Anonymous Intelligence? (from Medieval times)

Also, Descartes never thought we didn´t need emotions to reason. He explicitly says, in one of the Meditations, that "that thing in me that thinks" not only thinks, but also desires, fears, hopes, etc. So Descartes has been improperly understood ever since.

Very sad that so much knowledge is used as a weapon upon the unknowing

@Tardi Grade - in another lecture Lakoff says he was taught by Chomsky, but became increasingly to believe that Chomsky's notion of language as a system in which meaning and grammar are separate/discreet phenomena, was wrong. He also states that, when Chomsky came up against these issues he simply redefined grammar in a more limited way. I'm not taking sides (don't have enough knowledge yet) - just repeating what Lakoff said. I come from a literary criticism/stylistics background: we use functional grammar aka Halliday (and eschew Chomskian generative grammar), the biggest influence on me has been Roger Fowler and, for narrative, Michael Toolan. I have however read Lakoff and Johnson's 'The metaphors We Live By' and as a potential PhD candidate am concerned that my work should, where possible, be grounded in 'science' rather than just 'feelings' about texts. I'm also fascinated in how differences in how we process language affects our beliefs: flat earthers seem to have 'blocks' when trying to envisage scale/ three dimensional space/abstract or hypothetical arguments.

What is "pure cognition"? How can "cognition" be "pure"?

@@chuchaichu But, of course, tardi grade didn't imply something that blunt. They only retained pure in relation to bridging external to internal and had further characteristics of "formalist-minimalist/computational" in relation to social function. By any stretch this is pretty nearly true about what cognition and parsing reality is. You might want to add an encultured ability for topology/number, but I would argue these are just extensions to language allowing a more efficient reifying of reality.

@@fliprim Natural languages and all other symbolic representations of “meaning” or “meaningful reality” are discrete, while cognition is continuous. I disagree that language is cognition or “pure cognition” (whatever it means) on the basis that many life forms have full cognition but no (or extremely limited) language. A map of London is not London, in the same sense, language is not cognition. Is language the sum total of “pure cognition” and “social tool”? No, cognition >language, and social tool > language. So the sum total of cognition and social tool >> language. Let alone the fact that “social tool” is merely a subset of a subset (communication between different individuals) of cognition, the sum total of the subset and its parent set should still be the parent set: cognition. It is just, the only thing that justifies terminology is precision. Terminology should render natural language closer to computer language or mathematical logic to avoid ambiguity. However, many use big words in an poetic sense to obscure meaning and evade the scrupulous common sense.

l l

I think his main point here as I understood is, there is a more 'truthful' definition for the state of the chair. You are correct it is summarizing a complicated physical and unconscious process and behind that summary it is a greater truth with lesser abstraction. I think if we understand the chair is not green it is the same as acknowledging our unconscious interactaion that our brain has with the surrounding. A very subtle argument indeed

I think the illusion of color can be seen through the following example. How does green relate to red and blue? For you, those are separate categories, but, of course, color is just a difference in wavelength. You can't perceive or feel red as more than green and green as more than blue. Yet, you can perceive 300 hz as a deeper sound than 3000hz. You also say that "3000 hz is higher than 300hz" when you hear it. You even have a metaphor for it ("higher" and "deeper"). But which color is higher or deeper? It's not a shorthand, but an unconscious abstraction. You perceive the abstraction not the thing itself. In this case, the abstraction exposed to your consciousness is substantially different from the physical phenomena it abstracts. It's not like you take "10,434" and shorten it to "10,434". You take the value and categorically transform it. It completely abstracts away relation of certain wavelengths and instead splits colors into several categories that can blend into one another but which do not feel like they are positioned on one value range relative to each other.

@@bernardlowe5433 Actually we do sort colours similar to how we sort sound. There are darker and lighter colours. And if you look at the wave length you will notice, that the colour spectrum actually follows similar intuitive patterns, it goes from dark to light with violett < blue < cyan < green < yellow < orange < red. It doesn't fit perfectly, I'd say yellow is usually a more light colour than red, but overall it's very close to our language.

@leninsyngal - yes and no. Any particular wavelength of light is a real phenomena: we know, for example, which wavelengths are visible to humans and which are not. However, we do not all perceive these particular wavelengths of light in the same way - we know this from colour blindness, but, more subtly, there are biological differences between the sexes, in how we perceive colour.

Here. I would like to ask the philosopher if the "concept green" belongs to the set of green things? I mean, it doesn't reflect any light, so, is the "concept green" not green? Just to confuse you more, what is a "certain wavelength"? Based on wave-particle duality, this "certain wavelength" can well be a "photon with certain energy" - another concept, is it less green? My point is, not only green doesn't exist in the outside reality, but "wavelengths" also don't necessarily "exist" out there. These are all concepts in the mind that are reflective of the physical reality. Color is a fundamental concept formed before language, even before humans. Wavelength is a sophisticated concept that can only be constructed on other sophisticated concepts, which are not present in most parts of human existence. People would never use the phrase "wavelength 550" to refer to the US dollar.

Amygdala is responsible for long-term non-declarative (emotional) memories. You can't recall them (bring them to mind) but the emotions can be triggered by the right kind of stimuli. Why am I so good at this?

i shared this on facebook, nobody gives a fuck man , i am going to reshare it, people have to fuckin choke on this

BECAUSE OF HUMAN STUPIDITY

I'm going to watch it several times lol. It relates to the subject I'm studying.

@Seven Inches of Throbbing Pink Jesus Well let's concider this. All questions do not have answers in science. The reason as to why your professors could not answer your questions at times were probably because advances in the research dealing with those questions might not have been found yet. This is why we establish theories, learn about them and then dismiss them when something better comes along. We had newtons theory of gravity as our best theory of how the laws of physics work for ages, and the theory could answer some questions but could not for example explain black holes. Then Einstein came along with the theory of relativity which was better and offered some insights into phenomena like black holes that we previously could not explain or understand, and so we adopted that instead as our model. However, as our best model and theory of how the universe works in terms of the laws of physics, we still do not have the answers to all questions regarding those laws of physics. But the theory we have at the moment is the best one we have untill a better one comes along or someone finds that the theory can explain those things which we do not understand at the moment. It is not wrong to say "i dont know" as a scientist. We need to not know because it drives us and because if we assumed to know everything we would missunderstand a lot of things. So yea, thought is physical, a matter of brain circuitry, and that cannot explain the fact that thought can happen in NDE when the brain is dead. Either there is something wrong with the theory, or there is something wrong with our understanding of the idea of thought in NDE and this is okay! It is entirely fine that this is the case. We just have to do more research, adjust the theory according to findings and create new models when we find new phenomena. It is an ever evolving process and that is okay. Not knowing is good, hope you are well!

@Seven Inches of Throbbing Pink Jesus Why are you so angry? Science is not perfect, but our best guess, on how Nature might work. You label it as a kindergarden, but you are the one actin like a little child and can't stand, there isn't an answer to your questions (yet). Can you see this big splinter in your eye?

@@TimSKarlsson I agree, but your example is a bit wrong. Newton did not say anything about black holes. And GRT did not come along to explain them, black holes were a byproduct of GRT, and Einstein doubted their existence himself in the beginning. Cheers.

@Seven Inches of Throbbing Pink Jesus I hope you've realised that the dichotomy of 'college or poverty' you impart in your 1st sentence is entirely of your own personal division.

May 26th, 2011 (from info...)

It seems to me that the environment and the culture clearly play roles here. It is universal that the brain mechanism for making sense is "pairing". Theoretically, if we take the complete set of phenomena in the world and the complete set of linguistic respects, we can get the full set of potentials/possibilities a mind can be organized. In this case for phonetic iconicity, there is a set of different sounds one animal can make. My dog has at least twenty different ways to make sounds. So we do have a list of sounds to pair with the concept of "dog bark", so the stage for randomness is set. I guess how a culture views the animal (the other concepts directly and indirectly paired with dog) is at play here. On top of that, probably also has something to do with the connotation of consonants and vowels (it is not a coincidence that "s/z/tz" are often the consonants for friction and damage) in a culture, and the natural pattern of language shift in that culture, etc.

What was the problem with the audio?

@@TerryBristol sounded loud but wasn't really loud.

​@@TerryBristol/videos The compressor is constantly monitoring for a signal to press down on ( to equalize volume levels), so when he stops to breath, since the attack is set wrong, it RISES rapidly back up, and boosts his inhalations to be as loud as the rest of the audio coming into the mic.

I suspect nobody

Attack sounds fine IMO. Seems like it might be an issue of the release. You can hear the static fade in as he finish a thought and stops talking sometimes.

0:51

Hmm.. My mother-tongue is german, so I kinda have to rely on dictionaries. I searched for translations for "to double" on leo.org and dict.cc, and there is not any translation that would mean something like "to go quickly". Only one saying it means "to intensify", which makes a bit more sense in that context, but still is not really a verb of motion. In German there is not really a similar usage of "doppeln".

@@JUK3B0XX OED. Verb ..... Military move at twice the usual speed; run 'I doubled across the deck to join the others' Hope thats helpful.

@@qlnbd thanks for the clarification!

that's one - minor - definition

"To double" is to make twofold. To move at the double is to move at twice the usual speed. To "double in size" is to make twice as big. To double is simply to multiply by two some object, action, or state of being. While it does apply to motion in a limited context, its function within English is NOT of motion, but of measurement.

Metonymy is how our unconscious speaks.

yeah i was about to

His explanation still applies

You can say there isn't a dog in front of me. You could just say it because you felt like saying it or you could be horrified of dogs, see a dog and repeat that phrase to delude yourself for comfort. In the second case it is linguistically intelligible.

Is there a dog in front of you?

GEORGE LAKOFE AND MARK JOHNSON

Yes, make sure you don't experience empathy. You might end up exerting yourself.

@@stevenhines5550 Oh, the irony.

I had a problem with some of the things he said there aswell. Also with his examples. I don't think you can take simple and specific rules and solutions of a complex thing like the neuroscience of language and then just take these rules out of context into something entirely different, that is also very complex (like the politics of the middle east) and then claim you have fully explained this whole other problem. But I do think his examples about learning were plausible. Do you want to evaluate your point? I'd like to hear some more arguments about this ^^

@@eingew The linguist Whorf and the philosopher Quine believed the tradution is not objective. In his 1980 book, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson believe in epistemological and moral relativism in terms of cognitive science. Like Chomsky, Lakoff are not a good cognitive scholar. Ray Jackendoff is a important cognitive scientist. He understand language as a computation process ( Chomsky deny this). Language is a symbolic syntax computation. Hermeneutics, structuralism, relativism are wrong. ( see Mental Models, by Johnson Laird). Cognitve science show us human nature is innate and sentences have an objective meaning.

@@guilhermesilveira5254 - I think you might be the one with a simplistic view of human nature - not Lakoff. Current research on everything from gender identity to colour preferences show that it is impossible to separate nature and nurture, and that our positions on these things are always changing, never fixed. Human nature cannot possibly be completely innate - if it was then how could people change their views on the world, how they treat others etc? There is some evidence that we have evolved to be empathetic because we are a social species - just see how dogs (a species that has evolved with us) are also empathetic. However, we are not simply the product of our genes - genetics and environment interact continually - there are certain genes that can be activated/inactivated by environment for example. Lastly, if all human nature were inherent - why would the world's most successful religions be the ones that insist on extensive indoctrination processes from an early age (when our brains are developing and most susceptible to persuasion by those we perceive as in authority)??

@@honeychurchgipsy6 Reason, emotions, human nature are programs by natural selection. We can learn, but we are determined to learn. We have free will, but we are robots.( see Elbow Room, by Dennett). The concepts of " plasticity" or neural networks, are just the old tabula rasa ( blank slate) back in philosophy. Ethnography proved human emotions are universal.

@@guilhermesilveira5254 - I am a big fan of Daniel Dennett but I think you are muddling the ideas of determinism/free will with the inability to change through education/life experience. When I first came across determinism and the notion that we don't really have the kind of 'libertarian' free will most of us think we do, I had a similar reaction: I thought it meant that no matter what everything would occur according to a plan - that is closer to how Calvinists think and it is completely wrong. Determinism does not mean that it's impossible to change - in fact it makes change inevitable. You also seem to be oversimplifying the genetics versus environment argument: it isn't an either/or thing - they are intertwined. I think it is your feeling that we are either 100% programmed by genetics, or we are 100% the result of our environment that is the issue: try seeing them as interconnected - the one affecting the other.

Interesting point. Reminds me of a quote from Claude Bernard: "If it is possible to dissect all the parts of the body, to isolate them in order to study them in their structure, form and connections, it is mot the same in life, where all parts cooperate at the same time in a common aim. An organ does not live on its own, one could often say it did not exist anatomically, as the boundary established is sometimes purely arbitrary. What lives, what exists, is the whole, and if one studies all the parts of any mechanisms separately, one does not know the way they work." The question that comes up to me here is: While it is true, that the concept of the body (or an organ) does only descripe something very superficially while claiming to be specific, does that mean though, that this certain thing does not exist (or as you put it, is "false knowledge" and we can't claim to know anything about it)? Maybe a more extreme example. Intelligence. How can you define that? What is intelligence? The best experts of diverse science fields do not have an answer for that. It is the best researched field of psychology and yet we still lack a proper definition for the term. The best we have today is: Intelligence is what the intelligence test measures. But does that mean, that the concept of intelligence is "false knowledge" as you put it and that we don't really know anything about it at all? That all we have about it is illusory? And yet we are able to measure the potential of an individual and what his chances will be in live. And that pretty accurately. I believe that in the end, what Schopenhauer once said about the brain fits here aswell: The body might not be everything, but without the body everything is nothing. Everything is interconnected. A neuron on its own isn't much and you can't understand it without the context on the brain. But you can't understand the brain as a whole either if you ignore the neuron as a single unit.

@@eingew at the level of concepts here's another concept to address your questions- consciousness. All 'false knowledge- concepts' appear in consciousness, not in the body, which itself is a concept with intermittent apparitions in consciousness. The key is turning attention away, renouncing fascination with the objects reporting to the 'we' and believed real- the body, intelligence, guilt, pride, morals, compassion, etc. and look at the 'we' instead. To do that one must start from 'I' the only certainty that is beyond interpretations of the mind- 'I exist/am' cannot be doubted because who would be that who's one doubting?! All the rest is conceptual, hearsay information learned from others and skillfully used as one's own in building a world of concepts, from the most banal phenomenal object as a shoe, dog or a tree to most complex ones- like intelligence. That which appears and disappears, that comes and goes, cannot be real/true- this is what illusion consists of- change. But change cannot happen if there is no witness a background to record 'movement in time', which is change. That 'background- space' in which change happens is consciousness- eternally present, regardless of the nature of change happening and unaffected by it. 'Inside' the world of change, all seems real- the world, people, intelligence, universe, science, nature... 'me-the body'... but all is time bound- that which is born must die. And yet, time itself which is a most useful concept in communication in the world of illusory concepts, has no substance- yesterday memories or tomorrow's imagined plans cannot be perceived other than 'now' where the ever slippery 'now', if you really look carefully at it, it is the gateway to eternity where consciousness 'resides'. Trying to start from the known, at the level of concepts to explain the unknown through words is an impossible task for the mind because the mind cannot deal with these concepts that point beyond themselves. The mind is limited to that which has been trained for a lifetime to handle- concepts. Reality- the unknown is beyond the mind, transcending it; it can only be reached when the mind is silent and to silence the mind one needs to use the power of logic and reason of the mind to discern the false knowledge and discard it- and everything produced by the mind is false. This understanding happens in consciousness as a matter of contemplation, not of thinking- to be one need not think; it is thinking that creates falsity. Someone said- 'reality begins where the mind ends'.

Okay, take that idea and reverse it and you may ...may...have something. You gotta' think about who is monkeying ( lol metaphor ) around with your empathy. No one "below" you. Cheers.

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Sure.. he is not a neuro-scientists.. although he is obviously crossing over into that field because of his interest in cognition... he does it by reading the latest neuro-science

You are wrong! Learn your lesson

@@dinsel9691 - is a physicist not a physicist unless they actually perform all of the experiments that all of the previous physicists have done? Was Einstein NOT a physicist because he did not actually confirm his own theory of relativity?? NO - there is a difference between a theoretical and an experimental physicist. Both are required - both equally important. Lakoff may not actually DO the FMRI studies on the brain but he works closely with those who do and understands their work thoroughly.

@@honeychurchgipsy6 what are you trying to even say?? You say Lakoff is not a neuroscientist but works with them... and then give this absurd example of a physicist like Einstein not really being a physicist unless he proves his own theory.. stupid stuff

@@dinsel9691 - do you have a problem understanding hypothetical arguments, or are you simply being deliberately obtuse because you want an argument? You basically turned everything I said round the other way and then ridiculed it. Either way I do not have time to discuss this easily understandable concept with you. Maybe English is not your first language, or maybe you are just a contrarian who enjoys a fight for the sake of it??

Does that mean that you disagree with him or don't understand what he is saying? If you disagree what is it you disagree with? I was perfectly able to understand what he was saying.

Honestly the saddest part about it really is that he regards his own thinking is being you know special or breaking some kind of ground when it really sounds like the way freshman high school kids talk after smoking a joint

Seems sense is relative.

Thanks for his timestamp