Re: How much intelligence?

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 14:50:33 -0500, Tony Orlow <aeo6@xxxxxxxxxxx> in
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

Lester Zick said:
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:02:16 -0500, "Allan C Cybulskie"
<allan.c.cybulskie@xxxxxxxx> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:


"Lester Zick" <lesterDELzick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:44150aae.30999317@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 07:32:31 -0500, "Allan C Cybulskie"
<allan.c.cybulskie@xxxxxxxx> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
Since it was the philosophers who STARTED science (science started from
empiricism, which merged with rationalism to become the science we know
today), I don't think I really need to show any more [grin].

Science really started much earlier than empiricism. Certainly science
begins with speculation. But by the time speculation becomes
sufficiently organized to be called philosophy it is invariably rife
with a whole host of speculative and undemonstrated assumptions.

Science as we know it today started from empiricism.

How about geometry? I will grant you that its axiomatic foundations
are empirical but the development of theorems is exhaustive of truth
given the truth of its axioms. Most consider geometry and math not to
be science but that's only because experimental sciences rely strictly
on empirical assumptions of truth.

Whether or not you
think that's a good thing is up to you. But today I don't think you can
call something science -- at least referring to the organized study of
science -- without acknowledging what it gets from philosophy and
empiricism.

It gets everything from both except truth.

It's philosophy who'll tell us what limits science has. It's philosophy
that will keep science in check when it attempts to ditch the subjective.

I disagree here, Allan. It is "true" and "not true" which tells us
what limits science has. Philosophy does not subject itself to
demonstrable standards of "true" and "not true" that I'm aware of.
Certainly philosophies usually honor standards of "true" and "not
true" but not in any mechanically definitive or reductive terms.

Well, tell me what other course of study will even study what it means for
something to be true or not true?

Science.

When you talk about your notion of
difference between differences, you are doing philosophy -- even if you
don't know it.

Not true because the idea of differences in general is exhaustive of
truth. Either differences are true of everything or there is something
different from differences. That's what science produces as opposed to
empiricism and philosophy. Neither empiricism nor philosophy is
exhaustive of truth. Science is.

It's philosophy that points out what social issues certain scientific
methods and "conclusions" have. While philosophy doesn't do science
well,
that's not what it's for.

Well I can agree here that systematic disciplined speculation is
certainly preferable to undisciplined argumentation. And that
philosophy is a useful kind of disciplined speculation for topics
science doesn't or can't address very well. On the other hand it
isn't an appropriate vehicle for speculation on a variety of topics
from truth on down which science can and should address even if it
hasn't succeeded as yet.

Science can't address truth, unless you want it to be much, much different
than it is today.

Empiricism and philosophy can't address truth only because they have
no exhaustive arguments. Science can address truth only by exhaustive
argument.

The scientific notion of truth IS naturalized
epistemology,

Well the empirical notion of truth is naturalized epistemology. But
that's only because empiricism has no exhaustive notion of truth. I
don't know whether philosophy has any notion of truth. As far as I
understand it really only has a notion of wisdom but none of truth in
exhaustive terms.

where we try to determine what truth is or what knowledge is
by looking at the many ways in which we use the term and generalizing from
that. It tells us what we THINK truth is, but not what truth OUGHT to be,
and so is useless.

Empiricism only works from assumptions of truth and not truth in
general exhaustive terms.

At least in philosophy, you can ask what truth ought to be ...

A question often asked by philosophers but never answered in
exhaustive terms. The only philosopher who even entertained the
question in more than superficial terms was The Philosopher.
Aristotle was able to show that a conclusion would be true if its
constituent premises were true; however, he could never prove
constituent premises were true and was left holding the last bag of
exhaustive truth ever seriously considered in philosophy to the best
of my knowledge. Let's face it: if any philosopher were actually able
to demonstrate truth in exhaustive terms he would be doing science
instead of philosophy.

I think both philosophers and empirics are so
used to ambiguous standards of truth they have no idea what truth is.

But, see, philosophers are trying to figure that out. Empirics aren't.

That's true. But philosophers have tried in vain. Their claims to
truth aren't any more exhaustive than empirics' claims to truth.

The problem is Glen and behaviorism
start of with philosophy - monism, naturalized epistemology,
materialism, and behaviorism - so they can't wind up with anything
better than philosophy.

Of what you've listed, 3 of the 4 are basic assumptions that are made in
modern science ...

Of course they are. The problem is they're ASSUMPTIONS. (Please
forgive my shouting). There is no demonstrable regression to truth.
Modern "science" is nothing more than raw empiricism.

Well, I wouldn't go that far. The hypothetical-deductive model brings
rationalism into the picture as well.

Rationalized assumptions of truth and argument based on those
assumptions..

Even math
rests on purely specualtive empirical assumptions known as axioms
despite its adherence to tautological regressions of consistency for
theorems with those axioms. Monism is assumed because the only
standard empiricism recognizes is utility and monism provides the
only basis for utility empricism has for its subject matter, material
interactions generally. But monism nonetheless remains an assumption.

Oh, I agree with these problems, but I blame it on modern academics rather
than on philosophy. In order to get funding, your research has to look
cool. Saying things work in the ways that everyone common-sensically expect
them to work is not cool, and so isn't funded.

Well maybe the "modern academic" part of the problem is that
philosophers are preoccupied with someone else funding their
philosophy instead of the truth of their philosophy.

I shudder at what I read of some of the other philosophy students I've been
in classes with. It's full of sound and fury, but says nothing.

Easy enough to do when your objective is entertainment as opposed
to truth.And if the objective of philosophy is not truth in exhaustive
terms it might just as well be a dog-and-pony show.

Today, that's because that what's left for philosophy are those
conclusions
that you cannot scientifically prove true. How can we demonstrate true
conclusions easily about those things that you cannot easily prove true?

Quite simply by recognizing that "truth" does not depend on empirical
testing and contradiction, that "truth" cannot be determined by
assumption and must be inferred universally from "false" alternatives
and self contradictory alternatives are necessarily and exhaustively
false. That's what science means and not just empirical testing.

This is exactly what I'm referring to with philosophical speculation.
Most philosophers pay homage to the truth but then just go on with
speculative assumptions as to what's true and what's false. And with
no unambiguous concept of truth their philosophy of science or
anything else can only prove more or less useful. That's been the
thrust of everything I've written so it seems a little surprizing you
don't seem aware of the critical significance of the issue to science.

Well, when you can't prove the answer true you have to make an assumption
and see if you can make everything work out until someone manages to prove
what is or isn't true.

Let me put it to you this way: is the exhaustive alternative to what
is false perforce true and are tautologies in the form of "A, not A"
exhaustive of truth and is self contradiction exhaustively false?

You know, Lester, I am beginning to explore this very question. The answer is
not so clear as you might think. If we generalize logic quantitatively, and
consider truth values to be probabilities between 0 and 1 inclusive, then "p
and not p" can have a non-zero value. In other words, if the certainty of
proposition p is not absolute, then the mutually exclusive relationship between
a proposition and its negation is mitigated.

Consider that "and" has a geometric interpretation as the intersection of two
regions, as in a Venn diagram, and that this geometric interpretation
corresponds to an arithmetic operation, namely x and y is interpreted as x*y.
Also consider the arithmetic interpretation of "not x" as 1-x. Then, x and not
x is equal to x*(1-x), or x-x^2. This value is always 0, as long as x is either
0 or 1. But, for fractional values of x, the excluded middle is no longer null.
This appears to be the intuitionistic logic approach, and not entirely invalid.
What do you think?

The most interesting thing, which I discovered last weekend, is as follows.
Logical implication is generally thought of such that a->b means "b or not a".
It's false if a is true and b false, so it's equivalent to 1-(a and not b),
which in normal quantitative terms, as above, becomes 1-(a*(1-b)), or 1-a+ab.
For a and b being either 0 or 1, this formula produces a 0 when a is 1 and b 0,
and a 1 otherwise, as one would expect. But, there is another interpretation of
logical implication, which I intend to explore further. For x and y in [0,1],
1-x is in [0,1] and corresponds to "not", x*y is in [0,1] and corresponds to
"and", and x^y is also in [0,1]. If x^y is interpreted as "y->x", then for x
and y in {0,1}, it produces the same binary Boolean truth values as standard
implication, but gives a slightly different spread of probabilities when using
continuous truth values for x and y in [0,1]. I'll be examining the differences
and their implications in the near future. It's not trivial. It may be key.

So, when you talk about how to address the nature of truth itself, to me that's
a mathemtical question. There was a bit of a discussion in Epistemology 201:
the Science of Science (I think) where people argued about whether math is part
of logic, or vice versa. In the way I am suggesting, logic, the science of
truth, may easily be seen to be a branch of quantitative mathematics. How does
that strike you? :)

As I recall, Tony, in that thread the actual question was whether math
was a branch of science. Of course logic is the science of truth but
math is also a branch of science dealing with space in the context of
geometry and equal differences in the case of arithmetic. Logic is not
itself a branch of quantitative math in this regard. Quantitative math
is a branch of logic which in the case of arithmetic deals with equal
subdivisions which have the properties peculiar to cardinal numbers.

In other words I don't see any way for cardinal math to deal with its
logical antecedent, logic. I'm going to read over what you say above
but I need you to specifically answer the issue I pose above, whether
a thing is true whose alternatives are false?

It isn't the ASSUMPTIONS that generally get philosophers in trouble, but the
fact that the key questions are not proveable.

That's what I mean by assumptions.

~v~~



--
Smiles,

Tony


~v~~

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: How much intelligence?
    ... Science really started much earlier than empiricism. ... sufficiently organized to be called philosophy it is invariably rife ... given the truth of its axioms. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: How much intelligence?
    ... Science really started much earlier than empiricism. ... sufficiently organized to be called philosophy it is invariably rife ... given the truth of its axioms. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: How much intelligence?
    ... Science really started much earlier than empiricism. ... sufficiently organized to be called philosophy it is invariably rife ... given the truth of its axioms. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: How much intelligence?
    ... Science really started much earlier than empiricism. ... sufficiently organized to be called philosophy it is invariably rife ... given the truth of its axioms. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: How much intelligence?
    ... Science really started much earlier than empiricism. ... sufficiently organized to be called philosophy it is invariably rife ... given the truth of its axioms. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)