Existence as the referent of true statements...

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Existence as the referent of true statements...

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James Burns...

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 5:24 pm

Guest

James Burns wrote:

[quote]Today, we are not very far away from living cells
constructed in a laboratory -- months. (I had a news
reference and perhaps I'll find it again later.)
I am reminded of a recent comment of yours about,
if an artificial duck walked like a duck and quacked
like a duck -- then it would still be an /artificial/
duck. But what if the duck ate and metabolized as well?
What if it pecked its way out of a small ovoid of
calcium carbonate, ate and grew and, eventually,
stopped "working"? What if it successfully interbred
with "real" ducks? The point is, no matter what
objections you have, concrete objections, I mean,
not just declaring the "duck" not to be a duck,
I can suppose a better "duck" that avoids that
objection. Isn't there some point at which
walking and quacking and /everything else/ adds
up to a duck, a /real/ duck (whatever that may mean)?
[/quote]
Here's a place to start for "constructing artificial
cells within months".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1208047/Life-order-Man-organisms-months-say-biologists.html?ITO=1490
: Artificial life will be created 'within months'
: as genome experts claim vital breakthrough

: Scientists are only months away from creating artificial
: life, it was claimed yesterday.
:
: Dr Craig Venter – one of the world’s most famous and
: controversial biologists – said his U.S. researchers
: have overcome one of the last big hurdles to making a
: synthetic organism.
:
: The first artificial lifeform is likely to be a simple
: man-made bacterium that proves that the technology can work.
:
: But it will be followed by more complex bacteria that
: turn coal into cleaner natural gas, or algae that can
: soak up carbon dioxide and convert it into fuels.
:
: They could also be used to create new vaccines and
: antibiotics.
[...]

On a separate point, you argued that computers playing chess
or checkers were "just" making probabilitic calculations
or whatever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI#Evaluating_progress

I hadn't known this, but apparently computers play
checkers optimally and chess better than most humans
and are quite close to playing better than any human.

You are free to label machine-played chess "not really
chess", just as you are free to label conversation
with a machine "not really conversation" or thoughts
be a machine "not really thoughts".

But, what if we got /better/ chess, /better/ conversation,
/better/ thoughts from machines? (Put scare quotes in
there if you feel you have to. I doesn't change my
question.) /You/ may choose to call that "not real",
but I don't think you will get many takers on your
philosophy.

Jim Burns

mrdilligent...

Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 4:11 am

Guest

Date: Sat, Oct 24 2009 4:32 pm
From: Jim Burns

<<(I am a little confused by your use of "restrictive" above.
When I used it in my previous post, I meant that the circumstances
under which you would judge something to exist are narrower,
fewer -- more restricted, if you please -- than the circumstances
I would judge something to exist. Surely, you don't disagree
with that?)>>

I apologize for not responding to this reply of last Sat in a more
timely fashion.

But frankly, apart from the above, I do not understand the rest of
your post. I was---aparently mistakenly---under the impression that
we were engaged in a serious discussion, and not in trivial games of
word-play or other silliness. I fail to see how renaming words
currently in use with made-up words, or even with other words that can
be found in any standard dictionary, has to do with anything. You
are trying to raise the ol' "semantics" quibble, which in serious use
applies validly, but here does not apply at all.

As to the above, I agree that certain words (more and more, it seems)
should be used restrictively; i.e., restricted to certain contexts.
I believe I almost graphically demonstrated the---"my"--- restrictive
use of _exist_ in various posts, including the one in which I
indicated that fictional characters and events do not and never did
exist, at least in any serious sense, and that the content of
hallucinations do not exist even though hallucinations themselves do.
Isn't that the definition of a hallucination: a person experiences as
if real that which does not exist.

Judging from the enormous bandwith you took up to explain with two
made-up words (I suppose you now think those words exist) the
semantics issue, I gather that you do not agree, and that is fine with
me; I said earlier that agreement is not the goal of discussion.

But neither is making up nonsense syllables to make the simple point
that you disagree with my semanitcs. (Most of the world restricts
_exist_to the way I have demonstrated and articulated it.).

I am certain that you can do better than this.

A plant cannot grow without its roots; in fact, if severed from its
root system, a plant cannot even live, let alone grow. For man, these
roots are history, which must be uninerrupted and continuitous. Of
course, the events, circumstances, people of the past HAPPENED, and
are irrevocable, so we are talking about man's MEMORY of them, which
must go back at least as far as "Lucy," and it doesn't hurt to have a
memory all the way back to when the earth came to be. These events,
etc., of the past no longer exist in "real time," as we say, but they
do---should---exist in memory (as personally understood history), and
while these remembered events, etc., only exist in metaphysical
reality, this metaphysical reality of the remembered past DOES EXIST.
No, they are not the same as fictional characters/events, or little
green men or gargoyles, which do NOT exist (in the restricted sense I
have used), because this history really happened.

A single human being's manifest memory is not all that important;
even a plant can do without every root filiment, but the collective
memory of man is very importat. When the "tap root" of this memory is
severed from collective man, he is as a flower cut from the plant
which grew it; it will bloom brilliantly and beautifully for a short
while, but then it will will wilt, fade, wither, and then die as dead
as a doornail.

It seems that contemporary man has totallly severed himself from the
very root system that has grown him this far---including his
linguistic roots; It is hardly a wonder that "nobody can think good"
these days.

James Burns...

Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 3:07 pm

Guest

mrdilligent wrote:
[quote]Date: Sat, Oct 24 2009 4:32 pm
From: Jim Burns

(I am a little confused by your use of "restrictive" above.
When I used it in my previous post, I meant that the circumstances
under which you would judge something to exist are narrower,
fewer -- more restricted, if you please -- than the circumstances
I would judge something to exist. Surely, you don't disagree
with that?)

I apologize for not responding to this reply of last Sat in a more
timely fashion.

But frankly, apart from the above, I do not understand the rest of
your post. I was---aparently mistakenly---under the impression that
we were engaged in a serious discussion, and not in trivial games of
word-play or other silliness. I fail to see how renaming words
currently in use with made-up words, or even with other words that can
be found in any standard dictionary, has to do with anything. You
are trying to raise the ol' "semantics" quibble, which in serious use
applies validly, but here does not apply at all.
[/quote]
For something like eight response of mine, spread over most of a week,
I failed in getting your attention to the fact (a very simple,
uncontroversial fact) that you and I are using "exist" differently.
That post was a desperate attempt to force you to notice that
there were two competing usages, yours and mine, that needed to
be compared.

I have spent the last couple of days thinking that I had succeeded
with that post, because you changed the style of your presentation
right after it. I see now that you had not even read that post
when you changed your style and, now that you have, you still
do not understand my point.

[quote]As to the above, I agree that certain words (more and more, it seems)
should be used restrictively; i.e., restricted to certain contexts.
I believe I almost graphically demonstrated the---"my"--- restrictive
use of _exist_ in various posts, including the one in which I
indicated that fictional characters and events do not and never did
exist, at least in any serious sense, and that the content of
hallucinations do not exist even though hallucinations themselves do.
Isn't that the definition of a hallucination: a person experiences as
if real that which does not exist.
[/quote]
Now that you have decided (in an earlier post) that circles
/do/ exist, just that they do not exist in "cosmoterrestrial
reality" (your made-up word, isn't it?), I find that there
is very little difference in how we use "exist" any more.

An example is your insertion of "at least in any serious sense"
in your sentence just above discussing fictional characters
and events. Setting to one side the judgment implied by your
use of "serious", what you implied is all that I wanted to say:
there is a sense (serious or not) in which Sherlock Holmes
exists /within/ his stories. In that sense, Sherlock had a
mother. In the sense that refers to physical reality (your
"cosmoterrestrial reality", I have been assuming), Sherlock
does not have a mother for the same reason the third eye in
the middle of my forehead is not blue: neither of them exist.

[quote]Judging from the enormous bandwith you took up to explain with two
made-up words (I suppose you now think those words exist) the
semantics issue, I gather that you do not agree, and that is fine with
me; I said earlier that agreement is not the goal of discussion.

But neither is making up nonsense syllables to make the simple point
that you disagree with my semanitcs.
[/quote]
And yet, even now you have not addressed the differences in our
semantics. What are the options I have left? Give up and
go away?

[quote](Most of the world restricts
_exist_to the way I have demonstrated and articulated it.).
[/quote]
I thought I knew how you actually use "exist", but it
is no longer clear to me that I do. You claimed certain
uses are forbidden (or words to that effect) and then
you went ahead and used the word those ways anyhow.

My best evidence is the change in your use of "circle".
You were very definite that circles do not exist. You
went on at some length about that. Several days later,
it turns out that what you meant by your long screed
bewailing the mistaken notion that circles exist --
is that circles do not exist physically but they
do exist in some other fashion. If we ignore the
labels for these kinds of existence as unimportant,
we will be hard-pressed to find /anyone/ who disagrees
with your "startling result."

Also, you had no trouble answering my questions about
Sherlock Holmes' mother and the fifth leg of unicorns
-- answering the questions /as though those beings
existed/. This all that "existing within the story"
means.

What do I mean when I use "exist" /my/ way?

My own experience of the use of "exist" has been
very much within mathematical and logical arguments.
Here, a claim of existence or non-existence is tied
to the particular context within which it is made.
If I claim that a number x such that x^2 = 2
/does not exist/, then it matters very much whether
I am talking about rational numbers or real numbers.
Anyone trying to argue that some mathematical
object /exists/ independently of its context would
have trouble getting themselves /understood/, much
less winning their argument.

I suspect that the use of "exist" outside mathematical
and logical circles has been borrowed from its use
within those circles. It is much more natural to use
"at home" in a math or logic discussion. In normal,
every day speech, it feels much more natural to hear
"Sherlock Homes had a mother." than "The mother of
Sherlock Holmes existed."

You /claim/ that most of the world restricts _exist_
to the way you have demonstrated and articulated it.
It would be nice if you did more than make claims,
if you actually argued for a position of yours.

Against your position, I argue that
-- I do not use "exist" the way you prescribe, and I
never have.
-- You do not use it that way, either.
-- It is /impossible/ to use it that way in mathematics
and logic.
-- Mathematics and logic are a plausible origin for
the use of "exist" in the broader community -- and
so, its use there is a a plausible model for its
use here.

[quote]I am certain that you can do better than this.
[/quote]
I am no longer as amused by your tone of superiority as I once
was, what it only a week or so ago? I would greatly appreciate
it if you would dial it back a couple of notches.

Thanks in advance.

[quote]A plant cannot grow without its roots; in fact, if severed from its
root system, a plant cannot even live, let alone grow. For man, these
roots are history, which must be uninerrupted and continuitous. Of
course, the events, circumstances, people of the past HAPPENED, and
are irrevocable, so we are talking about man's MEMORY of them, which
must go back at least as far as "Lucy," and it doesn't hurt to have a
memory all the way back to when the earth came to be. These events,
etc., of the past no longer exist in "real time," as we say, but they
do---should---exist in memory (as personally understood history), and
while these remembered events, etc., only exist in metaphysical
reality, this metaphysical reality of the remembered past DOES EXIST.
No, they are not the same as fictional characters/events, or little
green men or gargoyles, which do NOT exist (in the restricted sense I
have used), because this history really happened.

A single human being's manifest memory is not all that important;
even a plant can do without every root filiment, but the collective
memory of man is very importat. When the "tap root" of this memory is
severed from collective man, he is as a flower cut from the plant
which grew it; it will bloom brilliantly and beautifully for a short
while, but then it will will wilt, fade, wither, and then die as dead
as a doornail.

It seems that contemporary man has totallly severed himself from the
very root system that has grown him this far---including his
linguistic roots; It is hardly a wonder that "nobody can think good"
these days.
[/quote]
It is ironic that you include a reference to "Lucy" in
your lament for our lost collective memory. "Lucy"
is a part of our collective memory that /was/ lost
and now is found -- which highlights the fact that
our collective memory (as I understand you to use
the term) is growing larger, not smaller. Our collective
memory (that is, our relatively firm scientific
understanding) extends well past the origin of the Earth
to within a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang.
Not that the job is complete; there is a lot more
growing for our collective memory to do.

I must assume that by "contemporary man has totally
severed himself from [...] his linguistic roots" you mean:
language has changed. If you can spare a minute
to review the history you worry about others not remembering,
you will notice that the nature of language is change.
Even in eras with stable politics and technology, language
changes, seemingly just for the hell of it. Bring in
wars, migrations, immigrations, emigrations, new technology,
new contacts with other cultures, and language will adapt
swiftly to the new circumstances.

The new circumstances that seem to concern you the most
are the new technologies that mimic humans -- or, at least,
mimic humans as we once understood them. I am not so
concerned, for two reasons: (1) humans are better than you
think (apparently) at distinguishing between shallowly
human-like behavior (such as by ELIZA or PARRY) and deeply
human-like behavior (such as by a real human or some
hypothetical truly AI entity), and (2), if we ever do
have truly AI entities, I find the human/AI difference
to be unimportant /on moral grounds/. Simply put, I
would not want to live in a slave-holding society,
even if the slaves were built.

Have you ever talked to ELIZA?
http://www.wedesoft.demon.co.uk/eliza/
While it can be very amusing at first, no one who spends
more than a couple of minutes talking to her will
mistake her for human -- no one /today/ that is. Before
chatterbots like ELIZA existed, it was reasonable to
suppose that any entity interacting at that high a
level had to be a human (although a very odd human).
It was reasonable because the only choices were human,
animal, or inanimate. If X asked you "How do
you feel about your mother?", you were pretty much
forced to assume X was human. Today, machines are
much subtler; on the other hand, so are humans.

I recommend you look around at your fellow contemporary
humans, the ones you think "can't think good". They're
not so dumb as all that.

Jim Burns

mrdilligent...

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:53 am

Guest

To James Burns:

My last post (10/29) was to be my last in this thread. It is plain
that we shall never agree---but that is not my problem.

You have raised some important/interesting questions, and, recently,
have made some interesting points, but my main problem with your posts
is that you seem not to have THOUGHT these diverse issues through. If
you WOULD think through these issues, and would come up with some REAL
facts that basically controvert what I say, believe me, no one would
be more delighted than I would. I do not read and reply to posts to
sound off (as it seems some here do), but to try to draw out some real
contention. That is what I learn from.

I said a while back that our differennces stem from entirely different
mind sets. I was raised in the 20th; and made it my personal business
to go all the way back tto the Azoic, and to move upwards from there.
Of course I do not remember every conclusion (working hypothesis) I
came to, but each has fed into the others so that I have a very good
"tap root" of our human---and all things terrestrial---history.

School has played a very little part in this; I was Ph.Ded before I
turned my mind "backwards" and began to really think (and therefore,
to really learn). Today, kids come into living-organism existence
with a perfectly good innate cognitive faculty, but are quickly led to
memorizing from verbal material. Our ed. system assumes, wrongly,
that this memorization is necessary to learning. In point of natural
fact, it works exacly the other way around: Humans, and all critters,
learn from experience and automatically "memorize" from this what is
important to them. To memorize from verbal material (and pix,
diagrams, etc.) is to stultify the budding cog fac, and to make all
"learning" purely intellectual, so that they CAN'T think---or truly
learn. Just think of all the years worth of "subjectmatter" you
"studied" soas to pass the next test---and then promply forgot it.

And just think of the largely unnoticed other evidence; for example,
that work study programs really teach, because of the working
EXPERIENCE, but the ed. system insisted that these students spend the
rest of their time in classwork. If this classwork has any value at
all, it is because the students can relate it to their personal
experience at work, not their work program to what they memorized in
class.

I could go on and on, but this tidbit will have to do.

I do not know you, of course, but I infer from your mental set that
you grew up similarly.

Children need to grow up developing their natural cognitive faculties,
and learning basic skills (reading, 'riting, "rithmetic, and I would
add two more Rs: reasearch (lab and lib) and rumination (thinking).
Then starting in their teens, they can focus on words and other
artificial symbols, because by that time they will have the cognitive
wherewithall to learn from them. Think of it this way: The appendix
is an extension of the intestines. I have always known this, but NOW
they are finding out that the appendix is not just a vestige, after
all. Suppose we cut off instead of the appendix, the intestines
themselves, and left all excreting to the appendix? Well, it is much
the same with cognition and intellect. Intellect is a MARVELOUS
extension of natural cognition---but without a well-developed
cognitive faculty, the intellect is worse than worthless.

I continue to use the referential MEANINGS of words, because the MLA
did not go off the referential standard until mid-20th, and the
culture did not pick it up until beginning in the late '60s. But I was
among those "intellectuals" who complained bitterly at Merriam-
Webster's 3rd ed. This no doubt accounts for much of your "semantic
quibbles."

Against this brief background, I will next probe your post of 10/27.

mrdilligent...

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:59 am

Guest

Date: Tues, Oct 27 2009 5:36 pm
From: James Burns

[...]

<<Let us consider, then, the differences between Natural
and Artificial.

<<I find this to be a very porous boundary. As our knowledge
advances, things that once were "natural" -- /because/
they were mysterious to us, and so had to be accepted
whole or not at all -- slide over the line into ...
maybe not artificial exactly, but technological.>>

I have no doubt at all that your do find a gossamer boundary. But it
exists solid as concrete whether you realize it or not.

_Natural_ and _mysterious_ ar not synonyms. To the Italic peoples who
coined _nature_, it meant what we today mean by "living organism."
_Natural_, then, would refer to "of or pertaining to living
organisms." Up through most of the 19th century, those who studied
living organisms (above the cellular level) were called naturalists,
not biologists. Mendel and Darwin were naturalists, for example.

Nature may be understood or nonunderstood by us, it doesn't matter.
What matters is what it is supposed to refer to, We need to
understand living organisms, including ourselves. I can't recall
offhand (and choose not to look it up) what _mysterious_ means, or
where it came from, but I think we can agree that it means "strange,"
"not understood by us." Much of nature (living organisms
collectively) is still mysterious to us---except that we have lost our
curiosity here.

It made me quite angry that in the '50s, those who worked in the
INSTITUTION we call "science" would say things like "science studies
nature." In point of fact, it does not. Geology, astronomy,
astrophysics, hydrology, metereorology, etc. are not nature; apes and
raspberry bushes are.

You are quite right; no none understands this today, so no one will
understand what I say without a detailed explanation of it. That is
the pity of it all. Not because they won't understand ME, but because
they won't understand reality!

The word _science_ doesn't mean much today, either, as ubiquitously as
it is used. The word itself means "knowledge," but as of mid-19th
century America, its meaning went through yet another change to what
is validly and validatably true. I agree with this, and understand
the sets of changes of meaning it went through. Do you?

In any case, there is not much bonafide science around today. Most of
it is actually technology, or what used to be called applied science,
like your cell tech you articulate below.

[. . . ].

<<Today, we are not very far away from living cells
constructed in a laboratory -- months. (I had a news
reference and perhaps I'll find it again later.)>>

You are quite right; I keep up. But that doesn't change anything I
have said so far. Unless we understand what the ancient Greeks (like
Heraclitus) did, we are crosspartitioing sets that are actually
mutually exclusive sets. It "works"---in the short run. So did
Thalididomide.

<<I am reminded of a recent comment of yours about,
if an artificial duck walked like a duck and quacked
like a duck -- then it would still be an /artificial/
duck. But what if the duck ate and metabolized as well?
What if it pecked its way out of a small ovoid of
calcium carbonate, ate and grew and, eventually,
stopped "working"? What if it successfully interbred
with "real" ducks? The point is, no matter what
objections you have, concrete objections, I mean,
not just declaring the "duck" not to be a duck,
I can suppose a better "duck" that avoids that
objection. Isn't there some point at which
walking and quacking and /everything else/ adds
up to a duck, a /real/ duck (whatever that may mean)?>>

I was referring to Turiing's defense of computerized chess; you have
taken this example way out of context. Toy plastic ducks that run on
batteries (or perhaps nuclear power in the future) are still toy
plastic ducks.

However, suppose we DID make aritificial "real" ducks that can
metabolize? I doubt that we -will ever do that, because it isn't
economically feasible---even if we were able to make artificial
chickens, cows, etc., for our food supply. I feel sorry for the
humanity that will eat such. In the long run, that is. I already
feel sorry for those who eat veggies that are genetically part animal.

For that matter, I feel sorry for the calves, poultry, pigs that spend
their entire lives in a cement barn, breathing in their biological
wastes that are pumped from troughs to a manure piile outside.
NOTHING can eradicate that odor. I also feel sorry for the cows that
can no longer walk because of the selective breeding done in the name
of "science." Much more.

<<A similar argument can be made for "artificial
minds". Can there be human-level intelligence
from machines? >>

Spurious, to say the least. We may eventually have machines which
more closely resemble the output (and input) of humans, but we will
NEVER have a cognitive machine. For that matter, we don't even
understand cognition enough to make them! Maybe if we can make
cellular humans that do metabolize, and think, as in the above, but
computers? No.

<<(If you want more examples of experiments
that are coming amazingly close to human-like
behavior right now, I will follow up.)>>

Never hurts; I am always in the market for such!

<<You may have to correct me, but it looks as
though you are trying to cement in place a
linguisitic distinction, between humans and machines,
that may have looked correct at one point in time,
but is looking more and more incorrect as
time goes on.>>

No, I won't bother to correct you; I have already gone to great
lengths to illustrate, even document, my point. But it is not a
linguistic distinction; it is a REAL distinction. Remember, tin can
be gilded to look like real gold. Would you know the difference?

More importantly: Would you be able to tell stubbornness from true
courage of conviction? On the surface, they look exactly alike.

mrdilligent...

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:51 am

Guest

Date: Thurs, Oct 29 2009 2:07 pm
From: James Burns

<<For something like eight response of mine, spread over most of a
week,
I failed in getting your attention to the fact (a very simple,
uncontroversial fact) that you and I are using "exist" differently.
That post was a desperate attempt to force you to notice that
there were two competing usages, yours and mine, that needed to
be compared.>>

But I DID understand your usage of _exist_! Wasn't that obvious??? I
understood yours; you failed to understand mine (which most of the
world still uses, btw).

A semantic quibble, I called it finally.

<<Now that you have decided (in an earlier post) that circles
/do/ exist, just that they do not exist in "cosmoterrestrial
reality" (your made-up word, isn't it?), I find that there
is very little difference in how we use "exist" any more>>

I didn't "decide" it; I was using my original failure to articulate as
a counterpart to something you said.

Yes, "cosmoterrestrial" is "my made up word." Its meaning is clear,
isn't it? I mean, you don't need a dictionary to understand it, do
you.

I was looking for something with which to replace _nature_ a long time
ago. Now that that term seems largely to have been dropped, _cosmos_
is available, but that tends to refer to outter space. I wanted to
include our planet. COULD THAT BE CLEARER?

<<An example is your insertion of "at least in any serious sense"
in your sentence just above discussing fictional characters
and events. Setting to one side the judgment implied by your
use of "serious", what you implied is all that I wanted to say:
there is a sense (serious or not) in which Sherlock Holmes
exists /within/ his stories.>>

As long as we are raising BIG issues from trivia, may I point out that
Sherlock Holmes does not have stories? Arthur Conan Doyle does, but
not his fictional character.

<<In that sense, Sherlock had a
mother. In the sense that refers to physical reality (your
"cosmoterrestrial reality", I have been assuming), Sherlock
does not have a mother for the same reason the third eye in
the middle of my forehead is not blue: neither of them exist.>>

I'll bypass Sherlock Holmes and his mother as dead horses. But the
"third eye" does exist as an actual organ in our brains. Of course
it is not blue, but it is an "eye" of sorts, as it is very sensitive
to emf. This time of year, when the sun goes south, it doesn't
function very well until the rotation of our planet brings sunlight to
the north again. As the sun goes south, furry mammals put on longer
coats and more fat, to protect themselves against the cold winter. As
the sun gets stronger in the spring, they shed again, this time for
shorter, thinner coats. For humans in particular, the immune system
depends heavily on the pineal body, and fails to work as well starting
in October. Why do you suppose flu and cold season runs from Oct
through Feb? Because the immune system is weaker with weaker help
from their "third eye," or pineal body. (No, it is not because people
are densely housed in buildings during this period, as has been said.)

"Third eye" is an Oriental term from olden days, because the
Orientals, particularly the Hindus, noticed that some people were
more, er, "ESP-" sensitive than others. These individuals could "see"
what most people could not. I knew there had to be a rational
explanation for it, and found it in the pineal body. In those days,
Western scientists didn't know much about the pineal body other than
it existed---in the center of the brain behind (by some inches) the
forehead. Later, they began to notice that it was emf-sensitive.
Well, heck, I had known that for years.

[. . . ]

<<And yet, even now you have not addressed the differences in our
semantics. What are the options I have left? Give up and
go away?>>

Weeell, I almost did! But you are clearly a very intelligent person,
and I am CERTAIN that you can do better, soooo. . . .

[quote](Most of the world restricts
_exist_to the way I have demonstrated and articulated it.).
[/quote]
<<I thought I knew how you actually use "exist", but it
is no longer clear to me that I do. You claimed certain
uses are forbidden (or words to that effect) and then
you went ahead and used the word those ways anyhow.>>

In language, there is the vernacular, which now includes vulgate, and
proper, accepted---restricted, if you will---usage of any word.
_Exist_ is one of those words (a cf. Bill Clinton's use when he was
trying to weasle out of his lascivious conduct with Monica).

I happened to come across part of a TV cartoon the other day, which I
thought would make a good vignette of what I mean: A young girl said,
"But that is real," and her boy partner said, "well, so are
movies . . . aren't they?" He then brought up Star Wars, and the
girl said, "you pay too much attention to science fiction, and not
enough to science."

That pretty much says it in a nutshell, don't you think?

<<My best evidence is the change in your use of "circle".
You were very definite that circles do not exist. You
went on at some length about that. Several days later,
it turns out that what you meant by your long screed
bewailing the mistaken notion that circles exist --
is that circles do not exist physically but they
do exist in some other fashion. If we ignore the
labels for these kinds of existence as unimportant,
we will be hard-pressed to find /anyone/ who disagrees
with your "startling result.">>

IMO, you are splitting hairs again. I originally didn't articulate
the distinction between cosomoterrestrial reality and artificial
reality because, at that time, I was sure that you understood that.
Circles do not exist; they are figments of man's imagination, and have
led to much technology. But doesn't every educated person know
that? NOT every person understands that cosmoterrestrial reality has
no circles, however!

<<Also, you had no trouble answering my questions about
Sherlock Holmes' mother and the fifth leg of unicorns
-- answering the questions /as though those beings
existed/. This all that "existing within the story"
means.>>

Again, beating dead horses. I was only trying to explain WHY such do
not exist.

<<What do I mean when I use "exist" /my/ way?

<<My own experience of the use of "exist" has been
very much within mathematical and logical arguments.
Here, a claim of existence or non-existence is tied
to the particular context within which it is made.
If I claim that a number x such that x^2 = 2
/does not exist/, then it matters very much whether
I am talking about rational numbers or real numbers.
Anyone trying to argue that some mathematical
object /exists/ independently of its context would
have trouble getting themselves /understood/, much
less winning their argument.>>

Ahh, mathematics. That is a separate consideration. For the present,
let's just say that is is an error to extrapolate from mathematics to
the nonmathematical world.

<<I suspect that the use of "exist" outside mathematical
and logical circles has been borrowed from its use
within those circles. It is much more natural to use
"at home" in a math or logic discussion. In normal,
every day speech, it feels much more natural to hear
"Sherlock Homes had a mother." than "The mother of
Sherlock Holmes existed.">>

What is a "logical circle"? The only ones I know of are in Venn
diagrams, but maybe there are others? Boy, learning of non-Venn
logical circles might be worth this entire discussion to me!

In any case, comfortable or not, it is still invalid to extrapolate
from math to the real world.

Now you are going to point out how very often a mathematical equation
will provide insight to, even discover, a fact of scientific reality.
Yes, and so also does sheer fiction do the same. But that doesn't
change the fact that whatever IS real, known or unknown, is real,
exists. And a whole lot of mathematical equations that "prove" in
their balancing prove nothing but fanciful nonsense.

One would think that a true mathemetician would be more exact in his
thinking, thus expressions, and a whole lot less metaphorically
vernacular.

[. . .]

<<Against your position, I argue that
-- I do not use "exist" the way you prescribe, and I
never have.>>

You are free to use any word any way you like. Feel free.

<<-- You do not use it that way, either.
-- It is /impossible/ to use it that way in mathematics
and logic.
-- Mathematics and logic are a plausible origin for
the use of "exist" in the broader community -- and
so, its use there is a a plausible model for its
use here.>>

I disagree. But then, until now, we weren't even considering
mathematics.

[quote]I am certain that you can do better than this.
[/quote]
<<I am no longer as amused by your tone of superiority as I once
was, what it only a week or so ago? I would greatly appreciate
it if you would dial it back a couple of notches.>>

"Superiority" is your word, not mine. Do you feel inferior?

But then enter subjectivity, and I thought we were having an OBJECTIVE
discussion.

Whomever *feels* superiority, inferiority, inadequacy, adequacy,
insecure, secure . . . (and I don't), let's agree to leave them behind
and not bring them to the posting agora, OK?

[. . . ].

<<It is ironic that you include a reference to "Lucy" in
your lament for our lost collective memory. "Lucy"
is a part of our collective memory . . .>>

I don't think it is ironic at all. And, is simply being aware of
facts the same thing as memory? History as memory of our collective
past must be a PERSONAL thing, as all memories are. And it must
connect to the present and past, alike. It must be continuitous.
Othewise it remains as simply "book knoweldge."

<<I must assume that by "contemporary man has totally
severed himself from [...] his linguistic roots" you mean:
language has changed. If you can spare a minute
to review the history you worry about others not remembering,
you will notice that the nature of language is change.
Even in eras with stable politics and technology, language
changes, seemingly just for the hell of it. Bring in
wars, migrations, immigrations, emigrations, new technology,
new contacts with other cultures, and language will adapt
swiftly to the new circumstances.|>>

And here we are in language! My, we are all over the map, aren't we.

I recall saying to you that I could write tomes just on this topic
alone. Now you ask if I can "spare a minute"?

I will say this much, a summary statement: All of the "linguistic
change" I have experienced, including vicarious experience, comes from
human ignorance,. A particularly graphic item is W. Wilson's semantic
slip to "normalcy." He *meant* _normality_, but apparently couldn't
think of that during his speech. Now "normalcy" is in accredited
dictionaries, just because he happened to be president of the US.
Almost no one uses "normality" any more.

But what do you suppose would have happened if an ordinary fellow made
the same slip? If he was culturally visible, he would have been
laughed at.

I am reminded of an acquaintence of mine who used "objectionable"
instead of _objective_, which is what she meant. Now extrapolate that
to the bulk of the human population, and to be "objectionable" now
means to be objective. Here, PLEASE, pretty please, use your
imagination!

<<The new circumstances that seem to concern you the most
are the new technologies that mimic humans -- or, at least,
mimic humans as we once understood them.>>

I am not in the least concerned about technologies which mimick
humans. I am concerned that the humans become convinced that these
technologies ARE human! Wnat I am most concerned about is that
humans can no longer understand reality itself, cosmoterrestrial
reality (what "God" made) and artificial reality (what man made).

<< I am not so
concerned, for two reasons: (1) humans are better than you
think (apparently) at distinguishing between shallowly
human-like behavior (such as by ELIZA or PARRY) and deeply
human-like behavior (such as by a real human or some
hypothetical truly AI entity), and (2), if we ever do
have truly AI entities, I find the human/AI difference
to be unimportant /on moral grounds/. Simply put, I
would not want to live in a slave-holding society,
even if the slaves were built.>>

You are not concerned because you like the way things are now,
failing to understand the important, if lost, distinctions. The rest
of your statement is self-contradictory; if we ever had AI gizmos that
really were thought of by humans as humans, and were as human as
humans, you WOULD live in a slave-holding society. Humans would love
to have human slaves, and have. So, if the AI humans really were
human-like, and could think for themselves, humans would be come
slaves to what began as their own slaves.

Many many people believe this; I was simply trying to point out that
this can never happen.

<<Have you ever talked to ELIZA?
http://www.wedesoft.demon.co.uk/eliza/
While it can be very amusing at first, no one who spends
more than a couple of minutes talking to her will
mistake her for human -- no one /today/ that is. Before
chatterbots like ELIZA existed, it was reasonable to
suppose that any entity interacting at that high a
level had to be a human (although a very odd human).
It was reasonable because the only choices were human,
animal, or inanimate. If X asked you "How do
you feel about your mother?", you were pretty much
forced to assume X was human. Today, machines are
much subtler; on the other hand, so are humans.>>

Yes, a long time ago, I tried out Eliza, and was disgusted, so quit
(therapy was my stock in trade). I suspect I still would be
disgusted, because we DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HUMAN NATURE.

And no, humans today are not much subtler. Ever hear of "dime-store
psychotherapy"? I have seen it with my own eyes, so to speak; not a
wit of understanding.

<<I recommend you look around at your fellow contemporary
humans, the ones you think "can't think good". They're
not so dumb as all that.>>

Oh, I have, alas alas, I have!

Take another gander at the world about you: obese 10-yr-olds (and
younger); kids that kill other kids merely because they want the
sneakers; kids tried as adults; grown men killing other grown men
because they didn't like the way the coach was treating THEIR kid;
people starting violence at sports arenas as regularly as clock work;
road rage, air rage, all kinds of rages among supposed-to-be self-
controlled adults. . . . I could go on with this list forever.

I am not the first or only person to point out that society has gone
nuts. None other than David Bohm pointed out, in the 70s, that our
society had gone psychotic. And that was a long time ago; it is only
worse now.

I think you must be living in a cocoon.

mrdilligent...

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:56 am

Guest

As you can see, I wrote this long ago, but it was still in my outbox,
so I suppose I never posted it. Might it be a missing link?

If I did post it in a different style, then just delete it.

Date: Fri, Oct 23 2009
From: James Burns

<<There are many differences [to organismic v material things], some
important, some unimportant. Which one or ones are you referring to?
[quote]
[/quote]
There is only one, very important, difference, from which all other
differences flow:
Animate matter (living organisms) have the property of COGNITION,
while inanimate (just plain ol') matter does not.

I didn't want to get into this, becaiuse THIS definition is, today,
squelched by contemporary culture, which sees mind epiphenomenally.
Well, ok; even if mind originates in the brain (which I don't agree
with), the brain still originates something metaphysial; just point
out to me what *matter* the mind, and its thought products, is made
of.

Things which are made of only matter lack ths property; yes, even the
computer.

To avoid getting into the sticky wicket that mind has become, just
tell me this: What is the difference between a statement on a road
sign, and one on the output device of a computer?

The road sign is not making a statement; only minded humans are making
the statement by printing it on the road sign. The same is true of a
computer.

A computer is more complex, and automated, but the principle is the
same. Do you know how computers work?

An intermediary question might be, what is the difference between a
card file and a computer? The card file does the same job by humans
manually filling out and filing the cards, and sorting them for
retrieval, that the computer databased does automatedly.

The statements of information on each of the index cards are HUMAN
statements; so also the statements on the electronic database. The
computer makes no statements of its own. In most cases, its output is
comprehended only by HUMANS.

A complex sort of human statement that is made for computers is the
program. A program is made out by humans according to what the humans
want the computer to do for them in an automated way rather than in a
humanly manual way. There is virtually no limit to what humans can do
by the automated processes of the computer. One computer designed and
programmed by humans can pass off to another computer designed and
programmed by humans what the humans want the second computer---or
third, fourth, . .. computer(s)--- to do. Say, design a tool
(according to human original design), and then send it to a computer-
operated robot to manufacture.

It is true that possibly no human has ever seen, or even imagined, the
particular tool that is finally made, but that is misleading. The
humans want the tool to be able to be used for a specific purpose (or
set of same) so the humans start out with CRITERIA for the tool. Then
they program these criteria as a set of parameters, expressed in
numerals, and these numerals then cause the electronic or photonic
flow of the computer to flow through or around certain "gates." The
particular configuration of "gates" that the purely material flow ends
up passing through is what ends up as the design of the tool, and then
this design is sent electronically to the computer-run robot that is
to manufacture the tool.

The program that controls the flow of photons through which "gates" is
also called "software," which starts out as a diagrammatic statement
on a piece of paper (perhaps electronic paper), which is then etched
materially into some material medium, such as mylar, and these
material etchings control the photonic flow through these and those
"gates." The final output can ONLY be understood by humans, which
have minds.

In short, every step of a computer process is material; only the
origin and final outcome is grasped by the human mind. A computer---
or a whole bank of computers and computer-run robots---is nothing more
than a fancy shovel or other simple tool. The advantage of the
computer is that it saves on mindless human grunt work.

The computer is also very, very fast. Photonic current flows at
nearly the speed of light, and even a flow of electrons is superfast.
The current can thus pass through any configuation of "gates" lickety
split, before a human can say "Jack Robinson."

Did you know that a computer keyboard, which LOOKS a lot like a
typewriter keyboard, is actually just a set of circuit breakers? Just
like, in principle, a household fuse box or circuit panel? But we are
fooled, these circuit breakers (which also mediate the "gates" through
which the current does or doesn't pass) are imprinted with our oh-so-
familiar alphanumeric characters, so we ASSUME that by typing "B" and
getting "B" on our output device that the conputer knows
alphanumerics, and words, and therefore is intelligent. This,
combined with our SOO anthropocentric language, like _language_ that a
computer _understands_, convinces us that they are the latest state of
evolution.

But be assured, there can NEVER be a H.A.L. unless a computer's
current flow can be (humanly) programmed with the criteria of paranoid
schizophrenia and other-controling performance.

Nam Nguyen...

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:47 pm

Guest

mrdilligent wrote:

[quote]
We may eventually have machines which
more closely resemble the output (and input) of humans, but we will
NEVER have a cognitive machine.
[/quote]
That human being "believes" a (sophisticated) machine could never have
cognition doesn't necessarily mean the machine couldn't have cognition.

There are only 2 entities who can _know_ a machine's cognition: itself
and God.

mrdilligent...

Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 4:24 am

Guest

When I first posted to the thread Existence as the referent of true
statements, originated by George Dance, I blindly assumed---apparently
incorrectly---that readers would accept what culture knows or accepts,
but not the culturally novel, such as circles don't exist (wheels do),
and that computers don't think, thus can't know or be conscious or
unconscious; that there can never be a computer or robot that is
H.A.L.-like.

I never dreamed anyone might seriously believe that fictional
characters, like Sherlock Holmes, exist, much LESS that they had
mothers never mentioned by the author of the story. Had I, I would
have thought that such would lead to a can of worms: Why not a
father, too? Why not four (maybe even more?) grandparents? Why not
uncles and aunts, perhaps one, two, or more siblings? Why not a whole
circle of friends outside of those put in by the author?

I also never dreamed that anyone would think unicorns exist, much less
have five legs---why not two and a half? Why not a thousand? Why not
another horn poking out from the top of its head; maybe two others out
from each of his shoulders?

So I have decided to start over again.

Despite HUNDREDS of words of "show and tell" as to how "I" (and a
whole lot of others in society) use the word _exist_---how "I" and the
others "restrict" the word---, one poster here reports that he STILL
has no idea of how I use the word. So, one last time, I will make
another attempt.

The word _exist_ validly (or seriously) applies to material things
which actually do exist in the world, and can be sensorally detected
by any human or other animal; these fall into two categories, 1.,
those which "God" made---were around long before man walked on the
earth---and 2., those which man made. I call the first group
"cosmoterrestrial" and the second group "artificial." Most of the
latter group, if they exist, are collectively called "technology."

I also happed to think that certain entities which are NOT made of
matter, and which thus cannot be detected with the senses, also exist;
we generally call these matterless entities "abstractions." Like what
we mean by "time," for example, by "politics," for another example, or
"philosophy" for another. The list of validly existant abstractions
(in both of the above-mentioned two classes) is practically endless.
I call these abstractions "metaphysical," after the word coined by a
Medieval Scholastic to cover an untitled group of Aristotelian
writings that had to do with human ideation, such as philosophy.

But there are many abstractions which do NOT exist, and are comparable
to fictional characters and beasts like unicorns and minotaurs which
may be considered as "physical," but which do not exist and never did
exist in any serious sense. Reifications are among these
abstractions. So are supernatural entities. And so on.

I hope this is a clear enough summary of how I understand, and use,
the word _exist_, for to enumerate even a partial list of what does
and doesn't exist by this meaning would take YEARS of writing by me,
and of reading by others. Any poster who disagrees with this meaning
is free to so disagree, but if there is to be a discussion, posters
must UNDERSTAND what each means; they are not required to agreeor
disagree.

Marshall...

Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 9:57 am

Guest

On Oct 31, 7:24 am, mrdilligent <osop... at (no spam) aol.com> wrote:
[quote]
The word _exist_ validly (or seriously) applies to material things
which actually do exist in the world
[/quote]
Circularity fail.

Marshall

Jim Burns...

Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 10:32 am

Guest

mrdilligent wrote:

[quote]Despite HUNDREDS of words of "show and tell" as to
how "I" (and a whole lot of others in society) use
the word _exist_---how "I" and the others "restrict"
the word---, one poster here reports that he STILL
has no idea of how I use the word.
[/quote]
If you will recall, it was you, not I, who said I
did not understand you, while you understood me all
along. I believe that was in response to my amazement
that you still did not understand me -- so I suppose
we are even on that one.

I will point out one /last/ time that I have not
been asking you how you use "exist". I have been
asking you (for example) why Sherlock Holmes does
not exist within stories about Sherlock Holmes.

Yes, you have written a lot, but repeating your
position over and over does not turn it into an
argument for your position.

Wait. There is one argument I see, I have to admit:
"It's obvious."

Since it is not obvious to me, and mrdilligent does not
expand on the obviousness of his use of "exist"
in preference to mine, there doesn't seem to be
anything more to say.

Jim Burns

Marshall...

Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 12:36 pm

Guest

On Oct 31, 2:50 pm, Jim Burns <burns... at (no spam) osu.edu> wrote:
[quote]Marshall wrote:

Circularity fail.

[...]
Is that mrdilligent's intended interpretation?
I expect him to deny it, although his denial creates
the peculiar situation of his writing sentences
that do not make sense until his admonitions
on the meaning of "exist" are set aside.
[/quote]
Mr. "Dilligent" is so bursting with pride at his own
words I do not expect him to admit to any flaws
at all.

Marshall

Jim Burns...

Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 3:50 pm

Guest

Marshall wrote:
[quote]On Oct 31, 7:24 am, mrdilligent <osop... at (no spam) aol.com> wrote:
The word _exist_ validly (or seriously) applies to
material things which actually do exist in the world

Circularity fail.
[/quote]
One interpretation of that sentence is that it
defines a certain subset of the uses of "exist",
the valid or serious uses, not a definition of
"exist" itself. One can tell them from the others
because they are /in the world/, as opposed to
in a story or in someone's imagination.

However, this interpretation implies other uses
of "exist", the invalid and/or non-serious uses,
which apply to non-material things possibly
not in the world.

Is that mrdilligent's intended interpretation?
I expect him to deny it, although his denial creates
the peculiar situation of his writing sentences
that do not make sense until his admonitions
on the meaning of "exist" are set aside.

Jim Burns

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