Elements of Style in English
in [Lisp]
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From: Raffael Cavallaro on 14 May 2010 10:53 On 2010-05-14 09:56:51 -0400, Bob Felts said: > First, unless you know what the underlying reality is, how do you know > which are illusions and which are real? It is repeatable, scientific experiments that tell us what is ultimately "real." The point is that our naive perceptions are demonstrably false - they do not stand experimental scrutiny. Again, I urge all of you to read the wikipedia page on the neuroscience of free will before making claims about the unknowability of such things: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will> or, for a lengthier treatment, Tor Norretranders' book _The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size_ <http://www.amazon.com/User-Illusion-Cutting-Consciousness-Penguin/dp/0140230122> These things are in fact knowable, they just don't conform to our naive perceptions. warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: Bob Felts on 14 May 2010 11:04 Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-05-14 09:56:51 -0400, Bob Felts said: > > > First, unless you know what the underlying reality is, how do you know > > which are illusions and which are real? > > It is repeatable, scientific experiments that tell us what is > ultimately "real." The point is that our naive perceptions are > demonstrably false - they do not stand experimental scrutiny. Experimental scrutiny doesn't withstand experimental scrutiny, either. If it did, you wouldn't have put "real" in quotes. Experiments show "something", just like our sense data shows "something". The best we can do is assume that there is a correspondence between what experiments uncover and what is really there. > > Again, I urge all of you to read the wikipedia page on the neuroscience > of free will before making claims about the unknowability of such > things: > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will> Man doesn't have free will.
From: Bob Felts on 14 May 2010 11:18 Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: [...] > People who think that subjects actually exist often believe that the > past and the future exist as well; that the present is an > infinitesimally small, effectively non-existent junction between them. > In fact, it's the other way round - there is only the present; the past > is just a fragmentary and distorted recollection, not even universally > agreed upon, and the future is just an imaginal creation of even less > consensus. There's actually a recent article which claims to show experimental support for the future influencing the past, but I can't find it at the moment. I'll ping the friend who originally sent it to me.
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 14 May 2010 11:27 On 2010-05-14 11:04:22 -0400, Bob Felts said: > Experimental scrutiny doesn't withstand experimental scrutiny, either. > If it did, you wouldn't have put "real" in quotes. I put it in quotes because it can mean different things, specifically what we subjectively perceive to be "real," and what we can experimentally show to be "real," independent of our subjective perceptions of "reality." > Man doesn't have free will. That is my whole point. We have the *illusion* of free will. This illusion flows from the theory of mind. The theory of mind predates language (because chimpanzees and other non-human species have it as well). Language evolved in the context of an illusion of agency, so this illusion of agency, the subject-verb-object distinction, pervades language. As a result, sentences which violate this illusory grammatical and semantic norm are closer to scientific reality than sentences that obey it. Rather than saying "John throws the ball," it is more scientifically accurate to say "the ball is thrown while John has the subjective illusion of being the agent of that throwing, but really, the throwing just happens, much as the rain just happens, or the grass just grows." However, John would be a dreadful predictor of the actions of his conspecifics and other creatures if his cognitive worldview began and ended with the notion that everything just happens. In stead, John has a firm illusion that the world is filled with agents with goals[1], which allows John to have some predictive success in anticipating the actions of others. He forms this theory of mind by treating himself as an agent, and extrapolating his (fictive) free will to others. It is a useful fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. warmest regards, Ralph [1] the goals exist in the sense that organisms have neurobiological systems that push them in various ways; the agent/author of actions does not exist. -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 14 May 2010 11:28
On 2010-05-14 11:18:41 -0400, Bob Felts said: > There's actually a recent article which claims to show experimental > support for the future influencing the past, but I can't find it at the > moment. Just wait a bit. By then the future will have influenced the past, and you will have found it. ;^) warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro |