My lowered respect for philosophy

Post Reply New Topic

I think sometimes we overestimate our powers of cognition because from "inside" it sometimes seems that our systems of knowledge are greater than they really are. I really like these quotes:

"Current physics is profoundly beautiful and useful, but it is in a state of chronic internal tension (consider the old quarrel between general relativity theory and quantum mechanics). It may be added, with Russell and others, that although physics appears to tell us a great deal about certain of the general structural or mathematical characteristics of the physical, it fails to give us any real insight into the nature of whatever it is that has these characteristics-apart from making it plain that it is utterly bizarre relative to our ordinary conception of it."

Strawson then quotes Russell:

"the physical world is only known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure-features that, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the physical world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind. Physics is mathematical, not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For the rest, our knowledge is negative...We know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when these are mental events that we directly experience...as regards the world in general, both physical and mental, everything that we know of its intrinsic character is derived from the mental side."

http://cognet.mit.edu/posters/TUCSON3/Strawson.html

This shouldn't be surprising given that our mind was largely designed to solve adaptive problems endemic to our hunter-gatherer ancestrors (back some time in the Pleistocene). So as others argue, just in the same way apes or birds can never understand the concept of say prime numbers there will be things that will forever be beyond our cognitive capacities. I don't find any arguments against this thesis very persuasive.

All we have are the phenomena. We hardly ever get the Real Thing. Kant made that rather clear. The Noumena we don't have. The Phenomena we do have.

ruveyn

But does this militate us to think that our systems of knowledge are less than they are?


The "internal tension" issue doesn't seem relevant. I state this simply because our tension isn't in our minds, it is in our theories, and our theories are formal structures. There is no reason given why we cannot find a formal structure that works(which presumably exists as a matter of definition given the nature of reality), and we have no reason to think that our mind is not capable of this, as nothing about mathematics or mathematical modeling seems to be beyond our mind, only that some things may be beyond mathematics.(which doesn't promote the whole cognitive closure idea)

Also, the point about "real insight" doesn't seem relevant. The only possible question I see put forward there is some strange metaphysical question, and unless you want to say that there are metaphysical facts or anything to directly link any mind to a metaphysical fact, I do not see a lack of FACTUAL access to be a sign of cognitive closure.


Except.... how do you arrive at your conclusion? Here's metaphysics, ergo minds are flawed??? I don't see this as following.

Even further, the point about apes and birds really doesn't prove anything about people, it is an inductive claim that we simply don't have any possible justification for, as even if birds and apes are limited, that does not entail that people are, and the growth of knowledge in human beings really shouldn't be seen as just a matter of the structure of the human mind so much as the flexibility of the human mind in acquiring tools. Apes and birds fail because they cannot acquire the tools we use to conceive of mathematics. They probably don't have the required abstract thinking abilities. We do, and we can create abstractions, and build on those abstractions, and really our growth in knowledge is tied to our ability to build better and better abstractions through our tinkering. Given that the abstractions are what really have the power to grow knowledge, we really should not look to the flaws of the human mind anyway. I mean, the growth in human knowledge should not be tied strictly to biological evolution but instead to a memetic evolution. (Using memes because they are an easily accessible concept)

Finally, shouldn't the burden of proof really be upon the person making this claim? After all, the claim is a weak inductive claim, without any real evidence AND reasons to have very significant (non-theological) doubts about the applicability of the induction to human abilities given that human beings are a creature that has developed very different tools of knowledge compared to other living organisms. I mean, in short, I see almost no reason to really accept this claim other than perhaps a love of HP Lovecraft's horror fictions, as most of the "evidence" does not indicate a clear conceptual weakness, and the induction is very faulty from the get-go.

I don't understand that. You think qualia can be reduced to a formal system? What part of this argument below do you not find concvincing. I'm just trying to understand your perspective:

A type of mind M is cognitively closed with respect to a property P (or theory T) if and only if the concept-forming procedures at M's disposal cannot extend to a grasp of P (or an understanding of T). Conceiving minds come in different kinds, equipped with varying powers and limitations, biases and blindspots, so that properties (or theories) may be accessible to some minds but not to others. What is closed to the mind of a rat may be open to the mind of a monkey, and what is open to us may be closed to the monkey. Representational power is not all or nothing. Minds are biological products like bodies, and like bodies they come in different shapes and sizes, more or less capacious, more or less suited to certain cognitive tasks.

http://art-mind.org/review/IMG/pdf/McGi ... blem_M.pdf

That a hand was developed for grasping tree branches does not negate its utility in operating a computer keyboard. Minds are extremely flexible and adaptive. To predict that a problem is unsolvable because it is not yet solved is more an indication of the lack of flexibility of the imagination of the assessor than an evaluation of mental potential.

Your quote wasn't about qualia, it was about quantum physics vs relativity. That must reduce to a formal system. This means that one of your quotes about the tension in physics isn't compelling. You have to realize that I quoted something so I could respond to what I quoted.

Even further though, I am not sure that qualia change my position on the matter. If this is a domain where logic holds, then what additional conceptual power is needed that could not be generated by a human mind, or a human mind aided by a tool? Unless there is reason to believe that we have a restricted access to logic, we have no reason to think our conceptual ability is limited, and we don't have reason to think our access to logic is limited, therefore we have no reason to think our conceptual abilities are limited. The appeals to cro-magnon and all of that fail to persuade me, as either these beings can use our formal toolkit, or they cannot. However, any theory must be explicable via logic, and for human growth in knowledge, it is really our institutions and cognitive tools that deserve the credit, as we are no different today than primitive cavemen except for those tools. McGinn's comparisons, thus don't really speak to me.

Finally, if push came to shove, I'd probably just accept functionalism. I mean, the considerations of cognitive limitations also tend to appeal to some of the same intuitions that Churchland and Dennett have appealed to in that they appeal to our consideration of our intuitive limitations in modelling a complex enough system. So... if I was going to accept that my mind might not really be up to the stuff for doing all of this, I wouldn't say that there is an unknown possibility, I'd instead doubt the validity of an intuition that keeps me from a known solution. Holding out for the solution that has yet to be determined, and where the possibility doesn't appear to exist is not a reasonable move.

In any case, I am sorry in that I did not finish the entire paper. It's a 19 page analytical philosophy piece, and those tend to be very dry and boring.

Your quote wasn't about qualia, it was about quantum physics vs relativity. That must reduce to a formal system. This means that one of your quotes about the tension in physics isn't compelling. You have to realize that I quoted something so I could respond to what I quoted.

Even further though, I am not sure that qualia change my position on the matter. If this is a domain where logic holds, then what additional conceptual power is needed that could not be generated by a human mind, or a human mind aided by a tool? Unless there is reason to believe that we have a restricted access to logic, we have no reason to think our conceptual ability is limited, and we don't have reason to think our access to logic is limited, therefore we have no reason to think our conceptual abilities are limited. The appeals to cro-magnon and all of that fail to persuade me, as either these beings can use our formal toolkit, or they cannot. However, any theory must be explicable via logic, and for human growth in knowledge, it is really our institutions and cognitive tools that deserve the credit, as we are no different today than primitive cavemen except for those tools. McGinn's comparisons, thus don't really speak to me.

Finally, if push came to shove, I'd probably just accept functionalism. I mean, the considerations of cognitive limitations also tend to appeal to some of the same intuitions that Churchland and Dennett have appealed to in that they appeal to our consideration of our intuitive limitations in modelling a complex enough system. So... if I was going to accept that my mind might not really be up to the stuff for doing all of this, I wouldn't say that there is an unknown possibility, I'd instead doubt the validity of an intuition that keeps me from a known solution. Holding out for the solution that has yet to be determined, and where the possibility doesn't appear to exist is not a reasonable move.

In any case, I am sorry in that I did not finish the entire paper. It's a 19 page analytical philosophy piece, and those tend to be very dry and boring.

First of all, there is no Mind. There is only brain.

Second, the human brain is not sufficiently capable of dealing with turbulence and chaotic dynamics unaided. A ten year old kid can shag a fly ball by estimating its ballistic trajectory without the help of a computer. Evolution has gifted the higher primates with the ability to throw rocks and sh*t and hit targets. That is an innate ability for normal higher primates, humans included.

What we cannot do "in our heads" is figure out how turbulent chaotic systems work. We can invent fancy computers that approximate fractal structures and chaotic dynamics, but our brains, by themselves, cannot do the job.

ruveyn

LANGUAGE FAIL!! !


You mean that we have to have computers in practice? After all, computers only use algorithms, so if we got an army of people, we could probably do the algorithms ourselves, it'd just be hella-complicated.

Finally, Kon's point isn't that "calculations are tough", it is that human beings cannot arrive at certain truths. If this was just hella complicated, we'd just need a large computer for solving our problems with qualia.

i do see where you are coming from, but when you only are interested in practical things, like the weather and how to make money, you become a pretty boring person.

Only to people who aren't also interested in the weather and how to make money.

The mathematics for chaotic dynamics is intractable. We cannot get usable results without resorting to rather powerful computers. The first mathematician to address chaotic dynamics was Henri Poincare' back in 1905 and he could only get superficial results because he did not have computers. Work in non-linear dynamics achieved its renaissance with the investigations of Ed Lorenz into the non-linear dynamics of heat transfer and convection in the atmosphere. He accidentally found the sensitivity to initial conditions by using a computer. The field picked up momentum from that point.

Here is the bottom line: no computers, no fractals; no computers, no usable non-linear dynamics. We cannot even do classical turbulence without help from computers. The Navier-Stokes equations are intractable without computers and there are still unsolved problems as to which numerical methods are stable and will converge to a solution. In fact one of the Millenium Prize questions is to find general conditions under which the Navier-Stokes equations are solvable.

We just don't have enough brain power to do turbulence in our heads. We can do simple ballistics in our heads, but not turbulence.

ruveyn

I felt the same as you, but it doesn't mean that we will stop speculating.

Probably just a little doubt about thus.

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.

Your post just so interesting, made me come back...

But I am going back to study again.

Vale.

Yea, I think when I was a teenager the bells and whistles of philoso-babble seemed impressive, however it becomes pretty clear that the long-winded semantics are just cover for someone "talking out of their ass". And let's face it, human language is flawed - it doesn't take a genius to work that out.
Philosophers were good before science because they were the closest thing humanity had to scientists, but in a world with modern science philosophers are seldom more than relics of a redundant discipline.