Maybe you should teach your steelmanning skills, or make a post out of it.
I’ve thought about this, but on consideration the only part of it I understand explicitly enough to “teach” is Miller’s Law (the first one), and there’s really not much more to say about it than quoting it and then waiting for people to object. Which most people do, because approaching conversations that way seems to defeat the whole purpose of conversation for most people (convincing other people they’re wrong). My goal in discussions is instead usually to confirm that I understand what they believe in the first place. (Often, once I achieve that, I become convinced that they’re wrong… but rarely do I feel it useful to tell them so.)
The rest of it is just skill at articulating positions with care and precision, and exerting the effort to do so. A lot of people around here are already very good at that, some of them better than me.
The unaddressed issue is the means of actualizing a specific model (that is, making it the most accurate). After all, if all you manipulate is models, how do you affect your future experiences?
Yes. I’m not sure what to say about that on your account, and that was in fact where I was going to go next.
Actually, more generally, I’m not sure what distinguishes experiences we have from those we don’t have in the first place, on your account, even leaving aside how one can alter future experiences.
After all, we’ve said that models map experiences to anticipated experiences, and that models can be compared based on how reliably they do that, so that suggests that the experiences themselves aren’t properties of the individual models (though they can of course be represented by properties of models). But if they aren’t properties of models, well, what are they? On your account, it seems to follow that experiences don’t exist at all, and there simply is no distinction between experiences we have and those we don’t have.
I assume you reject that conclusion, but I’m not sure how. On a naive realist’s view, rejecting this is easy: reality constrains experiences, and if I want to affect future experiences I affect reality. Accurate models are useful for affecting future experiences in specific intentional ways, but not necessary for affecting reality more generally… indeed, systems incapable of constructing models at all are still capable of affecting reality. (For example, a supernova can destroy a planet.)
(On a multiverse realist’s view, this is significantly more complicated, but it seems to ultimately boil down to something similar, where reality constrains experiences and if I want to affect the measure of future experiences, I affect reality.)
Another unaddressed issue derives from your wording: “how do you affect your future experiences?” I may well ask whether there’s anything else I might prefer to affect other than my future experiences (for example, the contents of models, or the future experiences of other agents). But I suspect that’s roughly the same problem for an instrumentalist as it is for a realist… that is, the arguments for and against solipsism, hedonism, etc. are roughly the same, just couched in slightly different forms.
But if they aren’t properties of models, well, what are they? On your account, it seems to follow that experiences don’t exist at all, and there simply is no distinction between experiences we have and those we don’t have.
Somewhere way upstream I said that I postulate experiences (I called them inputs), so they “exist” in this sense. We certainly don’t experience “everything”, so that’s how you tell “between experiences we have and those we don’t have”. I did not postulate, however, that they have an invisible source called reality, pitfalls of assuming which we just discussed. Having written this, I suspect that this is an uncharitable interpretation of your point, i.e. that you mean something else and I’m failing to Millerize it.
So “existence” properly refers to a property of subsets of models (e.g., “my keyboard exists” asserts that M1 contain K), as discussed earlier, and “existence” also properly refer to a property of inputs (e.g., “my experience of my keyboard sitting on my desk exists” and “my experience of my keyboard dancing the Macarena doesn’t exist” are both coherent, if perhaps puzzling, things to say), as discussed here. Yes?
Which is not necessarily to say that “existence” refers to the same property of subsets of models and of inputs. It might, it might not, we haven’t yet encountered grounds to say one way or the other. Yes?
OK. So far, so good.
And, responding to your comment about solipsism elsewhere just to keep the discussion in one place:
Well, to a solipsist hers is the only mind that exists, to an instrumentalist, as we have agreed, the term exist does not have a useful meaning beyond measurability.
Well, I agree that when a realist solipsist says “Mine is the only mind that exists” they are using “exists” in a way that is meaningless to an instrumentalist.
That said, I don’t see what stops an instrumentalist solipsist from saying “Mine is the only mind that exists” while using “exists” in the ways that instrumentalists understand that term to have meaning.
That said, I still don’t quite understand how “exists” applies to minds on your account. You said here that “mind is also a model”, which I understand to mean that minds exist as subsets of models, just like keyboards do.
But you also agreed that a model is a “mental construct”… which I understand to refer to a construct created/maintained by a mind.
The only way I can reconcile these two statements is to conclude either that some minds exist outside of a model (and therefore have a kind of “existence” that is potentially distinct from the existence of models and of inputs, which might be distinct from one another) or that some models aren’t mental constructs.
My reasoning here is similar to how if you said “Red boxes are contained by blue boxes” and “Blue boxes are contained by red boxes” I would conclude that at least one of those statements had an implicit “some but not all” clause prepended to it… I don’t see how “For all X, X is contained by a Y” and “For all Y, Y is contained by an X” can both be true.
Does that make sense? If so, can you clarify which is the case? If not, can you say more about why not?
I don’t see how “For all X, X is contained by a Y” and “For all Y, Y is contained by an X” can both be true [implicitly assuming that X is not the same as Y, I am guessing].
And what do you mean here by “true”, in an instrumental sense? Do you mean the mathematical truth (i.e. a well-formed finite string, given some set of rules), or the measurable truth (i.e. a model giving accurate predictions)? If it’s the latter, how would you test for it?
Just to be clear, are you suggesting that on your account I have no grounds for treating “All red boxes are contained by blue boxes AND all blue boxes are contained by red boxes” differently from “All red boxes are contained by blue boxes AND some blue boxes are contained by red boxes” in the way I discussed?
If you are suggesting that, then I don’t quite know how to proceed. Suggestions welcomed.
If you are not suggesting that, then perhaps it would help to clarify what grounds I have for treating those statements differently, which might more generally clarify how to address logical contradiction in an instrumentalist framework
I’ve thought about this, but on consideration the only part of it I understand explicitly enough to “teach” is Miller’s Law (the first one), and there’s really not much more to say about it than quoting it and then waiting for people to object. Which most people do, because approaching conversations that way seems to defeat the whole purpose of conversation for most people (convincing other people they’re wrong). My goal in discussions is instead usually to confirm that I understand what they believe in the first place. (Often, once I achieve that, I become convinced that they’re wrong… but rarely do I feel it useful to tell them so.)
The rest of it is just skill at articulating positions with care and precision, and exerting the effort to do so. A lot of people around here are already very good at that, some of them better than me.
Yes. I’m not sure what to say about that on your account, and that was in fact where I was going to go next.
Actually, more generally, I’m not sure what distinguishes experiences we have from those we don’t have in the first place, on your account, even leaving aside how one can alter future experiences.
After all, we’ve said that models map experiences to anticipated experiences, and that models can be compared based on how reliably they do that, so that suggests that the experiences themselves aren’t properties of the individual models (though they can of course be represented by properties of models). But if they aren’t properties of models, well, what are they? On your account, it seems to follow that experiences don’t exist at all, and there simply is no distinction between experiences we have and those we don’t have.
I assume you reject that conclusion, but I’m not sure how. On a naive realist’s view, rejecting this is easy: reality constrains experiences, and if I want to affect future experiences I affect reality. Accurate models are useful for affecting future experiences in specific intentional ways, but not necessary for affecting reality more generally… indeed, systems incapable of constructing models at all are still capable of affecting reality. (For example, a supernova can destroy a planet.)
(On a multiverse realist’s view, this is significantly more complicated, but it seems to ultimately boil down to something similar, where reality constrains experiences and if I want to affect the measure of future experiences, I affect reality.)
Another unaddressed issue derives from your wording: “how do you affect your future experiences?” I may well ask whether there’s anything else I might prefer to affect other than my future experiences (for example, the contents of models, or the future experiences of other agents). But I suspect that’s roughly the same problem for an instrumentalist as it is for a realist… that is, the arguments for and against solipsism, hedonism, etc. are roughly the same, just couched in slightly different forms.
Somewhere way upstream I said that I postulate experiences (I called them inputs), so they “exist” in this sense. We certainly don’t experience “everything”, so that’s how you tell “between experiences we have and those we don’t have”. I did not postulate, however, that they have an invisible source called reality, pitfalls of assuming which we just discussed. Having written this, I suspect that this is an uncharitable interpretation of your point, i.e. that you mean something else and I’m failing to Millerize it.
OK.
So “existence” properly refers to a property of subsets of models (e.g., “my keyboard exists” asserts that M1 contain K), as discussed earlier, and “existence” also properly refer to a property of inputs (e.g., “my experience of my keyboard sitting on my desk exists” and “my experience of my keyboard dancing the Macarena doesn’t exist” are both coherent, if perhaps puzzling, things to say), as discussed here.
Yes?
Which is not necessarily to say that “existence” refers to the same property of subsets of models and of inputs. It might, it might not, we haven’t yet encountered grounds to say one way or the other.
Yes?
OK. So far, so good.
And, responding to your comment about solipsism elsewhere just to keep the discussion in one place:
Well, I agree that when a realist solipsist says “Mine is the only mind that exists” they are using “exists” in a way that is meaningless to an instrumentalist.
That said, I don’t see what stops an instrumentalist solipsist from saying “Mine is the only mind that exists” while using “exists” in the ways that instrumentalists understand that term to have meaning.
That said, I still don’t quite understand how “exists” applies to minds on your account. You said here that “mind is also a model”, which I understand to mean that minds exist as subsets of models, just like keyboards do.
But you also agreed that a model is a “mental construct”… which I understand to refer to a construct created/maintained by a mind.
The only way I can reconcile these two statements is to conclude either that some minds exist outside of a model (and therefore have a kind of “existence” that is potentially distinct from the existence of models and of inputs, which might be distinct from one another) or that some models aren’t mental constructs.
My reasoning here is similar to how if you said “Red boxes are contained by blue boxes” and “Blue boxes are contained by red boxes” I would conclude that at least one of those statements had an implicit “some but not all” clause prepended to it… I don’t see how “For all X, X is contained by a Y” and “For all Y, Y is contained by an X” can both be true.
Does that make sense?
If so, can you clarify which is the case?
If not, can you say more about why not?
And what do you mean here by “true”, in an instrumental sense? Do you mean the mathematical truth (i.e. a well-formed finite string, given some set of rules), or the measurable truth (i.e. a model giving accurate predictions)? If it’s the latter, how would you test for it?
Beats me.
Just to be clear, are you suggesting that on your account I have no grounds for treating “All red boxes are contained by blue boxes AND all blue boxes are contained by red boxes” differently from “All red boxes are contained by blue boxes AND some blue boxes are contained by red boxes” in the way I discussed?
If you are suggesting that, then I don’t quite know how to proceed. Suggestions welcomed.
If you are not suggesting that, then perhaps it would help to clarify what grounds I have for treating those statements differently, which might more generally clarify how to address logical contradiction in an instrumentalist framework