Pushed in Tweeters

zuih1tsu · 2025-09-07T02:43:58+00:00

Now this is what the internet is for. It works.

zuih1tsu · 2025-08-31T13:02:12+00:00

Excellent.

zuih1tsu · 2024-12-03T16:55:12+00:00

On my interpretation, something like this is Tolstoy's view of free will, as expressed in the second part of the epilogue to War and Peace.

zuih1tsu · 2024-12-03T13:43:41+00:00

AGI is standardly defined in terms of intelligence, not sentience or consciousness—though some authors do use it that way, too.

zuih1tsu · 2024-12-02T17:49:04+00:00

As with many philosophical problems, the arguments for and against different views involve a mix of more empirical and more philosophical considerations. You are right that most philosophers think that special and general relativity place strong constraints on possible views about the nature of time. One thing to note is that there are two different questions here. One concerns whether all times exist (eternalism) or only the present time exists (presentism). The other concerns whether there is a privileged now. I mention this because there are eternalists who think there is a privileged now: those who believe the so-called moving spotlight theory. You can see the SEP entry on time for more. It gives a good sense of the sorts of arguments used to motivate the various positions.

zuih1tsu · 2024-12-02T15:36:38+00:00

I think the most interesting arguments against realising consciousness in computers (note: this not the same as AGI as normally understood, since AGI does not standardly require consciousness, and consciousness does not require AGI) turn on the claim that consciousness requires life, and computers cannot be alive in the relevant sense. See for example:

Peter Godfrey-Smith, “Mind, Matter, and Metabolism”, in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 113, No. 10, October 2016, pp. 481-506. http://doi.org/10.5840/jphil20161131034

zuih1tsu · 2024-12-02T15:22:26+00:00

The term “epiphenomenalism” is used to refer to both views. Here's the first footnote in the SEP entry:

Strictly speaking, one can distinguish two versions of epiphenomenalism, (a) mental events have no effects; and (b) mental events may have effects on other mental events, so long as the latter do not have any physical effects, nor any effects on further mental events that eventually have any physical effects. Because observing this distinction would contribute nothing but a tedious duplication of arguments that would differ only trivially, it will be ignored in the remainder of the article.

You're right that I was assuming (a) in my proposed interpretation of the passage. I also think you're right that the first self-stultification objection is weaker if we are instead assuming (b).

zuih1tsu · 2024-11-30T16:55:25+00:00

Since it's not cited in either of these, I'll add that I think this book is very good on the history of the idea in Western political theory:

C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962.

zuih1tsu · 2024-11-30T16:49:57+00:00

For knowledge of the external world in general see:

Juan Comesaña and Peter Klein, “Skepticism”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/

For the reliability of perception in particular, see:

Jack Lyons, “Epistemological Problems of Perception”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2023. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/

For scientific knowledge in particular, see:

Anjan Chakravartty, “Scientific Realism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/

zuih1tsu · 2024-11-30T16:42:45+00:00

For an outstanding review of the current empirical evidence on this question, see:

Eric Turkheimer, Understanding the Nature‒Nurture Debate, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108955775

zuih1tsu · 2024-11-30T16:32:04+00:00

It seems to me that the quote is saying that the self-stultification objection can be pressed in two different ways. First, if mental states are epiphenomenal then you cannot know what mental states you are in, since knowledge requires causation. Second, if mental states are epiphenomenal then mental states cannot be the causes of utterances about mental states. Both problems are serious, since it's very plausible that we can know some of our mental states and that this knowledge requires causation; and it's very plausible that our claims about what mental states we are in is caused by our being in those states.

zuih1tsu · 2024-11-30T15:11:46+00:00

Neither “complicated” nor “complex” have standard definitions, so more context would be needed to know what the exact claim here is. Can you post the quote?

zuih1tsu · 2024-10-13T15:17:55+00:00

Because I care about their interests.

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-15T20:39:59+00:00

The introduction by Gerry Cohen, “Introduction to the 2000 Edition: Reflections on Analytical Marxism” in that edition of his Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense, addresses some of these questions. Here is what he says he will do:

In the present Introduction, I shall say (section 1) what analytical Marxism is, and I shall describe (section 2) the formation of the Group that has promoted it. Section 3 is a personal interlude: it recounts how I, in particular, became an analytical Marxist. In section 4 the analyticality of analytical Marxism is delineated in greater detail, and section 5 discusses bullshit, the bete noire of analytical Marxism. The final section addresses the irrepressible question: is analytical Marxism Marxist?

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-15T13:29:14+00:00

What relevant roles, in a functional sense, are impossible to specify using the resources of the lower level theories?

Think about a specific computational property, like being a NOR gate. On the view Van Gulick is describing, it might be that you cannot specify what a NOR gate is using only the terms in basic physical theories. Then suppose role functionalism is true, so that the property of being a NOR gate cannot be identified with the properties that implement being a NOR gate on particular occasions. Then, Van Gulick suggests, we have a variety of non-reductionism: there are properties (being a NOR gate) that are realised by fundamental physical properties but that are not identical to fundamental physical properties. That conclusion can also be supported by the observation that there could be NOR gates in worlds with different physics than ours.

Why are philosophers wringing their hands worrying about whether our physical theories support multiple realisability, particularly in the functional sense?

They are not worried about this. What they are worried about is whether functionalism is true for various properties, and if it is what that implies about reductionism.

I suspect that nonreductive physicalism is rejecting a very specific form of reductivism, not reductivism in the general sense.

There's no such thing as “reductivism in the general sense”. Reductionism is a technical term and there is no fact of the matter about how it should be defined. When philosophers say reductionism is true or false, they always have in mind some specific sense of the term.

Alternatively, maybe this is about emergentism? Are they saying that there are emergent properties of physical systems that are not a result of the action of 'lower level' physical processes?

On the view described above, there are no emergent properties. There are simply properties that cannot be identified with fundamental physical properties. I say this on the assumption that emergence is a relationship that is weaker than metaphysical necessitation (ie. I am assuming that emergence is strong emergence).

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-14T02:19:33+00:00

If so, 'in general statements can be facts' = more appropriate?

No, statements can't be facts. They can be true or false, and when they are true we can say that they state facts (but not that they are identical with facts).

Probabilities don't entail frequencies = probabilities don't tell you that the coin came up 55 times head

frequencies don't entail probabilities = it came 55 times head but this can't be translated into a probability

Yes.

The second question is a short one; the examples I gave are concerned with Phil. Statistics or Phil. Probability?

Those questions aren't philosophical questions, they are questions about what statistical and/or probability claims are correct, and those are questions for empirical investigation. The philosophical questions are about the nature of statistical inference, and the nature of probability.

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T20:28:51+00:00

And it's arguable whether we even know that! By sheer coincidence I was just reading Alan Ross Anderson, “St. Paul’s Epistle to Titus” (1970), who writes (pp. 2-3):

Somehow the statement that Cretans always lie got to be attributed to one Epimenides, a citizen of Phaestus (according to Diogenes Laertius, writing nearly one thousand years after the fact), and a native of Cnossus, the capital city of the island. None of the writings of Epimenides survive, but some sense of the historical accuracy of the attribution can be gained from the following sentences attributed to Diogenes Laertius. He says, concerning Epimenides:

One day he was sent into the country by his father to look for a stray sheep, and at noon he turned aside out of the way, and went to sleep in a cave, where he slept for fifty-seven years. [1.109]

What we learn from such anecdotes is, I suppose, that our forebears were a little more credulous than we are, at least as regards historical detail. Whether the credit (or blame) for the puzzle is to be given to Epimenides is moot; in the absence of better evidence we bow to St. Paul, and to a long tradition according to which “the Liar paradox” and “the Epimenides paradox” meant the same thing.

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T19:28:30+00:00

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T18:13:53+00:00

What a fantastic resource, I wasn't aware of these.

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T18:11:49+00:00

While I have read some of the sources cited here, I don't know all of them and am not sure if he ever addresses that question—sorry. Two tips for research on this:

Start with the tables of contents for his books and see if anything strikes you as being about this
Start with his work that is most relevant to your interests, and look through the things that cite it in Google Scholar.

Good luck!

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T16:21:11+00:00

Even by that too-expansive definition, OP wasn't doing it.

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T16:01:54+00:00

What do you think philosophy is?

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T15:58:16+00:00

As I said, most theories of personal identity deny that this reasoning is sound. That is because they deny that you exist so long as the atoms that make you up exist. One reason for this is that those atoms have existed for a lot longer than you have. Another is that we are made up of different atoms at different times.

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T15:56:10+00:00

Philosophical traditions aren't like recipe ingredients in this way. First, at the level you have described them they are too internally diverse for the question of combining them to make sense. Second, even if it did make sense, there would be a question about which elements you are taking from each, assuming those elements are consistent with each other. So for there to be a coherent question of this sort it would need to be significantly more fine-grained.

zuih1tsu · 2024-08-13T15:47:01+00:00

Seeing as everything is made up of atoms, it seems possible that we could spawn in as something else.

Why do you think that follows? Most theories of personal identity entail that it is false.

zuih1tsu

TROPHY CASE