Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: March 28, 2024, 8:55 am

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Transcendental Knowledge?
#31
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
(October 16, 2014 at 5:24 pm)Rhythm Wrote: If I could isolate some physical structure or the collection of physical structures in your "mind" that were analogous to "a billion dollars" - I'd be given a billion dollars. Don't tempt me.
Don't you think--without speaking in terms of "folk magic"--that the mental image of a room full of Franklns and the correlation to x firing y and binding with z (or whatever) is a meaningful distinction to make in trying to understand the phenomenon that is brain AND mind (ignoring consciousness for the moment)?
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
Reply
#32
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
I'm brought to mind of the idea of holography. Not the idea that the universe is a hologram, but the study and creation of holograms we're all familiar with.

When you see the "film" of a hologram, it is unintelligible as an image. It's a jumbled mess of dark and light spots. When you shine the proper light on or through it, the image appears. So the correct light is needed to "decode" the information on the film. Shining a laser of the wrong frequency will not yield the original image due to improper cancellation. You need the set-up of the original laser, with its frequency and intensity, to reproduce the original conditions for a true representation of the object.

The different lasers could be looked at as different perspectives. The jumbled film could be looked at as objects in their natural state. And the holographic image could be looked at as the representation of objects rendered in the brain.

Interestingly, you need the laser to recreate the image, but you also need it to create the film.

This is all metaphorical and doesn't do us any good, I realize, but I thought it was interesting. Haha I apologize for adding nonsense here.
I can't remember where this verse is from, I think it got removed from canon:

"I don't hang around with mostly men because I'm gay. It's because men are better than women. Better trained, better equipped...better. Just better! I'm not gay."

For context, this is the previous verse:

"Hi Jesus" -robvalue
Reply
#33
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
(October 16, 2014 at 5:31 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Don't you think--without speaking in terms of "folk magic"--that the mental image of a room full of Franklns and the correlation to x firing y and binding with z (or whatever) is a meaningful distinction to make in trying to understand the phenomenon that is brain AND mind (ignoring consciousness for the moment)?
No. Because ultimately the "image of a room full of franklins" is just communicative shortahand for "x firing y and binding with z". There is no distinction.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#34
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
So, an Object without a Subject is no longer an Object. What would the Objects be? Nonexistent? Potential?
I can't remember where this verse is from, I think it got removed from canon:

"I don't hang around with mostly men because I'm gay. It's because men are better than women. Better trained, better equipped...better. Just better! I'm not gay."

For context, this is the previous verse:

"Hi Jesus" -robvalue
Reply
#35
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
(October 16, 2014 at 8:23 pm)Exian Wrote: So, an Object without a Subject is no longer an Object. What would the Objects be? Nonexistent? Potential?
Well I think Kant might say something like they would be ultimately unknowable; as well as the origin of our understanding their phenomenal representations...which I find unsatisfying. Others might say the sum of reality is perception alone. I was hoping someone here might be able to clarify some of the finer points on Idealism... but perhaps there are no Idealists here?
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
Reply
#36
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
I propose a thought experiment.

Let's say you rewired all people's brains so that part of their visual neurocircuitry fed into parts of the brain responsible for hearing. Let's say that through experience, these people learned that a particular tone or sound represented a particular color or shape. They'd then say "A rainbow sounds like a C-major chord played by harps" or whatever. (remember, we're taking all this as a given). They could say, "That's a particularly 'D' apple," and this statement would have meaning for the people they talked to.

Sounds silly, right? But isn't this really what the brain does? It takes discrete inputs of photons, channels them unprocessed to parts of the brain, and creates what is essentially a symbolic experience. Does any apple really "have" the subjective quality of redness, any more than it does of D-ness? I don't think so.

How about form, smell, etc? We could rewire all of these ot other sensory apparatuses, and have consistent sense impressions around which ideas and consistent communications could form, but they would be completely unlike an apple as we see it now; and yet, so long as the complexity of information was preserved, we should still be able to interact with the universe as completely as before (with a lot of learning, and assuming brain plasticity-- I guess we'd have to do it to a child).

Many people, including famous artists and musicians, have conditions in which they DO get this kind of crossover, so this is not a purely hypothetical example. If Mozart claims d-minor is a dark yellow, and this informs his construction of a great piece of music, are you really going to tell him he's full of shit, and sound is just vibrations in air and nothing more? Smile
Reply
#37
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
(October 16, 2014 at 10:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Many people, including famous artists and musicians, have conditions in which they DO get this kind of crossover, so this is not a purely hypothetical example. If Mozart claims d-minor is a dark yellow, and this informs his construction of a great piece of music, are you really going to tell him he's full of shit, and sound is just vibrations in air and nothing more? Smile

Yes there is a condition called Synesthesia, something like union of the senses:-)
Lets look at GOD as Rightful Action,Positive thinking, Living the moment, Compassion, Love, Nature, Family, Friends and all life around us. Such a GOD is not supernatural, but is as real as the feeling of being alive.
Reply
#38
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
What does the Greek in the OP mean?
I can't remember where this verse is from, I think it got removed from canon:

"I don't hang around with mostly men because I'm gay. It's because men are better than women. Better trained, better equipped...better. Just better! I'm not gay."

For context, this is the previous verse:

"Hi Jesus" -robvalue
Reply
#39
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
(October 16, 2014 at 10:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I propose a thought experiment.

Let's say you rewired all people's brains so that part of their visual neurocircuitry fed into parts of the brain responsible for hearing. Let's say that through experience, these people learned that a particular tone or sound represented a particular color or shape. They'd then say "A rainbow sounds like a C-major chord played by harps" or whatever. (remember, we're taking all this as a given). They could say, "That's a particularly 'D' apple," and this statement would have meaning for the people they talked to.

Sounds silly, right? But isn't this really what the brain does?

Not exactly. Ears aren't equipped to pick out shapes, so any "shape" your ear picks out is much more likely to be a top down imposition of abstraction. The idea of rewiring ears so that they "see" is meh. Plenty of creatures do "see" with their ears...but this is an artistic flair of language (and it's usually not their ears doing to seeing...though that seems to be the way we conceptualize it, the way we can describe it). They aren't actually "seeing", it's just a way to express a dissimilar function leveraged for a common effect (I could tell you how plants can see, and hear, and feel, and smell, and taste - but I'd be taking liberties with language in most cases, eh?). I would doubt, for example - that anyone could "hear" a square had they never "seen" a square to begin with. How would you go about "hearing a square" in the first place? What experience could you be having that would be reducible to "hearing a square"? Or, to put it another way. I could "see" a square in a vacuum - but could I "hear" one? I think that your thought experiment could only play with the meanings of sense words - not with the actual processes or apparatus, and without really diving into how our sense apparatus constricts our abstractions and experience I don't think that any insight can be gained from the thought experiment (which sort of brushes all of that aside from the get-go anyway). At least not much insight in the area of what may exist exterior to - though sure, probably plenty of fun to be had regarding our internal world in that one.

Quote: It takes discrete inputs of photons, channels them unprocessed to parts of the brain, and creates what is essentially a symbolic experience. Does any apple really "have" the subjective quality of redness, any more than it does of D-ness? I don't think so.
We could point a spectrograph at an apple and see if it gives us a range of 400–484 THz, 620–750 nm. I'd say that would be a resounding yes, it would, and so yes, it does. Inasmuch as anything "has color". I could explain to you why an apple is red via botany as well.....if you'd like. They are red whether you are there to view them or not. They are red even if you saw them as blue.

Quote:How about form, smell, etc? We could rewire all of these ot other sensory apparatuses, and have consistent sense impressions around which ideas and consistent communications could form, but they would be completely unlike an apple as we see it now; and yet, so long as the complexity of information was preserved, we should still be able to interact with the universe as completely as before (with a lot of learning, and assuming brain plasticity-- I guess we'd have to do it to a child).
I don't think that we could use an eye - which is a somewhat shady device just for seeing.....and then intentionally jimmy with the wiring to add yet more error and abstraction - and then claim that we'd be aight, or just as good as we are now, using it as an ear. It's like saying. "How about we took the wheels off cars, and replaced them with cinderblocks? The car would be fine." The complexity is irrelevant, just as an incredibly complex cinderblock would be irrelevant. I'd say that specificity is a much more salient category than complexity when it comes to sense apparatus, sense data, and sense abstraction.

Quote:Many people, including famous artists and musicians, have conditions in which they DO get this kind of crossover, so this is not a purely hypothetical example.

If Mozart claims d-minor is a dark yellow, and this informs his construction of a great piece of music, are you really going to tell him he's full of shit, and sound is just vibrations in air and nothing more? Smile
Yup. I doubt it would matter to him if I did say that though, and if he saw dark yellow in his minds eye when he struck a d-minor, then good for him. Doesn't mean that dark yellow is actually there (any more than a person being colorblind actually means that red is green, or green is red). If dark yellow were present when a person struck d-minor I'd know about it, and it would be a pretty easy experiment for any of us to run (assuming Mozart didn't have a 6th sense). Plenty of fun little tics when it comes to our senses and our brains. Obviously, I;m with you in a way..because we have plenty of reasons to doubt that our senses give us any sort of absolute truth or perfect representation. There are problems with abstraction, sure. That doesn't mean that anything is fair game though - that we can play so loosely with our sense data or that we could throw it all out in principle, rearrange it as we see fit for a thought experiment, and then conclude that this and thus (via our thought experiment) must be so. The accuracy of any individuals abstractions does not have a modifying effect on whatever it is they have abstracted. You thinking that an apple is blue will not make the apple blue. Someone thinking that a sound is a circle will not actually make the sound a circle. Our thoughts don't seem to have that ability, or, at least, mine don't. Our abstractions aren't always accurate - but this doesn't mean that they are always inaccurate. Removing an apples "redness" because of some imagined failure to percieve it, or an ability to percieve it as something else is massive error - because you aren't really talking about the apple, even though you're making conclusions about the apple.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#40
RE: Transcendental Knowledge?
(October 17, 2014 at 12:55 am)Exian Wrote: What does the Greek in the OP mean?

I'm pretty sure the Greek is used for reference so there's no confusion about the meanings of terms as they get translated among English, German and French.
Reply



Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  my suggestions of seeking knowledge. Mystic 70 9959 March 18, 2018 at 1:36 pm
Last Post: Brian37
  Limit of knowledge? SamWatson 23 3933 April 9, 2017 at 7:15 am
Last Post: bennyboy
  Logic Fallacies: A Quiz to Test Your Knowledge, A Cheat Sheet to Refresh It Rhondazvous 0 980 March 6, 2017 at 6:48 pm
Last Post: Rhondazvous
  Is knowledge the root of all evil? Won2blv 22 5750 February 18, 2017 at 7:56 pm
Last Post: Edwardo Piet
  The origins of Humanities Objective Knowledge and the fundamental mistake of behavior fdesilva 6 1387 August 19, 2016 at 10:03 pm
Last Post: PETE_ROSE
  Explicit vs Implicit Knowledge LivingNumbers6.626 9 2100 July 9, 2016 at 1:35 pm
Last Post: robvalue
  Knowledge and belief in God Harris 37 4441 April 29, 2016 at 8:00 am
Last Post: paulpablo
  My View on Belief vs. Knowledge GrandizerII 29 7244 March 4, 2015 at 7:12 pm
Last Post: Thumpalumpacus
  Belief and Knowledge Heywood 150 14848 November 9, 2014 at 8:24 pm
Last Post: bennyboy
  What is knowledge? Muslim Atheism 24 5296 June 22, 2014 at 7:58 am
Last Post: Confused Ape



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)