Recent Comments

There are a couple of comments on other posts this week that I didn't want to see get lost in the shuffle.

In case you missed them, I recommend you check-out:

Rob's comment regarding the persistence of stories as cultural echoes.

Marc's comment pointing to a recent article on the religious justification for genocide/infanticide.

Thanks to all of those that have posted recently!

Meeting notes

The meeting notes taken by Jonathan Forrester and transcribed by Seanchan Owen.

Seanchan apologizes for the technical kerfuffle and hopes to have the problem fixed soon.

12:35
technical problems, now meeting.

Obama/Osama - Christianity

John T... How we deceive ourselves.
What are the differences between subconscious/unconscious.
There must be something else
rationalize circumstances/fax/perceptions

Rob… Cognitive dissonance:
convince ourselves to things other than the facts
there is an awareness that is not consistently recognized
“the other” in the process of interpretation

Mark… The legacy question:
DNA
you become compost
deeds - the effect you have on the world
what you do/do not do
the result of your actions regardless of your consciousness
considered Chaos theory
the mere fact of your existence is the impact

Rob… Stories exist
cultural reduplication is more interesting than the singularity

Malcolm… “To live in the hearts we love is not to be dead” Campbell

Mark's final point
maybe your nonexistence has as much impact as existence
“choice doesn't matter”

John T… Some effects have better or worse impacts
based on values
outside of the realm of values, nothing matters

Mark… Time is relative
matter is a form of energy

1:05 adjourned

What if memory is our conscious existence?

Rob has been given the credit for saying something like “Memory is proof that the conscious exists” in our last meeting.

John Palme goes on say something like, “Memory is synonymous with consciousness. If you had no memory, do you lose consciousness? The feeling of having the memory is the feeling of consciousness.”

I would like to follow these thought a little bit.

What if memory is our conscious existence?

Let me put forward this scenario.

1. Stimula come in through one of our senses.

2. The brain matches the stimula up with a stabilized symbolic image.

3. This strengthens the stabilized symbol and increases a consistency to existence.

4. It is the consistency to symbolic existence that is consciousness.

What do you think of them apples?

Notes from meeting of April 26, 2011

This posting are the notes taken by Jonathan Foerster on April 26 of the individuals philosophy club.

The meeting opened with a subject brought up by Seanchan Owen. It was pasted on the whiteboard and went like this.

Network of interrelated sensual symbols

Intelligence is based upon

sensual symbolic stimulation of the brain,

either internally or externally,

which causes the brain to produce,

from it's trained vocabulary,

more personally recognizable symbols

with varying relationships to the subject at hand

which in turn,

causes more relationships within the brain.

The following outline of the discussion as produced by Jonathan Foerster follows.

S… There is no such thing as the unconscious mind.

We have direct contact with the brain.

John T… What would that change?

Rob… Mind is a lot of interacting parts.

Rob… Memory is proof that the conscious exists

John P… Memory is synonymous with consciousness

if you had no memory do you lose consciousness?

The feeling of having the memory is the feeling of consciousness.

S… Memory is a cascade that comes about by stimulus.

It is a trust exercise, like falling.

Rob… Does this relate to the stream of consciousness and maybe consciousness is a selective memory (arranging thereof)

John P… Consciousness as inner voice

or inner conversation.

A byproduct of memory

Rob… Gerald Ettleman Distinguied

higher order consciousness

primary consciousness

Rob… Animal behaviorists

Association versus memory

S… Is memory Association

Bryce… In a seizure; you have no access to memory even if you feel the presence of it.

S… Is the world perceptual or conceptual

John T… It is both

Rob… There is a continuum:

Association–rich memory

S… The animal response to stimulus.

The larger your vocabulary, the smarter you are.

Bryce… Outside speaking to the inside

or arbitrary assemblage

Primitives: more complexity, more primitives

more interaction; more relenstruotion

Rob… People who have a lot of tools know how to use them.

S… Words are sociological symbology.

“My car” is both standardized, portable which is different than the internal conception of it.

Rob… Internal representation; Wittgenstein

John Tate… We have been talking as if there is only one set of systems; two people with different systems might have comparative advantages.

Mark… What is significant to understanding the world.

S… “We are all solipsists.”–Wittgenstein (according to Shanahan)

Bryce… If you were to imagine a density of connections or nodes.

Rob… It communicates well enough.

Bryce… Communication is sufficient if it alters the recipient in the appropriate way.

S… On increase in social vocabulary:

does it make you more intelligent, or does it modify your inner vocabulary

John T… Your inner vocabulary is dependent on the social vocabulary.

Mark… There are different types of intelligence

it's one thing to know fax; it's another thing to know the meaning and the relationship between facts

S… Social vocabulary: what I communicate

internal vocabulary: metaphors/symbols which I may not be able to convert to social vocabulary

we received on unlimited amount of data, internally, but we cannot convey all of it through social vocabulary.

John T… Memory is reconstructed from parts.

No one is working with photographic imagery from memory.

Bryce… a dynctoctic; never get perfect; but you can get close enough.

Earl… We spend a lot of time talking about psychology.

Memory is deeply flawed; it is untrustworthy.

S… When we think internally, do we think with words or images?

John T... we can manipulate symbols without language.

Rob… Goodall's chimps: stripped branches; feed on and that's.

This is a trained behavior.

Decision-making is largely influenced by sense data.

Bryce… Trial and error; you come to understand when the ball has left your hand

S… By stabilizing your internal vocabulary

standardization of internal symbols to ourselves.

Thus improving our intelligence?

John T… inteat and decisions

(If few things were missed at this point because of a call from Malcolm)

Mark… Doing something–understanding through trial and error

communicating–learning from others

mind works digitally: memory is analog

mind–Contreras–fast response quickly

Rob… Body is analog; mind Language Digitally; catalogued.

John T… It's all analog

meaning is variant and changing

Bryce… Fractal dimensions: you're only specifying detail, not length.

John T… You can convey information without saying something.

James Joyce: much of what he's trying to convey is often what is not written.

S… Meaning and definition could be described by what they exclude.

You can improve your own internal vocabulary.

Rob… Feedback between internal and social vocabulary.

Languages utility is in its ability to transfer meaning.

S… How does one go about improving one's internal vocabulary?

Rob… Personal growth and development.

One is scaffolding for the other.

past To live in hearts we love....

Apropos of Seanchan's discussion, I would add from the Scottish Enlightenment, works of a fellow named Campbell--

"To live in hearts we love is not to die."

I have passed this on to several friends in recent years and they seemed to find it quite helpful.

This process of transforming archaic metaphors and revised historical narratives, seems to me very important. This week with Passover and Easter is a good illustration. I know that I found this past Christmas very trying. A couple of services left me in the same state as a confusing movie, like the one Marcella and I walked out on last week at the Tiburon International Film Festival. Had to drink a can of ginger ale to recover.

We are going to a Seder tonight. I thought I would raise the same question I raised last week about the Global Jewish Community support of settlements in Palestine. Mark's comment about the implications once there is a Palestinian state was very helpful. I enjoyed the Jewish Community Center twice this week--a real first.

The momentum of our March>April dialogue has meant a great deal to me, since Seanchan kicked it off with the session on imagination. Last week's session bubbled in my imagination all week. I thought Rob's combining historical reflection with our personal efforts was particularly useful.

Look forward to today.

--Malcolm

Eternal Life

This post is placed by Seanchan for Marc Krizack -

Can you be a materialist (or at least a skeptic who requires that there be scientifically verifiable information) and still believe in "eternal life" or "life after death"?" Well, certainly if you define life after death in a materialist way.

We know that if you have children, your DNA, or at least half of your DNA randomly mixed with the other biological parent's DNA, is passed on, and as long as each succeeding generation has at least one offspring, then parts of your DNA will continue on forever. In that sense one can sense that there is life after death. And certainly, the minerals and elements of your body return to the earth or become smoke and ashes ready to be recycled at the first opportunity.

Now, if you raise your children well and they do good things, or if you raise them badly and they do bad things, then it can be said that you live on after death in what your children do. And of course, this can also be said of what you do in your own life.

Chaos Theory says that a butterfly can flap its wings in the Amazon jungle and it can cause a hurricane a half a world away. Assuming in general that every act you do in the world has a direct effect, and that that direct effect then has further effects that ripple out, one can say that anything you do in life causes changes that make the world irrevocably different than it was before you did the act, even if it may be difficult to measure the differences.

Now, can we say that what you DON'T do has effects that live on forever? Suppose you have the ability to push the button and start a nuclear war. Suppose that it's the Cuban Missile Crisis and pushing the button is a legitimate, even if horrifying, option. If you choose NOT to push the button, it can be fairly said that that decision has ramifications, like the continued existence of mankind, that last on into the indefinite future.

Now, suppose you DON'T do something, not because you consciously choose not to do it, but simply that you don't do it. In fact, every time we do something, we are also not doing everything else. So, does it matter whether there is a consciousness or a motive behind our choosing NOT to act if NOT ACTING has an effect on the world?

Let's choose another example. A very self-aware guy gets picked on by another macho guy who wants to "take away" the first guy's woman. The first guy, being smart, knows that no good can result from a fight. So, he humors the other guy, builds up his ego, buys him a beer and calms him down. No fight ensues and therefore no consequences from that fight. However, there are consequences that result from not fighting. A second guy, totally unaware, kind of a nerdy guy who is totally out of it when it comes to interpersonal relationships, is talking to this girl (probably about computers) when the macho guy comes over to him in a threatening manner in order to "take away" the nerd's "girlfriend." The nerd, being totally out of it, doesn't recognize this as a threat, both because he is so out of it socially and because the girl isn't even his girlfriend. He responds in the exact same way as the first guy, and no fight ensures. Is there any difference? Can we say then that both action and inaction have effects in the real world, which effects have their own subsequent effects that ripple out into infinity? And if this is so, then can't we say that by the mere fact of our existence, everything we DON'T DO, as much as everything we DO DO, has effects that continue on into eternity? So, once we are born, do we not continue to live on forever whether we are kings and conquerors or couch potatoes?

symbolic foundation of our conscious mind

I have been discussing, with a few of my friends here in visalia, the idea of symbol and the “real world” that we live in. One might call it the symbolic foundation of our conscious mind. This is how I see it at this point.

First there is undefined spectrum of energy/matter.

When there is a life form that has evolved with the ability to recall images and a desire to convey these personal images to others, these life forms isolates a part of the undefined spectrum of energy/matter and attaches a social symbol to that selection. Since there are an infinite number of selections that can be isolated, the selections of these symbols are drived by the needs of that life form.

If all life forms become extinct, all distinctions of the spectrum of energy/matter will cease to be.

Let me give an example of a random life form. Humanity comes along and has a limited ability to perceive (energy/matter) light waves. Right there, we have an artificial limiting of the undefined spectrum of energy/matter.

(Let me insert here that the ability to recall personal images is a trained behavior and that if a human child is not trained the difference between X and Y, it (the child) will not have the ability to recall the personal images of X and Y even though it will have a stimuli repose to the difference between X and Y. We can pick this idea up in another post.)

So, one of the humans realizes that every time it (the human) eats a certain kind of flower it (the flower) makes it (the human) sick. It (the human) notices that color (light waves) being admitted by this flower is different then the color (light waves) being admitted by the other flowers and so the human creates a sound symbol “blue” which it (the human) connects to the visual stimuli of the flower. It (the human) has a hard time getting the other humans to make the connection between the stimuli and the sound symbol, but eventually every one goes around not eating the blue flowers. The section of the spectrum of light would never have been isolated into “blue” if there had not been a need for that distinction.

I am going to take a chance here and say that all energy/matter is a spectrums. That life forms are a spectrum of the combination of matter and energy. Humanity is within the same spectrum as amoebas, volcanic gases and lighting, mud, gold and any other isolated part of the energy/matter spectrum that you wish to make.

A “chair” is only one shape in the spectrum of shapes that can given an artificial boundary. There is no natural isolation of any section of any spectrum other then that which is artificially applied by a symbolic being. The distinction is artificially placed upon the spectrum by a being in the development of a symbolic language.

Notes from March 29th Meeting

12:00-12:25

After a brief discussion about inviting other people to the discussion, we did some trouble shooting for folks trying to access the system.

Gallery 1044, 1044 Larkin Opening Saturday at 7:00pm.

12:40

Seanchan will sort out the forum by Friday so that we have the weekend to get what we need together for next meeting.

12:45

A question was posed what philosophy you needed in the face of hopelessness.

We investigated the nature of hope, it's positive effects on us, and whether we can live without it.

1:05 - Adjourned

Our First Week Blogging - Stats

I thought you might find it interesting to see our traffic for the first week of blogging.

I hope that this increases, and I hope to see more contributors.  I have a few pieces in draft form that I plan to post next week, so keep checking back.

I have found this really rewarding (even if I have mostly been commenting on Seanchan's wacky ideas)!

How does one protect themselves from slipping from developing a theory into reinforcing a belief.

Since we have agreement on the definition of ‘belief’ and ‘theory,’ let us start a new related subject. How does one protect themselfs from slipping from developing a theory into reinforcing a belief.

Now that we know that when someone says that they ‘believe’ that X is ‘true,’ that there is no reason to use the empirical method in discussing their ‘believes.’ It would be unfair to both parties. By saying that one ‘believe’ that X is true, one is saying that they have no empirical data which can be evaluated for X. They do have feelings about X or they accept X or have faith in X or the hold the opinion that X is ‘true,’ but they have no data that can be compared with the other person. All opposing ‘beliefs’ have an equal probability of being ‘true’ or ‘false’ because they have nothing to compare between the beliefs. Believing something does not make it ‘true’ or ‘false,’ but it does mean that there is no belief has any more probability than any other belief.

If someone says that they ‘theorize’ that something is true, it opens up the possibility of mutual exploration into the idea with the use of the empirical/scientific method. By saying that they have a ‘theory’ they imply that they have premises and/or a framework which can be explored using empirical tools. Opposing ‘theories’ will have different levels of probability based on the empirical/scientific method. Theorizing something does not make it ‘true’ or ‘false,’ but it does mean that the data can show that one theory can be more probable then any other theories.

So, the question of this post is, how does one protect them selfs from slipping from developing a theory to merely reinforcing a belief when one uses the empirical/scientific method.

Let me again use the built in macintosh dictionary:

-------------------
Empirical method
Empirical method is generally taken to mean the collection of data on which to base a theory or derive a conclusion in science. It is part of the scientific method, but is often mistakenly assumed to be synonymous with the experimental method.
-------------------------
empirical
based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.
-----------------------------
scientific method
a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
------------------------------

One way one can protect them selfs from slipping from developing a theory to reinforcing a belief is to have empirical/scientific discussions where one explore the probability of empirical/scientific data and to continually get more data.

If one uses the empirical data that one has acquired up to the time of evaluation, one can propose that X is more probable then Y.

But now, let us talk about the gorila that is in the room. ‘Certainty.’

---------------------------
certainty
firm conviction that something is the case
---------------------------

the quest for certainty leads one to the “logical problems with induction” presented by David Hume, Karl Popper and others. Hume wrote: “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.”

In an infinit univers there is an infinit amount of data and the very last bit of data at the very end of infinity might be a ‘black swan’ which could disprove all previous observations. With this in mind, one must admit that there will be no certainty until all the data in the univers has been acquired.

But is knowledge an “on” or “off’ switch? Is empirical/scientific theory/knowledge an all or nothing deal? When they discovered that there were black swans it disproved the statement that ”all swans are white,” but it didn’t disprove that there are white swans. And even though humanity may find data that there are no “white swans,” the probability is very small.

A posible illustration of the rheostat of understanding could be ignorance, belief, hypothesis, theory, certainty and I would put forward that the farther one moves along this line of understanding, the more functionally one can interact with the world. (This maybe the start of another post.)

And so, in conclusion, I would like to say that even though empirical/scientific knowledge is not a certainty it is more functional then any method that we know of at this time and by continually reexamining our data we can keep ourselves from slipping from developing a theory into reinforcing a belief.

Proposed Agenda for March 29

I thought it might be a good idea to plan out a bit of the agenda, post feedback in the comments!:

12-12:15 - Getting People Connected

• help folks get online
• a little pre-meeting social chatting

12:15-12:25 - The Blog

• Make sure everyone can log in, knows how to access the blog.

12:25-1:00 - The Regularly Scheduled Program

The need of saying, "I theorize" instead of "I believe."

I, Seanchan Owen, put forward that an idea which has premises or a framework is a theory and it is different then a belief.

Let us take the example of 'Santa Claus.’ If one has the premises that the time it would take to get into all the house in the world in one night would be impossible, the aerodynamic and power of reindeers makes them unable to fly, and the amount of presents that would be need for all the children in the world would not fitted into Santa’s sled, and the definition of Santa Clause is someone who can get these things to happen, then one can theorizes that there is no one who can do these tasks and there fore there is no Santa Clause. It would be correct to say, “I theorize that there is no Santa Claus,” and incorrect to say, “I believe that there is no Santa Claus.”

Let’s us take a quick look at the dictionary that is built into this macintosh and see what it puts forward as the meaning of these two words. (we can look at other dictionaries as the post continues, if you wish, but I put forward that this could be looked at as general usage.)

----------------------

theorize |ˈθēəˌrīz; ˈθi(ə)rˌīz|

verb [ intrans. ]

form a theory or set of theories about something : [as n. ] ( theorizing) they are more interested in obtaining results than in political theorizing.

• [ trans. ] create a theoretical premise or framework for (something) : women should be doing feminism rather than theorizing it.

-----------------------

and

-----------------------

believe |biˈlēv|

verb [ trans. ]

1 accept (something) as true; feel sure of the truth of : the superintendent believed Lancaster's story | [with clause ] Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

• accept the statement of (someone) as true : he didn't believe her or didn't want to know.

• [ intrans. ] have faith, esp. religious faith : there are those on the fringes of the Church who do not really believe.

• ( believe something of someone) feel sure that (someone) is capable of a particular action : I wouldn't have believed it of Lois—what an extraordinary woman!

2 [with clause ] hold (something) as an opinion; think or suppose : I believe we've already met | things were not as bad as the experts believed | humu-humu are, I believe, shrimp fritters | ( believe someone/something to be) four men were believed to be trapped.

--------------------

We see here that ‘theorize’ has premises or frameworks and ‘believe’ is structured on feelings or acceptance or faith or the holding of an opinion.

There is no way to calculate which belief has a higher probability of being correct if there is nothing to compare but the 'belief' of the participants. Two people, each with a different belief system, will not be able to prove that the other is incorrect in their bilief by using bilief alown. There is no way to compare a belief with a theory to see which has a higher probability because there is no way to compare something which is structured on feelings or acceptance or faith or what opinion one holds with perceivable premises which are testable. One can only reach an understanding by comparing theories as to which has a higher probability of being correct by comparing the premises or the framework of the two theories.

It is posible to philosophically discuss God if all parties have theories with premises or frameworks in relation to what they are discussing.

And so I put forward that “the best philosophers” need to use the words ‘theory’ and ‘belief’ correctly. It will be hard to change our habit, but if we don’t do it, who will?

Notes From March 22, 2011 Meeting

12:19 - Meeting Called to Order
We briefly discussed the need for civic engagement in a modern context.

1. Immediacy
2. WikiLeaks

Democratization of the Internet

We decided to create this blog.  Hello, world!

12:52 - Meeting Adjourned.