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7 + 5 = 12

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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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Interbane wrote:Kind of like the Mary's Room problem, but not.
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Mary's Room. Is this a philosophical paradoz of some kind?
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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In a reductionist sense, synthetic statements are equivalent logically to a statement in empirical language:

1) either the subjective language granted by immediate experience, or..,


2) the objective language projected by physical things themselves

Johnny is granted neither of the above, Interbane.
I think philosophers are all over the board with how they demarcate the synthetic from analytic, or if they even find it useful. With that said, I'm not sure I understand what your two connotations above mean. They aren't exactly parsing in my head.

Physical things don't project language, especially physical language. Language is information that requires a physical medium.

The way I understand the distinction, in the most basic sense, is that analytic propositions are true by definition. Synthetic propositions are true if they accurately describe the real world.

So, if it is not true that bananas are by definition yellow, then the statement must be synthetic. It is not true that all bananas are yellow because we have experience of bananas that are not yellow. Ergo, the proposition is synthetic.

Under another philosophers understanding of the concepts, the answer might change, I don't really know. They can't seem to agree on definitions of their working concepts.
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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Interbane wrote:
Physical things don't project language, especially physical language. Language is information that requires a physical medium.
Maybe you might want to consider this..,

Semantic externalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_externalism

You're pretty well versed on philosophical topics so I wont assume that what I am referring to above is applicable to what you've said.

Putnam's "twin earth" thought experiment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Earth ... experiment


So, what is in the minds of inhabitants of both planets, ignorant of the molecular structure of the "water" is the same. But water actually means different things on earth and twin earth.

Doesn't that also mean that part of the meaning of water is a projection of information outside and independent of the language that is in the minds people?
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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ant wrote:According to an externalist position, one can claim without contradiction that two speakers could be in exactly the same brain state at the time of an utterance, and yet mean different things by that utterance.
Yes, if their intention is precisely the same, yet their environment is different. The information we communicate points to something in the real world. If we believe something we say points to one thing, but it instead points to something else, the semantics differ due to something external.
Doesn't that also mean that part of the meaning of water is a projection of information outside and independent of the language that is in the minds people?
First of all, we can't speak of meaning without asking who the utterance has meaning "for". The words, when heard by someone, have meaning by virtue of the brain state they induce into the listener. There is no part of the meaning that is outside of a medium, at the same time that unknown variables in the environment can change the meaning.

Someone mentioning "water" on Earth is precisely the same as someone mentioning "water" on Twin Earth, with respect to the listeners. It is not in fact different until someone exposes the difference. Someone with knowledge of both water and XYZ, such as you or I, viewing this situation through a hypothetical portal.

Speaking of "meaning" is like speaking of general relativity. The word is useless without a reference. The meaning of what I say is useless without referencing the people who read what I write.

It's a common mistake to think that meaning can be free-floating, or "in general". It is a concept that only makes sense with respect to an interpretive agent.
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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Movie Nerd wrote:I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Mary's Room. Is this a philosophical paradoz of some kind?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

I had a question about this too.
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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johnson1010 wrote:For the symbols to communicate any information to us there's a lot we have to know ahead of time. Our numbering system is a human construct which aligns very closely to what we see in reality. But does 5+7=12 exist somewhere outside of our construct?

Due to the quantum nature of reality, yes. Objects come in packets of charge. An electron is essentially -1 EMF. A proton contains +1 EMF. These quantities are constant and it is the comparison of this and other relationships which allows our construct some traction in reality.
All of our language in general is composed of symbols we've established as having a fixed meaning. So how can we know of anything having a reality outside of our language-capacity's construct?
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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Mary's Room.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

The conclusion of the original philosopher:

Premise: Any and every piece of physical knowledge in regard to human color vision has been obtained (by the test subject, Mary) prior to her release from the black-and-white room. She has all the physical knowledge on the subject.
Premise: Upon leaving the room and witnessing color first-hand, she obtains new knowledge.
Conclusion: There was some knowledge about human color vision she did not have prior to her release. Therefore, not all knowledge is physical knowledge.

Where this fails is premise 1. We believe Mary has obtained any and every piece of physical knowledge. But that's not actually true. Within the human mind, there are a couple of different types of knowledge. To make it easier, think of these types of knowledge in terms of "information format". Sort of like computer code. There are many different codes, but they can't talk to each other. You can't transfer the information from one format to another; it must always be translated. Transfer vs translate.

For example, you could spend the afternoon telling your child how to ride a bike, but none of this propositional knowledge is able to transfer the knowledge of riding the bike. Instead, it 'translates' it to words(propositional knowledge), then the propositional knowledge is conveyed, and the kid is expected to translate the knowledge back into another type. Philosophers cleverly name it "knowing-how", which basically means it's a sort of motor control knowledge. If you're a parent, you know that a great deal is lost in translation during this process.

Regarding incoming sense data, the information is experiential. You can recognize many things in the world around you due to your experiential knowledge. No number of words(propositional knowledge) can transfer the knowledge of the sight and smell of a rose. Some words translate that experience very well, using metaphor or what not, but none can transfer it.

So what you have in the human mind are a few types of knowledge. We can translate the knowledge from one form to another, which usually means experiential and motor control to propositional. But there is always something lost in translation. There is information loss. These types of knowledge have their own little domains inside our heads, and we integrate them seemlessly to navigate everyday life. Sometimes, I think it is the rise of propositional knowledge(the new kid on the block with regards to knowledge) that started homo sapiens on the path to dominate the planet.

When Mary leaves her room, she receives experiential knowledge that no amount of propositional knowledge could convey. It was that sliver of information that was lost in translation, so to speak. Which means that premise 1 is false, there was some physical knowledge that was withheld from Mary while she was in her room.
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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Interbane wrote:Mary's Room.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

The conclusion of the original philosopher:

Premise: Any and every piece of physical knowledge in regard to human color vision has been obtained (by the test subject, Mary) prior to her release from the black-and-white room. She has all the physical knowledge on the subject.
Premise: Upon leaving the room and witnessing color first-hand, she obtains new knowledge.
Conclusion: There was some knowledge about human color vision she did not have prior to her release. Therefore, not all knowledge is physical knowledge.

Where this fails is premise 1. We believe Mary has obtained any and every piece of physical knowledge. But that's not actually true. Within the human mind, there are a couple of different types of knowledge. To make it easier, think of these types of knowledge in terms of "information format". Sort of like computer code. There are many different codes, but they can't talk to each other. You can't transfer the information from one format to another; it must always be translated. Transfer vs translate.

For example, you could spend the afternoon telling your child how to ride a bike, but none of this propositional knowledge is able to transfer the knowledge of riding the bike. Instead, it 'translates' it to words(propositional knowledge), then the propositional knowledge is conveyed, and the kid is expected to translate the knowledge back into another type. Philosophers cleverly name it "knowing-how", which basically means it's a sort of motor control knowledge. If you're a parent, you know that a great deal is lost in translation during this process.

Regarding incoming sense data, the information is experiential. You can recognize many things in the world around you due to your experiential knowledge. No number of words(propositional knowledge) can transfer the knowledge of the sight and smell of a rose. Some words translate that experience very well, using metaphor or what not, but none can transfer it.

So what you have in the human mind are a few types of knowledge. We can translate the knowledge from one form to another, which usually means experiential and motor control to propositional. But there is always something lost in translation. There is information loss. These types of knowledge have their own little domains inside our heads, and we integrate them seemlessly to navigate everyday life. Sometimes, I think it is the rise of propositional knowledge(the new kid on the block with regards to knowledge) that started homo sapiens on the path to dominate the planet.

When Mary leaves her room, she receives experiential knowledge that no amount of propositional knowledge could convey. It was that sliver of information that was lost in translation, so to speak. Which means that premise 1 is false, there was some physical knowledge that was withheld from Mary while she was in her room.
That was an excellent explanation, thank you.
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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Apologies for maybe side-stepping a bit, but on the point of the knowledge and conveying it... just mused a bit over the Sagan / CETI message sent out a while back...
The premise was that any technologically advanced civilisation is in command of "universal" maths and, for instance, the prime numbers that make the sequence "work" would be picked up on.
So the other end would have to really see prime numbers like 5 and 7 in this thread's title as... numbers with those special properties within their own mathematics that is assumed to be similar to ours in its fundamentals.
But one just has to wonder :)...
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Re: 7 + 5 = 12

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Suzanne wrote:
Movie Nerd wrote:I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Mary's Room. Is this a philosophical paradoz of some kind?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

I had a question about this too.
yeah, I should have used Wikipedia before I asked.
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