Epistemology
The problem the epistemology has with ontology is skepticism. If something is real and exist it can be considered true. The skeptic calls into question the nature of reality. Let us see what something like an exhaustive denial of the devices used to perceive reality looks like. First, it would appear that there must be something real for the skeptic not to fall into absolute ignorance or nihilism. The goal of the skeptic ought to be the truth, not doubt for the end of deception. The awareness of one’s own limitations helps in producing a more accurate orientation in ontology.
The brain in a vat problem is an observation from the skeptic concerning our relationship to the world. The skeptic comes in degrees, being completely against the world’s existence; to partially against the world; to assuming only the world exists. If the world completely doesn’t exist and only the self exists, then we fall into solipsism. If the world is one mind that appears to be many, then idealism appears to be the case. Since the brain in a vat thought experiment uses technology, it makes assumptions about an existing world. The manufactured world of the brain that is in the vat would be equivalent to art or entertainment. Even if it was being used for scientific means, a simulation is an imitation of a thing. The skeptic’s suspicion as to the nature of the world seems to be a consequence of science’s discovery of the brain organ’s limits.
Skeptics seem to think the mind and body hide the truth from the consciousness. It is comparable to those who believe the true essence of the homo sapien is an immaterial soul. Some portion of these individuals see the body as an obstacle to reality. However, the body doesn’t will itself into existence. It is manifested in the world as parts of the world combine to result in what we call ourselves. What about the body fills the skeptic with caution? Though there may be more, we can look at the limits of the senses, the emotion’s effects on rationality, and mental illness. Hearing and seeing have limits on their extent and resolution. Science tells us the eyes are deceiving because they can’t see all the spectrums of light. There’s much weight placed on the visual sense as the main arbiter of truth. This appears contrary to science which confirms its theories by being correct on a prediction. There’s nothing in science that necessitates vision. Geometric ideas can be understood as abstractions or symbols. Our sense of smell and taste can be affected by our moods, the physical relationship between our structure and objects in the world, and the context the self and object are placed in. Our sense of touch appears to tie every other sense together, in that signals need to touch our sense organs to be observed, or the brain needs to generate motions that are equivalent to sense organs being acted upon or touched.
The skeptic may say, at some point, that pleasure and pain are wholly products of the mind. Emotions can have such a large impact on one’s mind that one may be led away from actions one knows are more rational than the ones being taken. This again brings up the hard problem of consciousness, as a robot need not have feelings of this kind of conflict. One may ask if a robot without the feeling would still act as one with the feeling? It does appear that one with the feeling of being alive is of more value than a philosophical zombie, i.e. one who merely acts like they have feelings but don’t actually possess any. However, a philosophical zombie may still prove themself to possess ethical value, e.g. showing their desire to exist, their susceptibility to damage, their gains and losses, etc. The skeptic seems to show feelings both should not exist and are deceptive.
The skeptic may appeal to something like profound schizophrenia and claim no way to know if perceived events are true events. Not only are the senses limited but the biological material may also produce maladaptive brain structures. In this, the hard problem would need to go further than just asking why qualia exist and ask why is it deceptive? Either the maladaptations are accidental and randomly placed, or the biological material generates beings with an intention on the outcomes, or the brain is intentionally deceiving the consciousness, or there is a brain in a vat like situation with greater authority in control of one’s experiences. Beyond this disrupting our ability to perceive true reality, it may also cause one to act in a way that influences the acts of others.
To deny the other the skeptic must also deny history. Like our eyesight, our reasoning has a limit on its extent. Physics can only take us so far back in the past or forward in the future. If we are brains in vats, then the study of nature is the study of a piece of art or entertainment. This would make others unreal objects, but then the truth of one’s world would be solipsism with the World being beyond all of one’s devices, unless an individual in the World cares to communicate truth to the one in the artificial world. The next problem is local evolution. Homo sapiens are multicellular organisms that multiplied from a single cell made from the combination of two cells. These cells themselves are made from chemicals combined in a particular way. This fact is gotten from others, being that it can’t be observed by the self as the self goes through the process of birth. Assuming the other is real and we are in the World, we may all be suffering from the same hallucinations. Others may have different experiences from what was thought to be the same content. Combining the deception of the senses, the unreliability of rationality, and the perplexity of mental illness the skeptic claims the world hasn’t been parsed. If the skeptic falls into idealism, they may say that freeing one’s self from the body will return one to the greater mind that may know the Truth.
There is a limit on knowledge that results from our physical limitations. Complex ideas don’t appear innate to the mind but must be learned. Language appears to go beyond physical limits. Though concepts like a square circle or the wave/particle duality are difficult to recreate as a visual imitation, they can still be instantiated as linguistic objects which correlate with real or impossible existence. Falsehood much like nonexistence has a paradoxical relationship with existence. Again, the skeptic ought to assume some truth is possible, or they would fall into total ignorance. This truth ought to be communicable, since symbols appear to be able to hold abstractions, and the world (assuming it is real) should be less abstract than the totality of what abstraction can contain. Scientists rely on technical tools and language made specifically for understanding particular parts of reality. Thus senses are replaced with technology and intuition replaced with formulas. From these, we attempt to see the world in a form untainted by the mind. Technology with its ability to process and analyze data with more precision than a brain makes it a good candidate for understanding the World. An automaton could make an actual representation of the World, rather than a deceptive semblance of it. Of course, how could one build a robot that can perceive the World if one can’t perceive the World oneself? Beyond this problem, science must still admit limitations because there are predictions that are difficult to make. One may not know what truth the skeptic will allow, but they must allow something given the data.
Monday, November 30, 2020
Saturday, November 21, 2020
PWIP 38
Ethics Dynamics
Utopia is a state by which all individuals are happiest and living the easiest. Such a social state appears to have some issues. First, Utopia appears mundane. Entertainment and the arts can’t maintain an audience’s focus on utopia, save perhaps in pictures. People are turned off by the unreality of the state and may become resentful of the lives of the utopians. Secondly, Utopia takes a great deal of effort because of its numerous requirements. The happiness of the populous would have to be the main priority of society. Those who reach the peak of social life would need to come back down for others. A threshold for knowledge concerning the self, other, and world must be passed before such a process could even begin. Lastly, though utopia would appear to be mundane, the difficulty of generating the state requires work, which is not mundane. The state implies a transcendent peace, but happiness for all is a mess of parts. Is the thing an exciting mess of motion or a mundane stable state?
Dystopia is on the other end of the spectrum, but it is not a lack of civilization. Rather dystopia is a society that maintains vices. Some virtue is necessary for cooperation. For no society can exist without a kind of honesty, peace, or respect for ownership. Regardless the main characteristic of dystopias is that they are maintained by particular vices. The vices of dystopia are subjugation of groups within the society or aggression towards those outside the society. In this light we can see that no utopia has existed hitherto, every society has been a dystopia. The homo sapiens can’t claim utopia if any contemporary civilization isn’t utopian, and civilizations can’t claim utopia without virtuous societies, societies can’t be virtuous without virtuous individuals.
Each ethical concept has a particular interaction with the utopia idea. Kantian ethics would likely get the most out of a robot’s utopia. Because of the artificial nature of robots, they can be made physically equal. They can be given the same knowledge, thus holding to equality in thought. But, of course, if all agents are of the same mind and, essentially, body, then in a sense there is only one being and no need for ethics.
A utopia for relativistic aesthetics is pure freedom. One can imagine it as a paradise without consequences. Only in a state of complete anarchy can there be no restrictions on the expression of the self. Though a world without consequence can be considered a utopia, it may be perceived as less meaningful or valuable than a world with suffering and loss. What does one become in a world one can have no impact on? This utopia is closest to the paradise many claim exists for those who acquire god’s favor.
Virtuous psychologies may find utopia onto themselves, being always at ease with the self and world. Virtuous psychologies need not be perfect replicas of each other as they can work within reason by either conceding to others or working out a solution. The ultimate nature of ontology is nihilism, thus the virtuous agent doesn't find the need to cling to any thing. Without knowledge, one can achieve a passive virtue where one avoids doing harm and helps whenever necessary. A more active virtue requires knowledge of the world. So one can also choose to explore the non-nothingness within the bounds of ethics.
Because utilitarian mathematics requires a more practical approach it is the hardest to parse out. One must mix the large and small, the qualitative and the quantitative, the concrete and the abstract.
Epistemology
The hard problem of consciousness seems to be that this biological machine built with molecules has feelings when machines can operate without feelings. Evolutionary biology appears to say any function that manages to survive does so because it is well fitted to the environment. Anything without pain is likely to be careless towards its own body. Sophisticated thoughts or an understanding of the world can help in alleviating pain. However, all these tools are developed by the DNA molecule, i.e. they are given or gifted, not created or innate. The consciousness appears to be the result of background processes. The background seems prebuilt by evolution and updated by experience. The consciousness itself isn’t privy to the workings of the background beyond their effects.
How is the hard problem of consciousness, i.e. why do we have qualia, and the brain in a vat problem, i.e. the uncertainty concerning the realness of experience connected? Consciousness appears important in the former, but incompetent, if not guileful, in the later. The problem appears to be between experience and consciousness. The consciousness is uncertain whether the experience correlates with what is actually going on in the real world. This is perhaps due to a perplexity with the variation in states of consciousness or differences in reports of experiences by others. There are also observations that appear to us from science which are judged to be our structural limitations. Regardless is the attempt to deceive the consciousness through experience an explanation for qualia (though the obvious next question is why deceive at all)?
If qualia is meant to deceive the consciousness via the brain in a vat then we may ask if qualia is innate or additional? Consciousness could be a calculating machine not requiring qualia. Experience would then be a means of control by a higher authority. If one perceives experience as something disconnected from consciousness, what keeps consciousness itself from becoming untrustworthy? Being a brain in a vat would allow one to have all the tools necessary to make a calculation, but no problem or content to work on if no communication is coming from the world. Both problems seem to assume the essential nature of consciousness is the ability to calculate, and not the content being manipulated. In the brain in a vat problem there is no possibility for exploration of the world. The brain can calculate but the signal is feigned. The hard problem allows for calculation and signals from the world. Yet it claims the resolution of the world’s signals ought to be purely mechanical.
Utopia is a state by which all individuals are happiest and living the easiest. Such a social state appears to have some issues. First, Utopia appears mundane. Entertainment and the arts can’t maintain an audience’s focus on utopia, save perhaps in pictures. People are turned off by the unreality of the state and may become resentful of the lives of the utopians. Secondly, Utopia takes a great deal of effort because of its numerous requirements. The happiness of the populous would have to be the main priority of society. Those who reach the peak of social life would need to come back down for others. A threshold for knowledge concerning the self, other, and world must be passed before such a process could even begin. Lastly, though utopia would appear to be mundane, the difficulty of generating the state requires work, which is not mundane. The state implies a transcendent peace, but happiness for all is a mess of parts. Is the thing an exciting mess of motion or a mundane stable state?
Dystopia is on the other end of the spectrum, but it is not a lack of civilization. Rather dystopia is a society that maintains vices. Some virtue is necessary for cooperation. For no society can exist without a kind of honesty, peace, or respect for ownership. Regardless the main characteristic of dystopias is that they are maintained by particular vices. The vices of dystopia are subjugation of groups within the society or aggression towards those outside the society. In this light we can see that no utopia has existed hitherto, every society has been a dystopia. The homo sapiens can’t claim utopia if any contemporary civilization isn’t utopian, and civilizations can’t claim utopia without virtuous societies, societies can’t be virtuous without virtuous individuals.
Each ethical concept has a particular interaction with the utopia idea. Kantian ethics would likely get the most out of a robot’s utopia. Because of the artificial nature of robots, they can be made physically equal. They can be given the same knowledge, thus holding to equality in thought. But, of course, if all agents are of the same mind and, essentially, body, then in a sense there is only one being and no need for ethics.
A utopia for relativistic aesthetics is pure freedom. One can imagine it as a paradise without consequences. Only in a state of complete anarchy can there be no restrictions on the expression of the self. Though a world without consequence can be considered a utopia, it may be perceived as less meaningful or valuable than a world with suffering and loss. What does one become in a world one can have no impact on? This utopia is closest to the paradise many claim exists for those who acquire god’s favor.
Virtuous psychologies may find utopia onto themselves, being always at ease with the self and world. Virtuous psychologies need not be perfect replicas of each other as they can work within reason by either conceding to others or working out a solution. The ultimate nature of ontology is nihilism, thus the virtuous agent doesn't find the need to cling to any thing. Without knowledge, one can achieve a passive virtue where one avoids doing harm and helps whenever necessary. A more active virtue requires knowledge of the world. So one can also choose to explore the non-nothingness within the bounds of ethics.
Because utilitarian mathematics requires a more practical approach it is the hardest to parse out. One must mix the large and small, the qualitative and the quantitative, the concrete and the abstract.
Epistemology
The hard problem of consciousness seems to be that this biological machine built with molecules has feelings when machines can operate without feelings. Evolutionary biology appears to say any function that manages to survive does so because it is well fitted to the environment. Anything without pain is likely to be careless towards its own body. Sophisticated thoughts or an understanding of the world can help in alleviating pain. However, all these tools are developed by the DNA molecule, i.e. they are given or gifted, not created or innate. The consciousness appears to be the result of background processes. The background seems prebuilt by evolution and updated by experience. The consciousness itself isn’t privy to the workings of the background beyond their effects.
How is the hard problem of consciousness, i.e. why do we have qualia, and the brain in a vat problem, i.e. the uncertainty concerning the realness of experience connected? Consciousness appears important in the former, but incompetent, if not guileful, in the later. The problem appears to be between experience and consciousness. The consciousness is uncertain whether the experience correlates with what is actually going on in the real world. This is perhaps due to a perplexity with the variation in states of consciousness or differences in reports of experiences by others. There are also observations that appear to us from science which are judged to be our structural limitations. Regardless is the attempt to deceive the consciousness through experience an explanation for qualia (though the obvious next question is why deceive at all)?
If qualia is meant to deceive the consciousness via the brain in a vat then we may ask if qualia is innate or additional? Consciousness could be a calculating machine not requiring qualia. Experience would then be a means of control by a higher authority. If one perceives experience as something disconnected from consciousness, what keeps consciousness itself from becoming untrustworthy? Being a brain in a vat would allow one to have all the tools necessary to make a calculation, but no problem or content to work on if no communication is coming from the world. Both problems seem to assume the essential nature of consciousness is the ability to calculate, and not the content being manipulated. In the brain in a vat problem there is no possibility for exploration of the world. The brain can calculate but the signal is feigned. The hard problem allows for calculation and signals from the world. Yet it claims the resolution of the world’s signals ought to be purely mechanical.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
A Philosophical Work in Progress X
Once one places value on one's self, one takes on the responsibility of constantly generating one's self. What results is perhaps an interpretation and an agent. One could start by framing the notion to something analogous to the id, an evolving entity. At the bottom the id is a mere chemical process. That the universe could produce such matter doesn't appear unusual, considering the trillions of planets in our galaxy alone, and the incredible power of mathematics. One's biology is one's whole self. We are nothing without our organs.
Once constituted, the id as a practical and actual entity takes on various forms in its biosphere. As an id, i am most aware of and connected to my own id, and i assume other ids are mostly aware of their own ids. The entity one calls "me" or "I," i would consider to be the ego. The ego maybe a more difficult entity to define because it consist of indirect physical objects, nonphysical objects, or mental objects; for one's experiences of one's self is not on display in the same way as one's physical structure, i.e. the id, is. The form of the ego is perceived through time as what the ego thinks, believes, and does in the present and the past. However, there are mental objects that one may not consider as one's own, and mental objects which maybe hidden from the ego.
Social, or harmonious id, behavior i'll call the overego. The overego is controlled by dominate ideas called the superego. The superego is instinct for most animals. For humans, the overego is whatever motion the masses are making. Confusion or disagreement on the superego in groups of individuals produce groups of overegos. Though one may admire the swarm creatures' unity, one may despise its mindless assimilation, i.e. complete control or negation of the ego. The superego, which is one's fundamental knowledge, is different for many egos; and made so simply by a change in where the id was initially generated, what cared for the id till maturity, how the ego developed, and other factors based in time.
A human's own subsistence depends on other humans for a time after birth, this forces human relation and interaction. And since we must imitate others before we gain the ability to invent our own objects/ideas, we also acquire a frame of reference in which we aren't the source. One persisting mental problem is the collective vs. the individual needs. If the ego perceives the collective as the most valuable, it will internalize the culture it is engrossed in. If it values the individual more, it will internalize the ethics implied in its self made philosophy.
One may need to supplement the personality given by the culture with a philosophical/scientific personality, though such may contradict at times. The ultimate rational being would perhaps be computer-like, it would analyze every notion based on mathematics or some other objective and detached standards. A scientific/philosophical mindset should, it seems to me, pursue knowledge for the sake of knowing in and of itself. Since intelligibility, or the intellect, is the main ability that separates humans, or rational animals in general, from other "lower" creatures, efficient thinking should be the main focus of development. Science, i.e. what is most likely the state of affairs, may provide knowledge of the activities that help to improve thinking. Philosophy, i.e. the attempt to know everything, pushes the limits of knowledge by showing its limits. But for most individuals knowledge is a means for obtaining some item for the id, ego, overego, or superego. Whereas I would accept such limits for my own self, it seems immoral to attempt to force others to maintain my mindset, because: 1. others may not be able to run on the exact same logic as me, and 2. forcing a mind into a certain form is psychologically painful. The transformation from a benign personality of a mere observer to the philosophical/scientific personality of an active knower is perhaps painful in of itself.
Once constituted, the id as a practical and actual entity takes on various forms in its biosphere. As an id, i am most aware of and connected to my own id, and i assume other ids are mostly aware of their own ids. The entity one calls "me" or "I," i would consider to be the ego. The ego maybe a more difficult entity to define because it consist of indirect physical objects, nonphysical objects, or mental objects; for one's experiences of one's self is not on display in the same way as one's physical structure, i.e. the id, is. The form of the ego is perceived through time as what the ego thinks, believes, and does in the present and the past. However, there are mental objects that one may not consider as one's own, and mental objects which maybe hidden from the ego.
Social, or harmonious id, behavior i'll call the overego. The overego is controlled by dominate ideas called the superego. The superego is instinct for most animals. For humans, the overego is whatever motion the masses are making. Confusion or disagreement on the superego in groups of individuals produce groups of overegos. Though one may admire the swarm creatures' unity, one may despise its mindless assimilation, i.e. complete control or negation of the ego. The superego, which is one's fundamental knowledge, is different for many egos; and made so simply by a change in where the id was initially generated, what cared for the id till maturity, how the ego developed, and other factors based in time.
A human's own subsistence depends on other humans for a time after birth, this forces human relation and interaction. And since we must imitate others before we gain the ability to invent our own objects/ideas, we also acquire a frame of reference in which we aren't the source. One persisting mental problem is the collective vs. the individual needs. If the ego perceives the collective as the most valuable, it will internalize the culture it is engrossed in. If it values the individual more, it will internalize the ethics implied in its self made philosophy.
One may need to supplement the personality given by the culture with a philosophical/scientific personality, though such may contradict at times. The ultimate rational being would perhaps be computer-like, it would analyze every notion based on mathematics or some other objective and detached standards. A scientific/philosophical mindset should, it seems to me, pursue knowledge for the sake of knowing in and of itself. Since intelligibility, or the intellect, is the main ability that separates humans, or rational animals in general, from other "lower" creatures, efficient thinking should be the main focus of development. Science, i.e. what is most likely the state of affairs, may provide knowledge of the activities that help to improve thinking. Philosophy, i.e. the attempt to know everything, pushes the limits of knowledge by showing its limits. But for most individuals knowledge is a means for obtaining some item for the id, ego, overego, or superego. Whereas I would accept such limits for my own self, it seems immoral to attempt to force others to maintain my mindset, because: 1. others may not be able to run on the exact same logic as me, and 2. forcing a mind into a certain form is psychologically painful. The transformation from a benign personality of a mere observer to the philosophical/scientific personality of an active knower is perhaps painful in of itself.
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