On Nothing in a void.

[arfa brane]

I asked you a justification for the system and method of logic you know as the one we should use.

And here's me being confused about what you might think me responding with: "there is no one system we should use", could possibly mean.

We don't know but most logicians seemed to have assumed there's just one logic since at least Aristotle and certainly including modern logic with Frege, Russell and a few others. That's the basic assumption.

Well, I certainly can count myself as someone who doesn't know that.

What I know instead is that there are lots of different kinds, not just one. Binary logic is just one kind, but there's trinary logic, and I guess you can say there's a logic of quaternions which is four dimensional. But why stop at 4?

The many different systems your talking about here are logics in the second sense . . .

What is this "second sense"? Are you saying there is logic in a first sense, second, third, and so on? Not a very convincing argument for your "one and only one" claim, is it?

There's nothing special in logical terms about all the formal systems you seem to regard as particularly significant. There're not.

How do you know what they are? And if they aren't significant, why can you enrol in university courses that teach formal logic?

 

[Speakpigeon]

And here's me being confused about what you might think me responding with: "there is no one system we should use", could possibly mean.Well, I certainly can count myself as someone who doesn't know that.
What I know instead is that there are lots of different kinds, not just one. Binary logic is just one kind, but there's trinary logic, and I guess you can say there's a logic of quaternions which is four dimensional. But why stop at 4?What is this "second sense"? Are you saying there is logic in a first sense, second, third, and so on? Not a very convincing argument for your "one and only one" claim, is it?
How do you know what they are? And if they aren't significant, why can you enrol in university courses that teach formal logic?

Nothing of substance here and nothing I would need to repeat myself for. Read again what I already said if there's something you don't understand.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

All you need to remember is that the cilia, the little hairs on the outside of the paramecium, contain microtubules (simple quantum computers). These hairs are the sensory equipment which allows this single celled organism to navigate and find mates.
There are billions of microtubules in the brain and skin which facilitate communication in the neural network of the brain and electrical conductance in the skin.
When you go to the doctor and have this little clamp placed on your fingers to measure the oxygen supply, this information is provided by the microtubules in the skin. When your skin is very cold, the conductance of the microtubules goes down and the reading becomes faulty.
As I understand it, microtubules are simple quantum computers because they are in superposed states which are required for quantum mechanics and the processing of the collapse of the wave function.
I'm sure it's all more complicated than this, but I believe it captures some of the fundamentals.

That only relates to how the brain can compute an operational model of the world for us to survive in it.
Very interesting. Thanks for the run-down.
That's all irrelevant to the question of how matter can give rise to subjective experience.
EB

 

[Write4U]

That's all irrelevant to the question of how matter can give rise to subjective experience.
EB

Ping!

 

[Write4U]

That's all irrelevant to the question of how matter can give rise to subjective experience.

No, that is the wrong way around. All matter undergoes a subjective experience during the quantum function of cause and effect. Some complex organization of matter has an evolved sentient subjective experience of these threshold functions.

A brainless slime-mold already has the ability to learn and memorize subjective physical experiences, such as taking an action in anticipation of a timed event.

For example, Japanese researchers have found that slime molds can accurately "design" an efficient rail system when yummy oats are placed where major cities would be on the map. Slime molds can also solve mazes, backing up from dead ends until they find the food at the end, and even anticipate predictable changes, such as a light turning on at regular intervals. They're capable of remarkable physical feats as well, able to create tubular structures called pseudopods (meaning "fake foot") and crawl along until they find a more satisfactory spot. And they grow fast: Given enough food, they can double their surface area in a day.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-slime-mold-brain-learning-20160426-story.html

 

[Speakpigeon]

No, that is the wrong way around. All matter undergoes a subjective experience during the quantum function of cause and effect. Some complex organization of matter has an evolved sentient subjective experience of these threshold functions.

???
You don't seem to realise that's a completely unfounded claim!
I can look at people around me. They all look somewhat more intelligent and capable than lifeless matter. And yet, I certainly wouldn't claim I know these people have subjective experience at all. I just don't know. So, lifeless matter?!
I grant you that's possibility but you should learn the distinction between claiming something as a possibility and claiming it's a fact and this without justification whatsoever.
So, I guess there's just some massive difference between our respective understandings of the notion of knowledge. You seem to believe you know things. Good for you. Me, I don't believe I do and and don't believe you do either.

A brainless slime-mold already has the ability to learn and memorize subjective physical experiences, such as taking an action in anticipation of a timed event.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-slime-mold-brain-learning-20160426-story.html

Nothing to do with subjective experience.
You don't seem to have any understanding of the notion of subjective experience.
Look up "qualia".
EB

 

[Write4U]

Nothing to do with subjective experience.
You don't seem to have any understanding of the notion of subjective experience.
Look up "qualia".

If you had read the link I provided you would have seen that a slime do form qualia.

The term qualia derives from the Latinneuter plural form (qualia) of the Latin adjective quālis (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkʷaːlɪs]) meaning "of what sort" or "of what kind" in a specific instance like "what it is like to taste a specific orange, this particular orange now".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

From the article I linked;

At first, there was a clear difference between the slime molds with a bitter bridge and those without. With a plain agar bridge, the slime molds sped across and pounced on the oats in about an hour. With quinine, slime molds entered the bridge only after two and a half hours, and it took them four hours in all to cross. On caffeine-covered bridges, the slime molds took almost five hours to enter the bridge but then quickly sped across.

For both bitter bridges, the slime mold didn't simply move its body across; it extended a long, thin tendril across the bridge, minimizing the area that touched the surface, as if it were trying to tiptoe over hot sand. When it reached the oats, it quickly moved the rest of its body over through that tendril and over to the oats. Once the slime mold had consumed the food source, the scientists connected it to another bridge, with a fresh food source at the other end. If the slime mold wanted its next meal, it would have to brave the bridge again.

Here's the strange thing: The slime molds dealing with the alarmingly bitter compounds seemed to get used to it, realizing that it wasn't a threat. With every bitter bridge they crossed, they moved more quickly and easily and seemed less concerned with minimizing their "footprint" that touched the surface. By the sixth day, Boisseau said, the slime molds were acting essentially as if the bitter compounds were not there.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-slime-mold-brain-learning-20160426-story.html

Try to connect the dots. It is clear that the slime-mold formed qualia what "it was to taste a specific flavor" such as pleasant flavors and bitter flavors.

 

[arfa brane]

Aristotle, via Stanford:

Aristotle’s logical works contain the earliest formal study of logic that we have. It is therefore all the more remarkable that together they comprise a highly developed logical theory, one that was able to command immense respect for many centuries

In the last century, Aristotle’s reputation as a logician has undergone two remarkable reversals. The rise of modern formal logic following the work of Frege and Russell brought with it a recognition of the many serious limitations of Aristotle’s logic; today, very few would try to maintain that it is adequate as a basis for understanding science, mathematics, or even everyday reasoning.

--https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/

 

[Speakpigeon]

If you had read the link I provided you would have seen that a slime do form qualia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

You have no evidence of this. It may well be the case that mould and slime experience qualia just at it may be the case that God exists or that we all have magical power if only we knew how to use them.
See what Schrôdinger says:

Erwin Schrödinger
The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so.

This is a rather well understood difficulty but you seem not to get it. Just looking at something won't give you evidence that this something experiences qualia. You would need to be the thing itself to see for yourself if you did. I'm not saying qualia are not physical, only that we don't know that they are and certainly how matter could give rise to qualia.
Your slime doesn't do anything that bigger animals don't do and we don't know that any of these other animals experience qualia, although they may.
Just looking at yourself in the mirror, you couldn't tell you're experiencing qualia.
From you insistence, I can only infer that you don't and probably can't understand the concept of quale.

From the article I linked;
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-slime-mold-brain-learning-20160426-story.html

Sorry, links have their own limitations. Your link here certainly does:

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

Try to connect the dots. It is clear that the slime-mold formed qualia what "it was to taste a specific flavor" such as pleasant flavors and bitter flavors.

This shows you just don't understand the concept of qualia. How would you know something tastes anything to a slime. Do you know that it feels something for the Moon to orbit the Earth?
You could also try to look up the notion of p-zombie. P-zombies is the notion of human beings bereft of qualia. Things looking exactly like normal human beings but not experiencing qualia. Such things would still insist they experience qualia.
The existence of qualia is something you can only assess from the private perspective of your subjective experience. You can decide for yourself whether you experience qualia but you can't assess whether some other thing, a thing you are not, is experiencing qualia, whether it be a human being, God or just slime, or indeed the Moon.
EB

 

[Write4U]

You can decide for yourself whether you experience qualia but you can't assess whether some other thing, a thing you are not, is experiencing qualia, whether it be a human being, God or just slime, or indeed the Moon.

Perception of brightness is a qualia. Perception of time is a qualia. When an organism adaptively responds to different states of its environment it possesses the ability to process qualia.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Aristotle, via Stanford:
--https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/

Sorry, if you can't explain yourself, there isn't much to talk about.
I would be the first to admit the limitations of Aristotle's method of logic, but I believe that it's at least correct, unlike the propositional logic developed from the work of Frege and Russell.
Now, you could try to provide examples of how syllogistic logic is not true of the logical reasoning human beings do.
Obviously, logic doesn't cover all forms or reasoning. We can reason by comparison for example, but that's not logical.
See the basic distinctions Wiki provides:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
The concept of logical form is central to logic. The validity of an argument is determined by its logical form, not by its content. Traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern symbolic logic are examples of formal logic.

• Informal logic is the study of natural language arguments. The study of fallacies is an important branch of informal logic. Since much informal argument is not strictly speaking deductive, on some conceptions of logic, informal logic is not logic at all. See 'Rival conceptions', below.
• Formal logic is the study of inference with purely formal content. An inference possesses a purely formal content if it can be expressed as a particular application of a wholly abstract rule, that is, a rule that is not about any particular thing or property. The works of Aristotle contain the earliest known formal study of logic. Modern formal logic follows and expands on Aristotle. In many definitions of logic, logical inference and inference with purely formal content are the same. This does not render the notion of informal logic vacuous, because no formal logic captures all of the nuances of natural language.
• Symbolic logic is the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the formal features of logical inference. Symbolic logic is often divided into two main branches: propositional logic and predicate logic.
• Mathematical logic is an extension of symbolic logic into other areas, in particular to the study of model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory.

EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Perception of brightness is a qualia. Perception of time is a qualia. When an organism adaptively responds to different states of its environment it possesses the ability to process qualia.

No. This is just absurd. We certainly don't know that. If we did, do you think people would have even invented the concept of qualia?!
Why would an adaptive response be even essential here? What's the difference between the Moon orbiting the Earth and a slime moving along a bridge?
EB

 

[Write4U]

No. This is just absurd. We certainly don't know that. If we did, do you think people would have even invented the concept of qualia?!
Why would an adaptive response be even essential here? What's the difference between the Moon orbiting the Earth and a slime moving along a bridge?
EB

The slime mold knows there is food on the orher side.....

 

[Speakpigeon]

The slime mold knows there is food on the orher side.....

Is that all you can do?! Make vacuous claims?
I can make up claims, too. The Moon knows it is orbiting the Earth!!! Water knows where to go to find the sink hole!!!
See?
I watched the videos on your fungus. It's just really, really obvious they go blindly. It's only once all alternative paths are covered that the shortest one is reinforced, and not surprisingly at all. Water can do the same trick.
Just pathetic.
Bye.
EB

 

[Beer w/Straw]

The Moon knows it is orbiting the Earth!!! Water knows where to go to find the sink hole!!!

I got into a fight with gravity once...

Call me a pussy but I'm not looking for a rematch.

 

[Write4U]

Water can do the same trick.

Yep, "movement in the direction of greatest satisfaction". It is a universal imperative for both sentient and non-sentient objects.

 

[arfa brane]

Qualia are supposed to be a concept of subjective experience.

According to Stanford:

Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia.

Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head.

The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness.

In other words, we can consider that qualia are symbolic, some kind of variable in a logical system (or rational system if you prefer). So does a slime mould subjectively experience its world, or what?

I would be the first to admit the limitations of Aristotle's method of logic

But you said it's the only logic there is. Perhaps you should admit that.

 

[Write4U]

In other words, we can consider that qualia are symbolic, some kind of variable in a logical system (or rational system if you prefer). So does a slime mould subjectively experience its world, or what?

According to the researchers it does. Hameroff proposes that microtubules themselves have a form of sentience as used in the cilia of the single celled Paramecium.

Paramecia are a part of a group of organisms known as ciliates. As the name suggests, their bodies are covered in cilia, or short hairy protrusions. Cilia are essential for movement of paramecia. As these structures whip back and forth in an aquatic environment, they propel the organism through its surroundings.

Paramecia can move forward at rates up to 2 millimeters per second, as José de Ondarza, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at SUNY Plattsburgh notes on his research website. Sometimes the organism will perform "avoidance reactions" by reversing the direction in which the cilia beat. This results in stopping, spinning or turning, after which point the paramecium resumes swimming forward. If multiple avoidance reactions follow one another, it is possible for a paramecium to swim backward, though not as smoothly as swimming forward.

Cilia also aid in feeding by pushing food into a rudimentary mouth opening known as the oral groove. Paramecia feed primarily on bacteria, but are known to eat yeast, unicellular algae and even some non-living substances such as milk powder, starch and powdered charcoal, according to "Biology of Paramecium."

https://www.livescience.com/55178-paramecium.html

 

[arfa brane]

Back on topic. Nothing in a void is a tautology, a void in boundary logic is a "space" with no structure. There is no notion of difference, or a distance between two different points, etc. There is no concept of number or order, there is nothing except a space that looks the same everywhere. '

According to Boundary Logic (which is not only a valid formal logic, it has practical applications because of its economy with symbols), a void with a boundary is 'Boolean equivalent' to a true state. It says it's true that a boundary can identify a false state, you are allowed a finite chunk of structureless nothing.

Symbolically I can say the set of all true statements T, and the set of all false statements F, have an empty intersection { } = ∅. BL says that { } is the state of all elements of T, and the space (character) between the brackets is the state of all elements of F.

 

[river]

Back on topic. Nothing in a void is a tautology, a void in boundary logic is a "space" with no structure. There is no notion of difference, or a distance between two different points, etc. There is no concept of number or order, there is nothing except a space that looks the same everywhere. '

According to Boundary Logic (which is not only a valid formal logic, it has practical applications because of its economy with symbols), a void with a boundary is 'Boolean equivalent' to a true state. It says it's true that a boundary can identify a false state, you are allowed a finite chunk of structureless nothing.

Symbolically I can say the set of all true statements T, and the set of all false statements F, have an empty intersection { } = ∅. BL says that { } is the state of all elements of T, and the space (character) between the brackets is the state of all elements of F.

But WITHIN the void there is , there are , no objects . In the absolute . The definition from the first paragraph lacks this inclusion of objects .

arfa brane you are only looking at a void in the mathematical model . Not from from absence of any physical thing .