A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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Terrapin Station
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:49 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:49 pm
RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:03 pm

That seems to be conflating public & private knowledge. A concept, once in the public domain, is to varying degrees shared. The states of various brains may be correlated with this shared concept, but it has its own mode of existence, not physical but made possible by physical reality, certainly. Searle's "The Construction of Social Reality" makes a lot of sense to me in this connection.
I don't agree that there is such a thing as public knowledge or that concepts can be literally shared or made objective/public.
wot bout books?
They're collections of paper with marks on them. There's no literal knowledge in them. Propositional knowledge is justified true belief. There are no literal beliefs in books. Books don't have mental functions.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:57 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:49 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:49 pm
I don't agree that there is such a thing as public knowledge or that concepts can be literally shared or made objective/public.
wot bout books?
They're collections of paper with marks on them. There's no literal knowledge in them.
That is EXACTLY what literal knowledge is LOL
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:30 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:57 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:49 pm

wot bout books?
They're collections of paper with marks on them. There's no literal knowledge in them.
That is EXACTLY what literal knowledge is LOL
Again, propositional knowledge is justified true belief.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:26 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:30 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:57 pm
They're collections of paper with marks on them. There's no literal knowledge in them.
That is EXACTLY what literal knowledge is LOL
Again, propositional knowledge is justified true belief.
You can dance with semantic as you like. But it is true that brain states are no more "knowledge" than words in books. Though different, neither exactly is equivalent to the abstractions that we like to call knowedge, but both are realised as knowledge when they are accessed.
In the same way that words in books and the charge state of neurones (presumably) are the physical analogues of the knoweldge; The "Knowledge" itself (which is an abstraction) is not the exact corrollary of either the words in books or the brain cells.

Books, audio, images etc. can all transmit knowledge and represent storage of knowledge.
You objection (above) seems to suggest that there can be no such thing as "public knowlege".
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:31 pm Why? Because freedom of choice by a will as a concept requires two separate parts of the world to be referred to: a mind which has a will, and something outside the mind which the will is about. So if we define our terms in relation to the mind, its state is internal and the state of the object of choice is external. If you can't admit that distinction, how can you talk about freedom of choice by a will?
So, two issues here:

One, we can choose, for example, to think about one thing rather than another. Say, for example, that one relaxes by thinking of something like walking through a forest or sailing on the ocean. Well, one can choose to think about one or the other there. Thinking about walking through a forest or thinking about sailing on an ocean isn't something outside of the mind that the will is making a choice about. It's something very much of the mind that the will is making a choice about in that case.

Two, as I tried to stress a number of times, thinking clearly about freedom vs determinism is easiest if we first stick to the simplest possible scenario, which is something like imagining the interaction of two different particles. In that case, we're not dealing with minds at all, and just what incompatibilists are saying can come into sharper focus.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:37 pm You can dance with semantic as you like. But it is true that brain states are no more "knowledge" than words in books.
Brain states are knowledge whereas marks in books are not because knowledge is a type of belief. Some brain states are beliefs. No marks in books are beliefs.

Different things have different properties.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:37 pm
If we were going to say that ink marks on paper are knowledge somehow, what definition of "knowledge" would we be employing?
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:01 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:37 pm You can dance with semantic as you like. But it is true that brain states are no more "knowledge" than words in books.
Brain states are knowledge whereas marks in books are not because knowledge is a type of belief. Some brain states are beliefs. No marks in books are beliefs.

Different things have different properties.
I do not deny that we store inforamation in the brain.
HOWEVER
It is not clear how the brain stores information. One thing is clear, we have no idea what the abstraction "knowledge" is though we can write and read about it.
"Brain state" is a vaccuous notion. What does the notion brain state look like as a brain state? How is the brain state for brain state different from the brain state for another abstract ideas such as "common sense"? Is it possible to identify a specific brain state? can you point to some image or structural information for the "common sense" brain state and show what the "brain state" of a brain state looks like. NO. Brains states might lead to represent and be coexistent as knowledge but since it is completely unknown how the correllation occurs or what it looks like I suggest that "The Ladybird Big Book of Knowledge" is a far more unambiguous example of "knowlege" than a big fat lump of meat inside a person's cranium.
You don't get knowledge from a brain state. You can get knoweldge from a book.
There is such a thing as public knowledge and private knowledge.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:26 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:37 pm
If we were going to say that ink marks on paper are knowledge somehow, what definition of "knowledge" would we be employing?
If we were going to say that blobs of fat inside the skull are knowledge somehow, what definition of "knowledge" would we be employing?
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 10:48 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:26 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:37 pm
If we were going to say that ink marks on paper are knowledge somehow, what definition of "knowledge" would we be employing?
If we were going to say that blobs of fat inside the skull are knowledge somehow, what definition of "knowledge" would we be employing?
Again, knowledge is justified true belief.

That definition, as a definition of knowledge, has nothing to do with brain states.

Let's get that part straight first.

If you're saying that marks in a book are knowledge, presumably you're not using "justified true belief" as a definition. What definition would you be using?
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:01 pm Brain states are knowledge whereas marks in books are not because knowledge is a type of belief. Some brain states are beliefs. No marks in books are beliefs.

Different things have different properties.
Irrelevant. Of course different mediums have different properties, but the same knowledge can be recorded, stored, and transmitted by many different means. Even electronically the same book can be stored digitally or analogically, or non-electronically on microfilm, punch cards, or printed on paper. The exact same knowledge can be communicated in any language, signed, spoken, or written.

If you equate, "knowledge," with, "belief," it is a strange epistemology. Belief usually means what one holds to be true. What one believes might or might not be true, but it is only knowledge if it is true. Most beliefs are not true and not knowledge, but superstition or just plain wrong.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat Jun 05, 2021 12:40 am
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:01 pm Brain states are knowledge whereas marks in books are not because knowledge is a type of belief. Some brain states are beliefs. No marks in books are beliefs.

Different things have different properties.
Irrelevant. Of course different mediums have different properties, but the same knowledge can be recorded, stored, and transmitted by many different means. Even electronically the same book can be stored digitally or analogically, or non-electronically on microfilm, punch cards, or printed on paper. The exact same knowledge can be communicated in any language, signed, spoken, or written.

If you equate, "knowledge," with, "belief," it is a strange epistemology. Belief usually means what one holds to be true. What one believes might or might not be true, but it is only knowledge if it is true. Most beliefs are not true and not knowledge, but superstition or just plain wrong.
So you've been studying philosophy for 50 years or whatever it was and this is the first you're hearing of propositional knowledge being justified true belief?

Or is it that you didn't realize that justified true beliefs have to be beliefs?
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 05, 2021 12:10 am
Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 10:48 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:26 pm
If we were going to say that ink marks on paper are knowledge somehow, what definition of "knowledge" would we be employing?
If we were going to say that blobs of fat inside the skull are knowledge somehow, what definition of "knowledge" would we be employing?
Again, knowledge is justified true belief.
Again you can find that and the judstification inside books.

That definition, as a definition of knowledge, has nothing to do with brain states.

Let's get that part straight first.

If you're saying that marks in a book are knowledge, presumably you're not using "justified true belief" as a definition. What definition would you be using?
You are contradicting yourself, with marks on a computer screen.
THink it over1
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Sculptor wrote: Sat Jun 05, 2021 10:23 am
Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 05, 2021 12:10 am
Sculptor wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 10:48 pm

If we were going to say that blobs of fat inside the skull are knowledge somehow, what definition of "knowledge" would we be employing?
Again, knowledge is justified true belief.
Again you can find that and the judstification inside books.

That definition, as a definition of knowledge, has nothing to do with brain states.

Let's get that part straight first.

If you're saying that marks in a book are knowledge, presumably you're not using "justified true belief" as a definition. What definition would you be using?
You are contradicting yourself, with marks on a computer screen.
THink it over1
I never said that the definition of knowledge has anything to do with brain states.

The definition of (propositional) knowledge is that it's justified true belief. If beliefs are states of ink on paper, then that's not a brain state, right?

If beliefs are nonphysical real abstracts, then that's not a brain state either. The definition doesn't tell you what beliefs are, exactly, ontologically. The definition, as a definition, is different than the ontological facts of what the definition picks out.

So again, if you're saying that marks in a book are knowledge, presumably you're not using "justified true belief" as a definition. What definition would you be using?

Or alternatively, would you say that books literally have beliefs?
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Sat Jun 05, 2021 9:37 am So you've been studying philosophy for 50 years or whatever it was and this is the first you're hearing of propositional knowledge being justified true belief?
I rid myself of all such ancient irrational nonsense as magic, astrology, alchemy, and Plato's, "justified true belief," along with the rest of is, "realism," almost as soon as I learned of them, many years ago.

I suppose you'll be asking me next if I haven't heard or transcendental meditation yet. Good grief!

Studying philosophy (or anything else) is not just believing what your philosophy professors have taught you and repeating what other philosophers have written. You really need to start thinking for yourself.
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