Howcan an object possibly literally be a concept, think of any shape possible, imagine drawing any 3Dshape on your computer, even colour it in with images ~ like a skin on a mesh in computer games. Even the image wont be a concept, only the ideas of that image as a concept [conceptual thought] will mean something conceptual. This then means that concepts and ideas cannot even be holographic, let alone a physical object, the movement/s nor the calibration of those objects!
This idea derived from the thread;
An artificial brain cannot produce consciousness…
Will it? how could we possibly know? We would have to be able to say what and where consciousness is. We cannot do that yet, and I get the feeling that we cannot do that simply because consciousness is nowhere to be found within the context of the physical.
If they can show us what and where it is in the physical then all my theories are wrong. However it would also mean that physical objects ‘contain’ everything we are, and that would make them into a very interesting thing. Objects that understand, feel and can be mental qualia, emotions, concepts, perceptions and visualisations ~ even hallucinations would be real physical things, we could open up the cranium, cut into the brain and look at them lighting up the brain in a mini 3D image [same as with the world we really see].
If they cannot show where and what all those mental things are, that would logically mean that building an artificial brain, or even creating an artificial biological brain, would not ‘produce’ consciousness!
Wrong. Consciousness is a concept of some image of what a concept could be the image of. Consciousness is reductive because it's a description of some thing which we are trying to desribe.
However, just because it's indescribable doesn't mean it doesen't exist on some level as some thing.
The last person whom I heard to say that was Khrishnamurti, -his last public talk 1982 August
The same was brought out by K with physicist Bohm c. 1970's.
True. I would think consciousness is expressed through perception &/or that perception is consciousness ‘seeing’ or understanding, knowing. Or in informational terms, mental information correlates with physical information, the act of which is ‘seeing’.
If, consciousness cannot generate mental info, then it wouldn’t even know that it itself exists, hence it wouldn’t ‘be’ consciousness.
That if true ^^ then that conceptual thought is generated from the physical needs to be shown, to wit I here challenge the notion not only is that not true, but philosophically, NO shape nor construct [objects of any kind] can directly be a concept.
true again, but Isn’t that a bit like saying that seeing an object cannot occur because seeing is not those objects, nor an object? This is part of the reason why I think there are other things than objects; like e.g. seeing, perception, experience, qualia. Mental info is probably much like e.g. colour qualia, in fact I think we can visualise information quite well and not just symbolically as with words.
Kovesi does make a distinction between material and formal concepts, and it is not to say that the concepts themselves consit of material, but that one concerns with description, the other naming. Wittgenstein makes the comment that you have to have a concept of X, in order to define what X is.
One concerns with fact, (it is what it is) and the other with value (it is how it’s described)
they may all be perfectly true, but truth appears to be somewhat a thing of perspective, don’t you think? You can have many areas of science and philosophy which are different but equally true, they all just observe the world from a different perspective. Do such arguments make an argument against mine here, or do they offer an alternative way of viewing things? Are we not still left with a fundamental stretch at which objects cannot take shape such to literally be a concept? No matter how we shape a plastic world [as if like clay in the hand] the X will never know it is an X. [X is the material [or any shaped object of any kind]].
A material thing e.g. a robot more sophisticated in build than a human being, cannot be conscious or know that it exists = they are all X.
oh, unless mind/spirit/souls are attracted to that kind of thing!? [as they are to the human form]
I think both. The question asked is how do concepts form? Does the value of a thing gives rise to the differing perspectives and further find them in different contexts? The value of some thing of interest puts perceptual focus (bracketing) discerning that thing, which later we learn to call X, thus defining it. The ideal paradigm, of the idea-concept including all possible perspectives, was Ryle's mistake. Different logical levels of description excludes this, by the fact that all perspectives cannot be included in the paradigm, because some are unknown, and some are rejected. This defeats a total denial of Descartes' duality, and hence partially invalidates Ryle's totally behavioristic model
Is this another perspective, or argument against your thesis? I think the way you state the oP by emphasising perspective, you are predicating fact, over value. You are siding with Ryle, and not seeing the incompleteness of his contradictory, albeit seemingly air tight logic. All behaviours are not reducible to perception, and therefore behaviourism is too incomplete to form a general semantic theory.
Ryle’s causative reduction gets him into trouble similarly as Russell’s sense data does.
In order to define some thing, by assigning a symbol or name to it, first the concept of it has to develop. This brings the problem of what a concept is, to the fore. The question of what is, is primarily a material concept of progressive linguistic/referential/objective familiar structures, and it is by discerning elements of structural partial intorconnections rather than comparing a pre-existing likeness.
So here, Wittgenstein supported Ryle’s anti dualistic criterion by denying any connection between the material thing and it’s idea, therefore it is simplyconsidering definitional language structures as truth’s in themselves, irrespective of perspective, but respective of an inherent meaning. Wittgensteins seems to somehow minimise the problem by corresponing the two processes, yet. He does so on the same logical plane.
Looking at your question, this view is no logical refutation of your op , nor is it a representational varience, but the view of a logic used in both vays, where in fact(in truth), a different level's logical mode is used to evaluate the material versus the formal logics involved.
With this view in mind, amorphos, the question whether a robot's consciousness can ever attain one of a human being, the answer has to be yes, as long as the robot learns to identify the thing he finally names by a symbol such as X. In this restricted sense of the use of the term "consciiusness" there is no appreciatable difference , but the ultimate question of what else besides this does consciiusness include, is the very problem with those who believe that all behaviors can be reduced to certain ideas.
Consciousness may contain unknown, unappreciated, or unexperienced behaviors, and their lack is what is at the bottom of any general theory based on strict causality.
A different culture may see a given other symbol Y which to them means everything X does to us. I don’t think the object itself has any linguistic or other properties?
The mind here is ascribing a meaning to an object = the meaning derives from the mind.
Interesting argument!
All behaviours are not reducible to perception; sure, as like we cannot see a propeller moving fast, hence its actions/behaviour cannot be perceived [or seen].
Does this mean that some behaviours can >be< a concept? I think we have the same problems concerning behaviour as we do with shape; a dance or a painting could be seen as shape being concepts, but the dancer is material and we are the only ones knowing it is dancing. It is still the mind giving it such qualities as ‘dance’.
Hmm on the other hand I do think nature manages to make a lot of art and movements which should only be recognisable to us!
A concept is a tool for thinking, it is not a thing unto itself.
Outside of a brain, there are no such things as “concepts”.
Conception is the action of simulating a thing using associative memory and sequential analysis.
My cat is capable of conceptualizing the fight path of a bird from one window to the next; that doesn’t mean the flight of the bird is a concept.
It means that the flight of the bird is capable of being predicted by a sufficiently capable brain which can conceptualize the actions of the bird in flight using memory and analysis to create a prediction of expectation.
Conception is a problem solving tool of a sufficiently advanced brain.
In literal answer, yes, any given thing may be conceptualized, but no, a thing itself is not a concept as what it is.
Conception requires perception and sufficient brain capacity to produce the phenomenon of a concept.
I think that some objects have to have a shape and a size and all that. But those are just the physical objects. There are objects that aren’t physical. Sometimes we use the labels for those objects as the objects of sentences. That’s a good way to tell if what you’re dealing with is an object or not, regardless of whether it’s a physical one.
I have been here 1 year+ and have not gotten a computer. I bring this up, because it is important in this type of argument to be able be able to paraphrase point by point. Therefore I hope to add here, that yes amorphos, I am saying essentially the same thing as you have indicated, except that you are going from a top to bottom and conceiving the argument from the factual scheme that upholds the notion that a reduction toward identification of objects from traits or represented characteristics may determine the concept (formal concept) whereas I go against that notion, from the material concept toward the formal. The idea is the same except in your argument , you quantify the idea as the most probable (ideal) object arising out of similarly characterised objects,whereas mine starts with a process of perception which de constructs the ideal by excluding non characteristic concepts with dissimilar, different traits. In this scheme of things, recognition occurs, by getting rid of unfamiliar concepts and therefore de constructing the ideally associated paradigm, leading to, finally to the perceptive ground of recognition which will identify it.
So we want to identify what that concept is, but through differing logical routes. I can give you a reference to this line of reasoning, I you’d care to, later on.
Those two types objects are the two types of concepts: material and value based: formal and material concepts. Just another way of saying.
And it gives reason to deconstruct the concept in favor of constructing one out of similar patterns.
I sometimes think philosophers use confusing and doubly used language in order to evade the problems with their argements.
I Think there may be - I say ‘may be’ - a process in your OP, Amorphos, of drawing a conclusion about reality based on a reification - read: misleading languge.
It seems to me a concept is a process. An interaction with something - even a text, which is a kind of object - by an intelligence. A relationship over time.
Objects can be processes, in fact they all are, though some are more complicated, even more interesting, than others.
Anyway, an object by itself can’t be a concept. The trick is that some minds can treat themselves or parts of themselves like objects. So the process happens where one part interacts with Another. These can be concepts. To me it might be possible that two objects in a relationship process can be a concept. You need a tool user and a tool. The tool itself is not a concept, though the tool user may assign it that name. (and remember ‘relationship’ is also a reification)
I don’t Think however one can draw the conclusion that physicalism is false however, by your line of reasoning, that is.
And who needs to? It seems to me that what is physical is now a set much weirder and including things that would have shocked earlier physicalists (materialists). Matter - whatever that means - we keep finding out can do and be things we did not realize Before. We shouldn’t feel boxed in by Words like object, matter, physical, because physicalists do not.
I don’t really understand why there needs to be a discussion of ought or is in regards to physical output.
I’m a physicalist; I’m not someone who is supporting a non-materialist standpoint.
My only point is that a concept doesn’t exist if there isn’t a brain involved.
Conception is the action of simulation in a brain; nothing more or less, really.
The zoo example involves a brain simulating from memory and analysis, so does the university example.
These concepts aren’t things unto themselves; they require that a brain analyzes the information and formulates a simulation.
I’m more in line with Moreno on this subject; that an object itself isn’t a concept. A concept requires a brain to be involved in the exchange.
Jason: I discovered Rupert Sheldrakes's. The sense of Being Stared AT, and I am kind of impressed. Moreno's ideas coincide with current trends, and they are the majority opinion. I was outlining minority philosophic opinion, which may turn the tables and gain more agreement. I too am making up my mind, and not at all convinced as to what camp I finally want to pitch my tent in.
Experiments of that kind have continued to be inconclusive for the proposition, equaling probability of accuracy not too different from chance.
Alternatively, I would more sympathize with the hypothesis that such experiences are subconscious assessments of received perceptions whereby the brain is picking up on nuances of differences not readily aware to overt cognition.
This seems more plausible than assuming there to be some non-physical medium phenomena taking place, or proposing some quantum state super-position interaction (like holographic theory extrapolated into justifying psychic phenomena, for example).
I love Sheldrake. I don’t think what I said was going against his ideas. He has his morphic fields, but these could be seeen as physical, like other fields are in science, as physical, just physical of some nature not yet measurable - though he thinks he can see the effects which is not quite the same thing.
The physicalism/dualism debate is made much more complicated - or potentially eliminated - by the fact that physical now can mean things like fields, massless particles, particales or whole objects (or universes) in superposition, neutrinos gliding through bodies in their trillions and a host of other possible and already considered real phenomena. I think people see the word physical and get the wrong associations - something like a chair (though even chairs aren’t really that physical)
There is where my confusion comes into play. Sheldrake seems to be a physicalist himself, and yet talks of the 7th way as if it was both: physical and mental. He implies that consciousness is both inside the brain and outside of the mind. I just started reading it, and it has really captured my imagination.
But then again, I am weary of occultism because from a physicalist perspective it seems to want to prove it’s self on basis of supposed and recorded psychic experiences. But this is the strange part, that he reminds his readers that the very fact of an admission of psychic experiences, one is likely be branded as not exactly playing with all the cards. So it makes sense to toe the line. However,his was a bold stance taken, despite knowing the academic risks he was taking.
[as they are to the human form]