• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

Merged Is Scientism Really Justified?

I asked this next question in a different thread and you never answered it from what I can tell, and since you put quotes around it, I want to know how you define it.

Define “information”.
It's very important to recognize that quantum physics defines information in a very specific manner that differs greatly from its colloquial or philosophical definition. Specifically in quantum physics information cannot exist independently from matter because it is a property of matter.
 
If a ratio like $\pi$ or the geometry of a circle is merely a human set of rules invented by the brain to organize facts, why does the physical universe conform to these precise relational structures long before any brain evolved to formalize them? Confusing the notation (the language we invent) with the underlying structural relation (the objective property of the universe) seems to be the exact point where physicalism substitutes an ontology with a convenience.
OH! WOW! How does water know how to fill the shape of a hole without being aware of the hole’s shape !!!

:eek::jaw-dropp


:jaw:
 
Dawn of a light lying between the silence and sold sources
Chased amid fusions of wonder
In moments hardly seen forgotten
Coloured in pastures of chance, dancing leaves cast spells of challenge
Amused but real in thought
We fled from the sea
Whole

Dawn of thought transferred through moments of days under-searching earth, revealing corridors of time provoking memories
Disjointed but with purpose
Craving penetrations offer links with the self instructor's sharp and tender love
As we took to the air
A picture of distance

Oi!

Quoting Yes lyrics is my gag!

But that lyric, as I'm sure you intended, is a pertinent one: The Revealing Science of God, i.e. the sub-text of the OP...
 
Also AI. The delimiter pair $...$ is how Google embeds LaTeX (markup for mathematical notation) in its AI-generated summaries. On the screen you see π. But when you copy the text, it pastes as its LaTex representation \pi delimited by the pair of $s that identify inline LaTeX to Google's browser output code.

@Gubiosak, you are clearly copypasting AI-generated responses from Google without identifying them as such and without apparently writing the answers yourself. And no, that's not the translator generating it. The translator properly just copies the Greek letter, not its LaTeX representation. Please stick to your promise to write your own posts instead of delegating your thinking to AI.
You're right, Jayuthat. I relied on Google's AI overview for that part and pasted it without cleaning up the output or writing it in my own words. I apologize for breaking my promise. I value this forum and will make sure all my future posts are strictly my own thoughts and words.
 
Also AI. The delimiter pair $...$ is how Google embeds LaTeX (markup for mathematical notation) in its AI-generated summaries. On the screen you see π. But when you copy the text, it pastes as its LaTex representation \pi delimited by the pair of $s that identify inline LaTeX to Google's browser output code.

@Gubiosak, you are clearly copypasting AI-generated responses from Google without identifying them as such and without apparently writing the answers yourself. And no, that's not the translator generating it. The translator properly just copies the Greek letter, not its LaTeX representation. Please stick to your promise to write your own posts instead of delegating your thinking to AI.
Fair point, Jayuthat. I used an AI tool to help summarize/translate the idea, but I mistakenly copy-pasted the generated output instead of digesting it and writing the reply myself. Lesson learned—I'll make sure to write everything in my own words going forward.
 
It's just physicalism. "Ontological" is implied by physicalism, so presumably it's there to lend the imprimatur of seriousness.


I'd dispute that the hard problem isn't well received. 62% of philosophers accept that there is a hard problem of consciousness.


(It should probably be noted that Chalmers is one of the designers of the PhilPapers survey, but I don't see much reason to believe it's been improperly biased.)
What about actual scientists? Especially those in relevant fields.
 
If a ratio like $\pi$ or the geometry of a circle is merely a human set of rules invented by the brain to organize facts,
Strawman.
why does the physical universe conform to these precise relational structures long before any brain evolved to formalize them? Confusing the notation (the language we invent) with the underlying structural relation (the objective property of the universe) seems to be the exact point where physicalism substitutes an ontology with a convenience.
This is rubbish.
 
Strawman.

This is rubbish.
Labeling a premise a "strawman" and calling an ontological distinction "rubbish" are dismissals, not refutations. If the universe's relational structures exist independently of human notation, physicalism still needs to explain their non-material nature. Dismissing the question only highlights the lack of a physicalist answer.
 
Fair point, Jayuthat. I used an AI tool to help summarize/translate the idea, but I mistakenly copy-pasted the generated output instead of digesting it and writing the reply myself. Lesson learned—I'll make sure to write everything in my own words going forward.
No.

You're not just using AI to "summarize" and "translate" your ideas. Post #24 in this this is obviously composed by AI from the ground up. You were warned that native English speakers would easily be able to tell. It's not just the phrasing. The entire structure and rhetorical flow is highly characteristic of LLM-generated text.

Further, your post #22—the one in which you dropped the telltale $\pi$—represents the second time your AI has completely reversed the intent of the post you asked it to respond to. Your AI clearly cannot understand the arguments being made here, and I highly doubt you're taking the trouble to translate the posts between English and Portuguese so that you can attempt to understand them yourself. I suspect you're feeding posts in English to your AI and simply copying its English response into the thread.

Specifically, your AI says that we're confusing notation with the underlying structural properties. But my post #20, to which it was responding, makes the opposite case. It spells out the notation, but then uses that as a framework to investigate all the underlying abstract concepts that synthetically compose the supposed structural relation. It concludes that the amount of thinking required to note a "simple" relationship actually requires a lot of synthesis that goes beyond the mere intrinsic properties of objects. Your AI completely missed the point, which they often do.

Your AI did this too in the scientism thread. Your post #572 in that thread (also obviously written entirely by AI) accuses my post #555 in that thread of trying to create a false dichotomy when it actually attempts to do the opposite. I doubt you were even reading many of the posts in that thread, otherwise it wouldn't have taken you dozens of pages to realize that your critics did not hold the beliefs you thought they did and—in fact—agreed with you.

Your AI is doing a poor job of debating at this forum.

Your feeble attempt to rehabilitate your AI by invoking the genetic fallacy is laughable. The genetic fallacy says a good argument can come from anywhere, and therefore that it's wrong to dismiss a good argument simply because it was written by an otherwise unreliable source. There are two problems with that. First, your AI is not providing good arguments. It's clearly unable to understand the posts you're feeding to it. Second, you are clearly unable of (or disinterested in) knowing whether your AI has generated a good argument in a language you do not speak well. Hence your invocation of the genetic fallacy is, at best, wishful.

I'll leave others to eviscerate you over your blatant and continued dishonesty.
 
Last edited:
Labeling a premise a "strawman" and calling an ontological distinction "rubbish" are dismissals,
Correct. There is no need to engage with you latest silly, irrelevant, AI slop. It's pointless
not refutations. If the universe's relational structures exist independently of human notation, physicalism still needs to explain their non-material nature. Dismissing the question only highlights the lack of a physicalist answer.
Pontificating, via an AI generator, is not engaging either.
 
University of Sao Paulo does indeed offer a bachelor's level course in philosophy, run either as an afternoon or evening course. Apparently free too.

Surely something like that would be a more productive use of the time of someone actually interested in some of the questions being asked, rather than using iffy AI to do so on a forum of folk of varying degrees of interest in or belief in the premises of the apparent subject area?
 
I admire you guys taking the time to address these arguments soberly. For my part, if I'm going to sincerely engage with a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ robot there needs to be a Happy Ending. Theoretical commitment, at this point in time.
 
Studying science would be even better......

There is that too, but, IIRC, this poster is the Spiritism (which we are most definitely not ever to confuse with Spiritualism, even if it looks to you like a distinction without a difference, because you would be very wrong to do so, 'cos Reasons) bod, so I don't think science is on any agenda.

As ever with most of our woo-ist or woo adjacent posters, that might resolve a whole heap of things.

I just thought a philosophy department with actual philosophers might be a start in constructing arguments about philosophy, which might lead on to an understanding of evidence and all the rest, then when the limitations of philosophy have been discovered, moving on to the real world...I know, I know...
 
You keep begging people to pretend the straw man is real. Yes, pointing out that something is a straw man is a dismissal of the argument. A proper dismissal of it.
calling an ontological distinction a straw man just to dismiss it still avoids the core question: do geometric relationships exist independently of human brains, or not?
 
calling an ontological distinction a straw man just to dismiss it still avoids the core question:
Calling your argument a straw man is not the same thing as calling something it mentions a straw man. And you are extremely arrogant to question other people's manner of engagement after your repeated, lazy, and dishonest use of AI.

do geometric relationships exist independently of human brains, or not?
I answered that question, but your AI dismissed it improperly as mere quibbling over notation.

You are obviously not equipped to have this conversation, and neither is your AI.
 
Last edited:

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom