= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
How well calibrated were the prediction book users?
I don't think you have phrased "the question" differntly and better, I think you have substituted two differnt questions. Well, maybe you think the MoL is a ragbag of different questions, not one big one. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. That would be a philsophical question. I don't see how empiricsm could help. Speaking of which...
What instruments do use to get feedback from reality vis a vis phenomenal consciousness and ethical values? I didn't notice and qualiometers or agathometers last time I was in a lab.
I've substituted problems that philosophy is actually working on (metaethics and conciousness) with one that analytic philosophy isn't (meaning of life). Meaning comes from mind. Either we create our own meaning (absurdism, existentialism, ect) or we get meaning from a greater mind that designed us with a purpose (religion). Very simple. How could computer science or science dissolve this problem? (1) By not working on it because it's unanswerable by the only methods we can have said to have answered something, or (2) making the problem answerable by operationalizing it or by reforming the intent of the question into another, answerable, question.
Through the process of science, we gain enough knowledge to dissolve philosophical questions or make the answer obvious and solved (even though science might not say "the meaning of life is X" but instead show that we evolved, what mind is, and how the universe likely came into being -- in which case you can answer the question yourself without any need for a philosophy department).
What instruments do use to get feedback from reality vis a vis phenomenal consciousness and ethical values? I didn't notice and qualiometers or agathometers last time I was in a lab.
If I want to know what's happening in a brain, I have to understand the physical/biological/computational nature of the brain. If I can't do that, then I can't really explain qualia or such. You might say we can't understand qualia through its physical/biological/computational nature. Maybe, but it seems very unlikely, and if we can't understand the brain through science, then we'll have discovered something very surprising and can then move in another direction with good reason.
And the CS departments are going to tell us what the meaning of life is?
If have to give up on even trying to answer the questions, you don't actually have a better alternative.
I absolutely loathe the way you phrased that question for a variety of reasons (and I suspect analytic philosophers would as well), so I'm going to replace "meaning of life" with something more sensible like "solve metaethics" or "solve the hard problem of consciousness." In which case, yes. I think computer science is more likely to solve metaethics and other philosophical problems because the field of philosophy isn't founded on a program and incentive structure of continual improvement through feedback from reality. Oh, and computer science works on those kinds of problems (so do other areas of science, though).
The field as a whole (or rather, some within it, to be more accurate) takes these issues seriously as a matter of debate, yes, but arguing over controversial claims is the entire point of philosophy so that's no mark against it. It's also a radically different position from the strong claim you've advanced here that the field itself is broken, which is nonsense to anyone familiar with modern moral philosophy and ethics/meta-ethics and is dangerously close to a strawman argument.
To say the problem is "rampant" is to admit to a limited knowledge of the field and the debates within it.
To say the problem is "rampant" is to admit to a limited knowledge of the field and the debates within it.
Well, Lukeprog certainly doesn't have a limited knowledge of philosophy. Maybe you can somehow show that the problem isn't rampant.
And your better alternative is...?
Defund philosophy departments to the benefit of computer science departments?
Oh I doubt I'd be surprised, but that's more a problem of the people coming out of Philosophy 101 than the discipline itself. Frege and Bertrand Russell put most of the metaphysical extravagances to bed (in the Anglo-American tradition at least) with the turn towards formal logic and language, and the modern-day analytic tradition hasn't ever looked back.
As it stands the field has about as much to do with mind-body dualism or idealism (or their respective toolkits) as theoretical physics. This goes for ethics and meta-ethics, and no serious writer in that topic would entertain Cartesian dualism or Kantian deontology or any other such in a trivial form. The idea of contingent, historical, contextually-sensitive ethics is widely recognized and is indeed a topic of lively discussion.
Show me three of your favorite papers from the last year in ethics or meta-ethics that highlight the kind of the philosophy you think is representational of the field. (And if you've been following Lukeprog's posts for any length of time, you'd see that he's probably read more philosophy than most philosophers. His gestalt impression of the field is probably accurate.)
And what we call the 'territory' is a map itself.
I think a realist would take issue with this statement... Surely territory is just another name for reality?
A description is sufficient for execution, but what executes the description?
Indeed, what? Is there an underlying computing substrate, which is more "real" than the territory?
Surely territory is just another name for reality?
I think you misinterpreted me. Territory is just another name for reality, but reality is just a name and so is territory. By nature of names coming from mind, they are maps because they can't perfectly represent whatever actually is (or more accurately, we can't confirm our representations as perfectly representational and we possibly can't form perfect representations). Also, by saying "actually is," I'm creating a map, too -- but I hope you infer what I mean. The methods by which we as humans receive and transform our state is imperfect and therefore uncertainty is injected into any thing we do, and furthermore by talking of "reality" (as it actually is) we assume no limitations of human-minds or general-mind-design that prevent us from forming what actually is within the constraints of our minds and general-mind-design.
Indeed, what? Is there an underlying computing substrate, which is more "real" than the territory?
Essentially, my question was a syncretization of the five ways. I.e., at the meta-level, what causes? Some people like Aquinas say that such a cause entails that it has the most important properties ascribed to their God (and consequently they pattern match "what causes" to their God). I don't take that view, though. I just think (i.e., a hunch) there's something there to explain and that it probably necessitates a teleological worldview at the meta-level if it is to be explained. I don't know.
In response to
Open Thread, November 16–30, 2012
Prompted by this comment, looking for references on the reductionism and the laws of nature, specifically, to address this argument:
if physical laws are guiding "reality" than they are not reducible to quarks and leptons themselves, which does call the whole idea of reductionism in question.
Basically, where do the laws of "fundamental" physics fit in the map/territory model (trying to steel-man it for myself, given that I'm not a fan)? If they are in the territory, what does the ultimate reduction look like? Is Nature just a fancy mathematical formula and some initial conditions, Tegmark-style? And if the physical laws are in the map, what represents them in the territory?
The laws are in the map, of course (if it came from mind, it is necessarily of a map). And what we call the 'territory' is a map itself. The map/territory distinction is just a useful analogy for explaining that our models of reality aren't necessarily reality (whatever that actually is). Also, keep in mind that there are many incompatible meanings for 'reductionism'. A lot of LWers (like anonymous1) use it in a way that's not in line with EY, and EY uses it in a way that's not in line with philosophy (which is where I suspect most LWers get their definition of it from).
And if the physical laws are in the map, what represents them in the territory?
Good question. A description is sufficient for execution, but what executes the description?
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Unfortunately we lacked a question to track prediction book users.
Hopefully then someone will do a supplementary calibration test for prediction book users in the comments here or in a new post on the discussion board. (Apologies for not doing it myself)