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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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:35 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:47 am I'm sorry, I honestly do not understand what, "I'm asking if you think that folks are debating whether consciousness has something to do with consciousness," means. I don't know what others are debating, and I certainly don't know how X could not have anything to do with X, no matter what X is, consciousness or any other concept. I think you may have left something out of that question.
Aren't you interested in philosophy enough that you at least casually follow what's going on in the field?
I've been studying philosophy for about 60 years, and have never stopped studying. Quite frankly I have no use at all for what is taught as, "philosophy," by academics. If what they teach were really philosophy, the world would be better off without it.

As for the rest, think very few genuine neurologist confuse the behavior of the neurological system with consciousness--that's more of those pseudo-scientific psychologist who try to press the finding of the true science into supporting their latest absurd hypotheses.
Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:35 pm ... "all that exists and has the nature it has independently of any human consciousness or knowledge of it" being the conventional usage of "physical" in philosophy.
Well, don't worry about it. If you believe everything is, "physical," however you choose to define physical, you should find everything can be explained in terms of the physical. If you are wrong, there will always be things which are an enigma, because you accepted a premise that has rejected some evidence. I'm not claiming that's true, only that if it is, you will have a problem.

Perhaps you will discover to your own satisfaction how the physical explains everything. I don't think you will, but have no desire to convince you otherwise. Good luck in your pursuit.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RCSaunders wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:31 pm I've been studying philosophy for about 60 years, and have never stopped studying. Quite frankly I have no use at all for what is taught as, "philosophy," by academics.
So what are you studying then?
Well, don't worry about it. If you believe everything is, "physical," however you choose to define physical, you should find everything can be explained in terms of the physical. If you are wrong, there will always be things which are an enigma, because you accepted a premise that has rejected some evidence. I'm not claiming that's true, only that if it is, you will have a problem.

Perhaps you will discover to your own satisfaction how the physical explains everything. I don't think you will, but have no desire to convince you otherwise. Good luck in your pursuit.
X being physical is different than whether there is an explanation for x.

When we're talking about whether there are explanations for something, and especially when we're critiquing whether there is an explanation for some phenomenon or other, we'd better have pretty well-defined metrics of just what counts as an explanation and why.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RCSaunders wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 8:01 pm
All statistics depend on some degree of ignorance. Determinism is the case whether anyone knows what the actual case is or not. In the physical realm there is no possibility of any event being other than what it is--not sums of events, but individual events. The only reason in statistics different outcomes are possible is because you do not know what each determined individual event is, but if you did, even the determined sum would be known.
Well, objective probability is certainly meaningful as a property of models, but as we can never be certain how accurate a model is, probability of actual events is normally subjective as you say. (I cannot know my life expectancy. I can only know the average life expectancy of a population of people sharing certain attributes with me.)
For there to be a truly undetermined event, it would have to occur without explanation, totally capricious and without cause.
The idea of probability as an objective exact “propensity” of a physical system had to be invented especially for quantum theory, and seems artificial from that point of view. This particular metaphysical concern is indeed shared by quite a lot of physicists – Einstein’s “God does not play dice” arguably stems from it. That is one reason why the multiverse interpretation of quantum theory is increasingly popular – it replaces objective probability of events by indexical probability: the subjective probability of an observer’s relationship to them. There is nothing "magical" about the multiverse. It's just what the best current scientific theories seem to describe as what the future is like at any moment, unless you incorporate additional concepts like "collapse" or "pilot wave" to reduce it to a single universe. So "everything that can happen, does happen".
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RCSaunders wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 1:29 am
RogerSH wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 1:13 am If the determined universe unfolds in such a way that there is consciousness, ...
I love it when someone explains things in these terms that mean nothing, like, "unfolds in such a way." It's like those who try to claim consciousness, "just emerges form the chemical electrical behavior of the brain," or anything else one claims is or happens, "somehow," without explaining or even thinking it's necessary to explain what that, "somehow," is.

I have no idea what you think consciousness is (apparently something produced by something else) but nothing real just exists by some mystic unfolding of, well something, somehow.
To say that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon is not to provide an explanation but to suggest what kind of explanation should be looked for. The only non-emergent elements of the physical universe are the fundamental particles and their fields, neither of which we can directly detect (except gravity, in a sense), so pretty well all our everyday experience is of emergent phenomena.

Here is a one-sentence summary of how emergence works:- Every particular instance of an emergent phenomenon can be explained in principle by a combination of phenomena at a lower level, but what makes them emergent entities is that they constitute new types, whose characteristics cannot be derived from the characteristics of their constituents but only from “coarse-grained” approximations to those characteristics; the new types, by the quasi-miraculous nature of mathematics, often having entirely unprecedented properties. Since this explains most of how the world is as it is, it is not unreasonable to suggest that some explanation of this type will apply to consciousness, rather than by it being a distinct ingredient of the universe.
Beyond that, I cannot say what consciousness "is", but that doesn't stop useful things being learnt about it, such as what capabilities it provides, in what circumstances it arises, and so on. Anything beyond that at our current stage of knowledge is just inventing different labels for our ignorance.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 10:34 pm
I don't think it's absurd to say that concepts, imaginings etc. are physical. They're simply brain states. Brain states are physical.
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.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:32 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:31 pm I've been studying philosophy for about 60 years, and have never stopped studying. Quite frankly I have no use at all for what is taught as, "philosophy," by academics.
So what are you studying then?
Well, don't worry about it. If you believe everything is, "physical," however you choose to define physical, you should find everything can be explained in terms of the physical. If you are wrong, there will always be things which are an enigma, because you accepted a premise that has rejected some evidence. I'm not claiming that's true, only that if it is, you will have a problem.

Perhaps you will discover to your own satisfaction how the physical explains everything. I don't think you will, but have no desire to convince you otherwise. Good luck in your pursuit.
X being physical is different than whether there is an explanation for x.

When we're talking about whether there are explanations for something, and especially when we're critiquing whether there is an explanation for some phenomenon or other, we'd better have pretty well-defined metrics of just what counts as an explanation and why.
We're not going to agree, so I'm just trying to be agreeable. So lets avoid the personal and stick to ideas, if you choose to.

I'm not sure what you are getting at with, "metrics." A lot of people fall for the Pythagorean fallacy, the belief that everything can be described in terms of numbers, or even measurement (metrics). I have no idea if that is what you are suggesting, but before anything can be measured, it must first be identified, whatever measurable attributes it has must be discovered, some method of making the measurements developed and an arbitrary commensurate unit of measure must be chosen. Actual measurements are seldom fundamental, and with the exception of some fundamental numbers (speed of light, Plank's number, etc.) most scientific relationships are expressed sans measurement, E=IR, and E=1/2mv^2, without any specific values, because it's not the measurements that are fundamental, but the relationships.

Perhaps that's what you meant.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:28 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 8:01 pm
All statistics depend on some degree of ignorance. Determinism is the case whether anyone knows what the actual case is or not. In the physical realm there is no possibility of any event being other than what it is--not sums of events, but individual events. The only reason in statistics different outcomes are possible is because you do not know what each determined individual event is, but if you did, even the determined sum would be known.
Well, objective probability is certainly meaningful as a property of models, but as we can never be certain how accurate a model is, probability of actual events is normally subjective as you say. (I cannot know my life expectancy. I can only know the average life expectancy of a population of people sharing certain attributes with me.)
For there to be a truly undetermined event, it would have to occur without explanation, totally capricious and without cause.
The idea of probability as an objective exact “propensity” of a physical system had to be invented especially for quantum theory, and seems artificial from that point of view. This particular metaphysical concern is indeed shared by quite a lot of physicists – Einstein’s “God does not play dice” arguably stems from it. That is one reason why the multiverse interpretation of quantum theory is increasingly popular – it replaces objective probability of events by indexical probability: the subjective probability of an observer’s relationship to them. There is nothing "magical" about the multiverse. It's just what the best current scientific theories seem to describe as what the future is like at any moment, unless you incorporate additional concepts like "collapse" or "pilot wave" to reduce it to a single universe. So "everything that can happen, does happen".
I have no objection to the use of statistics when exact scientific knowledge is not required. It's great for gamblers, investors, and insurance companies. The whole problem with statistics in science (and what is call induction, generally) is that basing anything called science on what cannot be known (quantum mechanics is an excellent example), is just wrong. No statistic can describe or discover any single event.

Both induction (the careful observation of similar events, for example) and statistics can certainly suggest directions scientific research ought to take, but no scientific principle can be established statistically. I know that flies in the face of popular sentiment today among those who are certain they are the latest thing in science, and I'm not interested in changing anyone's mind about it. I'm only explaining why I do not swallow the statistics pill.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:41 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 1:29 am
RogerSH wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 1:13 am If the determined universe unfolds in such a way that there is consciousness, ...
I love it when someone explains things in these terms that mean nothing, like, "unfolds in such a way." It's like those who try to claim consciousness, "just emerges form the chemical electrical behavior of the brain," or anything else one claims is or happens, "somehow," without explaining or even thinking it's necessary to explain what that, "somehow," is.

I have no idea what you think consciousness is (apparently something produced by something else) but nothing real just exists by some mystic unfolding of, well something, somehow.
To say that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon is not to provide an explanation but to suggest what kind of explanation should be looked for. The only non-emergent elements of the physical universe are the fundamental particles and their fields, neither of which we can directly detect (except gravity, in a sense), so pretty well all our everyday experience is of emergent phenomena.
Sure! So where do the non-emergent particles and fields come from. [Do you think, "gravity," is a, "thing?"]

All the phenomena you describe as non-emergent are actually fictions invented to describe the real world we actually perceive and live in. See my article, "Atoms And Apples—What's Real."
RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:41 pm Here is a one-sentence summary of how emergence works:- Every particular instance of an emergent phenomenon can be explained in principle by a combination of phenomena at a lower level ...
There is no point going any further. For that to be true, you have to assume beforehand that something is, "emergent." It's exactly the same kind of argument the religious make to attribute everything to God. They begin with the assumption,: "everything is made by God, except God." You begin with the assumption,: "everything is emergent, with the exception of some fundamental non-emergent somethings." This is no explanation of emergence at all.

Nobody denies that most things are constructed of other things. It's what the entire field of chemistry is about. Every physical thing is has a chemical structure and nature. Nothing, "emerges," from chemistry, chemistry only explains what things and their structure are. First you must have your entities and events, then you can study them to discover what their nature is. If anything, it is chemistry that emerges from that fact of what already exists and has the nature it has.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Sculptor wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 6:02 pm
RogerSH wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 5:10 pm I certainly don't think the world is as simple as this! If a principle is alleged to be true in every case, it should be true in the simplest case, so a simple model can legitimately be used to disprove a claim. Conversely, a principle that works in a simple case might apply to a general case. If it doesn't, the challenge is to say what exactly the difference is that affects the principle, not just to say "that's only a model".
Utter crap.
Your model is just a manifestation of your desire to prove a point. Determinism is not a fucking mechano set LOL.
Meccano strips are in no way analogous to the rest of the world
Really?? Determinism is a concept in the topological theory of mechanisms, which is why it applies to a Meccano mechanism like any other. Ultimately it is a mathematical concept, so is the same concept whatever the application. It only applies to ontology by virtue of Physicalism, according to which, as Laplace imagined it, the whole of reality could be represented by a set of equations – one for every real-world relationship – a model, in fact. So there is no fundamental distinction between physical reality and a model, only between thought-experiment perfect models of physical reality, actual approximate models of physical reality, and models of imagined realities. As for the use of approximate models, this is the practice upon which the whole of applied science relies for its success.

To spell out the present use of a model: if it is a true universal principle that determinism of a physical system entails determinism of the relationship between one part of the system and another, then that principle must apply to the Meccano model (or more precisely, the idealised model that would involve rigid links). It doesn’t apply to this model, and so the supposed universal principle is false. (If some incompatibilists don't wish to rely on that principle, that's fine, but they need to be careful about formulations that sound exactly as if they do!)
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:23 pm
Sculptor wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 6:02 pm
RogerSH wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 5:10 pm I certainly don't think the world is as simple as this! If a principle is alleged to be true in every case, it should be true in the simplest case, so a simple model can legitimately be used to disprove a claim. Conversely, a principle that works in a simple case might apply to a general case. If it doesn't, the challenge is to say what exactly the difference is that affects the principle, not just to say "that's only a model".
Utter crap.
Your model is just a manifestation of your desire to prove a point. Determinism is not a fucking mechano set LOL.
Meccano strips are in no way analogous to the rest of the world
Really?? Determinism is a concept in the topological theory of mechanisms, which is why it applies to a Meccano mechanism like any other. Ultimately it is a mathematical concept, so is the same concept whatever the application. It only applies to ontology by virtue of Physicalism, according to which, as Laplace imagined it, the whole of reality could be represented by a set of equations – one for every real-world relationship – a model, in fact. So there is no fundamental distinction between physical reality and a model, only between thought-experiment perfect models of physical reality, actual approximate models of physical reality, and models of imagined realities. As for the use of approximate models, this is the practice upon which the whole of applied science relies for its success.

To spell out the present use of a model: if it is a true universal principle that determinism of a physical system entails determinism of the relationship between one part of the system and another, then that principle must apply to the Meccano model (or more precisely, the idealised model that would involve rigid links). It doesn’t apply to this model, and so the supposed universal principle is false. (If some incompatibilists don't wish to rely on that principle, that's fine, but they need to be careful about formulations that sound exactly as if they do!)
Your objection is not relevant. You might as well take any material analogy. Models are expressions of what you think the world is like; demonstrations. They cannot be proofs. Models are in constant change and FOLLOW the paradigm, and current ways of thinking. Your meccano set is nothing more than an analogy. Your model assumes determinism.
I have no idea why you cannot see that.
Take a roulette wheel. You throw in the ball and no one knows where is will land. QED a world of random events is proven.
A man walks into an ice cream parlour and makes a choice between 101 varieties. QED a world of free will is proven.
Yours is no better.
For what it is worth I reject the idea of free will, myself. I do not see the need, nor am I convinced of that by the use of children's toys.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:03 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 10:34 pm
I don't think it's absurd to say that concepts, imaginings etc. are physical. They're simply brain states. Brain states are physical.
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.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:20 pm For that to be true, you have to assume beforehand that something is, "emergent."
It's actually a conclusion rather than an assumption. I'm saying that emergence is a useful name for a type of explanation of the world that goes hand in hand with reduction, and that IF you accept the reductionism that identifies particles & fields as the irreducible ingredients for a physical account of the world, emergence is the only way to make sense of higher level concepts. However, given the metaphysical framework that you are committed to, I can see that it must be difficult to make sense of emergence in that framework. (All the worse for that framework, to my mind). Not worth pursuing here.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:34 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:20 pm For that to be true, you have to assume beforehand that something is, "emergent."
It's actually a conclusion rather than an assumption. I'm saying that emergence is a useful name for a type of explanation of the world that goes hand in hand with reduction, and that IF you accept the reductionism ...
That's your, "assumption." I don't, "accept," any, "-ism," including reductionism. There is nothing wrong with attempting to understand things in terms of principles that simplify more complex phenomena [it's the entire basis of conceptual knowledge and the epistemological hierarchy of knowledge], but everything cannot be reduced to some physical explanation.

There is always this idea that science now has all the answers and what everything is made of is finally understood, and that view is always wrong. The reason it is always wrong is, because every new particle or, "so-called," field that is discovered to answer the questions of why the immediately preceding particles and fields have the nature they do and behave as they do, required the, "discovery," of those latest particles and fields. But the question then becomes, why do these latest particles and fields have the properties they have, and why do they behave as they do and those questions will remain until some new particles, fields, or principles are discovered. Reductionism must either be truncated (and incomplete) or results in an endless regress. It can never be the final answer.
RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:20 pm However, given the metaphysical framework that you are committed to, I can see that it must be difficult to make sense of emergence in that framework. (All the worse for that framework, to my mind). Not worth pursuing here.
I'm not sure what, "metaphysical framework," you think I'm, "committed," to. I'm not aware of any, except that I will not accept anything as true without evidence I can personally examine. [I don't mean I have to actually personally examine it, only that I or any other cogent human being could. I don't accept anything on the basis of anyone else's assurances or authority.]
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 5:07 pm
RogerSH wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:31 pm Absolutely no dualism intended. External and internal is not an ontological distinction but a difference in the relationship to the action of choosing,
This makes no sense. If it's some sort of distinction of relations and/or locations, it's an ontological distinction.
which I am saying incompatibilists OUGHT to make.
It's a distinction they ought to make why? If you're going to argue for compatibilism, you need to demonstrate that you understand what incompatibilists are claiming (which this thread doesn't demonstrate), and then you need to show why what they're claiming has a issues that allow compatibilism to work.
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?

By the way, I don't regard free will as a "thing", what I am taking about is a capability, which is a property.

My understanding of incompatibilism is largely based on writings by Peter van Inwagen, Sam Harris & John Searle, plus sundry more arm-waving versions. PvI is clearest, the issues raised here being well buried in the formalities; in other words, his formal arguments actually lead to FW by his definition being impossible irrespective of determinism. I need to revise that paper before going into detail, maybe in a different thread. Sam Harris contradicts himself all over the place, but he more or less admits that the concept of Free Will he is talking about is incoherent, in which case the question of it being available is surely undefined. He certainly doesn't explain anywhere what it would be like to have Free WIll in a suitably different kind of universe, if we don't in this one. I agree with him that there isn't a free-floating intelligence in the brain that acts upon the neurons, but even if there was, its state would have to be determined or undetermined, neither of which would provide freedom of choice by his account, as he implies that it would, so that is no answer. John Searle is a philosopher I often like, but his treatment of Free Will more or less assumes incompatibilism rather than demonstrating it. There's a lot of discussion about different kinds of determinism, then, hey presto, therefore we do not have free will (a reluctant conclusion, he admits).

So at the risk of repeating myself again & again - I can't "understand incompatibilism" because I am actually saying that it is not intelligible. If you look at it closely enough, it either becomes a tautology ("you can't will what you will") that doesn't need Determinism to be true, or a non-sequitur, jumping from Determinism which is a claim about how the universe behaves in its entirety to Freedom of Will which is a claim about the relationship between a part of the universe (the mind which has the will) and part of the rest of the universe (that part which the will is about). How can the second claim, or its negation, follow directly from the first? It sounds like a sort of inverted fallacy of composition: the whole has certain properties, therefore every element must have the same properties.
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Re: A Meccano model of two Incompatibilist Fallacies

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Terrapin Station wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:49 pm
RogerSH wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:03 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 10:34 pm
I don't think it's absurd to say that concepts, imaginings etc. are physical. They're simply brain states. Brain states are physical.
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?
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