking a metaphor to be literal (though he didn't understand it as such). Suppose, Zeno argues, that time really is a sequence of points constituting a time line. Consider the flight of an arrow. At any point in time, the arrow is at some fixed location. At a later point, it is at another fixed location. The flight of the arrow would be like the sequence of still frames that make up a movie. Since the arrow is located at a single fixed place at every time, where, asks Zeno, is the motion? Time, Zeno argues, is not divided up into instants. In our terms, the idea that time is a linear sequence of points is metaphorical, a consequence of times seen as locations in the Moving Observer metaphor. The mistake, once again, is to take what is metaphorical as literal. [...] The appearance of paradox comes from attributing real existence to metaphorical point locations. Zeno's brilliance was to concoct an example that forced a contradiction upon us: literal motion and motion metaphorically conceptualized as a sequence of fixed locations at fixed points in time.

Such observations by Zeno and Augustine are not mere conundrums dreamed up in ancient and medieval philosophy, conundrums that are irrelevant today. They are early insights into the fact that our conceptual systems are not literal. They show that the most common concepts that we use every day and in terms of which we state our truths cannot he taken as literally fitting an objective reality. (pgs.156-158)

many of us would take a sentence like "Time is flowing by rapidly" to be true. Suppose you take this metaphor as being literal; that is, you assume that there really is a "flow" of time past us. This entails that the future is flowing toward us from somewhere and that it presently exists at the future "place." In short, it implies that the future, at least some of it, must exist at the present. [...] If you do not realize the metaphorical nature of the question, you might be led to ask, as some philosophers have, "If time flows, it has to flow at a rate relative to time. Mustn't there be some higher-order time relative to which time itself flows? " The question arises from taking the metaphor literally. To treat it as a deep metaphysical question would be silly. (pg.159)

Philosophers have observed that taking the theory of general relativity as literally true entails that the past, present, and future all exist "at once." That is, the theory seems to suggest determinism and the impossibility of free will or even random probabilistic events, as required by quantum mechanics. Of course, if one recognizes that general relativity uses our common metaphor for conceptualizing time metaphorically in terms of space, one need not reach such metaphysical conclusions. One can see general relativity as metaphorical. This does not make general relativity either false or fanciful or subjective, since its metaphors can still be apt. That is, they can entail non metaphorical predictions that can be verified or falsified. In general, to say that a science is metaphorical is not to belittle it. Because metaphors preserve inferences, and because those inferences can have non metaphorical consequences, one can often test whether or not a scientific metaphor is apt. Indeed, metaphor is what allows mathematical models to be linked to phenomena in the world and to be regarded as scientific theories. (pg.160)

What exactly was proved when Einstein's theory was "confirmed"? Einstein's theory claimed that a large body like the sun should create a significant space-time curvature in its immediate vicinity. If a light ray passed near the sun, it should follow a curved path. This was seen as providing for a test of the gravitational-pull theory versus the space-time-curvature theory. It was assumed that light had no mass; hence there should be no "pull" and the light should travel in a straight line by the sun. But if space-time was curved near the sun, such a light ray should travel along a curved path, mass or no mass. During an eclipse of the sun, the position was observed of a star that could not normally be seen next to the sun when it was shining. If space-time was curved, the light from the star should move in a curved path by the sun, and the star should appear shifted over a few degrees. The measurement was made during a 1919 eclipse, and Einstein's calculation of where the star should appear was verified. Einstein's theory was taken as confirmed-and interpreted literally: There is no force of gravity. What we've been calling that force is space-time curvature. 

Einstein's theory need not have been interpreted literally. One could have said: Einstein has created a beautiful metaphorical system for doing calculations of the motion of light in a gravitational field. The metaphor of space as a temporal dimension allows him to use well understood mathematics to do his calculations. That is a magnificent metaphorical accomplishment. But that doesn't mean we have to understand that theory as characterizing the objectively true nature of the universe. (pg.228)

In superstring theory, all forces-gravitational, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces-are conceptualized as curvatures in ten-dimensional space. What this does is allow the same mathematics, Riemannian geometry, to be used to calculate all of what we ordinarily call "forces." But of course, if one takes this theory literally, no forces at all exist as forces. What we used to conceptualize as forces are now all curvatures in ten-dimensional space. If we take superstring theory literally, no forces exist at all. And we live in a radically multidimensional universe, one with ten dimensions! Do we "really" live in a world with ten or more dimensions, many of them very small, with no forces but lots of curvatures in multidimensional space? Or is superstring theory an ingenious and productive technical metaphor that allows all calculations of force to be unified using the same mathematics - Riemannian geometry? These are not mutually exclusive alternatives. From the perspective of the everyday human conceptual system, superstring theory is metaphorical, as is general relativity, as is Newtonian mechanics. To take any of these theories literally is to say that force, and therefore causation, is nonexistent. But to take these scientific theories metaphorically is to allow for the "existence" of causes from our everyday perspective. (pg.230)

One important thing that cognitive science has revealed clearly is that we have multiple conceptual means for understanding and thinking about situations. What we take as "true" depends on how we conceptualize the situation at hand. From the perspective of our ordinary visual experience, the sun does rise; it does move up from behind the horizon. From the perspective of our scientific knowledge, it does not. Similarly, when we lift an object, we experience ourselves exerting a force to overcome a force pulling the object down. From the standpoint of our basic level experience, the force of gravity does exist, no matter what the general theory of relativity says. But if we are physicists concerned with calculating how light will move in the presence of a large mass, then it is advantageous to take the perspective of general relativity, in which there is no gravitational force. It is not that one is objectively true while the other is not. Both are human perspectives. One, the nonscientific one, is literal relative to human, body based conceptual systems. The other, the scientific one, is metaphorical relative to human, body-based conceptual systems. From the metaphorical scientific perspective of general relativity and superstring theory, gravitational force does not exist as an entity-instead it is space-time curvature. From the literal, nonscientific perspective, forces exist. Now, if we take one scientific theory or another as being literally true, and if we insist that there is only one truth and it is the best scientific truth we have, then, as Russell observed, force does not exist, and so neither does causation. If, however, we can allow scientific theories to be recognized for the metaphorical conceptual structures that they are for human beings, then we can allow multiple ways of conceptualizing the world, including both the scientific and nonscientific. Allowing for the multiple perspectives indicated by cognitive analyses allows us to maintain both scientific perspectives, in which causation doesn't exist, and our everyday perspective, in which it does. (pgs.231-2)

When someone asks, "Does causation exist?" that person usually wants to know whether there is a single unified phenomenon (which is called "causation") objectively existing in the mind independent world and operating according to a single logic. Furthermore, he or she assumes that there is a straightforward simple yes-or-no answer. As we have seen, the situation is more complex than that. But the presuppositions lying behind this apparently simple question are massively false. First, causation is a word in a human language and it designates a human category, a radial category of extraordinary complexity. In that complex radial category, there is no set of necessary and sufficient conditions that covers all the cases of causation. Therefore, causation as we conceptualize it is not a unified phenomenon. It does not simply designate an objectively existing category of phenomena, defined by necessary and sufficient conditions and operating with a single logic in the mind-independent world. Because the presuppositions lying behind the question are so far off base, the question has no simple straightforward answer. This eliminates a simpleminded realism that assumes that our language is simply a reflection of the mind-independent world, and hence that such questions are simple and straightforward. But eliminating simpleminded realism does not eliminate all forms of realism, and it does not require either idealism or total relativism. What remains is an embodied realism that recognizes that human language and thought are structured by, and bound to, embodied experience. In the case of physics, there is certainly a mind-independent world. But in order to conceptualize and describe it, we must use embodied human concepts and human language. Certain of those embodied human concepts, the basic-level ones, accord very well with middle-level physical experience and therefore have an epistemic priority for us. It is here that we feel comfortable saying that causation exists for ordinary cases of the direct application of physical force in our everyday lives. The central prototypical case in our basic-level experience gives us no problem in answering the question. He punched me in the arm. He caused me pain. Yes, causation exists. (pg.233)

George Lakoff & Mark Johnson - Philosophy in The Flesh (1999)

Tweet discussions

‏@philosophytweet: A reminder of philosophy’s embarrassing failure, after over 2000 years, to settle any of its central issues.

‏

@rudivanetteger: The goal of philosophy is not to provide definite answers, but to provide reasons for individual choices, which it does.

@svarricc: Philosophy is a process not a product. Assess results for value based on the quality of their reasoning.

‏

@rudivanetteger: if you equate philosophy to process of reasoning, does that not reduce philosophy to rhetoric, processing the facts of science?

@svarricc: I never said reasoning had to based on science - although scientific methodology is a popular form.

@rudivanetteger: I spoke of philosophical method: rhetorics and possibly logic, and of scientific results. To me philosophy as process is empty

‏@svarricc: A process is necessarily empty. Its a form for perspective and dialogue but needs content.

‏@rudivanetteger: Does philosophy provide its own content? Or who does?

‏@svarricc: We provide content. We do philosophy. It does not exist without us, and is only as effective as the craftsman who uses it.

From https://twitter.com/rudivanetteger/status/328056251806273537

Intuition Pumps quotes by Daniel Dennett

Giving an intentional-stance* interpretation of some sub-personal brain structure is like putting a comment on a few lines of code; when done well, it provides an illuminating label, not a translation into English or other natural language of some formula in Brainish that the brain is using in its information-processing.

(*) the level of abstraction in which we view the behavior of a thing in terms of mental properties [wikipedia]

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In general, the cryptographer’s maxim holds: if you can find one solution to a puzzle, you’ve found the only solution to the puzzle. Only special circumstances permit as many as two solutions, but such cases show us that the existence of only one single solution to a question like this is not a metaphysical necessity, but just the immensely probable result of very powerful constraints.

People are much more complicated than either crossword puzzles or computers. They have convoluted brains full of neuromodulators, and these brains are attached to bodies that are deeply entwined with the world, and they have both an evolutionary and a personal history that has embedded them in the world with much more interpenetration than the embedding of a crossword puzzle in a linguistic community. So Ruth Millikan (for instance) is right that given the nature of design constraints, it is unlikely in the extreme that there could be different ways of skinning the cat that left two radically different, globally indeterminate, tied-for-first-place interpretations. Indeterminacy of radical translation* is truly negligible in practice. Still, the principle survives. The reason we don’t have indeterminacy of radical translation is not because, as a matter of metaphysical fact, there are “real meanings” in there, in the head (what Quine called the “museum myth” of meaning, his chief target). The reason we don’t have indeterminacy in the actual world is that with so many independent constraints to satisfy, the cryptographer’s maxim assures us that it is a vanishingly small worry. When indeterminacy threatens in the real world, it is always just more “behavioral” or “dispositional” facts—more of the same—that save the day for a determinate reading, not some mysterious “causal power” or “intrinsic semanticity.” Intentional interpretation almost always arrives in the limit at a single interpretation, but in the imaginable catastrophic case in which dual interpretations survived all tests, there would be no deeper facts to settle which was “right.” Facts do settle interpretations, but it is always “shallow” facts that do the job.

(*)  Radical translation is a term by W. V. O. Quine to describe the situation in which a linguist is attempting to translate a completely unknown language, which is unrelated to his own, and is therefore forced to rely solely on the observed behavior of its speakers in relation to their environment. [wikipedia]

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How can meaning make a difference? It doesn't seem to be the kind of physical property, like temperature or mass or chemical composition, that could cause anything to happen. What brains are for is extracting meaning from the flux of energy impinging on their sense organs, in order to improve the prospects of the bodies that house them and provide their energy. The job of a brain is to “produce future” in the form of anticipations about the things in the world that matter to guide the body in appropriate ways. Brains are energetically very expensive organs, and if they can’t do this important job well, they aren’t earning their keep. Brains, in other words, are supposed to be semantic engines. What brains are made of is kazillions of molecular pieces that interact according to the strict laws of chemistry and physics, responding to shapes and forces; brains, in other words, are in fact only syntactic engines. [..] Don’t make the mistake of imagining that brains, being alive, or made of proteins instead of silicon and metal, can detect meanings directly, thanks to the wonder tissue in them. Physics will always trump meaning. A genuine semantic engine, responding directly to meanings, is like a perpetual motion machine—physically impossible. So how can brains accomplish their appointed task? By being syntactic engines that track or mimic the competence of the impossible semantic engine.

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Natural selection is an automatic reason-finder; it “discovers” and “endorses” and “focuses” reasons over many generations. The scare quotes are to remind us that natural selection doesn't have a mind, doesn't itself have reasons, but it is nevertheless competent to perform this “task” of design refinement. This is itself an instance of competence without comprehension. Let’s just be sure we know how to cash out the scare quotes. Consider a population with lots of variation in it. Some members of the population do well (at multiplying); most do not. In each case we can ask why. Why did this one have surviving offspring while these others did not? In many cases, most cases, there is no reason at all; it’s just dumb luck, good or bad. But if there is a subset, perhaps a very small one, of cases in which there is an answer, a difference that happens to make a difference, then what those cases have in common provides the germ of a reason. This permits functionality to accumulate by a process that blindly tracks reasons, creating things that have purposes but don’t need to know them. The Need to Know principle reigns in the biosphere, and natural selection itself doesn't need to know what it’s doing. So there were reasons before there were reason-representers. The reasons tracked by evolution I have called “free-floating rationales," [...] There are reasons why trees spread their branches, but they are not in any strong sense the trees’ reasons. Sponges do things for reasons; bacteria do things for reasons; even viruses do things for reasons. But they don’t have the reasons; they don’t need to have the reasons. There are reasons aplenty for these behaviors, but in general, organisms need not understand them. They are endowed with behaviors that are well designed by evolution, and they are the beneficiaries of these designs without needing to know about it. This feature is everywhere to be seen in nature, but it tends to be masked by our tendency, adopting the intentional stance, to interpret behavior as more mindful and rational than it really is.

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Then what might the self be? I propose that it is the same kind of thing as a center of gravity, an abstraction that is, in spite of its abstractness, tightly coupled to the physical world. [...] It may be a “theorist's fiction,” but it is a very valuable fiction from which a lot of true predictions can be generated. [...] What then is a center of narrative gravity? It is also a theorist’s fiction, posited in order to unify and make sense of an otherwise bafflingly complex collection of actions, utterances, fidgets, complaints, promises, and so forth, that make up a person. It is the organizer of the personal level of explanation. Your hand didn't sign the contract; you did. [...] In the same way that we can simplify all the gravitational attractions between all the parts of the world and an obelisk standing on the ground by boiling it down to two points, the center of the earth and the center of gravity of the obelisk, we can simplify all the interactions—the handshakes, the spoken words, the ink scrawls, and much more—between two selves, the seller and the buyer, who have just completed a transaction. Each self is a person, with a biography, a “backstory,” and many ongoing projects. Unlike centers of gravity, selves don't just have trajectories through space and time; they gather as they go, accumulating memories and devising plans and expectations.

Ontology & Epistemology

I tend to gravitate around "the Map is not the Territory" concept in the ontology/epistemology discussion. I understand «territory» as the event generator, aka reality. We are only able to measure events indirectly using our senses and tech (events with no effects are non-existent for all purposes). The 'map' is a tangled web of shared and private beliefs that we, Humanity, build and maintain for centuries. The «Map» is the meaning generator (I'm dropping the guillemets now).

The terms objective/subjective imho only make sense in the Map. Objective beliefs are those not dependent of personal mind states, and those dependent are subjective (this is more like a spectrum than a boolean feature, but let's keep it simple). Beliefs not dependent of private or social features (even if they are known just because of specific historical contexts) and which are known using logic/evidence/reason are (more) objective like Math. This does not mean that objective beliefs are necessarily 'true' (it depends on the semantics of the word 'true') but they are not, or should not be, dependent of persons X's or Y's state of mind. This also does not mean that objective beliefs are necessarily better than subjective ones (that requires a value judgement which is context-dependent). Anyway, this is why I think that, say, my liking of ice-cream is subjective. That is a private belief that would not exist if I would not exist. It depends of my current mind state. On the other hand, the theory of evolution by natural selection or the Central Limit Theorem are beliefs that do not depend on any person's mind. But, either objective or subjective, all are map denizens. Even scientific models are just that: maps; not intrinsically true or false, just more or less adequate to the known relevant evidence and current knowledge. 

However this way of classifying beliefs is just one way not the way. Thinking about the divide between public or private beliefs is as important as seeing them as objective or subjective (Ethics and Politics seems a much more interesting and important subject that Ontology and Epistemology but that's my perspective). 

One more thing: in a subtle way, every belief belongs to the Territory -- human beliefs are caused by certain neuro-electric impulses, and those are measurable events -- which is a trivial fact and not that interesting (even if it is important, because it protects this model of ontology against the charge of dualism, the Map is not independent of the Territory). The meaning of those brain impulses only makes sense in the Map. Without humans -- the makers and keepers of the Human Map -- the only thing that would exist would be the physical phenomena that we label with words and inject with meaning. Without a 'Map' there would be no stars, no colors or sounds, no art or philosophy or love. There would only exist 'meaningless indifferent stuff' (for lack of better words).

Filosofia

"[...] There are things I know I learned from studying philosophy. The most dramatic I learned immediately, in the first semester of freshman year, in a class taught by Sydney Shoemaker. I learned that I don't exist. I am (and you are) a collection of cells that lurches around driven by various forces, and calls itself I. But there's no central, indivisible thing that your identity goes with. You could conceivably lose half your brain and live. Which means your brain could conceivably be split into two halves and each transplanted into different bodies. Imagine waking up after such an operation. You have to imagine being two people.

The real lesson here is that the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard. Even a concept as dear to us as I. It took me a while to grasp this, but when I did it was fairly sudden, like someone in the nineteenth century grasping evolution and realizing the story of creation they'd been told as a child was all wrong. [2] Outside of math there's a limit to how far you can push words; in fact, it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings. Everyday words are inherently imprecise. They work well enough in everyday life that you don't notice. Words seem to work, just as Newtonian physics seems to. But you can always make them break if you push them far enough.

I would say that this has been, unfortunately for philosophy, the central fact of philosophy. Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean by "free." Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by "exist." Paul Graham

Questões menores?

"Words like "maximize" or "minimize" are disdained by the great thinkers among us as they are associated with common problems, not ultimate ones. But there are some evils we can minimize or even prevent, regardless of the ultimate origin of evil. I think it is clear that we should emphasize addressing common problems. Perhaps we'll find that when common problems have been resolved the ultimate ones will no longer interest us." Ciceronianus

Definições e Abusos

[A] definition can be anything we choose. But the arbitrariness of definitions doesn’t make truth arbitrary. Rather, it just means that in order to understand which proposition it is whose truth we’re being asked about, we need to know what the words mean. Once again, it is just a matter of pinning down the meaning in order to pin down the truth. [...] whenever something substantive seems to depend on a choice of definition—for example, if whether to take a contemplated action seems to depend on whether the action falls within the scope of some proposed definition of right—we should suspect that a tacit definition is being smuggled in, and a sleight-of-hand substitution of the tacit definition for the explicit one is occurring. Here’s a good diagnostic technique: define some made-up word in place of the familiar one that is being defined, and see what apparent difference that substitution makes. [...] A definition is just an arbitrary association between a symbol and a concept; it has nothing to do with what is true or false about the world. [...] If concepts yielded to our attempts to equate them just by our proclaiming definitions in that manner, then definitions would be like magic spells, capable by their mere incantation of somehow rearranging the substantive facts of the world. Obviously, definitions have no such power. [We need arguments, not definitions] [e.g. ownership] A supporter of libertarian capitalism may argue that you are morally entitled to use your own property for your exclusive benefit, because such entitlement is the very definition of the word own. But by that definition, you have not established that anything is your own until you have (somehow) established that you are morally entitled to use it for your exclusive benefit. However, there is another definition of own that is often implicitly smuggled in—roughly, that if you have obtained an item by purchasing it, inheriting it, building it, and so forth, then you own it. Sleight-of-hand alternation between the explicit and implicit definition creates the illusion of having established that whatever you build, purchase, inherit, and so forth, you are necessarily entitled to use for your exclusive benefit. [You need to argue that the latter implies the former]. - Gary L Drescher, Good and Real.

Esvaziamento

O livre-arbítrio é um conceito filosófica e cientificamente estéril. Considerando qualquer situação passada, se repetíssemos o mesmo estado do mundo, agiríamos sempre da mesma forma. A evidência existente aponta de forma esmagadora para esta possibilidade. A não ser que aceitemos uma perspectiva dualista - e.g., a existência de uma alma imaterial - não há fundamentos para afirmar que as mesmas condições poderiam dar lugar a decisões diferentes. E actualmente, considera-se o dualismo como um conceito epistemologicamente inútil, tal como os deuses, a referida alma, o vitalismo ou o elã vital.

É comum, nesta temática, referir o problema do determinismo como ameaça ao livre-arbítrio. Por isso, os seus defensores tentam minar a afirmação do determinismo, levantando dúvidas e argumentos à sua existência mais ou menos relevantes. Os dois lados podem concordar num ponto: nunca teremos a certeza que o mundo é determinista. A noção de certeza é uma assimptota, um ideal ao qual apontamos como objectivo mas que não chegamos a alcançar. Nunca teremos a certeza sobre um certo X mas podemos, com esforço e método, chegar a um ponto ao qual afirmamos X muito para lá da dúvida razoável. Este tipo de certeza ocorre no corpo de conhecimento de disciplinas como a física, a química ou a biologia. E a maioria desse conhecimento aponta para um mundo determinista. Os poucos casos na teoria clássica que parecem indeterministas, como as singularidades nuas entre outras situações patológicas, estão tão afastadas do nosso universo local (assumindo que realmente existem), são tão pouco relevantes no nosso dia-a-dia, que não encerram força argumentativa na discussão da cognição humana. Situações potencialmente locais, como o choque simultâneo de três corpos, se bem que não deterministas no contexto clássico, são eventos de probabilidade negligenciável (correspondem a conjuntos de eventos de medida nula).

O último reduto de indeterminismo parece ser a teoria quântica. Não na dinâmica resultante das suas equações, que é totalmente determinista, mas no acto de interferência ou observação. A interpretação de Copenhaga é manifestamente não determinista mas admiti-la levanta demasiados problemas sendo alvo de muita controvérsia desde o início da sua formulação. Já a interpretação de muitos mundos (many-worlds) defende que nada de mais acontece para lá da dinâmica determinista da equação de Schrödinger. Para explicar o aparente não-determinismo resultante do acto de observação, esta interpretação refere apenas que nós vivemos apenas em um de múltiplos ramos da dinâmica quântica. É deixado intocado o determinismo que já se encontrava nas equações, sacrificando para isso a nossa capacidade última de observação, uma perspectiva menos antropocêntrica e mais racional que a interpretação de Copenhaga. Mas, mesmo assumindo a interpretação de Copenhaga, é difícil imaginar como um evento não-determinista no mundo sub-atómico possa resgatar um conceito tantos níveis de abstracção acima como é o processo de decisão de uma mente humana (ou seja, como o arbítrio quântico se transforma em arbítrio humano?).

Há também quem argumente de acordo com a ideia que o mundo não pode ser determinista porque isso implicaria o colapso das noções de liberdade e de responsabilidade individual. Mas esta linha argumentativa é um non sequitur. O mundo é o que é. Uma ameaça à civilização, por mais grave ou iminente que seja, não tem qualquer efeito sobre a natureza do mundo externo. E, de qualquer forma, estes importantes conceitos não precisam ser abandonados:

• A liberdade é a possibilidade de termos disponíveis mais escolhas e de agirmos de acordo com a nossa escolha preferencial. Isso não depende do mundo ser determinista: uma pessoa tem opções e age segundo elas, seja o processo de decisão determinista ou não (aliás, um processo demasiado não determinista seria, este sim, uma ameaça a regras sociais estáveis);
• A responsabilidade é um conceito social. Ela é julgada moral e socialmente de acordo com as regras da sociedade em questão. E mais uma vez, isso não depende da natureza ontológica do mundo externo. Depende sim dos diversos modelos - sociais, científicos, éticos, religiosos - que a sociedade partilha e utiliza no seu dia-a-dia. É natural que novo conhecimento seja incorporado na sociedade e altere a sua perspectiva, como a moderna noção de inimputabilidade de certos doentes mentais. Mas, em última análise, as sociedades têm de ser capazes de manter um mecanismo coerente e sustentável de responsabilidade individual, qualquer que seja o conhecimento adquirido. A justiça, tradicionalmente o corpo social que formaliza e gere conflitos de responsabilidade, é um corpo independente. Ela recebe ajuda da ética, da ciência e da lógica, mas não depende delas para se fundar e funcionar.

Temos cada vez melhores modelos sobre o mundo, o cérebro humano e a forma como a mente funciona e interage. Cada vez mais parecem vazias ou incoerentes noções como o livre-arbítrio e o não-determinismo. Cada vez mais as discussões filosóficas nestes temas se parecem com as discussões sobre anjos ou almas da teologia antiga. Este é apenas mais um campo onde as discussões foram esvaziadas de significado pelo progresso do conhecimento humano.

Razão e ETs

Uma citação longa, mas que vale a pena, da novela que inspirou Stalker de Andrey Tarkovskiy:

I must warn you that your question, Richard, comes under the heading of xenology. Xenology: an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. It's based on the false premise that human psychology is applicable to extraterrestrial intelligent beings."

"Why is that false?" Noonan asked.

"Because biologists have already been burned trying to use human psychology on animals. Earth animals, at that."

"Forgive me, but that's an entirely different matter. We're talking about the psychology of rational beings."

"Yes. And everything would be fine if we only knew what reason was."

"Don't we know?" Noonan was surprised.

"Believe it or not, we don't. Usually a trivial definition is used: reason is that part of man's activity that distinguishes him from the animals. You know, an attempt to distinguish the owner from the dog who understands everything but just can't speak. Actually, this trivial definition gives rise to rather more ingenious ones. Based on bitter observation of the above-mentioned human activities. For example: reason is the ability of a living creature to perform unreasonable or unnatural acts."

"Yes, that's about us, about me, and those like me," Noonan agreed bitterly.

"Unfortunately. Or how about this hypothetical definition. Reason is a complex type of instinct that has not yet formed completely. This implies that instinctual behavior is always purposeful and natural. A million years from now our instinct will have matured and we will stop making the mistakes that are probably integral to reason. And then, if something should change in the universe, we will all become extinct—precisely because we will have forgotten how to make mistakes, that is, to try various approaches not stipulated by an inflexible program of permitted alternatives."

"Somehow you make it all sound demeaning."

"All right, how about another definition—a very lofty and noble one. Reason is the ability to use the forces of the environment without destroying that environment."

Noonan grimaced and shook his head.

"No, that's not about us. How about this: 'man, as opposed to animals, is a creature with an undefinable need for knowledge'? I read that somewhere."

"So have I," said Valentine. "But the whole problem with that is that the average man—the one you have in mind when you talk about 'us' and 'not us'—very easily manages to overcome this need for knowledge. I don't believe that need even exists. There is a need to understand, and you don't need knowledge for that. The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense."

"Hold on," Noonan said. He finished his beer and set the mug noisily on the table. "Don't get off the track. Let's get back to the subject on hand. Man meets an extraterrestrial creature. How do they find out that they are both rational creatures?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Valentine said with great pleasure. "Everything I've read on the subject comes down to a vicious circle. If they are capable of making contact, then they are rational. And vice versa; if they are rational, they are capable of contact. And in general: if an extraterrestrial creature has the honor of possessing human psychology, then it is rational. Like that."

"There you go. And I thought you boys had it all laid out in neat cubbyholes."

"A monkey can put things into cubbyholes," Valentine replied.

"No, wait a minute." For some reason, Noonan felt cheated. "If you don't know simple things like that … All right, the hell with reason. Obviously, it's a real quagmire. OK. But what about the Visitation? What do you think about the Visitation?"

"My pleasure. Imagine a picnic." Noonan shuddered.

"What did you say?"

"A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car drives , off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out of the car carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Gas and oil spilled on the grass. Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around. Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind. Oil slicks on the pond. And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow."

"I see. A roadside picnic."

"Precisely. A roadside picnic, on some road in the cosmos. And you ask if they will come back."

"Let me have a smoke. Goddamn this pseudoscience! Somehow I imagined it all differently."

"That's your right."

"So does that mean they never even noticed us?"

"Why?"

"Well, anyway, didn't pay any attention to us?"

"You know, I wouldn't be upset if I were you." Noonan inhaled, coughed, and threw away the cigarette.

"I don't care," he said stubbornly. "It can't be. Damn you scientists! Where do you get your contempt for man? Why are you always trying to put mankind down?"

"Wait a minute," Valentine said. "Listen: 'You ask me what makes man great?' " he quoted. " 'That he re-created nature? That he has harnessed cosmic forces? That in a brief time he conquered the planet and opened a window on the universe? No! That, despite all this, he has survived and intends to survive in the future.' "

There was a silence. Noonan was thinking.

"Don't get depressed," Valentine said kindly. "The picnic is my own theory. And not even a theory—just a picture. The serious xenologists are working on much more solid and flattering versions for human vanity. For example, that there has been no Visitation yet, that it is to come. A highly rational culture threw containers with artifacts of its civilization onto Earth. They expect us to study the artifacts, make a giant technological leap, and send a signal in response that will show we are ready for contact. How do you like that one?"

"That's much better," Noonan said. "I see that there are decent people among scientists after all."

"Here's another one. The Visitation has taken place, but it is not over by a long shot. We are in contact even as we speak, but we are not aware of it. The visitors are living in the Zones and carefully observing us and simultaneously preparing us for the 'cruel wonders of the future.' "

"Now that I can understand! At least that explains the mysterious activity in the ruins of the factory. By the way, your picnic doesn't explain it."

"Why doesn't it? One of the girls could have forgotten her favorite wind-up teddy bear on the meadow."

ROADSIDE PICNIC, Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky

Guilherme de Ockham

Ockham [...] deplored the inaccuracy of the terms used in philosophy, and spent half his time trying to make them more precise. He resented the Gothic edifice of abstractions- one mounted upon the other like arches in superimposed tiers- that medieval thought had raised. We cannot find in his extant works precisely the famous formula that tradition called "Ockham's razor": entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem - entities are not to be multiplied beyond need. But he expressed the principle in other terms again and again: pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate - a plurality (of entities or causes or factors) is not to be posited (or assumed) without necessity; and frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora - it is vain to seek to accomplish or explain by assuming several entities or causes what can be explained by fewer.

The principle was not new; Aquinas had accepted it, Scotus had used it. But in Ockham's hands it became a deadly weapon, cutting away a hundred occult fancies and grandiose abstractions. Applying the principle to epistemology, Ockham judged it needless to assume, as the source and material of knowledge, anything more than sensations. From these arise memory (sensation revived), perception (sensation interpreted through memory), imagination (memories combined), anticipation (memory projected), thought (memories compared), and experience (memories interpreted through thought). "Nothing can be an object of the interior sense" (thought) "without having been an object of the exterior sense" (sensation); here is Locke's empiricism 300 years before Locke.

All that we ever perceive outside ourselves is individual entities- specific persons, places, things, actions, shapes, colors, tastes, odors, pressures, temperatures, sounds; and the words by which we denote these are "words of first intention" or primary intent, directly referring to what we interpret as external realities. By noting and abstracting the common features of similar entities so perceived, we may arrive at general or abstract ideas- man, virtue, height, sweetness, heat, music, eloquence; and the words by which we denote such abstractions are "words of second intention," referring to conceptions derived from perceptions. These "universals" are never experienced in sensation; they are termini, signa, nomina - terms, signs, names - for generalizations extremely useful (and dangerous) in thought or reason, in science, philosophy, and theology; they are not objects existing outside the mind. "Everything outside the mind is singular, numerically one."

Reason is magnificent, but its conclusions have meaning only in so far as they refer to experience- i.e., to the perception of individual entities, or the performance of individual acts; otherwise its conclusions are vain and perhaps deceptive abstractions. How much nonsense is talked or written by mistaking ideas for things, abstractions for realities! Abstract thought fulfills its function only when it leads to specific statements about specific things. From this "nominalism" Ockham moved with devastating recklessness into every field of philosophy and theology. Both metaphysics and science, he announced, are precarious generalizations, since our experience is only of individual entities in a narrowly restricted area and time; it is mere arrogance on our part to assume the universal and eternal validity of the general propositions and "natural laws" that we derive from this tiny sector of reality. Our knowledge is molded and limited by our means and ways of perceiving things (this is Kant before Kant); it is locked up in the prison of our minds, and it must not pretend to be the objective or ultimate truth about anything.

Will Durant - Story of Civilization, vol.06, pp.246-49