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Topics - sciborg2

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1
RPG Discussion / Occult Investigators in the Bakkerverse?
« on: June 28, 2021, 08:52:24 pm »
Transporting some discussion about this from the Discord ->

Athjeari:

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Is anyone into the SCP Foundation universe?  If so, I’m trying to identify what portions of tSA that could be transferred over to the D&D 5e rule set in a believable manner.
This specific group of players I DM for played my patchwork version of tSA, but I think they would really like an adventure version where they are essentially SCP agents and all of the SCP’s they are called to investigate are out of the Bakkerverse

Shulgi the Innkeeper:

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SCP is great
Used to read articles before, haven't checked it in more than a year though.
If you combine the technological anomalies, such as the ones made by Anderson Robotics or perhaps Prometheus Labs and use them as technology for the Consult, I think it will make a fun mixture. I doubt the lores are compatible in any way though, even the horror atmosphere is different.
Flesh that hates and Consult abomiantions could work together I guess

Sciborg:

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Regarding the RPG idea I think you can combine elements of Neuropath - use tech to fuck with people's brains in Seven-movie fashion w/ elements of the gods and Outside
The Hundred can be archetypes, hiding behind angels of the monotheisms and gods of the polytheisms.
The Hundred, are, arguably, akin to AIs
The Trickster seems like a friend, helping you navigate these horrors, but in truth seeks a way into the world could be a campaign.
Ciprhang - I assume 5e has the Tanar'ri, the demons of the Abyss
Those seem to be inspiration for the Ciphrang we get in the books.

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5e Ultramodern - I think that's the title - prolly has enough modern rules for stuff like guns to help blend the fantasy and sci-fi elements.
You don't even need to read Neuropath, you can just ask yourself what happens when the worst people in the world - many of whom are in power - get access to tech that can fuck with brains....

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Chorae would need to be toned down, tho Aporetics could be how Ciphrang are harmed...like you scribble some Word of God onto bullets, blades, etc.
just use magical weapon rules, maybe with some "ignoring defensive magics"

Wilshire:

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The all/nothing nature of Bakker's magic is likely untenable for an rpg.

It works on the scale of armies, but for small groups it doesn't make sense. Either all encounters simply end with a handwaive, or the wizard does nothing.

SmilerLoki:

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it's pretty much like the real world - who lands the first hit, wins

Sciborg:

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Aporetics actually gives a reason for the sci-fi tech

The mechanic is already in the Modern / Urban-Fantasy rules for 5e
Ah you just tone down the efficacy of Aporetics
Like how you need a +1 magical weapon to hit most demons, elementals, etc
It give the opportunity, not victory outright

H:

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Brutal Rock, Paper, Scissors balance there.
I mean, it can work, you just better watch each other's asses.  But, yeah, maybe they were going for a real D2 Hardcore-style.  It does make for some real "stakes."  In a Heideggerian Being-Towards-Death way, I guess.

Sci:

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Yeah a lot of the Old School Renaissance stuff is pretty hardcore
But if the goal is Occult Investigation into Bakkerverse type horror
Seems like you need to either up the power of science and/or lower the power of magic

Wilshire:

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Permadeath is not something I have ever felt I had time for.

Sci:

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permadeath based on a die-roll especially is hard if you were 3/4ths of the way into an X-files style case

Wilshire:

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Closest I've come is Xcom2 where your soldiers can die. While great fun in its devastation, i don't have the hours to lose an entire game.

Sci:

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heh i was just thinking of how it could be done Xcom style

Wil:

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Yeah feeling the loss of a mistake that kills a character you've been grooming is nice in that way, as you kind of get the best of both..

You still keep playing the stakes are there to lend weight to decisions.

Sci:

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Plus the agency itself has more of a character. Sorta like Men in Black

You select agents for the job, possibly separate investigators from "SWAT" back up

So your "main guys" aren't dying every time

Pail:

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Sorcerer vs Sorcerer battles still get a back-and-forth, where wards get worn down and reinforced

Smiler:

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that's assuming no one's blindsided, which is a pretty big assumption

Pail:

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they still have reflexive and incipient wards though

and it's hard to be blindsided due to the mark

Wil:

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Akka gets ambushed a number of times
Manages to live.

Smiler:

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I would assume those can be overwhelmed with a precision strike, given time to aim/concentrate

Sci:

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Akka has warning Wards, it's why he wakes up in the library

Smiler:

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and I mean blindsided in a skirmish, when too much stuff happens, and you can get attacked from any side at any point, while you yourself are attacking someone in the same way

Wil:

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Kellhus teleporting around and killing all the primaries.

Where were their skin wards lol.

2
...by the absence of souls in their meat?

Basing this on a Bakker quote ->

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Regarding the Third Sight (which refers to the way Cishaurim see without seeing), the idea is that Psukari can actually see souls - those things invisible to the naked eye. Souls 'shine' to the degree they reflect the 'proportion of the God.' So the implication is that the Dunyain somehow reflect the proper proportion..

Also, isn't it weird that despite the Dunyain reflecting a proper proportion of the God they are spiritually weak?

3
Wutteat, AFACITell, has a soul and this is what sustains his undeath.

But the other dragons, from what I understand, are soul-less beings and this is why they can be controlled by the No-God.

Yet the way they speak in the series, they seem more like full entities when compared to the Sranc and the Skin-Spies.

So...does this mean they have souls? That they are soul-less but have a link to the Outside in order to breathe fire?

4
General Earwa / What was the inspiration for Gierra?
« on: May 01, 2021, 08:30:00 pm »
To start here's her entry int the Glossary ->

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Gierra—The God of carnal passion. One of the so-called Compensatory Gods, who reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Gierra is very popular throughout the Three Seas, particularly among aging men drawn to the “aphrodisica,” Cultic nostrums reputed to enhance virility. In the Higarata, the collection of subsidiary writings that form the scriptural core of the Cults, Gierra is rarely depicted with any consistency, and is often cast as a malign temptress, luring men to the luxury of her couch, often with fatal consequences.

Some related entries ->

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Ajokli - ...competitor. In the Mar’eddat, he is the faithless husband of Gierra...

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Sign of Gierra—The twin serpents that Sumni harlots must have tattooed on the back of their left hand, apparently in imitation of the Priestesses of Gierra.

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Ten, the—Epithet for the ten most powerful and widely worshipped of the Hundred, consisting of Yatwer, Gilgaöl, Husyelt, Gierra, Jukan, Anagke, Onkhis, Akkeägni, Bûkris, and Ajokli.

And from the text of books proper (only AE for now) ->

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...Afterwards she would decide that the insult was rather clumsy, no more subtle than the slit gowns worn by the Priestess-Whores of Gierra...

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Even the priestesses of Gierra, who sold themselves with the sanction of god and temple, were broken. To sell intimacy is to be turned inside out, to make a cloak of your heart, so that others might be warmed. A soul could only be inverted so many times before it all became confused, inside and outside.

-WLW

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A dais the size of small barge dominated the floor beneath the high dome. She numbly gazed at the arc of idols arrayed upon it: wane Onkhis, fierce Gilgaöl, lewd Gierra, bulbous Yatwer, and others, a tenth of the Hundred, the eldest and the most powerful, cast in gold, shining and lifeless.

-WLW

So we have a goddess of lust, who seems to fit the idea of a succubus, with a priestess-hood of sacred prostitutes. Will post of potential inspirations or at least parallel figures in religion next.

5
The Unholy Consult / What's up with the "Second" Inverse Fire
« on: April 30, 2021, 11:39:46 pm »
From the TUC Glossary, note the spelling error  ->

Excruciata

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Famed fresco of the One Hundred and Eleven Hells in the Holy Junriüma, and perhaps the most well-known of the countless artistic renditions of perdition. Apparently inspired by ancient, pre-Arkfall Nonman statuary, the grand image—the product of the legendary “Ten Simpletons” to commemorate the Scholastic Wars in 3800—is the first depiction of the hells that defects from spatial and associative norms, bringing the chaos of damnation to the fore. As a ceiling fresco, it is sometimes referred to as the Hanging Hells or the Inverse Fire.

And from WLW ->

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And sometimes, more rarely still, she sees the particulars of their coming damnation...

...Such torment. Clenched and cringing, huddled in ways outside worldly dimensions. Prised and flayed, the innumerable petals of his soul peeled back in shrieks and sulphurous flame. Screams braided into screams, pains heaped upon agonies. She sees it, his future, a gleam across his eyes, a fiery halo about his crown. His suffering disgorged like paint, smeared and stroked into obscene works of art. His soul passed from Ciphrang to feasting Ciphrang, dispensing anguish like milk through the endless ages. She sees the truth of the Excruciata, the One Hundred-and-Eleven Hells depicted on the walls of the Junriüma in Sumna....

So who are these "Ten Simpletons"? I can't help but think they are victims of Shae's attempts to create a circuit that keeps his own soul from Damnation. How else would they come to know with such accuracy the nature of damnation?

Or did they somehow collectively possess the Judging Eye? But then why does the work end up also being called the Inverse Fire?

6
My original thinking on Seswatha was that it was something like Hofstadter's Strange Loop ->

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“The key question is, no matter how much you absorb of another person, can you have absorbed so much of them that when that primary brain perishes, you can feel that that person did not totally perish from the earth? In the wake of a human being’s death, what survives is a set of afterglows, some brighter and some dimmer, in the collective brains of those who were dearest to them. Though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain, a collective corona that still glows.”
—Douglas Hofstadter

But so much of Seswatha seems to survive, even dominating the minds of those who grasped the Heart...and given that even the Nomen have limited storage capacity I changed my mind...

Seswatha is not in their brains/minds, but in the Heart. So Mandati And Swayali are wirelessly connecting to the Drop Box that is the Heart...

Or maybe think of it as playing games on the Playstation Network?

After Akka becomes a Wizard, a rogue Gnostic, he no longer gets the patch updates which causes memory leakage...

Admittedly computational analogies fail after a point, but I hope this expresses the general idea. Though I am still not sure if Seswatha's actual soul is in the Heart, perhaps the soul is cleaved as in the case of other artifacts so that part of the Sohonc Grandmaster's soul burns in Hell while the other part is encased in the Heart.

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Could sea creatures unlock the origins of the mind?

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When it comes to understanding the mind, philosopher, writer and diver Peter Godfrey-Smith suggests marine life may hold some illuminating answers. Among the vast array of marine life, shrimp, coral, and cuttlefish exhibit amazing levels of consciousness and the octopus with its many tentacles and 8 limbs-- functions as a creature with multiple “selves.”  What can we learn from the way these animals experience the world? Could sea creatures unlock the origins of the mind?

KCRW’s Jonathan Bastian talks with Peter Godrey-Smith about his new book “Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind” about his exploration of levels of consciousness and “self” among some of his favorite undersea creatures.

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Is there this problem of projecting our human way of thinking, our human way of understanding self on to these creatures?

Godfrey-Smith: “There is a problem there and this is a good point to talk about the octopus. One of the reasons octopuses are an important case in the story, is the fact that there's a kind of ‘centeredness of self’ that we humans, and probably lots of other mammals and vertebrates have as a consequence of how our nervous systems are set up and our bodily organization There's a ‘centeredness of self’ that might be absent or very different in some animals with different organizations and the octopus is the outstanding case, because most of its nervous system is not concentrated in the head between the eyes but spread through the body, especially in the upper part of the arms. There's a gigantic network of control devices and sensors in the arms, which is larger than the central brain.

So when we look at an octopus and try to imagine what it's experience is like, one of the big questions is how we should tackle these differences in organization that might imply differences in the kind of “selfhood” that's present there. This is another question, which I'd love to give a definitive answer on how to handle this but I think it has some very puzzling features.”

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Food for thought? French bean plants show signs of intent, say scientists

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...Together with Vicente Raja at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy in London, Canada, they used time-lapse photography to document the behaviour of 20 potted bean plants, grown either in the vicinity of a support pole or without one, until the tip of the shoot made contact with the pole. Using this footage, they analysed the dynamics of the shoots’ growth, finding that their approach was more controlled and predictable when a pole was present. The difference was analogous to sending a blindfolded person into a room containing an obstacle, and either telling them about it or letting them stumble into it.

“We see these signatures of complex behaviour, the one and only difference being is that it’s not neural-based, as it is in humans,” Calvo said. “This isn’t just adaptive behaviour, it’s anticipatory, goal-directed, flexible behaviour.”

The research was published in Scientific Reports. “Although the research seems sound, it is not clear that it teaches us much new about plant sentience or intelligence,” said Rick Karban, who studies plant communication at the University of California, Davis. “For more than a century, scientists have been aware that plants sense aspects of their environments and respond, and understanding how plants [do this] is an active area of current research. Whether you choose to consider these processes sentience or intelligence depends entirely on how to choose to define these terms.”

Calvo acknowledges that this experiment alone doesn’t prove intent, much less consciousness. However, if plants really do possess intent, it would make sense. All biological organisms require the means to cope with uncertainty and adapt their behaviour to pass on their genes, but the timescale on which they operate makes this particularly imperative for plants: “They do things so slowly, that they can’t afford to try again if they miss,” Calvo said.

One possibility is that this “consciousness” arises out of the connections between plants’ vascular systems and their meristems – regions of undifferentiated dividing cells in their root and shoot tips, and at the base of leaves.

In a separate paper, Calvo and his colleagues set out a theory of plant consciousness based on integrated information theory (IIT) – a leading theory of consciousness – which posits that we can identify a person’s (or any system’s) level of consciousness from the complexity of the interactions between its individual parts.

Others rebut such claims. IIT is based on an assumption that everything material has an element of consciousness, even nonliving complex systems: “It cannot have any special significance for plants,” said Jon Mallatt at the University of Washington, US. He believes claims about sentient plants are misleading, and risk misdirecting scientific funding and government policy decisions.

Calvo said he was happy to be disproved, but experimentally, rather than on theoretical grounds. In another paper scheduled to appear in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, he proposes a set of experiments which may settle the matter once and for all. “If successful, these experiments could position plants as the next frontier in consciousness science, and urge us to rethink our perspectives on consciousness, how to measure it, and its prevalence amongst living beings,” he said. The gardening gloves are off.

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Can Self-Replicating Species Flourish in the Interior of a Star?

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The existing view of biological life is that it evolves under suitable conditions in the low-temperature world of atoms and molecules on the surface of a planet. It is believed that any plausible extraterrestrial form of life must resemble the life on Earth that is ruled by biochemistry of nucleic acids, proteins, and sugars. Going against this dogma, we argue that an advanced form of life based upon short-lived species can exist inside main-sequence stars like our Sun.

PBS Space Time throws a bit of cold water onto this idea of sidereal ecosystems, bringing us back down to Earth.

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Birds Have a Mysterious 'Quantum Sense'. For The First Time, Scientists Saw It in Action

Mike McCrae

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Importantly, this is evidence of quantum physics directly affecting a biochemical reaction in a cell – something we've long hypothesised but haven't seen in action before.

Using a tailor-made microscope sensitive to faint flashes of light, the team watched a culture of human cells containing a special light-sensitive material respond dynamically to changes in a magnetic field. The change the researchers observed in the lab match just what would be expected if a quirky quantum effect was responsible for the illuminating reaction.

This could be a game changer, proof of natural selection being able to exploit quantum phenomena...or so it seems to me?

(I do recall photosynthesis but my understanding is that while this was initially thought to be a utilization of superposition this has been cast into doubt?)

11
Is there Ultimate Stuff and are there Ultimate Reasons?

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In this essay, we reflect on two fundamental assumptions, the one philosophical and the other scientific. The first has been called the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). This encapsulates the idea that there is (at least in principle) a complete explanation for everything that exists or happens. We argue that recent attempts in philosophy to undermine the PSR should be rejected on a combination of philosophical and scientific grounds, and PSR should be upheld. Secondly, we argue, from the assumption that PSR is true, that the quantum vacuum (QV) is not the most fundamental stuff that exists, and moreover that we can say something positive about the nature of the “more fundamental” stuff. We argue that these conclusions follow from the implications that PSR carries for the nature of scientific explanations applied within the framework of the model of Nature indicated by Systems Philosophy. We show that under PSR the indicated substance underlying the QV has promise for developing solutions to certain fundamental empirical puzzles in science such as the nature of dark energy and the foundations of consciousness.

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Dr. Johannes Kleiner: Why the universe might be conscious

This is a pathbreaking conversation with Dr. Johannes Kleiner, a mathematician and physicist at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. He works at the cutting edge of an ever urgent question — is the universe conscious? He explains to Grin why the answer could well be, yes.

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The crucial ingredient in constructing and studying mathematical models of consciousness is to represent conscious experience in mathematical terms. This is what makes mathematical models of consciousness so powerful. One can use what is called a ‘mathematical space’ to represents the content of conscious experience. Once provided with some mathematical description of the physical domain (e.g. of the neural network in the brain), on can then apply a model of consciousness to calculate which conscious experience it would have.

    Now the crucial ingredient here is that any physical system that can be represented mathematically (in principle) can be ‘plugged into’ a model of consciousness to calculate the conscious experience of that system according to that model. Next to brains, this could be a mathematical description of a computer, a large network or even a approximate mathematical description of the universe.

This is where the headline you have quoted above comes from. Mathematical models of consciousness allow us to calculate the conscious experience of all sorts of systems. And while a final verdict is still pending of which model of consciousness describes reality correctly, it is a possibility that the universe as a whole has some conscious experience.
     



13
Philosophy & Science / The Three Holograms
« on: May 15, 2020, 05:36:15 am »
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Physicalism proposes that the relational realm is mindless. There are many versions of this  proposal.  The  one  most  influential,  at  present,  proposes  that  the  basic  building blocks  of  the  relational  realm  are  the  particles,  fields,  and  other  entities  within  the province of microphysics. The behavior of these entities is mindless, governed entirely by probabilistic laws.

Idealism proposes that the relational realm is made of minds. It may be one mind, as in Berkeley’s  proposal  that  it’s  the  mind  of  God,  or  it  may  be  many  distinct  and  finite minds in interaction. In the latter case,  the behavior of these  minds has also been described by probabilistic laws.

Dualism proposes that the relational realm is made  both of minds and mindless entities. There are probabilistic laws governing the minds, the mindless entities, and the interactions between the two.
   --Peeking Behind the Icons

The Three Holograms

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What the Idealist tells you stuns your mind. He reveals that the year is 2212, and that you’re part of a hi-tech experiment designed to solve the problem of consciousness once and for all. Then he says enigmatically, “The wires funneling through the wall are as much a part of your mentally-projected reality as the walls and the desk are. But these wires feed into your brain to generate that perception of reality!”

“What does that mean?” you ask.

The Idealist smiles, and says, “It means that those so-called physical components, the wires that project your mental reality into you, and so are entirely responsible for the creation of your experience, are as much a part of that mental reality as the thoughts in your head. All that exists here is entirely mental.”

“But, what does that mean?”

The Idealist chuckles merrily, “It means that there is no direct evidence in your experience of any connection to a physical realm, simply because what you would call your mind’s physical connection to the so-called physical world is just as much a part of your experience as the chair you’re sitting on. What you are experiencing now is a purely mental reality.”

Pleased by your joyous visitor, you laugh – but your laughter is interrupted when the Idealist suddenly becomes grave, danger looming in his voice. He intones, “I must warn you – I am not the only holographic being who will visit you today. Two more holograms are on their way. Their messages will be fallacious. However, the final hologram’s message is by far the most misguided. I warn you, no matter what he tells you, don’t listen. If you listen, it might cost you your life.”

14
The Conceivability Trap: Analytic Philosophy’s Achilles Heel

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...Since our empirical experiences are always perspectival—after all, each of us operates through a unique point of view or window into the world—the achievement of objective knowledge is contingent upon a procedure meant to distill objectivity out of perspectival subjectivity. In science, Karl Popper offered the following: “the objectivity of scientific statements lies in the fact that they can be inter-subjectively tested” (emphasis added). In analytic philosophy, however, issues often cannot be settled by experimental testing, so a different form of procedural objectivity is required. In this context, Bertrand Russell held that there are a priori principles of logical reasoning—not contingent on the idiosyncratic perspectives inherent to empirical experience—which, if properly applied, render objective conclusions possible.

Even philosophers of mind, whose object of study is that most subjective of all things, aim for objectivity. Expressions now common in the community—such as ‘what it is like to be (something or someone)’ to define the presence of experience—as well as words such as ‘phenomenal’ and ‘access’ to qualify consciousness, reflect an effort to objectify what is essentially subjective.

But can the ideal of full objectivity ever be realized? For as long as analytic philosophers are fallible human beings, instead of computers, it surely can’t. Their conclusions, too, are inevitably a function of the variety and metacognitive depth of their personal experiences. It is more productive to acknowledge this fact and respond accordingly, than to pretend otherwise.

For instance, the notion of conceivability—which is often appealed to in modern ontology and philosophy of mind to establish or refute metaphysical possibility—relies on the particular set of subjective experiences a philosopher has had in his or her life. Therefore, it is naïve—perhaps even pretentious—to assume that one’s personal inability to conceive of something entailed or implied by an argument positively refutes the argument. For not only in continental, but also analytic philosophy, one’s conclusions reveal perhaps as much about oneself as they do about one’s object of inquiry.

Indeed, even language itself—an indispensable tool not only for communicating, but also formulating our thoughts—is based on shared experience. Words only have meaning to us insofar as their denotations and connotations are experiences we’ve had ourselves. For instance, because you and I have experienced a car, the word ‘car’ has meaning for both of us, and so we can use it in a conversation. Similarly, because the word ‘color’ denotes an experience I’ve had, I can use the concept of color in my own meditations about the nature of mind.

As a matter of fact, the concept of a color palette occupies center stage today in philosophy of mind. Analytic philosophers who adhere to constitutive panpsychism use the concept to conceive—by analogy—of how a limited set of fundamental phenomenal states could be combined—like pigments in a palette—to constitute our ordinary experiences. The conceivability of this very notion rests on our shared experience of colors and how they can be combined to form other colors.

Now imagine Helen Keller as an analytic philosopher. Born deaf and blind as she was, she didn’t share with sight-capable philosophers the experience of having mixed watercolors in kindergarten. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even know what a color is. The very notion of a palette of fundamental experiences that could be combined to form meta-experiences wouldn’t be conceivable to her. And yet, the rest of us knows it is perfectly conceivable. Conceivability is thus not an objective notion, but an inherently subjective one....

15
Philosophy & Science / Peeking Behind the Icons
« on: May 10, 2020, 10:24:26 pm »
Peeking Behind the Icons


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There is a relationship then, in the normal case, between what you see in the phenom-enal and relational senses. What you see in the phenomenal sense is a useful and sim-plified interface to  what  you  see  in  the  relational  sense.  It  summarizes  a  myriad  of complexities in  a way  that  lets you  interact  with  that  complexity  without  tedium and distraction. What it provides you is indeed phenomenal — a phenomenal interface. So the answer to your first question — Are we seeing and playing with the same volleyball? — is both yes and no. No, you each have constructed  your own volleyball experiences. And yes, you each are interacting with the same hidden world of circuits and software. There are as many phenomenal volleyballs as there are players. There is only one rela-tional volleyball, and it doesn’t resemble a volleyball at all. That first question took you to unexpected places, so you try another. Is the volleyball still there when I don’t look? Again  the  answer  depends  on  the  volleyball.  Your  phenomenal  volleyball  is your  con-struction.  When  you  don’t  look  you  don’t  construct  it.  So  the  phenomenal  volleyball isn’t there when  you  don’t  look.  However,  the  relational  volleyball  doesn’t  depend  on your constructive powers for its existence. The relational volleyball is just the circuits and software. So the relational volleyball is there when you don’t look. It just doesn’t re-semble a volleyball.

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Which brain creates all my conscious experiences? The phenomenal brain or the relational brain?

The brain you just experienced in The Virtual Brain was of course a phenomenal brain. Indeed, The Virtual Brain headphones told you that this phenomenal brain was indis-tinguishable from the phenomenal brain you would find if you opened up your skull. So is it this phenomenal brain that creates all your conscious experiences? No. The phenomenal brain, with all its phenomenal neurons and synapses and neural net-works, is your constructed experience, just like the phenomenal volleyball. If you don’t look, it’s not there. And if it’s not there, it can’t do anything. But you have conscious experiences even when you don’t see your phenomenal brain. In fact, until just a few minutes ago, you had probably never seen your phenomenal brain. So the phenomenal brain can’t be what constructs your conscious experience.

That leaves your relational brain. If it’s true that your brain creates all your conscious experiences, then it must be your relational brain, not your phenomenal brain, which is the creator. But what is your relational brain? Does it resemble your phenomenal brain? There’s no reason to suppose it does. In fact, as we saw with the volleyball, there’s no reason to suppose that the nature of the phenomenal brain in any way constrains the nature of the relational brain. Your phenomenal brain is simply a graphical interface that allows you to interact with your relational brain, whatever that relational brain might be. And all that’s required of a graphical interface is that it be systematically related to what it represents. The relation can be as arbitrary as you wish, as long as it’s systematic. The trash can icon on your computer screen is a graphical interface to software which can erase files on your computer disk. The trash can icon is systematically related to that erasing software, but the relation is arbitrary: the trash can icon doesn’t resemble the erasing software in any way. It could be any color or shape you wish and still success-fully do the job of letting you interact with the erasing software. It could be a pig icon or a toilette icon instead of a trash can icon. All that matters is the systematic connection.

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You can’t help yourself. You have to ask the question. Which circuits and software make it all possible? The phenomenal or the relational? By  now  this  question  is  easy.  It’s  not  phenomenal  circuits  and  software  that  make  it possible, say, to spike a virtual volleyball. It couldn’t be. There need be no phenomenal circuits and  software,  for  you  or  anyone  else,  when  you  spike  the  volleyball,  so  there-fore phenomenal circuits and software can’t be what makes that spiking possible. The answer must be that it’s the  relational circuits and software that make it possible to play virtual volleyball. But of course this raises another question. What are relational circuits and software? We know that they needn’t in any way resemble the phenomenal circuits and software that we experience. But what more can we say about them? This raises a general and important question. If the relational realm needn’t resemble the phenomenal, then what can we safely say about the nature of the relational realm? Not much. However,we can propose theories and see how they stack up against our ex-periences. This is an intriguing enterprise, and one that has attracted lots of attention. There  are  now  many  theories  of  the  relational  realm  that  are  compatible  with  all  the evidence we have from the phenomenal realm. These theories come in three basic kinds: physicalism, idealism, and dualism.

Physicalism proposes that the relational realm is mindless. There are many versions of this  proposal.  The  one  most  influential,  at  present,  proposes  that  the  basic  building blocks  of  the  relational  realm  are  the  particles,  fields,  and  other  entities  within  the province of microphysics. The behavior of these entities is mindless, governed entirely by probabilistic laws.

Idealism proposes that the relational realm is made of minds. It may be one mind, as in Berkeley’s  proposal  that  it’s  the  mind  of  God,  or  it  may  be  many  distinct  and  finite minds in interaction. In the latter case,  the behavior of these  minds has also been described by probabilistic laws.

Dualism proposes that the relational realm is made  both of minds and mindless entities. There are probabilistic laws governing the minds, the mindless entities, and the interactions between the two.

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