What can we know of reality?

[watcher]

Qfwfq's description of how modern physics defines the structure of the tennis ball is a good example here. Notice how that's also a description of the (frantic) behaviour of smaller entities, whose collective behaviour gives stability to the complex structure that we call "tennis ball", but whose own ontological identity should be just as much under question as the identity of that tennis ball.

 

as i understand him, a tennis ball as a collection of electrons has nothing but pattern to identify it as a tennis ball. and yet the electrons that composed it is all identical so we can't really say if it is the same electrons or a different one. we can't even say if is is just a single electron or many electrons. ergo we cannot say that the electrons that disappeared is the same electrons that appeared to replace it. the electrons appeared and disappeared discontinuously that the only thing that make us seel the continous existence of the ball is the fastness of rate of its appear/disappear and the coherent stability to reconstruct the information that forms a tennis ball.

 

In other words, don't jump to conclude that those smaller entities have got ontological identity to themselves any more than the tennis ball does. It would be equally unfair to assume they have got ontological identity, as they too are perceived due to some familiar pattern having been defined as the doings of that sort of "object".

 

they are not perceived. us a matter of fact their are beyond our perception. this hidden entities are only inferred derived from the behavior of the electrons. IOW, they are logically deduced.

 

i see one problem with your thinking. you think that logic is a human property and refuse ontological attributed to what the mind can logically apprehend. well i disagree, logic is not a human thing, logic is the property of the universe it self. the dinosaurs bones will still be there even if humans did not evolved at all.

 

I.e, different people might see the exact same portion of reality through different concepts, and you might yourself be able to understand the exact same things in terms of many different alternative perspectives.

 

as long as you see potions, there will be differing POV. the thing is to see it is its entirety, then there is only one view. yes, there are many worldview, but there are precise worldviews and approximated worldviews.

 

And what do we call that? Semantics! Our semantical ability is due to the fact that we don't truly "know" what we are perceiving. We "interpret" data whose meaning is unknown, and many logically valid interpretations always exist.

 

semantics are figure of speech expressing the same thing. perceiving is what gives us knowledge about these onto things. and we give meaning to these things that we perceived but the data are the same regardless of the meaning we gave to them.

 

the weakness to which we conceptualize our worldview will be due to the axioms we make about the universe. for example, is the universe an organism that created an eye to see itself or a mechanisms that can be contained in an axiomatic formalism? ? one importance consideration is how we think about perceiving. we must make distinction between what is perceiving and the ability to give meanings to the perceived, they are not the same thing. . we can create a formalism for these things. . but it will always be the direct perception that would tell us what are these sans any meaning. if you think this way, what will it tell us about this unknown ontological things then? or if the logical deduction of what is and the apparent direct perception of it, matches... what say you?

[AnssiH]

semantics are figure of speech expressing the same thing.

 

Oh I'm not allowed to use the word "semantics" the way I did? Now that's just arguing over semantics!

 

You know, this reminds me of when I've talked about evolutionary processes in general, then there's always someone to say "evolution only applies to living organism".

 

That of course ignores the question, "what constitutes a living thing?".

 

There are always those who have never thought about it and reply "isn't it obvious".

 

Those who have thought about it, have surely noticed that the line between "living" and "dead" things becomes quite blurry.

 

I'm sure you've seen many "interesting" threads where people just end up arguing over specifics of "what is life". There are always all kinds of arguments that may seem rational, until you realize their validity hinges on the specific definitions of what constitutes those other "things" that the argument rests on.

 

Often the participants miss the fact that when all is said and done, there is no one else but us to define what is meant by "living thing" (and all associated definitions); they miss the fact that there is no (ontologically) correct answer to be found anywhere.

 

In other words, it is pure semantics what we think of as "living things" from the sensory data.

 

Likewise, the argument that "semantics" only applies to "language" loses this "seemingly obvious" classification if you think about it a bit, and especially when you take into account the context of where I said it; machine intelligence.

 

We don't only pick up the meaning of language semantically, we pick up the meaning of gestures, facial expressions, smileys :D and all sorts of patterns the same way. These are exactly the semantical aspects of "communication" that people don't think machine could be capable of understanding the way we do.

 

Some people say here "yeah but it's just the communication between two LIVING THINGS that is semantics"... You see how tangled up they are getting inside their own worldview, where everything is at the end of the day a semantical definition, in the sense that every definition is tangled up to the definitions of other things in some self-coherent fashion.

 

Eventually you should understand that there is no one else but us to define what a specific pattern in the sensory data means. Some pattern is thought to mean "there is an electron there", but there is no ontologically correct answer as to "what constitutes an electron" to be found anywhere.

 

And once again there are quite many seemingly rational arguments, until you realize they rest on all sorts of other definitions in your worldview, whose validity is also undefendable independently (whose validity you also defend by their relationship to other definitions in your worldview).

 

Once again you will come to find that your worldview is simply a self-coherent set of definitions, and many different sorts of self-coherent sets can always exist... In other words, the meaning of something depends on the context. While that issue is most obvious with language, it is present in all human understanding. That is the very heart of so-called "semantics".

 

So with this terminology, the difference between string theory and the standard model is essentially a matter of "semantics".

 

Overall, your post is a good example of thinking about this issue from the "wrong paradigm"; exactly what I warned you about in my previous posts. Let me just bluntly point out few things ->

 

they are not perceived. us a matter of fact their are beyond our perception. this hidden entities are only inferred derived from the behavior of the electrons. IOW, they are logically deduced.

 

In terms of "building a worldview from sensory data whose meaning is unknown", what constitutes an "electron" is also inferred from rather complex patterns (taking into account the so-called context in different situations). In that sense, there is really no difference between how we perceive "something that affects the behaviour of electron" or "electron itself" (as it is also "something that affects the behaviour of some other defined entity in predictable manner")

 

In other words, the same issue of "unknown identity" applies to the electron just as much as it applies to the tennis ball.

 

And btw, talking about it through the terminology of modern physics, electrons also are completely beyond our perception according to standard definition. You can't see an electron, you can perhaps see a photon that "the electron emits", but really more accurately you can sense the effect that a photon has on the eye... ...actually the effect that the eye has on the brain... ...actually just the interpretation that was done about that effect... and here we are reaaaallly getting tangled up to semantically defined entities here! :D Isn't it just fun? (I could talk about how this line of thinking leads directly to the "hard problem of consciousness", which is unsolvable without the suggested paradigm shift... but really we are getting quite far from the topic)

 

i see one problem with your thinking. you think that logic is a human property and refuse ontological attributed to what the mind can logically apprehend. well i disagree, logic is not a human thing, logic is the property of the universe it self.

 

Here it should suffice to point out, that whatever ontological idea you assign to "logic", will not have any effect on the validity of DD's epistemological analysis. Logic is seen only as a tool for finding tautological relationships.

 

semantics are figure of speech expressing the same thing. perceiving is what gives us knowledge about these onto things. and we give meaning to these things that we perceived but the data are the same regardless of the meaning we gave to them.

 

Either very bad misconception about the topic, or very bad terminology problem here.

 

In the sense that I've used the word, "perception" of a thing is essentially an interpretation from a pattern, i.e. you can only perceive what you have ALREADY DEFINED. That is the very essence of the problem at hand, and I hope it has been understood by the readers to at least some extent by now.

 

I realize you may be using the word "perception" differently than I do, and in that case our disagreement would be just over semantics, and that would be quite fair! :D

 

And if you are just using the word differently, I still would like to point your attention on the problem of "identity", i.e. about handling the idea of "patterns" without assigning ontological identity to "whatever is constituting the patterns". The solution to this has been discussed in more detail over my previous posts, and in exact detail in DD's analysis.

 

Just as an afterthought, I know why DD is so frustrated when trying to explain this. It is rather like trying to explain how "life" is a matter of definition, while some people think that the bottom line is, that "a rock is definitely not the same thing as my dog", and will never even begin to comprehend what was said.

 

In this case, in the minds of many people, the bottom line is that "reality is some sort of set of objects interacting with each others", and can never even begin to fathom how even the very concept of "discrete objects" could be completely a matter of defining reality that way.

 

Think about it.

 

-Anssi

[watcher]

In the sense that I've used the word, "perception" of a thing is essentially an interpretation from a pattern, i.e. you can only perceive what you have ALREADY DEFINED. That is the very essence of the problem at hand, and I hope it has been understood by the readers to at least some extent by now.

 

to say that we can only perceived what we have already defined is like saying we only see what we want to see. seeing happens, a baby with no memory and have not defined anything can perceive. iow, seeing happens first , then we interprets make sense give meaning. what ever.

 

this problem you present is not about reality itself but how we make sense of reality. but whether it make sense to us or not, reality is still reality. a fact that seemed to be ignored .

 

I realize you may be using the word "perception" differently than I do, and in that case our disagreement would be just over semantics, and that would be quite fair!

 

yes. that's what i said. we need to at least explain our axioms, because in the end, what we are presenting is our worldview based on our idea what reality is ought to be and were just sucking into each other axioms and definitions.

 

consider the title of the thread. what can we know about reality.

 

there are three major entities here to be considered whose nature you must understand to answer the question.

.

1. we - the knower

2, the faculty or ability to know, the knowing itself and

3. reality

 

the first, is where you base and concentrate your rationale. you reasoned that as knower, our ability to know reality is limited. as knower, we can only apprehend pattern and meanings but not the thing itself. and you make a conclusion that reality is contrived or defined by our perception. i said no, this is a self imposed limitation and a form of anthropomorphism.

 

the second, not sure if you have any idea what knowing is. but it seemed to be ignored or taken for granted as given here

 

third, reality the one in question. first reality must be independent of our perception.. it is not perceived. since you readily say that ontological things by nature is unknown then it follows that everything we perceived the pattern and all, cannot be it. it sounds semantics, but there is a profound conceptual framework you can dig up there. if you can shift your paradigm.

 

ps. if we are to discuss DD's analysis, can you at least say the gist in a paragraph and in a way even a high school student can understand.? also enumerate the postulates and conceptual framework of his work.

[Qfwfq]

...And after all that, there is still the fiendish deception of there being such thing as "quarks, leptons and bosons" with persistent identity to themselves.

Exactly. Even the high stability of a single proton is already a fiendish deception of there being a persistent object; one could scarcely consider its parts to be such (and this even if we could take the Feynman diagrams to literally be the picture).

[watcher]

Exactly. Even the high stability of a single proton is already a fiendish deception of there being a persistent object; one could scarcely consider its parts to be such (and this even if we could take the Feynman diagrams to literally be the picture).

 

but the fact remains that we see something out there. the interpretations, labelling and making sense into a coherent pattern comes later. we see partially so we compensate it with meanings and interpretations. to see completely needs no interpretations.

 

what seemed to be beyond some people here is the limitations pegged in knowing this reality. as if there is only one way of seeing things ... an erroneous postulate. , imho.

so what can we know of reality? without any limitations like putting it into symbols... all of it.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

watcher: "so what can we know of reality? without any limitations like putting it into symbols... all of it."

I'd like to agree with you but I can't. There are too many assumptions behind what you say that are, at best, risky.

What if reality changes, subtly, over time? We assume the "laws of nature" are constant - but we've only witnessed nature in a very limited fashion for a microscopically small period of time. So, we hope there is constancy because it would scare the crap out of us if there wasn't.

So much of our worldview is affected by belief that IMHO we are blind to a rather large portion of patterns that we should be open to.

If I'm understanding this thread at all, the work that DD has done recognizes that all of these musings are moot - if we can identify the processes involved and mechanize them. That might give us a way to get impartial observations that are in no way affected by preconceptions and confusion over meanings (semantics).

Hmmm. So, we have a black box that performs pattern recognition of ..... (unknown elements) .... and then performs predictive procedures on those patterns and presents them ... how? Hmmm. I am guessing that we'd have to populate the database with projected results and have another way to inform ourselves of the results. But I still think I'm missing the most important part of all of this.

The formulations of DD are a mathematical representation of all of this. If the formulations are valid, he has concluded something completely new from those formulations. Something new about the nature of the processes. Something new and fundamental about us. And this is what he is excited about.

Am I in the right building AnsiH?

[Michael Mooney]

A

nssiH;264865]No, definitely not.

 

There's a difference between the idea that reality does not exist apart from our imagination (idealism/solipsism), and the idea that our definitions of "persistent entities" are immaterial references to the patterns of "reality of unknown ontological nature".

 

Glad to hear that you are not an idealist/solipsist.

But I don't think you answered my question about to what extent you trust your senses to give accurate information about the 'real world' we perceive. In my spacetime thread, there was a long period of debate, mostly with Modest about the "objective" distancees (as I call it) between objects... allowing of course that everything is in motion making those "objective distances" change as things move closer or further apart. But he and those who say (as an absolute, ironically) that "everything is relative" maintain that there is no such thing as "objective distance between bjects... that all "distances vary with the relative frame of reference of the point of observation.

This "absolute relativity" I called Idealism... that distances actually change with observational perspective... as per relativity.

 

So, likewise, I asked you if you really question whether the tennis ball is "the same ball" each moment of your observation. Granted the "atoms" and molecules which give the ball "substance" are in constant motion. But your comment seems to posit that they are not "the same" atoms/molecules from moment to moment. This would seem to suggest that you believe there is no "real ball out there" independent of your perception.... and your "definition" of it confering a persistent "identity" through time as "this particular ball" as distinguished from millions of other ones... or that it blips in an out of existence with each moment of your observation.

 

Please clarify.

 

Very important to understand that as long as we are talking about persistent identity of something, the idea that anything at all has got identity to itself is completely epistemological of nature. Who else is there to point at some "region" or "portion" of reality and call that portion "a tennis ball", if not us?

 

That is NOT to say, that the tennis ball is idealistic in nature. It is just to say, that we do not know what is its ontological nature, and we cannot even think about that issue without using some undefendable ideas of some "things with persistent identity" (Think Kant and noumena, and also map/territory relationship)

 

It's important to understand that this issue is completely about epistemological aspects of our ability to point at something and think about it as a tennis ball. Not an attempt to claim that reality itself is fundamentally idealistic.

 

Seems to me that the cosmos and all its parts do exist "on their own" independent of our perceptions and our definitions of what confers "identity" on a given "object."

 

So then the"clearer" our "doors of perception" (as Huxley called them), the less 'filtering" we do through our subjective biases and programs... the more "open" we are to "seeing things as they are" rather than just seeing what we are looking for... the more *accurate* our perceptions can be in seeing things as they are.

 

Of course it is "the same tennis ball" that you might serve and I might return... until we get another one out of the bag!

 

"Does the tree falling in the forest make a sound independent of someone or some animal hearing it? Of course it creates sound waves whether any ears hear them or not.

The above is a conversation I had as a sophomore with my philosophy classmates. We "got over" such "idealism" in a couple of sessions! Glad you are not stuck there... but please address the above related questions.

 

Michael

[Michael Mooney]

delete redundant post...??

[AnssiH]

to say that we can only perceived what we have already defined is like saying we only see what we want to see. seeing happens, a baby with no memory and have not defined anything can perceive. iow, seeing happens first , then we interprets make sense give meaning. what ever.

 

Honestly I'm getting little bit frustrated, because I've been here before...

"Seeing happens..."

 

I think I know why you think the way you do, and I don't think you are concentrating very hard... This is not about seeing something and thinking "oh I didn't really understand what that was". What you perceived was still "a roundish blurry thing" or something else that you can "think about", i.e. some thing or concept whose definition you hold in your mind.

 

Or what is it, that you can "think about", but has not been defined? What is it, that you can "perceive" without having any thoughts about what you perceived? Is not your "perception" exactly the same as "what you thought you saw"?

 

When I say "defined thing", I'm not necessarily talking about conscious definitions. I'm talking about having an avalance of sensory data, and interpreting that as "a red circle", or "shiny transparent object" or anything at all.

 

If you just suppose that reality is simply "seen" and then we try to make sense of what we are seeing, do you realize in what sense this is exactly the cartesian theater idea, a rather classic example of naive realism? "naive realism" is not an insult, it's a philosophy... just not very coherent one.

 

this problem you present is not about reality itself but how we make sense of reality.

 

Yes, and I've been repeating that over and over in almost every post, and hence I don't think you are concentrating on what I'm saying.

 

but whether it make sense to us or not, reality is still reality. a fact that seemed to be ignored .

 

I am really, really, really puzzled as to why you think this is being ignored, when I've explicitly stated it many times. "This is not an ontological argument, it is an epistemological argument", "this is not referring to ontological reality at all"... After I had been repeating that over and over, I even said:

 

I bolded and underlined "worldview", because we are indeed talking about characteristics of WORLDVIEWS, as oppose to characteristics of actual reality. Print that and tape it onto your monitors people.

 

Three sentences before that, I had said:

 

Very important to understand that we are not here theorizing "what reality is like" or "how reality behaves". Not a "theory", and not an argument about ontological reality at all.

 

And this is exactly what DD is always getting frustrated over; about the fact that everyone just persistently thinks this is about ontological reality, no matter how many times they are warned about it.

 

So you understand, I am getting little bit frustrated when after all this, I'm being told that "I'm ignoring the fact that we still are not talking about ontologial reality..." :huh:

 

yes. that's what i said. we need to at least explain our axioms, because in the end, what we are presenting is our worldview based on our idea what reality is ought to be and were just sucking into each other axioms and definitions.

 

consider the title of the thread. what can we know about reality.

 

there are three major entities here to be considered whose nature you must understand to answer the question.

.

1. we - the knower

2, the faculty or ability to know, the knowing itself and

3. reality

 

the first, is where you base and concentrate your rationale. you reasoned that as knower, our ability to know reality is limited. as knower, we can only apprehend pattern and meanings but not the thing itself. and you make a conclusion that reality is contrived or defined by our perception.

 

I said, that we must assign persistent identity on "patterns" in order to think about them as "things". And all that without ever being able to defend the ontological correctness of our position (our ideas of "what constitutes a thing").

 

And I furthermore noted that identity should be viewed as an epistemological tool, as long as we are talking about this epistemological analysis. That is, so we would not make superfluous assumptions about the nature of reality.

 

i said no, this is a self imposed limitation and a form of anthropomorphism.

 

I tried, but could not figure out why you say it is a form of anthropomorphism :I

 

the second, not sure if you have any idea what knowing is. but it seemed to be ignored or taken for granted as given here

 

It is what is under analysis, and that is why I'm calling this "epistemological analysis".

 

The part that is taken for granted is "we are able to build a predictive worldview one way or another". I.e. we are not discussing any specific learning mechanism (albeit we are saying something about learning mechanisms in general)

 

I think you should follow that analysis before you say more, as you are probably thinking it is something quite different than what it actually is.

 

third, reality the one in question. first reality must be independent of our perception.. it is not perceived. since you readily say that ontological things by nature is unknown then it follows that everything we perceived the pattern and all, cannot be it. it sounds semantics, but there is a profound conceptual framework you can dig up there. if you can shift your paradigm.

 

I don't know what you are referring to.

 

ps. if we are to discuss DD's analysis, can you at least say the gist in a paragraph and in a way even a high school student can understand.? also enumerate the postulates and conceptual framework of his work.

 

I think I've been saying it as clearly as I can in the previous posts in this thread. I guess I can try once more. (This is quite brief and thus contains a fair amount of ambiguity... just be forewarned)

 

It is analyzing the logical consequences of us being ignorant of the actual ontological meaning of the patterns onto which we build our worldviews.

 

When our predictive worldview is expressed numerically, we can express our prediction ability as an unknown function that gives probability for a specific future (specific set of numbers).

 

While we don't know what that function is, nor what sorts of specific probabilities it would give for such and such futures, we know some characteristics of that function;

 

Our ignorance about the data leads to certain symmetries that the prediction function must obey, when our worldview does not contain superfluous assumptions about the ontological meaning of the patterns, and when that worldview is self-coherent.

 

Those symmetries lead to quite specific characteristics regarding how defined things (anything that is seen as having persistent identity) can move (collectively) in our conception of the data. I.e. those symmetries correlate to certain relationships, that can be seen as exactly the relationships that are expressed in modern physics.

 

The implications of all this are discussed in my previous posts in more detail.

 

Later, good night...

 

-Anssi

[Doctordick]

Seems to me that the cosmos and all its parts do exist "on their own" independent of our perceptions and our definitions of what confers "identity" on a given "object."

It is quite obvious that you have utterly no idea as to what it is Anssi and I are talking about. We are discussing the problem of creating a world view given that the ontology on which that world view is built is unknown.

 

One very important issue within that question is perceptions themselves, the information provided you by your senses. Without a world view, you have no way of even thinking about or describing your senses and yet your world view is constructed from that very information. Notice further that no one is able to perceive the signals presented to their brain by their senses; what they perceive are supposed characteristics of the world out there. When you read this, you do not perceive photons striking your retina of your eye, you perceive instead, a video display screen a short distance ahead of you with this print upon it. The actual mechanism which transforms the interaction with the rods and cones on your retina to an image in your conscious mind is totally undefined.

 

We have a problem here. Somehow you have managed to create a world view based entirely on totally undefined information (the actual impact of reality upon you) transformed by a totally undefined transformation (your senses). It is quite clear that millions upon millions of children solve that problem every year. They are able to create an extremely valuable world view from a stream of totally undefined information transformed by a totally undefined transformation in a matter of a few months. That makes it a solvable problem which the entire scientific community has totally ignored (under the presumption that it is not a solvable problem). I have solved that problem and I am trying to explain the solution. Anssi seems to be the only person who even grasps the existence of the problem.

 

It has essentially nothing to do with the issues you manage to generate trying to explain your world view. Your position and all the issues you bring up require that the problem Anssi and I are discussing has already been solved. Until you are ready to discuss that problem, I am afraid I must ignore your posts as they do not even approach the problem.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[arkain101]

My attempt to explain this topic.

 

 

Seems to me that the cosmos and all its parts do exist "on their own" independent of our perceptions and our definitions of what confers "identity" on a given "object."

 

Firstly, I should clarify that where I stand in this topic is in agreement with DD's assertions. I have not come to fully understand the work, but as I go along through his work, my work agrees.

 

The objects DO exist. Now, if we go to explain them: "What can we explain"?

 

In the scene of our solar system; Lets begin by thinking about one of those objects (like a planet or your object of choice)fundamental parts.

 

First, Let's mentally localize on a photon for a moment, and describe it, excluding the following:

Visual: no color, contrast, or shade

Texutre/Spacial: No shape or static form

Scent: moot

Taste: moot

Sound: moot

 

So, we can understand that this particular localized part of the object is, by the extent of our abilities, an unknown.

 

Second, Let's mentally localize on the source of that photon and describe it. The localalization of an 'atom'

Visual: no color, contrast, or shade

Texutre/Spacial: No shape or static form

Scent: moot

Taste: moot

Sound: moot

 

Extension: If we use the tool of our body (like our hands), or an instrument, to attempt to feel for that particular localized source we are forced to use the same unknowns to grasp at the unknown we are trying to describe.

 

At this point there is a strong suggestion that a concept beyond our methods of perception(beyond our conscious world view), all that can be KNOWN is that it is unequivocally unknown. For example: The very statement of saying "beyond our methods of perception things are unknown" is a false statement, a kind of ironic paradox if there is such a thing. The word "things" in red color, does not belong beyond our perception. All that can be KNOWN is that it is unequivocally unknown.

 

"Does the tree falling in the forest make a sound independent of someone or some animal hearing it? Of course it creates sound waves whether any ears hear them or not.

 

If we pursue the study of a realm purely as unknowns in a objective manner we will be having a discussion about as exciting as describing the space in 'space-time'. The result is a discussion excluding description, a topic on nothing, the lack of a topic in fact. Which I am going to assume DD has realized and moved onto the next step.

 

The process where known-unknown makes the transformation into the known-known is the next step in along the path of investigating from origin to experience (consider it like a spectrum, from left (origin) to right (experience). The stage where we are (within the reading of this post) is very far left, we are infact, on the first step towards the right. If we consider the unknown concept is valid, then the acknowledgment of the unknown is valid. Then like DD said, we have a problem. If we don't give this acknowledgment our attention, we leave a large portion of understanding out of the picture.

 

The tree falling in the forest is so far towards the right, using it to work with would exclude several important steps along the process spectrum, so I don't feel it is worth, jumping ahead, if we want absolute clarity of the spectrum.

 

DD, is explaining to us, this process (the transformation of known-unknowns into known-knowns) can be represented by an equation. My ability to take us into these next steps is limited mathematically, and if I am on target, I will leave it to DD to work on those next steps.

 

 

 

What I am adding here is a visual tool, although it is partially useful in relation to this topic, it is also misleading in the sense that it offers known-known visual ideas of unknowns, so don't let it mislead you in that respect ...as it was designed for another discussion, which referred to how the mind classifies and catagorizes stages of meaning for any system that has a spectrum complexity.

The image explains our mind both contains a smooth and continuous undevisible overall spectrum of meaning while it also includes blocky and devided divisible meanings as the parts of that continuous spectrum. The continuous spectrum is more so related to the experience of meaning, while the devided sections are related to processes of meaning.

Our minds do it with the cosmos (superclusers, clusters, galaxies, solar systems, bodies, moons), the macroscpically small (organism, cell, molecule, atoms, its parts, quarks, photons). We define it as part of a whole system, but we always develop specific stages within the whole system. This is our processing of known-knowns.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

DD: "They are able to create an extremely valuable world view from a stream of totally undefined information transformed by a totally undefined transformation in a matter of a few months. That makes it a solvable problem (such a simple observation but one that is easy to see once the previous sentence is accepted) which the entire scientific community has totally ignored (under the presumption that it is not a solvable problem) (that is a very interesting observation). I have solved that problem and I am trying to explain the solution. Anssi seems to be the only person who even grasps the existence of the problem. "

Thank you Dick. I have been attempting to grab that problem, it just kept slipping out of my fingers. I trust my senses and I don't trust my senses is as close as got. I am now aware of the problem but do I grasp it? Probably not. But this is the farthest I've come so far. The reason for presenting the solution mathematically is starting to make more sense to me. But until I understand AnsiH's last post:

"When our predictive worldview is expressed numerically, we can express our prediction ability as an unknown function that gives probability for a specific future (specific set of numbers).

 

While we don't know what that function is, nor what sorts of specific probabilities it would give for such and such futures, we know some characteristics of that function;

 

Our ignorance about the data leads to certain symmetries that the prediction function must obey, when our worldview does not contain superfluous assumptions about the ontological meaning of the patterns, and when that worldview is self-coherent.

 

Those symmetries lead to quite specific characteristics regarding how defined things (anything that is seen as having persistent identity) can move (collectively) in our conception of the data. I.e. those symmetries correlate to certain relationships, that can be seen as exactly the relationships that are expressed in modern physics." - I suspect that I won't really grasp the problem.

[Qfwfq]

Actually Steve I understand the green text above, just I can't currently be sure of the whole logical-mathematical process being conclusive.

 

Somehow you have managed to create a world view based entirely on totally undefined information (the actual impact of reality upon you) transformed by a totally undefined transformation (your senses). It is quite clear that millions upon millions of children solve that problem every year. They are able to create an extremely valuable world view from a stream of totally undefined information transformed by a totally undefined transformation in a matter of a few months.

Actually, Dick, upon my disagreement with this you once replied that I had to count evolution, ever since protozoa, into those "few months".

[Doctordick]

Actually, Dick, upon my disagreement with this you once replied that I had to count evolution, ever since protozoa, into those "few months".

Yeah, I did do that didn't I. But, when you really get down to facts, evolution may have built a machine which can solve the problem, but can you honestly profess to believe that the world view itself together with all the definitions behind that world view exist within that fertilized egg?

 

I actually said what I said because I didn't want to give you that free out. People, and that includes you, are just too quick to use any excuse to avoid thinking about “the problem”. Personally, I am afraid that I find the accomplishments of that fertilized egg to be quite impressive. The same thing goes for AI. Isn't the idea behind AI to construct a machine to solve that very problem and isn't it a rather major mistake to think that one must somehow insert the solution (that world view itself) into the program? I feel that an AI device should be able to create a world view on its own or it has not really achieved AI.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[AnssiH]

At this point there is a strong suggestion that a concept beyond our methods of perception(beyond our conscious world view), all that can be KNOWN is that it is unequivocally unknown. For example: The very statement of saying "beyond our methods of perception things are unknown" is a false statement, a kind of ironic paradox if there is such a thing. The word "things" in red color, does not belong beyond our perception. All that can be KNOWN is that it is unequivocally unknown.

 

Thank you Arkain, suddenly I feel a lot less frustrated.

 

Since you are concentrating on the word "things", I suspect you understand what I mean by saying that the concept of "identity" is essentially an epistemological tool. I've called it "the fallacy of identity" before, I guess you know what I mean by that.

 

As an additional commentary, notice how Chalmers' "Hard problem of consciousness" is essentially an argument that "since brain is actually many little things in interaction, one cannot explain why a singular conscious experience would exist as a result of their interaction". As there is no "single perceiver" to be found anywhere. It is rather like trying to explain how "the New York traffic system" would be having a conscious experience.

 

I assume the readers are aware of this problem and won't spend more time explaining it, but notice how that argument is completely resting on the assumption that reality is ontologically "a set of things". It completely ignores the fact that while in our worldview reality is always comprehended as "a set of things", ontologically we have no information about the validity of that sort of classification, or any reason to believe reality itself cares the tiniest bit about the boundaries that we happen to draw between "portions of reality".

 

I'm sure you have also noticed, that since we comprehend everything in terms of "set of things", there doesn't even exist a proper language to discuss this problem. All communication always feels rather sloppy (like to say "portions of reality"). All we can understand is in what sense our thoughts are limited here, but no way of thinking about what would be more valid ontologically.

 

Fallacy of the hard problem of consciousness

 

...investigating from origin to experience (consider it like a spectrum, from left (origin) to right (experience). The stage where we are (within the reading of this post) is very far left, we are infact, on the first step towards the right. If we consider the unknown concept is valid, then the acknowledgment of the unknown is valid. Then like DD said, we have a problem. If we don't give this acknowledgment our attention, we leave a large portion of understanding out of the picture.

 

Yes, exactly. You could refer to the first couple of steps like DD referred to them when he said:

 

"Somehow you have managed to create a world view based entirely on totally undefined information (the actual impact of reality upon you) transformed by a totally undefined transformation (your senses)."

 

Now, the first two steps are indeed unequivocally unknown, and while our worldview always contains some assumptions about these steps, those assumptions are always undefendable, and understood in terms of semantically defined "things". That is why many philosophers, including Kant, have come to conclude that the ontological form of reality is fundamentally unknowable. That is quite a fair assesment, and very hard to get around when you understand "the fallacy of identity".

 

Now, like you said, "all that can be KNOWN is that it is unequivocally unknown", and that is essentially the bit that DD's work is resting on. The fact that those two steps are unknown, lead us to a critical bit of knowledge about the further steps. That is, that the worldview that is getting built in the further steps, must exhibit few symmetries, that are springing exactly from our ignorance of the first steps.

 

The way to handle that issue is not immediately obvious, as you have to refer to the unknowns without really making any assumptions about the identity of things there. How do you refer to anything, without saying it is "anything"?

 

That is why, on my posts to Rade, I concentrated so much on trying to explain that the idea of so-called "undefined ontological elements" is there just so we can talk about "unknown patterns". They are not "things in reality" or any underlying "things" at the left side of the spectrum (and I realize to call them "ontological elements" can be quite confusing, so focus on the "UNDEFINED" part there).

 

What is essentially communicated there is that any given definition of any given "thing" or "feature" or "concept" of any given worldview is based on patterns of unknown origin, and as a consequence of that fact, certain symmetries exist in our resulting definitions.

 

And I really think the results of the analysis speak volumes for themselves...

 

And I really think tomorrow I have time to concentrate on the derivation of Schrödinger's Equation again... :)

 

Edit: Oh, and Steve, like I said before, I really appreciate your efforts to understand. I just have not replied because of limited time, and the past days I've just chosen one post to reply to. I feel my replies probably were relevant to you too still, and I think you are on the right track.

 

-Anssi

[modest]

The same thing goes for AI. Isn't the idea behind AI to construct a machine to solve that very problem and isn't it a rather major mistake to think that one must somehow insert the solution (that world view itself) into the program? I feel that an AI device should be able to create a world view on its own or it has not really achieved AI.

 

The artificial part of AI is the world view we give it. If it evolves its ability to interpret sensory input itself then it's just a naturally evolved intelligence—not so much artificial.

 

~modest

[Doctordick]

The artificial part of AI is the world view we give it. If it evolves its ability to interpret sensory input itself then it's just a naturally evolved intelligence—not so much artificial.

Now you see I wouldn't have said that! I would say that the design of the program which yielded that ability to interpret input was the artificial part, not the world view you think is valid! I think that is exactly why all the people who work on AI miss the issue.

 

Have fun -- Dick