So is it a case of 'I will know it when I see it' then?Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2019 11:28 am And I've looked at what the so-called experts talk about and I've found what they say lacking.
If you are finding the work of experts lacking, then it seems to me you have a much broader perspective than the 'experts' do.
If that's the case why are you waiting for somebody else to write the book?
Why don't you finish Boole's work?
It is obvious to me that the expression 'human logic' means something very different to you than it does to me.
Is it not obvious to you?
Daniel Dennett has a phrase which captures all I need to say: Competence without comprehension.Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2019 11:28 am What's even difficult to understand? How could you possibly go through life without understanding what such a simple expression as "human logic" means?
There is a difference between using something and understanding it.
You can USE a car without understanding how it works.
You are busy USING a computer without understanding how it works.
Similarly: you can USE your mind without UNDERSTANDING it.
I'd venture a guess that the verb "to understand" means something very different to you than it means to me.
My understanding of 'human logic' is approximately the body of knowledge behind 'computational trinitarianism'.Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2019 11:28 am The logic of the human mind? The logic of rational thinking? Do you want me to explain what I mean by human being?
And, you don't even seem to understand the word "since".
I understand 'human logic' as the science of constructing and executing models of reality for the purpose of computing consequences.
I understand 'rational thought' as instrumental thought-patterns used by humans towards achieving a particular, subjective goal.
Rationality is goal-optimisation.
Attempting to 'accurately describe human logic' is one particular kind of goal.
It brings us no closer to having objective criteria for success or failure.
I do not find a computational description of my mind lacking at all. Broadly speaking - it is how my mind works.
If you disagree with my conception of 'human logic' and you are finding it lacking then tell us why.
Would you say that it's outright wrong, or just incomplete?
When I look at the work of all Mathematicians, Logicians and Computer scientists from a holistic (Quinean?) lens I have arrived at the 'computational trinitarianism' perspective. It is a phenomenological perspective - computation is a phenomenon. I also find it to be an accurate-but-incomplete description of my decision-making mind.Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2019 11:28 am Sorry, I don't seem to see the end of your sentence here... What's the question?
Why do you find it lacking?
I don't know if I can label myself a mathematician, but I DO mathematics. Often. Daily perhaps?
The above sentence is not representative of my desires.
What I want out of computation is the ability to outsource the tedious, boring and repetitive mental work to a mechanical mind.
Principle of least effort and all that.
I want to automate myself away, so that I can sit on a beach drinking cocktails while machines do the undifferentiated heavy lifting of human existence.
Perhaps you have heard of Game semantics.Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2019 11:28 am Think of games. People want to play, whatever the game. But you don't get to play if you insist on redefining the rules. Once in a while you'll have individuals who decided to upend the table, Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein. For any Einstein, you could quote thousands of experts who asserted that Newton was correct. In fact, they're still saying it today!
I mean I'm sure these people were bright minds but so what? You think a bright mind is necessarily correct?
Basically, these people didn't even look, really, at human logic. That's all there is to it.
In the same way that I wouldn't label myself a mathematician, I wouldn't label myself a game theorist either.
But I DO game theory every single day of my life.
I play the game of life. I develop strategies towards achieving my goals knowing that reality is subject to chance and stochastics.
To this end I use many of the tools of logic. In particular probability theory and I use computers to perform Monte Carlo simulations.
I use the results of these logics to make decisions.
Good! Now apply that same thought-pattern back to 'human logic'!Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2019 11:28 am If something say the Moon is square and green, I infer they're not talking about what I call the Moon.
When you say to me 'human logic' is not computational, then you are not talking about what I call 'human logic'.
So that constrains the discussion only to deduction.
And what about induction?
What about counter-factual reasoning?
What about pattern recognition?
What about judgments?
Your mind doesn't do any of those things?
Most concerning of all. Deductive logic is entirely deterministic, but the world we live in is stochastic.
It sure seems like the wrong tool for the job.
Well, there are no esaping the epistemic problem of criterion here.Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2019 11:28 am I can't vouch for all of them being inappropriate but each one I took the time to look at is indeed inappropriate and I think I looked at the main ones. I thought initially Gentzen's natural deduction was likely correct but turns out it isn't.
Could you verbalize your notions of 'correctness' and 'incorrectness' when it comes to 'accurate descriptions of human logic'.
What is your referent for 'correctness'?
Is it possible that your intuition works differently to my intuition?Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 4:53 pm I can only use my own intuition. That's all each of us has. Aristotle's syllogistic is faultless. A bit limited in scope but all good. The Stoics seem all good to me but I haven't looked at the details. I'm fine with all widely accepted logical truths since Aristotle. Isn't that a solid foundation? Well, not quite but that's a start. Most logicians nowadays poo-poo intuition, essentially because respected mathematicians in the past have been guilty of committing themselves to quite a few paradoxes. I disagree. We only have our intuition just as we only have our senses of perception. Logical intuition is essentially like a sense of perception. Too me, it is exactly that.
Is it possible that all humans don't think the same way?
Is it possible to develop new intuitions and discard old intuitions?
Is it possible that your mind works differently to my mind?
Which would explain why 'computational trinitarianism' may seem like an accurate description of 'human logic' to me, while it doesn't appear so to you.
I didn't say that I am a sheep. But I am a computer. Not in the ontological, but in the metaphysical sense.
I spend sufficient amount of my life designing/conceptualising/creating things. I use my mind in a highly collaborative space and so I am finding myself needing a nomenclature/concepts/models to talk about my mind. To this goal I use the models of computer science and It works. Which is all I could ever ask from a scientific model.
If you give me something that works better - I am happy to adopt it.
Hence why I keep repeating: Computational trinitarianism is an accurate-but-incomplete description of my mind.
That's a nice attempt at dodging the point. You are still appealing to the authority of (dead) philosophers.Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 4:53 pm Quote somebody with the stature of a Boole, Frege, Russell, Tarsky, Quine etc.
It's ironic that none of the authorities you recognise ever worked on computation, so I am not sure why I would ever quote them on matters of 'computational trinitarianism'.
You are welcome to wait until Scott Aronson dies before you take him seriously.
Or you can read Marvin Minsky's views
in his book 'Society of Mind" he describes the human mind as a distributed system
Of course, no matter how many 'experts' I quote, it still doesn't change the fact that you are insisting I must appeal to an authority in order to support my views. That seems very.... irrational.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. --Richard Feynman
If the evidence alone doesn't convince you and you still insist on settling this via an authority then here is a list of authors who have written on the Computational Theory of Mind.
This is a bad analogy.Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 4:53 pm So designing a new fridge or a new toaster is doing something like inventing a new kind of human logic?!
If you have never designed a toaster before, but you want to know how toasters work you are going to study them first.
Once you have sufficiently understood the inner workings of a toaster you are going to have to generate some jargon to describe what you have seen, experienced and learned. You are going to need words like 'timer', 'timer delay mechanism', 'heating element', 'bread holder' and 'crumb collector'.
If you have sufficiently understood how toasters work you ought to be able to make one from scratch that works much like your referent.
If you can't make a 2nd toaster that works just like your referent, can you really say that you 'understand' how toasters work?
Or you could recognize that the essence of a toaster is its purpose, and you could come up with a new and innovative machine that revolutionises the way we currently make toast.
As the elderly say: there are many ways to skin a cat.
It's not that. I just think ontological questions are a dead end.Speakpigeon wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 4:53 pm OK, you believe there's no logic that's intrinsic to the human brain. Me, I do. And I believe that if we didn't have that, we couldn't design any new toaster, let alone some computer. In fact, I believe we couldn't even make sense of the world around us.
Science doesn't explain what things ARE.
Science explain what things DO and how things WORK.
Science often produces a number of competing models, that explain different aspects of the same thing.
And so (given the title of this thread) my epistemic criterion for 'accurate description of the human mind' stops at functional equivalence.
If I can build a machine that works LIKE a human mind, then I can say that I understand how the mind works.
For better or worse - self driving cars are a manifestation of human logic in a machine.