tar

Mordred, Yeah, but she is a "real" idiot. Regards, TAR

dimreepr, Just gesturing perhaps, but if there is a requirement in science to explain that you really don't know reality, you really are not trying to match reality, you just have this model that is the best you have at the moment, subject to change and improvement and such, why it is bad to say I have this working model that has me conscious, and other people conscious, that has so far past every test I have put on these other humans that are everywhere, and have been everywhere for a long time? What is the objection? Who would get in trouble if they were to say that other minds existed? Regards, TAR In fact, if the idea is to be right, about the call as to whether you are a simulation or you are real, who would be angry with you, if you called it wrong? If you determined you were a simulation, would the simulators be upset that you found out? Are the simulators then automatically real, or do they have to claim they don't know either? And more importantly if there is anybody whose job it is to enforce the idea, that you can not prove you are not a simulation, then I would say automatically the enforcers had to be the real thing.

DrP, I of course know you don't beat your wife. That was the point. You can't prove a negative. You can't stop beating your wife, if you never started, so the question is impossible to answer, yet you know the truth, you just can not prove it, once the question is made. I was drawing an analogy to the solipsism question, you of course know the truth, you just can't prove a negative. So I take the opposite task and concentrate on the evidence that there is, that you have a mind, regardless of the fact that I can not know this for sure. But follow me here. For me to think I have a mind, I MUST be capable of developing a theory of mind. The ability to view yourself objectively in this fashion, requires having a mechanism within your brain that is capable of taking "you" and putting that observer in someone else's or something else's "place". It is done in science all the time. The very idea of the models we are talking about requires the ability to have one thing stand for another, to consider what it would "be like" to be the thing under study. This operation requires two minds, one's own, and one's own in the place of the entity under study. Einstein had observers all over the place, that were given hypothetical minds. Science has peer reviewers. Other minds, meant to check reality for the same conditions you found. The whole operation, philosophy, science and reality, requires at it's base a mind that is investigating, recording and manipulating the place, and then only when this mind is assumed to be real, is there any reason to continue the investigation. Then the question of whether someone else has a mind, like yours, can be asked...but the fact that there is science (requiring peer review) and language (requiring a second party, or a internal construct,) to share your thoughts with and philosophy (requiring the consideration of other people's thoughts, by definition), and a reality to share with these other minds, already has the question of whether other minds exist, answered in the affirmative. Regards, TAR for instance, if one scientist makes some progress, but allows for the fact that he/she stood on the shoulders of giants to make such strides...the fact the other scientists existed, and had not only minds, but exceptional ones, is a given

robinpike, Two points. One, who are you attempting to prove this to? And how are you assuming the person simulator is capable of considering that it has a mind? If we as human's require a Right Temporoparietal Junction to even develop a theory of mind for ourselves? And the person simulator demonstrably lacks a functioning Right Temporoparietal Junction, which with to notice its own mind. Regards, TAR, So you have not provided a mechanism through which the person simulator would think it had a mind, so the question of whether the person simulator would be able to tell if it was a simulation or not, would not come up. which, I just realized provides a proof of mind Only a real mind could consider whether or not it was real. A proof Rene already offered those many years ago. Cogito ergo sum

DrP, I am a realist, in the sense that I do not subscribe to cancelling arguments that rely on the fact that you can't prove a negative to prove their point. So when did you stop beating your wife? That everything could be an illusion is such an argument. Everything could be a strawberry sundae and you can't prove otherwise. Stupid for a scientist to propose such nonsense. For substance, browse Wiki's article on "theory of mind" iNow's thread on how religion hijacks the neurocortical mechanisms of the brain included some work on the study of the portion of the brain that develops at around 3 or 4 years old, that is responsible for our ability to put ourselves in other people's shoes, also responsible for our ability to converse with unseen others, and heavily involved in our resolution of moral dilemmas. A paragraph from Theory of Mind follows. Regards, TAR Definition[edit] Theory of mind is a theory insofar as the mind is the only thing being directly observed.[1] The presumption that others have a mind is termed a theory of mind because each human can only intuit the existence of their own mind through introspection, and no one has direct access to the mind of another. It is typically assumed that others have minds by analogy with one's own, and this assumption is based on the reciprocal, social interaction, as observed in joint attention,[5] the functional use of language,[6] and the understanding of others' emotions and actions.[7] Having a theory of mind allows one to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to others, to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. As originally defined, it enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of—and thus be used to explain and predict—the behavior of others.[1] Being able to attribute mental states to others and understanding them as causes of behavior implies, in part, that one must be able to conceive of the mind as a "generator of representations".[8][9] If a person does not have a complete theory of mind it may be a sign of cognitive or developmental impairment. And here is a link to the scientist that studied this area of the brain. https://www.ted.com/speakers/rebecca_saxe

Why not, in your person simulator with all the data streams of inputs just imagine instead of the supposed imprecise inputs a human receives, a super human detector that sensed all wavelengths of light and sound and could tell exact energy and pressure and the existence of contacting chemicals...you could take the human right out of the sensing business and just say what ever is happening is happening. It could be a rock, and the rock is real and receives all the stuff around it. Every vibration, every photon, every object or chemical that comes to it. Put a person and a rock and a person simulator in the same room and they will experience the exact same reality, give or take a few feet. Except the rock receives the stuff and takes it like a rock, and does not "think" it is anything other than a rock. A human takes it and considers itself human. A person simulator would take it like a person simulator. does a rock "remember" getting hit by a photon by heating up? did you ever notice that everything above the shoreline on a glassy lake is repeated upside down below the shoreline...that means the same impressions that are hitting your eyes must also be hitting the lake...every point on the lake is surrounded by the exact same reality that surrounds your eyes proof that reality exists

DrP, Well I don't believe our senses are lying to us. What they report is true stuff happening in the real world. If something tastes bitter it is because it has the chemicals in it that activate those taste buds. That I might hate bitter things and you might like them or that I might have fewer of the buds and you might be more sensitive to that chemical than I am, or that I can have a bitter taste in my mouth just by breathing in a few molecules of that chemical, or that I can remember what a bitter taste is like, without even biting into a bitter thing, or that a onion and an apple taste the same with your nose closed, does not mean the chemical is not real and that we really sensed it. In fact, the fact that we need to smell the onion for it to be identified as an onion and not an apple proves that we notice the world based on a combination of our senses, AND that the onion and apple have real characteristics, that effect the senses of all functioning humans in the exact same manner. The apple is real, the onion is real, the tasters and smellers are real. The senses are not fooled they complement each other. And they do so in a consistent manner across all instances of functioning humans. Regards, TAR

DrP, I do not accept that there is no way to tell if you are a simulation or not. You will have to go through that logic for me again, because I don't see the problem. So not an attempt at humor, just a statement of fact. If you were a conscious computer, you would be conscious of your computerness because your computerness would be the reality of the situation. Regards, TAR

DrP, No, go ahead. This is central to the argument (the question) of what is real. Regards, TAR If a person simulator were to be created, it would have to have all the senses of a human, all the capabilities of a human, all the internal timings of a human, all the needs, wants and motivating factors of a human, or it would not act like a human, or be like a human or "think" it was a human. A camera does not think it is at a wedding. And I don't think the camera will be leaving a gift.

yeah I think the wires and chips might be a tip off to the computer, that it was not a person

dimreepr, Why yes I have done that. I can also close my eyes and drive the route to work that I drove for 26 years, even though I quit my job two or three years ago. I can "see" the reservoir, see the swans on it, see the turn coming up where I used to turn to get to one building, where I went straight to get to the other building. Dreams and imagination are close to reality, because both or all are happening in our brains. That is, our senses internalize the outside, and build a model of the place that we can navigate without actually expending much energy. Its a very detailed and complete model and it matches every aspect of reality that we can sense. No wonder we can get confused between the waking world and the dream world, it is all happening in our brains. But there is this thing we are modeling. And that this thing is so consistently modeled by all of us is a testament to the fact that the thing is real. That there is indeed a waking world. Regards, TAR We cross posted. I gave the driving to work example before I read your driverless car analogy. But none-the-less, I can tell the difference between actually driving to work, and imagining I am driving to work. We have a predictive motor simulator in our brains that rehearses combinations of motor signal timings and sets the whole coordinated sequence up, before actually sending the signals. We in essence go through the motions, before we actually move. The driverless car has untold subprograms to run in various situations, just having the program is not the same as moving the car through reality. The driverless car would know what was real and what was simulation. If such an ability to tell the difference was not built into the car, then it would be quite dangerous indeed, liable to do zero turns at 60 miles an hour in the middle of a festival, just to burn rubber. Regards, TAR robinpike, as to how would the person simulator know if it was actually a person or a simulation, I would have to go with consideration of whether or not the thing was conscious of itself and conscious of its position in reality...if it knew what it was, and where it was, had a intuition of time and space and could place itself in context, then I would say it would know it was a person simulator

In the shaded chess board example the two same shade of grey squares "look" like different shades to EVERYBODY. This is not an indication that human thought and perception is faulty, or that our picture of the world is therefore somehow incorrect and fraught with error. It is actually quite the opposite, and shows not only do we all see the same reality, but we all see it in a consistent fashion. That is, we make the correction in our brains, each of our brains for the fact that the one square is illuminated in bright sunlight and the other is in deep shadow. We know what a chess board looks like, we know that a white square in the shade will not reflect as much light as a white square in the sun. So an illusion is drawn to convince us that the white square is in a shadow and EVERYBODY is fooled by the same construction. But it is a drawing. There is not real sunlight hitting a real board, and if it where, the black squares in the sunlight might indeed reflect exactly the same amount of light as the white squares in the shade. An argument FOR reality being consistent and understandable in a common fashion. That even though illusions can be created, that they can be created so consistently, across the board, proves we all match the same reality to our internal model in the same fashion. Regards, TAR Just thought in addition that the illusion also proves some things about pattern matching and transforms, that are a consistent feature of all humans, and suggests to me that although our models are all independently occurring in our isolated brains, that there is a consistency in both how we match, and the thing that is being matched to. Consider the black square, drawn with a corner in the sunlight and the rest in the shade of the cylinder. There of course is no sunlight, but the artist is constructing the picture to convince us that there really is sunlight and shade, and this square provides the correction factor, that all squares in the shadow of the cylinder will be darkened by this amount.

fiveworlds in my 12 segments of the sphere thread I was able to determine using an Euler calculator that the areas of my divisions at 15 degree sections were equal, and you could set the digits to which you wanted to figure to 14 or 20 digits or something, but when attempting to figure the areas of my divisions when the sphere is sliced up into minutes and seconds the numbers, even to the highest precision they provided, were way to rough to multiply out by the total number of sections and check that they added back to the total area. Whatever digit pi was taken to in the calculator, was not enough for my purposes. That is I was having a hard time figuring the area of a minute by minute diamond like section much less a second by second section, to the precision required to then translate these measurement to the globe and come up with a square footage number. That is the digits to the right of whatever the calculator's precision was, were the ones that made the difference. regards, TAR for instance suppose I wanted to figure to 100% accuracy how many yds of thread I would need to weave a tarp that would cover exactly 1/155,520,000th of the globe how many digits of pi would I need?

Strange, Maybe this will help. Your memory of a "real" snake, is not a creation of your mind, it is a recall of the sensory perceptions you had of that real snake. An analog representation of an actual real snake, slithering through actual grass, growing on an actual sunlit field, illuminated by an actual Sun around which our actual planet cycles. You HAD TO have had your own eyes to see the thing and store this memory in the actual real synapses and cells and chemicals and connections in your actual brain, located in an actual building in front of an actual computer in an actual location on the planet everybody we know of calls their own. It is the simple explanation of our common experience that according to the ole razor, is probably the correct explanation. All this "could be" nonsense, is non-sense. It makes no sense and has zero to do with our common condition. Regards, TAR I agree in principle that there can be only one instance of each event that is currently happening in the universe. But that is in accord with the universal now idea only, which is a mental exercise where we put ourselves in God's shoes and imagine the place as if the speed of light is not a constraint. In actuality the universe really looks as it does, with old stuff close and young stuff far away. But each item is not therefore all ages, because that would require being able to put ourselves in every possible shoe that currently exists, which is way out of our computational abilities, even with super computers, and WAY out of our reach in terms of the information such a picture would require.

what is this insistence that everything could be an hallucination? it can't be There is no way such a situation would work out. And it certainly makes no sense.

Strange, I do not think it is true that there is only one instance of a given star. That is, take our Sun. It looks younger to a viewer a million lys from here and even younger to a viewer 2 million lys from here. In fact a viewer 40 billion lys from here might look in this direction and see the Milky Way when another star that provided the material for our Sun to get together went supernova...that is, to someone 63.5 lys from here, with a powerful enough telescope, I am just being born. To a current observer 100 lys from here my mom does not exist, yet. To an observer here and now, my mom does not exist either, but she was real while she lived. So how many instances of a star do you figure there are? I say, only one, but that is not the instance we will see in our telescopes, so that is at least two instances, and counting. Regards, TAR

For instance, Earth science would be a pretty lean study, without an Earth. Strange, I did not pick up, until a few posts ago that you are making an anti-(The Existence of God) argument. Can we stipulate that there is no anthropomorphic God/Creator, and still stipulate that the world in all its glory, complexity and wonder does exist? Regards, TAR

does this mind then exist? if so, is it a constituent of some greater reality? That is, where, and in what manner does this mind of yours exist?

I had some arguments with my calculus teachers about limits and integrals, that I obviously lost, but never did I understand the principle. If the whole idea of an integral is to determine the tendency of a tiny slice with which you can then describe the whole by multiplying the slice by the number of slices, then "tending toward zero" is a characteristic of your slice size to begin with. If you need to look at the thing and as you consider your formulae, you make the determination that this or that term is tending to zero...how can you, or at what point is it proper to "call it zero"? Regards, TAR Where this comes into LIGO is the fact that in order to sense a GW, space has to contract or expand a thousandth the width of a proton. This is pretty darn close to zero distance. Much tinier than any slice we are able to make.

Which brings up the consideration of the Earth being seeded by some advanced alien race. I bring it up because the logic of such a scenario fails as surely as the logic allowing reality to be somebody's dream fails. Who or what seeded the planet the advanced alien race grew up on? Swansont, If you read the passage, knowing what you know, you can read the hypothetical nature of statements, you can assess the conditional portions as conditional. But as a laymen I can only read it as this is what scientists that believe the standard model is correct think the place is made of. Right, we established that science and/or an individual human, can not know the thing in itself. But we can still say a heck of a lot about our models of the place. Philosophy can talk about "how the universe looks" from a God's eye perspective. Science, bound by the requirement to retrieve empirical data, can not say much about what a star 4 lys from here, is doing now. All science can do is tell us what it was doing 4 years ago, and perhaps predict what it will look like in our sky IN four years and imply that is what it is probably doing now, but there you have two instances of the star. One that exists in our telescopes, and one that exists in our minds. Which one is more real? Regards, TAR. that is, which reality does science form its models from, and which reality does a scientist seek to match her model to? for instance the CMB (or the matter we are currently sensing) was relatively very close to us (the matter that formed the MilkyWay) at the time of last scattering, but that same matter is currently part of some system 46 billion lys from here, and because of the expansion of the universe we will never see what that system is currently doing...NO empirical evidence ever available as to what that system is currently doing, but plenty available as to what the matter was doing at the time of last scattering when the universe came clear...but it is the photons that are hitting us now that are real to us...we have no scientific concern with that system as it ages beyond how it ages in front of us....we will never empirically be able to verify what kind of system it evolved into as it is currently extant

BeeCee, I read the words and I understood them to say if our model is correct, then putting the measurements we took into the equations, the indication is that the universe is 5 percent normal matter and energy and 95 percent dark matter and energy. There was no suggestion that dark matter and energy were placeholders for a fudge factor needed to have the numbers come out clean. Which goes directly to several points of disagreement on the thread, and to the OP questions. "This topic talks about the relationship of philosophy, science and reality. I will expound it thru questions: 1. Is philosophy more advance than science in understanding reality because it can form ideas even when there is no experiments performed or observations (While science on the other hand can't step forward because it relies on data)? 2. Is philosophy always correct? Are there instance that science prove philosophy?If philosophy always correct, we can rely solely to philosophy than science. 3. Is philosophy as accurate as science? 4. When can we say that a question become philosophical? Can we say that philosophy is an advance science? If yes then we can conclude that the only task of science is to prove philosophy ( is it correct?). I hope you understand my points. If you need clarifications, just ask me. Thank you..." To these questions the status of reality is important to get straight between us, to begin with. If you can't assume reality is real, then all discussions concerning the nature of it, are put on hold until you can determine or stipulate that reality is real. That there is something "out there" beyond our fingertips to model. So we have to logically stipulate the place exists and we have to stipulate that we notice the place, and we have to stipulate that each of us indeed has fingertips for everything else to be beyond. If these things are not "assumed" to be true, then there is no discussion. Regards, TAR Even if the place is an elaborate dream or a virtual reality episode, there is still TAR to account for. Either TAR is someone else's illusion, in which case that someone else is real, or EVERYBODY is someone else's creation, in which case THAT someone else is real. I am missing no point. The reason that the models work is because reality works first. If you think that the models cause reality to work you are giving science too much credit. Regards, TAR

BeeCee, One of my own scientific searches has to do with the meaning behind language. When WIKI uses declarative statements, that is universally understood to be the sharing of information. "The world IS this way or that." "This what I am saying is true." And wiki articles are suppose to be unbiased. "This is not how I feel, this is what I know to be true" And to me, information is the internalization of the outside world. We have no direct access to the world beyond our fingertips, but we have myriad ways of getting outside and even distant or unseen "forms", "in". Earlier I claimed that the point of science was to confirm reality. And I still think this is true. The information process is fraught with dangers. Bias, imprecision, limited reach, limited storage capacity, errors of all sorts...but our human information process is pretty amazing. We can drive down the street, avoid collisions, get where we are going without injuring anyone or destroying anything, AND we can notice at 60 miles an hour the new siding on the old barn we pass every day. We have an excellent model of the place, built in the synapses and cells, chemicals and connections in our brain. Instant, or at least really fast updates of our model of the place, continuously. Now you and I have a different personal model. It is not false because it is different. Each is true. Mine might include the mineral museum in Franklin, and an old Edison iron mine back in the woods behind Lake Arapaho, and these real places might not be in your model. But both are real and are of real portions of our common world. When I say there is an old iron mine in the woods behind Lake Arapaho, you can pencil that in to your model, and might check it out for a match if you happen to be wandering on a trail behind second lake, near lake Arapaho in NJ. It is a declarative statement of fact, of truth, a facet of our common reality. Science's job, in my estimation is to facilitate the information process. To catalog and measure and record the place in a common, sharable language. To experiment, to discover, to focus on this or that aspect of reality and inform the rest of us of how the place works, how the place is, the reality of the place, in clear and precise declarative language. We individually can notice stuff about the world, manipulate it to our advantage and enjoy the place and seek to arrange things in such a manner consistent with the continued survival of ourselves and those we love. Science is, to me, how we do this noticing of reality and this experimentation with reality, and this manipulation of reality, together, in an agreed upon manner, and report the facts to each other in a common language. Regards, TAR

So no, I do not have any specific examples...except most all that conform to the standard model, or the simple gas laws, or Einstein's field equations, or Newton's laws of motion, or the laws of thermodynamics, provide a certain joy to the scientist, when a match is found. I am not saying the match is false. I am saying the match is true, but it pleasures a person to find their model matches the place. Regards, TAR Makes a person feel somehow in possession of the truth. That they know reality a little better, their model fits the place and life is good. People like to be right about the world. There is however a little bit of difference between finding your model works, and finding out something new about the place. Discovering that the world fits together in some way that you were not aware of is joyful. It is also joyful to solve a problem you had with your model...but just finding that solution is not the end, you still have to check it out and see if it works in reality. Then when it does, you feel great.

"Assuming that the standard model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68.3% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 26.8% and 4.9%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount.[3][4][5][6]The density of dark energy (~ 7 × 10−30 g/cm3) is very low, much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it comes to dominate the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space.[7][8][9]" So I am guessing most people here take the standard model as being correct, and the rest are implications of exactly what the measurements must then indicate.

Epicycles were probably to explain the observed retrograde motion of nieghboring planets. The math worked...if you understood it. Sorry, I was just going by the recent arguments in the thread. So its not a theory, yet Wiki talks about it like it is accepted fact, and they don't mention the placeholder bit. ​"Assuming that the standard model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68.3% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 26.8% and 4.9%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount.[3][4][5][6] The density of dark energy (~ 7 × 10−30 g/cm3) is very low, much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it comes to dominate the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space.[7][8][9]" Regards, TAR ​ What if, for instance the universe is dynamic and undulating like a huge soap bubble in the wind. Then what we saw at 1 million ly is representative of the going away or coming closer of an area of space measured by its redshift/blueshift but representative of the motion that part of space was undergoing 1 million yrs ago, and we actually have NO measurements to look at concerning what that portion of space is doing now. Not a thought out theory, just a placeholder to explain the redshifts we measure at different depths of space. If the model we are going by had inflation followed by expansion that would indicate a mechanism slowing down growth of space, and the expansion of space would more sensibly slow to a stop and perhaps then retract. Can you explain to me how redshift measurements of different depths of space lead one to hypothesize that the place is currently doing any one thing? Regards, TAR