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Topics - What Came Before
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256
« on: April 25, 2013, 06:06:07 pm »
So in Achamian's last dream we see the final battle of the Apocalypse once again, but different. What do you all suspect is happening? Certainly, the dream is the first in a long series of subtly different dreams Achamian has, but what do you think that means?
Is the truth coming out at last, or is this all part of Kellhus's plan to further manipulate Achamian? Is the No-God somehow still alive, speaking to Achamian? If the dream reflects reality, when Anaxophus echoes the No-God what do you think is happening? Is it just something as simple as Anaxophus's mind being overtaken by Mog-Pharau's will like the sranc?
What are your thoughts on Achamian's final dream of the PoN?
257
« on: April 25, 2013, 06:04:49 pm »
Looking for people to help immortalize some of Bakker's more interesting quotes from each book, so I am making this and similar topics for each book. There is the site, called wikiquotes, that is essentially for quoting your author, so Truth Shines' idea was that we could compile a large list of quotes and make a pretty epic page for Bakker.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/R._Scott_Bakker
If you'd like to see any quotes added, post them here and me or someone else will hopefully get around to putting them up on the wiki. Also, if possible, provide the page number, who said it, and the edition (including country).
258
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:51:46 pm »
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/searle.comp.html
I don't think this refutation by Searle is limited to the Hard Problem of Consciousness which relates to qualia and self awareness.
In fact, [as far as I can tell] he is claiming that even the "easy" parts relating to sensory interpretation are not "computational", that the very idea is ultimately nonsensical. There's a very subtle point being made, either that or he is shadow boxing against straw men of his own invention.
What's hard to grasp, for me anyway, is his insistence that computational models demand that syntax plays a causal role.
As a layperson who is not a philosopher, I found it worthwhile to read the summary before diving into the paper:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". The brain, as far as its intrinsic operations are concerned, does no information processing. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.
259
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:34:58 pm »
Recent 'philosophy wank' posts in Scott's blog have revealed that a lot of the things he discusses are extremely opaque to some of his readers (and I do not exclude myself, I find most Continental philosophy very opaque). Therefore, I think it's only natural to start a thread here that we can point people to if they want to understand what Scott is going on about. Obviously, the philosophy underpins a lot of his writing, so understanding the background could allow people to have deeper readings of his work.
First, I'd say that most blog posts of Scott's are related to a single philosophical problem. The Hard Problem of Consciousness.
Relevant initial reading:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
I also highly, highly recommend Chalmer's book "The Conscious Mind" as a primer. He also gets into the extremely thorny issue of intentionality. Another book I could recommend for people unfamiliar with these types of philosophical questions is "The Mind's I", a collection of classic essays compiled and commented on by Daniel Dennet and Douglas Hofstadter.
Extremely briefly:
The hard problem of consciousness is primarily a problem that we run into with the predominant "physicalist" mindset that has been so successful at explaining the world, thanks to science. Basically, the assumption that "a consistent physical world with highly structured laws" is all that exist underlies the scientific methods. Scientists don't 'do' ghosts, souls, spirits, gods, magic. We break things into smaller things and see how they work. The power of reductionist empirical methodology is undeniable: computers, vaccines, atomic bombs, men on the moon, etc. In this way, scientists and philosophers (and intellectuals more generally) have come to reject heliocentrism, special creation, the existence of a Judeo-Christian omnibenevolent deity, and so forth. Science explains it all away.
The problem occurs when you turn that scientific lens INWARDS, towards the brain. Suddenly, the human 'soul' (consciousness, Being, first-person frame, phenomenology, whatever you want to call is) vanishes. You look with science, and all you find is cells. But it seems like science is wrong here! I most definitely 'have' a first-person perspective... there is something it is like to be me. I bold that statement because the meaning of those words constructed in that fashion may lie at the heart of the problem.
Perhaps the concept that most vividly illustrates the disconnect between science and soul, is the concept of a quale (plural qualia). Again, I'm doing an injustice to this idea here, but I think many children get a sense of this problem when they ask the seemingly innocent question:
"How do you know my blue is your blue?"
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
The existence of qualia seems undeniable, they lie at the heart of what it means 'to be' for a human being. However, when science gets involved, qualia disappear. There seems no way to account for their existence from a purely physicalist perspective. It gets really weird in the literature. You have philosophers denying qualia exist or that the concept is nonsensical (Dennett) or those who advocate that many objects possess 'mental phenomenology': there is something it is like to be a thermostat.
Alright, so that's a quick and dirty primer on the philosophy of mind.
Scott's entries on 'philoso-wank' can be reduced to the following ideas:
1. Philosophical ideas cannot be trusted because there is no good measuring tape by which to judge them. Academics are as prone (or more prone) than laymen to fall pray to self-confirmation bias and in-group selection. Basically, the "Ivory Tower Eggheads are Also Idiots and Will Defend Nonsense" hypothesis. This is more of an institutional attack (specifically on the division between analytical and continental philosophy), and one that also considers academics to be self-excluding. Scott claims that many literarati don't actually want to communicate to the masses, because they shun the genres that would be most effective at doing so. Then (in typical Bakker fashion), he turns the canon on himself and says that this is due to his own self-confirmation bias since he writes fantasy.
2. Your sense of volition or "willing" actually comes after the decision has been made at parts of your brain you have no conscious access to. This deserves a much longer treatment, and I will eventually get around to fixing this entry, but for now just understand that this is the pervading theme of the Prince of Nothing trilogy, and a recurring motif in the Second Apocalypse in general. It also plays a huge role in his psych-thriller Neuropath. Very quickly: cognitive neuroscience is starting to prove Hard Determinism. More generally, science is starting to deliver final answers on philosophical problems previously thought to be intractable or only solvable by introspection.
3. The Hard Problem of Consciousness occurs because of the way the brain is structurally wired, and because of the way evolution works. Bakker has never made the claim that he has solved the problem. But his "Blind Brain Theory" (BBT) makes testable empirical predictions about consciousness. BBT is too difficult to quickly recapitulate, but a rough and dirty summary might be as follows.
[list=1]
You can injure someone's brain in such a way as to cause them to lose function of an arm. That is not hard to believe, we have all met stroke victims. Startlingly, it is also possible to injure someone's brain in way that makes them unable to recognize that their arm no longer works. They will 'confabulate' explanations as to why their arm no longer functions. More startlingly, it is possible to do the same thing with blindness. The stroke-blinded patient will vehemently insist that they can see. This phenomenon is call anosognosia and it reveals something profound about the way our conscious experience always seems "full" or "complete". Blind brain theory postulates that ALL conscious experience can be summarized this way. That every qualia you experience is the result of some part of your brain hitting an asymptotic limit in information integration, which is the result of the more recently evolved parts trying to track the information in the deeper parts. This "thalamo-cortical" loop eventually 'runs out' on tracking itself.[/list]
An empirical prediction this theory would make is that we should be able to 'indefinitely' expand qualia space (ie: see colors you've never seen before, or have a novel phenomenological experience associated with sonar). It also predicts that we don't actually understand our own phenomenology as much as we would like to believe we do. That is, that our own awareness of our mental states might be deeply flawed. (also see: Eric Schwitzgebel's blog)
4. Dissection of middle and late 20th century philosophy through the lens of BBT. These posts are extremely difficult, primarily because philosophers like Heidegger and Derrida did not go out of their way to make themselves easily understood.
5. Future implications. If you ever see a blog post with the words 'Semantic Apocalypse' in them, that means Scott is using it to buttress his claim that cognitive neuroscience will annihilate 'intentionality' and 'meaning' from the world.
So... what the hell does this have anything to do with Drusas Achamian, Anasurimbor Kellhus, and Esmenet?
Everything.
My own reading of the Second Apocalypse, is Scott's attempt to structure a hypothetical universe where "intentionality" and "meaning" cannot be extricated by science. God and Soul are literally true. The work then examines the epistemological and moral consequences of such a universe, a universe where science still works but it is wrong.
In other words, the most mind-blowing piece of fantasy fiction this side of 1954.
260
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:30:33 pm »
I work with some pretty brilliant people, and I just took an informal poll about whether or not an AI that is advanced enough to pass the Turing Test should be given legal rights.
I was shocked to find out that most of my colleagues said "No."
So, I want a poll of this forum
What do you think?
261
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:28:11 pm »
On a more sanguine note than my latest posts:
Do other animals - any other ones - possess forms of communication akin to the creative, abstract, and "self-aware" human language(s)?
I've heard a few things about crows, dolphins, and elephants that I can't readily reference at the moment, but how about videos like these featuring bonobos?
That is, this* and that.**
Is it just more evidence that puts paid to the (filthy!)notion of anthropic exceptionalism, or have zoologists grossly misinterpreted the likeness to our own selves in uncovering a greater degree (but not kind) of certain behaviors than was previously known or assumed?
Personally, my stance is that nothing in particular sets us above the rest of the Animal Kingdom other than superior neural complexity and some features well-suited to digital manipulation and precise phonation. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to discover traits and behaviors in animals that closely mirror ours - we all share evolutionary physiological equipment to some extent, after all. Whether any of our well-observed animals truly do have 'human-like' language or capacity for it, I'll leave open to further research, the nitty-gritty of which I am ignorant.
*
Disregard everything the lady says about what's behind the capabilities, she's delusional
**
Taking the videos at face-value, the bonobos seem to (possibly) display an implicit and abstracted understanding of the English language; the written symbols thing could be taken either way, unless someone can locate more in-depth resources decisively in favor of bonobo capacity for dynamic learning of written/symbolic communication beyond Pavlovian association? I couldn't find much more than news stories in the popular media, but...
263
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:09 pm »
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6115/96.full
"Young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future. People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives. This “end of history illusion” had practical consequences, leading people to overpay for future opportunities to indulge their current preferences."
I thought this is interesting, in the context of Bakker's philosophy in general, stressing how deluded we are about 'knowing' ourselves. 
264
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:22:49 pm »
Here's an idea - a semantic apocalypse already occured. At some point in ancient history there was a fracture in just trying to be 'right' in the eyes of all men. There were just too many men, too many circumstances the fractured right in too many ways. The bead of water, the maintaining surface tension, is overwhelmed. Is burst.
Many fell in what might be called cronic depression. Perhaps that's what made the human population drop to 2K at one point in Africa (or so scientists seem to have suggested had occured, after looking at genetic patterns)
Or less dramatically, cronic depression, the incapacity to escape pounding hammer after hammer of failure and wrong, simply made for a crippling. A liability laboured under. Slowing.
Until the capacity to simply think oneself right, despite observation, came to light. Or rather than despite it all, from the outside it might be called more an insulation between the observable and the subjects own measure of their right and wrong.
Perhaps a mildly sociopathic development.
Suddenly the hammers are gone. The liability gone. The capacity for survival increased. The genes for it, spread.
The books magic population number for connect/disconnect from gods, I found pretty bogus at first. But over time, in thinking of parralel applications in somewhat similar ideas, I wonder.
265
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:21:45 pm »
I may have been exposed to this in the past and it rang particularly true this time with a venue to pass it through. I tend to listen to many random lectures serials and I've rebegun another, which mentions these as an introduction. This one in particular will probably come up as it reflects communication, something Bakker researched heavily in writing PON and Kellhus dominates among Earwa.
This seems the piece most referenced: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/wiio.html
Wiio's Seven [Humorous] Communicative Laws (the humorous aspect is supposedly attributed to Wiio):
1. Communication usually fails, except by accident.
1.1 - If communication can fail, it will.
1.2 - If communication cannot fail, it still most usually fails.
1.3 - If communication seems to succeed in the intended way, there’s a misunderstanding.
1.4 - If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails.
2. If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage.
3. There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message.
4. The more we communicate, the worse communication succeeds.
4.1 - The more we communicate, the faster misunderstandings propagate.
5. In mass communication, the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be.
6. The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.
7. The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago.
267
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:18:39 pm »
So how 'bout that Higgs-Boson that's maybe just been discovered? Shocked there's no thread on this.
Technically speaking of course, it hasn't been demonstrated that this is the Higgs-Boson yet. Just that it's a new fundamental particle with the predicted mass. Huge discovery either way.
268
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:17:33 pm »
My god, the guy was so mad for being so calm. His house had become a rabbit warren due to all the newspapers he'd horded. And he'd talk about it, how they might fall over, like it was the weather - like it was something he had no hand in.
There was this scene where a rather gung ho gardener who had befriended the horder was there with a psychologist at a kitchen sink, with the shrink asking is any of this rubbish? With bits of - I dunno what - papery yuck nearby. And the horder says well, there's detritus of course, at which point the gung ho gardener starts noisily shaking open a garbage bag and says we can thow these bits of grotty paper stuff away and....the horder just pauses, then says actually they are still usefull...a pause...you can use them to wipe the worst of the dirt off the plates and...
The shrink tells the gardener that the horder just doesn't see any rubbish in front of him at all.
And this is a striking bit, the horder hears this and goes 'Well, umm, sort of, a bit'. The rationalisation machine his voice was, that which usually made excuse after excuse was suddenly not refuted and...you could see it having trouble facing all the excuse making it did as a concept supported by someone else.
And they never seem to go back to what started it - I'd be curious as to when he started collecting papers. The exact date and what happned around then.
And as my partner said, Andy Warhol had a warehouse full of crap - with a bit of money you can hide your madness much more effectively.
But my god, was his voice just not attached to any sort of control - it really was just a thing to make excuses to other people, ceasing to have anything to do with what he was doing in life. And he was just so damn calm...
269
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:13:57 pm »
Man, I argued this one with Kalbear for long enough at Westeros. Even Scott at the TPB said along the lines of 'You've gotta explain this objective morality thing to me'
And eventually I came up with an analogy which is fun in it's own respect.
What's your favorite colour?
Okay, so we have a book about a fictional world where, objectively, everyones favorite colour is blue (and dang does this example not work if your favorite colour is blue!).
So, uh, does your favorite colour change when you read the book?
I'm guessing no?
So are you a disruption to this world? A mind which does not concede to the principles of this world. How can blue objectively be the favorite colour of this world, when you turn your mind to it?
"Oh, but worlds can have segregated little 'favorite colour' fields around them"
So what, when you read you have to change your favourte colour when reading?
Let alone the idea of 'fields'?
Anyway: So it's objective. The author is insistant that the favorite colour in the fictional world is objectively blue.
Exactly how does that work out, when as the reader, your own favorite colour is not blue?
(except for some - perhaps Kalbear - who's favorite colour already matches the world? Or perhaps more accurately, who's favorite colour is 'externally dialable' - ie, something else can set it. Like a text?)
270
« on: April 24, 2013, 06:12:07 pm »
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