http://mashable.com/2016/06/02/elon-musk-simulated-reality/#sdLXHm2_jsqB
2,657 thoughts on “Elon Musk Thinks Evolution is Bullshit.”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
I’m not a positivist. I might LIKE something to be verifiable, but just because I’m unhappy if they aren’t doesn’t mean that to be meaningful things must be verifiable.
keiths:
walto:
Sigh. Dennett, who coined the phrase, writes:
As you know, I do not hold that there is a central “Theater” in the brain where “it all comes together”. I am not a “Cartesian theaterist”.
You just misunderstood the concept.
Sorry, but you either misunderstand the implications of your own Cartesianism or Dennett’s description of the theater, or (most likely) both.
I’m pretty sure my original point in the relevant post was about knowledge, but it is fair that I should have specified knowledge-that to be consistent with the rest of my post which mentioned JTB, (going by memory though!).
Although I think the context-dependence of knowing-how for socially-defined skills is relevant for determining if it intrinsically has those skills.
As an example of a context-independent skills, can we say it knows how to pick its nose, or would that be saying something rude about the person of which it is a duplicate?
walto,
Meanwhile, you actually think that Boltzmann Brains and Cartesian demons are examples of Cartesian Theater scenarios:
walto:
keiths:
walto:
So for you, any scenario in which the brain receives sensory information is a Cartesian Theater. No wonder you’re so confused!
Walto, first you were mixing up Swampman and Twin Earth. Now you’re mangling the Cartesian Theater. If you want to deploy these concepts, shouldn’t you, um, learn what they are first?
walto:
No, it’s an argument. It shows the futility of trying to assert that there is some fact of the matter about whether Jones means horse or schmorse when he says, or thinks, “horse”.
My metaphysical “tether” criticism gets at the same point. I notice that neither you nor Bruce have addressed it, though I keep asking.
Here it is again:
keiths,
That’s too confused (as between ‘sensory information’ as a bunch of processes or acts and as objects as acts) to bother responding too. Your ‘views’ are a mass of such confusions. You really have very little idea what you’re talking about. Which would be ok except that you’re so damn sure you’re right about everything.
Confusion mixed with arrogance is a smelly stew.
walto,
Heh. You don’t have a response.
Anyone can read Dennett’s words, and then yours, and see that you mangled the concept of the Cartesian Theater.
It was just a mistake, walto. Acknowledge it and move on.
As I said, you have no idea what you’re talking about if you think you’re not a Cartesian Theaterist because you think a Cartesian theater needs a “screen”. That’s simply wrong.
From Dan Lloyd, “Popping the Thought Balloon”
That you can’t get this is not exactly a good thing, keiths.
Keiths simply CANNOT admit when he’s wrong!!
Here’s a bit more from the same paper (not that keiths will get this either):
Dennett has spent most of his career attacking that view of cognition. (In my view, it’s the main thing he’s been right about.)
Good grief, walto.
The quote you supplied actually supports my position rather than undermining it. Try reading it again, more carefully this time, focusing on the following:
That “special clearinghouse” is the Cartesian screen.
Dennett says the same thing:
It was just a mistake, walto. You make quite a few of them. Accept it and move on.
Try to say the words, “I was wrong,” keiths. I know you’ve never done it before, but it gets easier, and you need to learn how, because you really should be saying them a lot. On this site alone, maybe five times a day.
There’s no Cartesian skepticism of the kind you like without a Cartesian theater. No screen necessary.
You are simply wrong.
KN,
Here’s how I think about it:
Memories are just beliefs about the past. Like other beliefs, they may be true or false.
At the instant of his creation, Swampman has plenty of memories, but a healthy percentage of them are false. He remembers lots of things as happening to him when in fact they happened to non-Swampman.
Other things he remembers — such as the fact that Bush was the president at the time of the 9/11 attacks — are true, though associated memories (such as where he was when he learned of the attacks) are false.
In short, memories may be true or false, but they’re still memories — beliefs about the past.
Now Bruce will of course argue, as you have above, that Swampman’s pre-‘birth’ memories aren’t real memories because they aren’t causally connected to their referents, but that’s no different than the argument he makes for meanings, and my criticisms still apply.
It is verifiable in principle if that is your criterion for reality: someone could have seen the creature at its moment of creation.
ETA: With that knowledge, we would not treat any predicted behavior as evidence that the entity had memory.
Same goes for understanding a language, I say.
It was just a mistake, walto. You make quite a few of them. Accept it and move on.
And for God’s sake (so to speak), learn what Dennett actually means by “Cartesian Theater”.
Now, how about addressing this?
ETA: I see you added this to your comment:
That’s incorrect. Cartesian skepticism does not depend on the Cartesian theater. That is, nothing about Cartesian skepticism depends on assuming that “amid the squishy stuff there is a special clearinghouse where the full-blown cogitations gather.”
The quote you supplied defeats you.
I’m not a verificationist about linguistic meaning, but I like verificationism about ontological commitment. If I take myself to be observing a X, and no one who I take to be suitably disposed to observe the X reports observing it, that’s a compelling reason for me to think that there is no X. One of the nice things I learned from Ladyman and Ross’s Every Thing Must Go is that it’s helpful to think of verificationism as a criterion of epistemic significance.
By the way, I think you’re right that there’s a faint whiff of Cartesianism to the idea that “the brain receives information,” but it’s not a Cartesian theater per se. (This is a situation where there’s a lot of burden tennis — the burden of proof being shifted back and forth — due to deep underlying differences in basic theoretical commitments.)
For example: if one is generally convinced by the sorts of considerations raised by Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception and Gibson in Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, then one might think that it’s a deep mistake to say “the brain receives information”. Instead one would say that animals actively perceive the information in their environments. They do not receive information but detect it; they do so actively, not passively; and the cognitive agent is the whole animal, not just the brain. Granted, part of how they do involves the two-way information flow between neurodynamics within and across cortical and subcortical areas and the ebb-and-flow of the firing of sensory receptors.
Conversely, to say “the brain receives information” invites the idea that the brain stands to the world and to the body much as two communicators stand in relation to one another — I send you information, and you receive it. The cognitive agent receiving the transmitted message is now identified with the brain, considered in abstraction from its relations with body and world. But notice that we are, in this metaphor, attributing a property that belongs to the embodied/embedded agent — the person — to the brain itself, we are in effect attributing to a part (the brain) a property (the ability to receive information) that belongs to the whole (the person).
And that is, indeed, one aspect of the Cartesian conception of cognitive agency. That’s what all the debates between cognitivists (like Fodor) and enactivists (like Chemero) are all about, with the PP folks (Friston, Frith, Hohwy etc.) caught between them — to what extent are any cognitive processes partially constituted by brain-body or brain-body-environment interactions, rather than being wholly skull-bound?
I really think you can do it if you try, keiths. Try to say “I’m confused and wrong.” You absolutely are, and it might do you good. I know it’s wicked hard for you, but those who know you will take it as a major step forward in your recovery.
The quote I supplied doesn’t “defeat” anybody. It simply illustrates that Dennett has always been opposed to Cartesianism, and that the Cartesian theater doesn’t require a “screen” as you weirdly believe.
Anyhow, give it a try. You might find it liberating!
Kantian Naturalist,
KN, I take Dennett’s “Cartesian theater” to be a metaphor for any view in which one perceives sense data and then infers a world from them. That is precisely what our own little confused Dennettian is doing.
If one feels (because of a need of cartoons) that we need a homunculus and a screen, then the “homunculus” is keiths’ “consciousness” or inner perceiver and the “screen” is the array of pictures that passes before it–all displayed in a manner that allows them to be seen or heard or smelled by this inner perceiver.
The point is that anybody who thinks that he can never know that he is seeing cows because he might just be perceiving deceptive sense data instead is a charter member of the anti-Dennett club on the Descartes issue. And, as you note, such a person is also a member of the earlier anti-Gibson club.
I’m guessing that keiths is one of the only Cartesian Dennettians in the world. He’s hilarious.
I don’t really understand what you’re saying here, but I do know that you attributed some words to me that I didn’t write! I was quoting someone (KN, I think.)
ETA: To be clear, I said the “I’m not a positivist” stuff. KN said the stuff referring to KN1 and KN2.
Incidentally, even Descartes himself didn’t suggest there was a “screen.”
walto:
walto,
The Cartesian Theater and Cartesian skepticism are distinct concepts. I am a Cartesian skeptic, but not a “Cartesian theaterist”.
KN sees your error:
Swallow your pride, admit your mistake, and move on.
walto:
Gee, I wonder why. There were movie theaters all over the place in the 1600s.
(Just to forestall the inevitable, the pineal gland was the “screen” for Descartes.)
No, you dope. Even Plato had a screen.
Words to live by, keiths. Start now!
Re: KN, it’s nice that you suddenly happen to agree with him on this matter, but, well, he’s wrong.
I suppose one could be a certain type of Cartesian skeptic without buying the theater as you do. But when one sees the sense data and can’t know anything because he can’t be sure he can get past them, he joins you in the Cartesian theater business.
Swallow your pride, admit your mistake, but don’t just move on. Start looking for the other several hundred errors you’ve made on this thread alone and note them too. It’s a huge enterprise, no doubt. But good for the soul.
Make your OP about yourself! There might then be more than a grain of truth in it!
walto,
I repeat:
keiths,
The pineal gland was not a screen.
One more error of yours. Keep ’em coming, man!
walto,
For Descartes, the pineal gland was the interface between the soul and the brain. In other words, it plays the same role as the screen in Dennett’s metaphor.
Dennett says so explicitly:
Even the quote you provided says so:
For Descartes, the pineal gland was the screen. You are wrong again.
This is all quite entertaining, but I do hope you’ll eventually suck it up and admit your mistakes so we can get on to a discussion of the “metaphysical tether” issue.
No. It was not thought to be a screen; Descartes took the pineal gland to be the seat of the soul.
You think that’s the same thing as a screen on which sense data play? There is really no limit whatever to the silly lengths you’ll go to to avoid admitting an error.
Screen–seat of soul; meh what’s the dif? Hahaha.
If you think of the cognitive agent as immediately perceiving, or immediately aware of, only his or her sense-data, and everything beyond that is an inference or guess or even speculation, then yes, one is certainly swimming in very Cartesian waters.
Let us note that this conception of the cognitive situation, though arguably original with Descartes in the West (though there is much like it in earlier Islamic philosophers), is not unique to ‘rationalists’. It is also there in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Kant struggled against it, and to this day it’s debated whether he was ultimately successful or unsuccessful. In the 19th-century it can be found in Helmholtz, Mill, Schopenhauer, and even Nietzsche. Reid may have been one of the first to really protest it, and he influenced Peirce, James, Dewey, and other reasonable folks. (Presently I’m reading an essay by Chemero about James’s influence on Gibson.)
Still, one could be in the position of having to infer a world from sense-data without there’s being any unity to the cognitive agent. There needn’t be a Central Meaner sitting in the Cartesian Theater. To see why, notice that Dennett’s argument for the multiple drafts model of consciousness are not going to give you a vindication of direct realism. Dennett might well be assuming direct realism to some extent — I myself think that he takes over a great deal from Ryle (his D.Phil supervisor) and Sellars, both of whom were direct realists at the personal level.
But even if Dennett were assuming direct realism in the background of his work, it is still the case that one could reject the Central Meaner, accept a multiple drafts theory of consciousness, and yet also think that all cognitive operations are performed on sense-data, and that sense-data are the termini of our immediate awareness.
More precisely, Descartes thought the pineal gland was the site of causal interaction between the ‘animal spirits’ that ran throughout the body and the res cogitansor mind.
Kantian Naturalist,
All hail the wise and mighty Reid!
Poor walto.
This thread has gone from bad to worse for you. I hope the lesson isn’t lost on you:
When trapped in hole, stop digging and await rescue.
If it’s been bad for me, it must be absolutely awful for you, keiths (now even your imagined lone supporter KN has left you). Nearly every post you’ve made in the last couple of days has been riddled with silly mistakes and absurd evasions. I know you can’t admit when you’re wrong, so you should take a break maybe.
What you’re doing now is just pathetic.
I wonder if anybody else has been able to find a Cartesian Dennetian other than our own keiths.
I’ve come up completely empty 🙁
walto:
Um, walto — I hate to break the news to you, but KN is agreeing with me.
keiths:
walto:
KN:
“The Interface between the soul and the brain” means the same thing as “the site of causal interaction between the ‘animal spirits’ and the res cogitans“.
You actually didn’t realize that?
Presumably Descartes would invite us to distinguish between
1. what is the mind immediately aware of?
2. what is the underlying nature of the mind?
3. what is the relation between the mind and the body?
He would say “ideas”, “an immaterial substance”, and “causal interaction via the pineal gland”, respectively.
But if one rejects immaterialism, there’s still the remaining question as to what one is immediately aware when one takes oneself to be perceiving veridically?
An empiricist would say “sensations” (Locke: “simple ideas of sense”, Hume: “impressions and ideas”, Russell: “sense-data”). All of those views are consistent with rejecting immaterialism.
But insofar as a “screen” metaphor is operative in any of those doctrines, that’s clearly separable from the dualism vs. materialism in (2) and (3).
On the one hand, I am puzzled that keiths is both a constructive phenomenalist in his epistemology and a reductive physicalist in his metaphysics. Those positions do not seem to fit together. On the other hand, keiths is hardly alone in accepting both of those positions and trying to make them cohere. There’s a long tradition in Western philosophy attempting to do just that. Perhaps the last major philosopher to try and square that circle was Quine.
walto,
Just in case you’re tempted to claim that KN and I are out to lunch on this, here’s an excerpt from the SEP article on Descartes and the pineal gland:
Let’s see, “a low-pressure image of the sensory stimulus appears on the surface of the pineal gland”, and the rational soul considers the image “directly when it imagines some object or perceives it by the senses.”
Even you can’t miss something that obvious. For Descartes, the pineal gland plays the same role as the screen in Dennett’s metaphor.
Dennett agrees (in the quote I provided), and so does Dan Lloyd in the quote you provided. After quoting Lloyd, are you now going to turn around and tell us that he’s an idiot for equating the Cartesian Theater with “the pineal frontier”? And that the person who wrote the SEP article is also an idiot?
Cut your losses, dude. Even I’m starting to feel embarrassed for you.
Keiths, my cartesian Dennettian, your confusions on these matters just pile higher and higher. But I get you prime directive: you can’t admit you’ve been wrong numerous times in this thread. And it must be made worse for you to realize that your two heroes, Descartes and Dennett, have contradictory views )both of which you hold!)
What to do? Denial! Call Descartes’ ‘seat of the soul” a sense data screen! If you add in few insults and non-sequitors, maybe nobody will notice.
Well, sadly, it didn’t work. I noticed. KN noticed. And I’m guessing Bruce noticed too, though he’s too nice to pile on. It really has been an awful thread for you.
And all you had to do was say the one thing you simply can’t say.
walto,
That SEP article includes Descartes’ own words on the topic. Are you going to tell us that Descartes is an idiot who doesn’t know what Descartes thinks? But that you, walto, do ?
You wouldn’t admit your mistake even if Descartes walked up to you and pointed it out himself, would you?
Right. Precisely. Keiths seems to think that because he’s a physicalist who doesn’t think there are interactions between souls and bodies at the pineal gland or anywhere else, that he can’t be a cartesian theaterist. But he obviously is. The physicalism is, as you say, irrelevant, to that position, which is epistemological.
Cartesians don’t rely on pineal glands any more–except maybe those who want to change the subject.
Well we were talking about YOUR own wack views until you changed the subject to, of all things, Descartes’ silly and long discarded pineal gland theory. I was not aware that he thought of this interaction place as a kind of screen, and my claim that he did not was incorrect.
Fortunately I’m not terribly interested in Descartes absurd descriptions of the pineal gland. Nobody is. Dennett was talking about modern Cartesians (like you), none of whom rely on a place where animal spirits act on the soul (or vice versa). He was talking about YOUR view regarding the taking in of sense data.
So, I was wrong once on this thread–regarding what is basically a red herring. How many times have you been wrong? I’m going to say, charitably, 75.
walto:
* bing bing bing bing bing *
You admitted a mistake! I’m proud of you! (Seriously.)
You’re still making excuses, but hey — I can’t deny that it’s progress.
walto, to KN:
Where did you get that idea? That’s not at all what I think.
Of course physicalists can be “Cartesian theaterists”. That’s why Dennett coined the term “Cartesian materialism”:
However, I’m not a Cartesian theaterist, because I do not think there is (to quote Dennett again)
Can you bring yourself to admit this mistake, too?
walto,
Let’s see — who was it that brought up Descartes’ beliefs? Why, it was walto, of course:
Are you going to beat yourself up for “changing the subject” to Descartes and his silly beliefs?
KN,
What do you mean by “a constructive phenomenalist in his epistemology”?
keiths,
Good deflection, keiths! Classic.
walto,
What deflection? You complained that I changed the subject, when you were the one who did so!
That’s known as an “own goal” or a “foot shot”.
Keep up the good work.
walto,
While we’re addressing your mistakes, let’s not neglect this one:
walto:
keiths:
walto:
keiths:
Dennett is perfectly comfortable with the idea that our brains receive sensory information. Why on earth wouldn’t he be? That idea has nothing to do with the Cartesian Theater.
For example, here he discusses hysterical blindness: