No you cannot be an algorithm. An algorithm is a concept, it only exists inside our representations… You cannot be an object/a concept inside your own representation, that makes no sense…
quen_tin
Karma: −70
I don’t think relying on algorithm solves the issue, because you still need someone to implement and interpret the algorithm.
I agree with your second point: you can take a pragmatist approach. Actually, that’s a bit how science work. But still you did not prove in anyway that your model is a complete and definitive description of all there is nor that it can be strictly identifiable with “reality”, and Kant’s argument remains valid. It would be more correct to say that a scientific model is a relational model (it describes the relations between things as they appear to observers and their regularities).
My question is what does “happiness” rest upon? A probability of what? You need to have an apriori model oh what hapiness is in order to measure it (that is, a theory of mind), which you have not. Verifying your model depends on your model...
Each of those questions have several known and unknown answers...
Moreover the same questions applies to your preconception of continuity and probability. How could you know it applies to your inputs? For example: saying “I feel 53% happy” does not make sense, unless you think happiness has a definite meaning and is reducible to something measurable. Both are questionnable. Does any concept have a definite meaning? Maybe happiness has a “probabilistic” meaning? But what does it rest upon? How do you know that all your input is reducible to measurable constitutes, and how could you prove that?
The nature of logical reasoning is actually a deep philosophical question...
You know what an algorithm is, but do you know if you are an algorithm? I am not sure to understand why you need algorithm at all. Maybe your point is “If you are a human being X that receive an input Y, this allows you to know a nontrivial fact about reality (...)”. I tend to agree with that formulation, but again, this supposes some concepts that do not go without saying, and in particular, it supposes a realist approach. Idealist philosophers would disagree.
I can understand that your idea is to build models of reality, then use a Bayesian approach to validate them. There is a lot to say about this (more than I could say in a few lines). For example : are you able to gather all your “inputs”? What about the qualitative aspects: can you measure them? If not, how can you ever be sure that your model is complete? Are the ideas you have about the world part of your “inputs’? How do you disentangle them from what comes from outside, how do you disentangle your feelings, memory and actual inputs? Is there a direct correspondance between your inputs and scientific data, or do you have presupositions on how to interpret the data? For example, don’t you need to have an idea of what space/time is in order to measure distances and durations? Where does this idea comes from? Your brain? Reality? A bit of both? Don’t we interpret any scientific data at the light of the theory itself, and isn’t there a kind of circularity? etc.
If I am a cognitive algorithm X that reveives input Y, I don’t necessarily know what an algorithm is, what an input is, and so on. One could argue that all I know is ‘Y’. I don’t necessarily have any idea of what a “possible reality” is. I might not have a concept of “possibility” nor of “reality”.
Your way of thinking presupposes many metaphysical concepts that have been questioned by philosophers, including Kant. I am not saying that this line of reasoning is invalid (I suspect it is a realist approach, which is a fair option). My personal feeling is that Kant is upstream of that line of reasoning.
That is also what the linked article seems to entail. The statement I quoted, as I understand it, says that every information we have about reality is the result of “some cognitive algorithm” (=the representations that appears (...) provided by our senses)
The map is certainly a kind of information about the territory (though we cannot know it with certainty). Strictly speaking, Kant does not say we have no information about reality, he says we cannot know if we have or not.
I agree, and I really doubt philosophers fail to deeply question their own intuitions.
In a sense, science is nothing but experimental philosophy (in a broad sense), and the job of non-experimental-philosophy (what we label philosophy) is to make any question become an experimental question… But I would say that philosophy remains important as the framework where science and scientific fundamental concepts (truth, reality, substance) are defined and discussed.
They are very similar. Kant does not claim that we have no information about reality, and the linked article does not only say that we are sometimes wrong with our intuition...
This statement for example is very “Kantian” : Before you can question your intuitions, you have to realize that what your mind’s eye is looking at is an intuition—some cognitive algorithm, as seen from the inside—rather than a direct perception of the Way Things Really Are.
What’s weird is that you begin criticizing continental philosophy. Then you say that philosophers do not understand how their brain work, and what their intuition is (linking to an article which explains that our intuition of reality is not reality). But one of the main topic of continental philosophy, long before cognitive science existed, was to argue that we are in a sense trapped inside our cognitive situation with no way out, and for that reason, we cannot know what reality-in-itself is. It feels like you rediscovered Kant… I agree that continental philosophy as somehow derived to something obscure, and that analytic philosophy is much clearer. But it is also argued sometimes that analytic philosopher never read or cite past philosophers, and that they tend to ignore some large areas that have been widely discussed before. I would say this article illustrate that.
end loop;
Then I followed a path on this tree.
That is my experience. As far as I can know if something happened, that happened.
It does not explain why we followed that path in the many world, not another one. Our experience is “better explain” > it is a good heuristic interpretation.
I did not claim that my experience has a subjectively priviledged ontological status. This is your interpretation. I meant it has a subjectively priviledged epistemological status.
your “empirical fact” will be factually incorrect.
I really doubt it. how could you factually prove that the past or the future exist ?
Let’s say my position is a very narrow version of Tegmark’s view, and that I call “present” (with a certain thickness) the parts of the past and future that actually “exist”.
my experience is the only thing I can assume as real. Everything else is derived from my experience. It is thus the only thing that needs to be explained.
Indeed I find it reasonable to assume that everyone else can claim the same for him/herself.
My point is that this model theory is incomplete, because it does not fully explain my experience. The model lacks a kind of instantiation.
As a “model theory of my modal logic”, it may have an heuristic interest, not an ontological one. In other words, it’s fine as long as you consider it only as a descriptive/predictive model. It’s not if you think it is reality.
It’s a category error. I am not a concept, nor an instance of a concept.