Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Halc]

The BiV is an INVALID tool regarding skepticism. I have no problem with questioning reality, but if the tool used is simply impossible nonsense, then it's of no use.

It's not impossible nonsense. In fact, your basic religious dualist position is exactly that, a mind hooked to something that it isn't. There is zero knowledge of how said mind works, hence no evidence of its plausibility or impossibility. They don't just suppose that it's possible, but suppose that it's actually how it is, except the interface to the physical is strangely unexplained, grounding my justification of rejecting that sort of arrangement.

The Boltzmann Brain is also pointless. Sure, there it technically a non zero chance that a brain could emerge in a vacuum, although that number would be exponentially greater than the total number of atoms in the universe, and is thus simply fiction.[/quote]You seem unaware of the numbers involved. First, you're comparing one number with an infinite one. Sure, in a given space and time, there's a tiny chance of one, but there's not only infinite space, but also infinite time. The mathematics needs to work out the probability of a real brain vs that of the BB existing, and with some theories there are incalculably greater odds of the latter than the former.

For instance, Tegmark's MUH suffers from this. He posits all mathematical structures to exist, but any BB is just as much a mathematical structure as any structure that contains evolved observers, and there are far more of the simpler BB structures than the relatively complex ones where complex physics allows the formation of natural observers.

Point is, it the analysis isn't pointless as you assert it to be. The universe seems to be a very improbable thing, as is argued by the fine tuning argument for it being a deliberate creation. One needs to either accept that argument or come up with an alternative, and so many of the alternatives suffer from the BB problem.


I've tried to make myself more clear, and you said that perhaps you've not done it yourself, but I see no clarification, just repeat denial of something where denial isn't the point.

Another fanciful notion that proves nothing, demonstrates nothing, other than as a fable, like the hare and the tortoise.

That's another interesting topic, demonstrating all sorts of interesting problems that need to be solved. Ignoring those problems just shows a lack of interest or lack of ability to confront objections. Waving them away with denials contributes nothing to addressing them.

It would be fab if reality was not as it appears.

I personally think that quantum physics has demonstrated that what you call reality isn't the nice neat classical thing that it appears to be. This is one of the few things where science has proven something, and not just theorized it, and even then the proof rests on empirical evidence, brought into question with issues like those being discussed here.

but it is clearly APPROXIMATELY as we perceive it.

I'm far more in the 'stranger than we can imagine' camp.

[Sy Borg]

The BiV is an INVALID tool regarding skepticism. I have no problem with questioning reality, but if the tool used is simply impossible nonsense, then it's of no use.

It's not impossible nonsense. In fact, your basic religious dualist position is exactly that, a mind hooked to something that it isn't. There is zero knowledge of how said mind works, hence no evidence of its plausibility or impossibility. They don't just suppose that it's possible, but suppose that it's actually how it is, except the interface to the physical is strangely unexplained, grounding my justification of rejecting that sort of arrangement.

By “your basic religious dualist position” do mean “your” as in the standard garden-variety dualism or are you suggesting that I am religious? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former.

Sure, if we knew how minds worked, we would have created artificial ones by now. No argument there. I don’t think the BiV notion illuminates the hard problem. It does not reconcile first person subjectivity and third person objectivity. I see it as just a cul-de-sac, as stated.

Not sure what “arrangement” you are rejecting - the BiV?

The Boltzmann Brain is also pointless. Sure, there it technically a non zero chance that a brain could emerge in a vacuum, although that number would be exponentially greater than the total number of atoms in the universe, and is thus simply fiction.

You seem unaware of the numbers involved. First, you're comparing one number with an infinite one. Sure, in a given space and time, there's a tiny chance of one, but there's not only infinite space, but also infinite time. The mathematics needs to work out the probability of a real brain vs that of the BB existing, and with some theories there are incalculably greater odds of the latter than the former.

The chance of a Boltzmann Brain existing might as well be zero, whatever absurdly large number describes the odds of it happening. That’s a good thing too, because the poor brain would be faced with the unspeakable horror of existing in a void. It wouldn't last long.

For instance, Tegmark's MUH suffers from this. He posits all mathematical structures to exist, but any BB is just as much a mathematical structure as any structure that contains evolved observers, and there are far more of the simpler BB structures than the relatively complex ones where complex physics allows the formation of natural observers.

I don’t always agree with Tegmark for the same reason. He extrapolated the math to a point where suppositions are heaped upon others. He's an interesting and provocative thinker, though.

Point is, it the analysis isn't pointless as you assert it to be. The universe seems to be a very improbable thing, as is argued by the fine tuning argument for it being a deliberate creation. One needs to either accept that argument or come up with an alternative, and so many of the alternatives suffer from the BB problem.

Fine tuning is trumped by the multiverse, but both are highly speculative.

My preferred alternative is to say I don’t know and follow the evidence, eg. CMB, James Webb, LHC, while considering (but not adopting) left-field ideas. For all we know, this might not be the first Big Bang (or whatever) but the trillionth. What if there are informational residues that influence the initial states of new universes?

Another fanciful notion that proves nothing, demonstrates nothing, other than as a fable, like the hare and the tortoise.

That's another interesting topic, demonstrating all sorts of interesting problems that need to be solved. Ignoring those problems just shows a lack of interest or lack of ability to confront objections. Waving them away with denials contributes nothing to addressing them.

I addressed it. I started with Occam’s razor and added the general implausibility of these remote brains, which I think misunderstands the relationship of brains and consciousness. The whole point of brains is to protect a metabolism and reproductive system. That’s what brains do. That’s why they evolved. An isolated brain has no purpose, like an isolated liver.

It would be fab if reality was not as it appears.

I personally think that quantum physics has demonstrated that what you call reality isn't the nice neat classical thing that it appears to be. This is one of the few things where science has proven something, and not just theorized it, and even then the proof rests on empirical evidence, brought into question with issues like those being discussed here.

Quantum mechanics is another matter again. One can think of quanta as the informational building blocks of reality, although we have no idea if smaller things exist that impact the seemingly erratic behaviour of quanta. Things can theoretically meaningfully happen in reality down to the Planck scale, but apparently you’d need a collider the size of the solar system to find evidence one way or another. Sometimes we simply have to accept that there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know.

but it is clearly APPROXIMATELY as we perceive it.

I'm far more in the 'stranger than we can imagine' camp.

I have used that Haldane quote myself on this forum a number of times. I obviously see no conflict with my views and Haldane’s. My issue is with some of the anthropocentric and neurocentric things that humans can imagine.

[Pattern-chaser]

I addressed it. I started with Occam’s razor and added the general implausibility of these remote brains...

Occam's Razor is a heuristic, a rule of thumb. We use it (only) when we want to make a decision, but do not have enough evidence or information to do so. It's a guessing-tool that seems to work more than 50% of the time, so we retain it, and use it, on occasion.

Then you add the vague objection of "general implausibility", while offering no justification for your feeling/belief that it is implausible...

This is not refutation, it is desperate-seeming denial. Or so it looks to me.

Go on, keep telling yourself that your leprechauns and brains-in-vats are potentially real, and then be a patronise and misrepresent the ideas of those who don't buy into such fanciful notions, who prefer to consider actual reality rather than pretend that magic might be real.

Reality is real. It is as presented, at least in a relative sense. Our dogs perceive more or the less the same world as we do, with some differences. Even an ant often perceives the same things, but its world is very different. Microbes could be said to live in a very much different world but, if an asteroid struck, our subjective worlds would converge.

None of this has any purpose in this discussion. You simply seek to dismiss that which you do not believe.

The world you describe, to which I think we all subscribe too, is the world of physics. It is Apparent Reality. I have been trying to discuss Actual Reality, a subject which you seemingly are averse to considering at all. Is it just that yiu aren't interested in metaphysics, or do you want more, perhaps to discredit the very notion of Apparent and Actual Reality by ridicule, thereby discouraging its discussion? It might seem so...?

I admit I don't really understand your reticence.

[Pattern-chaser]

Our senses will always sense apparent reality, because that's what they do.

To be a little more precise, there's a difference between what is perceived and what is sensed. There's a lot of processing that goes on between the sensing and the conscious perception layer. Useless stuff is (hopefully) filtered out. But your point stands, the contrast between how we perceive the world and how it is.

I admit I have deliberately shied away from sensation and the process of perception that follows directly after it.

It seemed to me that it might serve to offer further confusion, in a topic that seems plagued with misunderstanding, both now, and in our philosophical history. Is the background to this ... resistance to discussion, the old sciencist/analytic trope that metaphysics of this type is unworthy of serious discussion???

[Pattern-chaser]

Another fanciful notion that proves nothing, demonstrates nothing, other than as a fable, like the hare and the tortoise.

Amusingly, the main use and purpose of such ideas as BiV *is* as a fable, a teaching-story, like the hare and the tortoise. ... But then we realise that it has its value as a teaching story because it could *actually* be true. No-one asserts that it *is* true, but only the possibility that it could be. That is its lesson, I think?

[Sy Borg]

I addressed it. I started with Occam’s razor and added the general implausibility of these remote brains...

Occam's Razor is a heuristic, a rule of thumb. We use it (only) when we want to make a decision, but do not have enough evidence or information to do so. It's a guessing-tool that seems to work more than 50% of the time, so we retain it, and use it, on occasion.

Then you add the vague objection of "general implausibility", while offering no justification for your feeling/belief that it is implausible...

This is not refutation, it is desperate-seeming denial. Or so it looks to me.

I see. My refusal to play along with the fanciful brain-in-a-vat notion is "desperate" and "denial".

Please think before posting. This is a philosophy forum, not a repository for silly thought bubbles. If there was a skerrick of evidence that we do not actually exists in reality, fine, but ALL evidence points to reality being real.

Go on, keep telling yourself that your leprechauns and brains-in-vats are potentially real, and then be a patronise and misrepresent the ideas of those who don't buy into such fanciful notions, who prefer to consider actual reality rather than pretend that magic might be real.

Reality is real. It is as presented, at least in a relative sense. Our dogs perceive more or the less the same world as we do, with some differences. Even an ant often perceives the same things, but its world is very different. Microbes could be said to live in a very much different world but, if an asteroid struck, our subjective worlds would converge.

None of this has any purpose in this discussion. You simply seek to dismiss that which you do not believe.

The world you describe, to which I think we all subscribe too, is the world of physics. It is Apparent Reality. I have been trying to discuss Actual Reality, a subject which you seemingly are averse to considering at all. Is it just that yiu aren't interested in metaphysics, or do you want more, perhaps to discredit the very notion of Apparent and Actual Reality by ridicule, thereby discouraging its discussion? It might seem so...?

I admit I don't really understand your reticence.

I am reticent against the idea of us being brains in vats, just as I am reticent about the flat Earth, Moon landing denials, Reptilian infiltration, Jesus rising from the dead, and the existence of leprechauns. People can be imaginative. One can enjoy the ideas without taking them seriously.

Give me a decent hypothesis - something that is even vaguely feasible - and I'll join in, but don't expect me to blindly accept obvious science fiction as fact. There is too much blind following of bad ideas, just because some academics say so. No. I will judge ideas on their merits, not on their sponsors or popularity.

[Halc]

By “your basic religious dualist position” do mean “your” as in the standard garden-variety dualism or are you suggesting that I am religious? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former.

Yes, the former. It isn't necessarily garden variety since only some of them posit the mind as a separate object of sorts, something that lives on after the death of the body. That sort of mind is very much a BiV of sorts (a disembodied mind that is or is not always connected to sensory input), and I brought it up as an example of a fairly mainstream idea that some claim is necessary, and yet you dismiss as a dead end cul-de-sac.

The chance of a Boltzmann Brain existing might as well be zero, whatever absurdly large number describes the odds of it happening.

The question is, what are the odds that you are one? Hand-waving it to zero is not a justification. The numbers are dependent on the model, and no model has been specified.

I don’t always agree with Tegmark for the same reason.

That you don't agree with Tegmark is no surprise. That your reason is one of which you don't demonstrate an understanding is unbelievable.

Fine tuning is trumped by the multiverse, but both are highly speculative.

By which multiverse, and how does it trump the fine tuning thing?

For all we know, this might not be the first Big Bang (or whatever) but the trillionth.

Are your referencing some sort of cyclic model where the bangs are numbered?

I started with Occam’s razor and added the general implausibility of these remote brains

Neither of those falsifies it, and nobody is proposing it, so applying these attacks on plausibility is besides the point.

My issue is with some of the anthropocentric and neurocentric things that humans can imagine.

Agree with that

[Lagayascienza]

If apparent reality is all we have, then why not choose the apparent reality of a mind-independent universe, the reality of physics? At least physics works. It will continue to progress and enlighten us. But Idealism, brains-in-vats, simulations ... these are just dead-ends that cannot progress and can never enlighten us. There is nothing to see there for philosophy or science. They are just mind games that lead nowhere for people with too much time on their hands. No one can give me a single piece of empirical evidence for any of them. I leave the door ever-so-slightly ajar for Idealism in case one day someone will. I am not hopeful.

[Sy Borg]

By “your basic religious dualist position” do mean “your” as in the standard garden-variety dualism or are you suggesting that I am religious? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former.

Yes, the former. It isn't necessarily garden variety since only some of them posit the mind as a separate object of sorts, something that lives on after the death of the body. That sort of mind is very much a BiV of sorts (a disembodied mind that is or is not always connected to sensory input), and I brought it up as an example of a fairly mainstream idea that some claim is necessary, and yet you dismiss as a dead end cul-de-sac.

The chance of a Boltzmann Brain existing might as well be zero, whatever absurdly large number describes the odds of it happening.

The question is, what are the odds that you are one? Hand-waving it to zero is not a justification. The numbers are dependent on the model, and no model has been specified.

I don’t always agree with Tegmark for the same reason.

That you don't agree with Tegmark is no surprise. That your reason is one of which you don't demonstrate an understanding is unbelievable.

Fine tuning is trumped by the multiverse, but both are highly speculative.

By which multiverse, and how does it trump the fine tuning thing?

For all we know, this might not be the first Big Bang (or whatever) but the trillionth.

Are your referencing some sort of cyclic model where the bangs are numbered?

I started with Occam’s razor and added the general implausibility of these remote brains

Neither of those falsifies it, and nobody is proposing it, so applying these attacks on plausibility is besides the point.

My issue is with some of the anthropocentric and neurocentric things that humans can imagine.

Agree with that

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[Pattern-chaser]

If we assert that the nature of reality *is* WYSIWAI (or any of the others), *that assertion* is unfounded and unfoundable.

Agree with your statement, but want to point out that many realize the significant different between what is seen and what actually is. Per Heisenberg: "“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”

Agreed. But it seems not everyone agrees:

I suspect Sy Borg gives a far greater correspondence between the two, but it's Sculptor1 that takes WYSIWAI most literally:

Yes. Worlds are ideas. And yes none exist without the consciousness of subjects to create them. This inevitably means that the world you live in and the world that I live in are necessarily not the same world.

It seems to me that Sy Borg's comments are founded upon the unspoken axiom of WYSIWAI, that Apparent Reality and Actual Reality are one and the same thing. That Apparent Reality *IS* Actual Reality. Not two things so similar that they seem identical, but that they are one thing, unquestionably, without even the possibility of doubt or challenge. That all else is philosophical frippery.

While Scupltor1's comments seem to me to accurately describe the many different perspectives that we all apply to the "world", i.e. to Apparent Reality. Many perspectives applied to one thing.

In contrast, the metaphysical speculation about the connection(s) between Apparent and Actual Reality are not about one thing, but many. I.e. the many different possible explanations of the nature of Actual Reality. Sculptor1 does not choose even to cknowledge the latter, that I can see.

[Pattern-chaser]

I see. My refusal to play along with the fanciful brain-in-a-vat notion is "desperate" and "denial".

Please think before posting. This is a philosophy forum, not a repository for silly thought bubbles. If there was a skerrick of evidence that we do not actually exists in reality, fine, but ALL evidence points to reality being real.

Wise words. You are posting in this discussion like an isolated grown-up trying to bring a group of wayward adolescents 'back down to earth'. But when one of them says, "Hey, wait. What is it that makes you think that's so?", your only answer seems to be that of the perennially-frustrated parent: "Because I said so!"

You seem unwilling or unable to explain why your POV has value. You say only, as you repeat once again what you have already asserted, that it's "bleedin' obvious" that you're right, and that all other views are "ridiculous".

"Silly thought bubbles"??? Once again, I suggest that, on this philosophy forum, insults are counter-productive.

You point out that this is a philosophy forum. Yes, it is, and it is quite common for people to ask their fellows for *justification* of a particular viewpoint. It's considered normal, in philosophy circles, to do this. And it is usually the case that the request for justification will be answered, not dismissed with insults, yes?

[Lagayascienza]

BiV is a silly thought bubble. Once the point is made that we could not tell with 100% certainty that we are not BiVs, and once we accept that we don't experience ultimate reality but only that which is apparent to us via our sensorium and technological extensions thereof, the BiV thought-bubble leads nowhere, so we pop it. It's just philosophical frippery.

[Sy Borg]

I see. My refusal to play along with the fanciful brain-in-a-vat notion is "desperate" and "denial".

Please think before posting. This is a philosophy forum, not a repository for silly thought bubbles. If there was a skerrick of evidence that we do not actually exists in reality, fine, but ALL evidence points to reality being real.

Wise words. You are posting in this discussion like an isolated grown-up trying to bring a group of wayward adolescents 'back down to earth'. But when one of them says, "Hey, wait. What is it that makes you think that's so?", your only answer seems to be that of the perennially-frustrated parent: "Because I said so!"

You seem unwilling or unable to explain why your POV has value. You say only, as you repeat once again what you have already asserted, that it's "bleedin' obvious" that you're right, and that all other views are "ridiculous".

"Silly thought bubbles"??? Once again, I suggest that, on this philosophy forum, insults are counter-productive.

You point out that this is a philosophy forum. Yes, it is, and it is quite common for people to ask their fellows for *justification* of a particular viewpoint. It's considered normal, in philosophy circles, to do this. And it is usually the case that the request for justification will be answered, not dismissed with insults, yes?

I don't understand your vehemence about this. Lagaya sees my point. Yes, we can say that our perceptions are all just signals in our brains - except they aren't. Those signals are intimately linked with other body systems. It's a larger system. I likewise suspect that AI will never become conscious unless it is embodied, with energy supply needs.

[Pattern-chaser]

I don't understand your vehemence about this. Lagaya sees my point. Yes, we can say that our perceptions are all just signals in our brains - except they aren't. Those signals are intimately linked with other body systems. It's a larger system. I likewise suspect that AI will never become conscious unless it is embodied, with energy supply needs.

There is no "vehemence", but only misunderstanding. Points that I make in the arena of metaphysics, you interpret as if they belong to the arena of physics. And so we avoid understanding one another.

What you say here relates to physics (and biology, etc), but it has nothing to do with metaphysics, and therefore nothing to do with the points I have offered.

[Lagayascienza]

If physics has no relation to metaphysics, then metaphysics has no relation to anything. In which case metaphysics would be just pointless mind-games. Fortunately, there is more to metaphysics than philosophical frippery such as BiV.