Skepticism and The Normal

[WWHP]

While a harmony is inevitably going to be implied by a melody, that harmony is not necessarily going to be the same for all listeners. You keep citing Miles Davis: if you aren't aware that there can be more than one set of chords implied by a given melody a lot of what he (and any other post-bop jazz musician) did will be lost on you.The elements of music are melody, harmony and rhythm. Syncopation is not essential; nor is syncopation is synonymous with rhythm. Music without syncopation is, in fact, very common. We've all heard it: the tunes of nursery rhymes, for example, tend to lack syncopation.

Bubblefish is no longer restating his position on musical terms. The terms have been clarified, failure to gather meaning at this point after they have been clarified is due to a lack of questioning on your behalf. Please do not bore us with these semantical tit for tats on musical terms or interpretations of philosophy of music, it simply is not what the argument is about.

Regards,
The Agency

 

[flimflam_machine]

Let's take pain as another example. If I put my hand on hot saucepan I feel pain. But is the pain in the saucepan?

'Pain' is a synthesis of the 'heat' that's now IN YOUR HAND that was transferred FROM the saucepan. extreme heat is objectively painful when experienced by a nervous system. Sheesh, I thought you were a scientist.

I am a scientist, which is why I, unlike you, am keen on rigid definitions for words e.g., synthesis. The whole point here Bubb is that the pain doesn't exist in the saucepan. It does not exist in the absence of your hand and more importantly in the absence of your consciousness. We have a word for that kind of thing: subjective. That it is caused by an object does not make the experience of pain any less subjective.

Human Beings are BOTH objective and SUBJECTIVE. Consciousness is both objective and subjective. Art is both objective and subjective. Universe is both objective and subjective.

What? No. What? and What? in that order.

When I hit one 'note', I made a tone and a 'beat' at the same time.

Erm, no you don't. One note cannot set a tempo since without a pre-determined rhythm you cannot say whether it is a crotchet, a minim, a quaver or whatever

one singular note does not exist by itself, it wouldnt sound like a 'note' unless there were other complimentary notes to it potentially. If I play C, I can hear E and G in my head automatically.

Notes do exist by themselves Bubb, I've heard them, and you mention one above. The fact that you anticipate the 3rd and 5th means nothing, and in any case, what happens if a minor chord is then played. Doesn't that then clash with the major chord that you are automatically hearing?

 

[zooterkin]

I never said music consists minimally of syncopation and harmony, rather, syncopation and harmony are co-existant in music by default, they are neccesary truths of music.

Yes, that's exactly what you did say.

What is music but syncopation and harmony?

And what you just restated is not true, either. Syncopation and harmony are not 'neccesary truths of music'. (Only one 'c' in necessary, by the way.)

I am not going to get hung up on semantics or philosophy of music, that is not what this discusion is about.

This is, as far as it is about anything, about you claiming that OS012 can do something. One of the steps in using it, as far as I can tell, is to classify things as objective or subjective. We are trying to explain to you what these terms mean. You have introduced music, claiming it is objectively beautiful. We (i.e. just about everyone else who didn't give up on this thread due to having a life) are attempting to explain that beauty is subjective, and that by the very definitions of the terms, as used in philosophical debate rather than journalism, photography or some other unrelated field, something cannot be both subjective and objective.

Work that one out with your therapist

So, you must find something beautiful in order to be attracted to it?

You have quite a few number of mathematicians, AI specialists, artists, and philosophers who disagree with you.

Name one, and please state here their definition of beauty.

hah! That's a laugh. People have been arguing about this for thousands of years

I think that's rather my point. If there was an objective definition of human beauty, I think we might have exposed it by now.

Beauty can also be observed objectively

Go on, give an example.

symmetry is balance, harmony, elegance

Measured how, exactly?

one singular note does not exist by itself, it wouldnt sound like a 'note' unless there were other complimentary notes to it potentially.

If I play C, I can hear E and G in my head automatically.

That may be your subjective experience.

It's like numbers. The number 3 includes all other natural numbers in existence for it to have that relevance of 3.

Gibberish.

Your missing my argument. This is not an argument about the philosophy of music. I created music for over ten years. My music has been on radio, television, and film, and has been signed to a Major distributor. I know how to make music. Music is not constructed in words, so dont get hung up on an irrelevant misunderstanding your having about my meaning.

You categorically stated what you believed music was composed of. You were wrong.

A note is a rythmic refrence in time to a tone.

A note on its own has no rhythm. And I don't know what you mean by it being a rhythmic reference to a tone.

it's subjective to the arranger/artist, an arrangment is a subjective construct of an objective musical language.

The arranger or composer may make use of subjective experiences, but the arrangement itself is an objective construct. It can be written down in musical notation, and the performance can be recorded and replayed. What is not objective about that? The effect it has on the listener is subjective.

No it's not, unless your ignorant. I dont for many arrangements, that doesnt mean those notes, chords, or progressions themselves arnt beautiful in an of themselves, I just dont like they way they were expressed by the artist.

In which case, I would submit that you would not describe that performance as 'beautiful'.

It's subjective TO YOU, but you are unable to identify objective beauty, so for you beauty is random and based soley on your feelings.

Since objective beauty does not exist, I'm not to worried about not being able to spot it. And that's solely, by the way.

If your going to play 3rd grade spelling teacher, do it with everyone. I find this spelling issue with me just a strawman. I have noted spelling errors from virtually everyone here, yet only mine seem to catch the attention of the little old lady school teachers.

You are currently the person whose posts I'm replying to (perhaps I do need to find a therapist). And you consistently misspell words which are a key part of your arguments, so it is particularly noticeable.

 

[zooterkin]

"Right now, the Sun is bigger than the Earth"

To expand on my earlier succinct post that may have been overlooked.

Well, I was using your own definition, that a false idea cannot be in conflict with a true idea.

That is not my definition, that is your crude interpretation of my definition and that is how you are fumbling your rebuttal.

true ideas are not in conflict with false ideas or mysterious ideas, and vice versa.

So, how am I misinterpreting that statement?

It is false, but it potentially can be argued as true, and was argued as true in the past. In the past, the moon and the sun were argued to be the same size, as when we look at an eclipse, we see the uncanny syncronicity of two celestial objects actually appear to be the same size.

The statement opens with 'Right now', placing us in the present.

The 'sun is bigger than the earth' is no longer argued because that has become the MASTER MEME, or the dominant idea that is no longer rationally argued in the conflict of idea.

It's no longer debated because it is demonstrably true. There is no conflict.

Please send the $100 to the same place as before, assuming you still don't have the facility for online transfers.

 

[flimflam_machine]

first off, it DOES make it a value of truth to that person. Secondly, we all have shared unknowns in common. In Socrates time, it was the actions, desires, and whims of the gods that were the shared unknowns. Today, the shared unknowns are dark matter, UFO, Iraq War resolutions, life extention.

That doesn't make it a universal truth value Bubb, those things are just unknown at the moment, so what?

Quote:
The third value = unknown, you've written this yourself. Could you point out exactly how that fits into the Socratic dialectic?

Sure. I dont know what your talking about, can you explain?

Wow! Revelatory stuff! I still don't know how that relates in any way to a third value of truth. You are simply asking someone to convey their knowledge to you, so what?

Quote:
Firstly “the cogito”: “I think therefore I am”.

your gonna hate me for saying this, but this is also incomplete. The completeness is 'I think and feel, therefore i am"

Sorry Bubb, more basic wrongness on your part. From here http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/#4

"I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (Med. 2, AT 7:25)
As the canonical formulation has it, I think therefore I am (Latin: cogito ergo sum; French: je pense, donc je suis)—a formulation which does not expressly arise in the Meditations."

Nothing about feeling in there.

Quote:

What this says is simply there is nothing (and I mean absolutely nothing) that we can be certain of beyond our own existence.

and the nature of that existence? if you answer that question, then you get the third value. Think about it. If the only thing we can be purely certain about is our existence, then what is our existence to be for us to be so certain about it yet so UNRESOLVED regarding it's objective meaning?

Quote:
The whole of objective reality may simply be an illusion.

But then it is an objective illusion, we can still be certain about it because it is mutually experienced and observed. I think we can be certain about three things with perfect certainty.

I exist.
you exist
we exist.

Note that I only can get you existing and we existing because of an objective reality. We can be certain therefore that an objective reality exists, either as illusion or phenomenon it matters not, it still exists.

Quote:
But then we can be certain of nothing to that degree so that doesn’t actually get us anywhere.

YES WE CAN. that is a philosophical misnomer. Our ideas about it may evolve over time, but we can be certain that ALL OF US EXIST, and if then, we can be EQUALLY CERTAIN that there is a shared reality as opposed to a subjective reality.

OS 012 is about the distinctions in OBJECTIVE and SUBJECTIVE reality.

Quote:

Dialectic has absolutely no bearing on this problem whatsoever, since any dialectic may simply be happening in a reality that doesn’t actually exist.

I dont think you understand what dialectic is yet to make a statement about that. It is ONLY through dialectic we could ever even parse our existence into a statement and say 'I EXIST'!

We would not be able to contruct the truth about the certainty of our ontological being if it were not for our discussions with others.

It sounds to me Bubb like you fundamentally have not understood the problem of the cogito.

Have a read here Bubb: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/#4

The most fundamental thing is this: I know that I exist since, if I think then there must exist an "I" to do the thinking, but I cannot be sure about anything other than that. I don't know in what form I exist since I may only be dreaming that I have a body. More crucially for your argument, I certainly cannot be sure that you, much less “all of us”, exist since there is no possible argument that can prove to me that you are not a figment of my imagination. Try it. Try to prove to me that you (and therefore we) exist.

Dialectic certainly cannot be used to prove that you or anyone (anything) else exists since its very nature presupposes the existence of someone to have a dialectic with. All your arguments about objective reality go completely out the window since if you cannot prove to me that you exist then proving that reality exists through mutual viewability is impossible.

 

[zooterkin]

Bubblefish is no longer restating his position on musical terms. The terms have been clarified, failure to gather meaning at this point after they have been clarified is due to a lack of questioning on your behalf.

Bubblefish made a mistake, but won't admit it. He's going to cover his ears and hum if you mention it again.

Please do not bore us with these semantical tit for tats on musical terms or interpretations of philosophy of music, it simply is not what the argument is about.

And it is entirely relevant to the discussion. You claim the beauty of music is objective. You also claim that music consists essentially of syncopation and harmony. Therefore the objective beauty of music must lie within either or both of those attributes.

Since it has been shown the music need contain neither syncopation nor harmony, your whole argument falls apart, unless you believe that, for example, a single voice singing a nursery rhyme cannot be beautiful music.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Bubblefish is no longer restating his position on musical terms. The terms have been clarified, failure to gather meaning at this point after they have been clarified is due to a lack of questioning on your behalf. Please do not bore us with these semantical tit for tats on musical terms or interpretations of philosophy of music, it simply is not what the argument is about.

Regards,
The Agency

Interesting. I've been reading a book "Imaginary Weapons", and have just gotten to the part where the terms "pseudo-science", "junk science", and "pathological science" are defined.

Pseudo-science is non-science veiled in scientific terms.

Junk science is science that uses questionable methods.

Pathological science revolves around a person who says that his ideas cannot be understood or his experiments replicated because everyone else is too stupid/incompentent to grasp it.

I think we all know into which realm we have wandered here.

ETA: As a former music theory major, I'm really sorry I missed this discussion before BubbleSort clamped down on all dissent. However, the end result would undoubtedly have been the same.

 

[Mojo]

Bubblefish is no longer restating his position on musical terms. The terms have been clarified, failure to gather meaning at this point after they have been clarified is due to a lack of questioning on your behalf. Please do not bore us with these semantical tit for tats on musical terms or interpretations of philosophy of music, it simply is not what the argument is about.

Regards,
The Agency

If Bubblefish didn't want to discuss music, he shouldn't have introduced it into the thread, or made so many unsupported and incorrect assertions about it.

By the way, are you or Bubblefish aware that it is against the forum rules for an account to be used by more than one person?

 

[zooterkin]

I think we all know into which realm we have wandered here.

Humpty Dumpy's?

ETA: As a former music theory major, I'm really sorry I missed this discussion before BubbleSort clamped down on all dissent. However, the end result would undoubtedly have been the same.

That's a shame; I'd be the first to admit that my musical knowledge is minimal (no pun intended).

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Re being attracted to someone you don't find beautiful... Obviously BF has never heard of Borderline Boilers (The eye's say no, but the nuts say GO!).

 

[Z]

Just a small note: attraction starts with the visual, so they say; but it's clues about fertility, not symmetry or syncopation, that gets things rolling. If you're in close proximety to a person giving off the right pheremones at the right time, she could look like Phyllis Diller and you might find her attractive.

As to discussion of Rome's unfounded and childish personal attacks: it is very telling that his OS012 discussion has pretty much broken down over his immature behavior. Further, he is only more deeply demonstrating his own hypocracy and simple-mindedness, by attacking others for 'magical thinking' when he himself has repeatedly discussed magical notions such as 'spiritual symmetry'.

Isn't it also interesting, that after accusing me of a personality disorder - well, before AND after, actually - that he himself has been posting in a purely bipolar fashion (i.e. The Agency)?

Are there any depths of hypocracy and childishness that OS012 does NOT bring a person down to?

I noticed someone asked if they would be wrong to NOT consider Jolie beautiful, and it appears as if Rome answered that they would be incorrect, that they merely were unable to discover her beauty. Perhaps this is the wrong question. The right one should be, is it possible to find beauty where none exists? If it is possible, then there should be established, explicit indicators of what is beautiful and what is not - which, by the way, there are not. If it is NOT possible, then Rome is faced with the very real possibility that, because different people find different things beautiful or NOT beautiful, accordingly, and because there is absolutely no universal agreement, then beauty must be subjective. And all the waffling in the world about beauty being both subjective and objective is clearly nonsense.

In other words, if beauty is that which has to be discovered, then there must also exist those things in which no beauty may be discovered, which in turn means there would be universal agreement over things which are not beautiful. If beauty lies ready to be discovered in all things, then beauty becomes a useless term.

I find it interesting that this discussion is still continuing, though, even though from what evidence I gather, not one of his arguments is advancing.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

You lost me a bit there - what is bipolar about posting as The Agency?

 

[Z]

Referring to himself - not only as The Agency, but as if he were distinct from the poster making the Agency posts.

Recall that Mojo jokingly pointed out that it's against forum rules for more than one person to use his account?

Bipolar Disorder manifests in this way, I've been told, among others...

 

[jimbob]

Referring to himself - not only as The Agency, but as if he were distinct from the poster making the Agency posts.

Recall that Mojo jokingly pointed out that it's against forum rules for more than one person to use his account?

Bipolar Disorder manifests in this way, I've been told, among others...

I just think that he is a pompous twat...

 

[Professor Yaffle]

I have never heard of this as a symptom of bipolar, but then I have only really known one person who had it (my grandfather).

Sounds more like dissocciative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder).

 

[drkitten]

I have never heard of this as a symptom of bipolar, but then I have only really known one person who had it (my grandfather).

Sounds more like dissocciative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder).

I have a really really radical idea. How about we not try to practice medicine over the Internet, especially those of us who never bothered to attend medical school in the first place, hmmm?

 

[jimbob]

I have a really really radical idea. How about we not try to practice medicine over the Internet, especially those of us who never bothered to attend medical school in the first place, hmmm?

I *can* diagnose pomposity and associated twatdom...

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Oh I don't think any of us were actually suggesting that BF actually HAS Bipolar Disorder or any other mental health problem. I thought Z's comment was just a flippant comment - and I was responding to Z's understanding of bipolar disorder rather than trying to say I thought BF had DID/MPD.

I also hate it when mental health labels are thrown around willy nilly and as if they are terms of abuse. I probably should have said that first.

Sorry if it was misconstrued.

 

[Z]

Oh I don't think any of us were actually suggesting that BF actually HAS Bipolar Disorder or any other mental health problem. I thought Z's comment was just a flippant comment - and I was responding to Z's understanding of bipolar disorder rather than trying to say I thought BF had DID/MPD.

I also hate it when mental health labels are thrown around willy nilly and as if they are terms of abuse. I probably should have said that first.

Sorry if it was misconstrued.

Ditto. Just making a flippant observation. Actually, I think that he thinks he's dealing with annoying and off-topic banter with a witty reply.

Of course, what it LOOKS like... well, I don't need to spell it out for anyone.

 

[WWHP]

Flim,

let me see if I can finish this last post from last night on this short break I have right now.

Earlier, i said;

Consider. If we cant be clear about what we dont know, how can we be clear about what we do? How can we KNOW we are clear about what we dont know? How can we be certain we are clear?

Not knowing is neccesary for CLARITY.

And you query

Now you need to clarify. What do you mean by this?

Clarity can be understood as the ability to accuratly percieve that which one does not know juxtaposed against that which we do. Clarity is a state of honesty. To invoke the third value is to invoke honesty. Clarity is not a perception about knowledge, it is an understanding of knowledge.

We can all be aware that we cannot be certain about the existence of objective reality and that at that level we can “know” nothing at all other than of our own existence.

Our existence is self reflecting it's own truth recursivly, yes. Our existence is thus the foundations for all other truths we can encounter

But once we have assumed that objective reality exists, and that we share it, we can build up knowledge of it.

build up knowledge and understanding, yes

Of course all of this can be undercut by the cogito and this is why it is not useful to talk about it as a standard for certainty since nothing operates on the same level. We require that initial assumption, if we make it, we can know plenty; if we don’t, we can know nothing.

There are variations of the certainty of objective reality. Our existence occurs in objective reality. Objective Reality is our certainty, which is founded upon our individual sense of certainty, existence and being. You would never know the truth to the cognito if it were not for objective reality.

These are the two truth values in OS 012. Our being is the two value, objective reality is the one value.

But back to certainty in dialectic. The suggestion here is that we can be more certain about what we do not know, than by what we do know, for the very same reason you pointed out what you did. To get clarity on what we do not know only requires self honesty. to get clarity about that which we do know requires knowledge that must be tested in objective reality.

Can you make the distinctions between knowledge and understanding? Knowledge is useless without understanding. For example, let's say Steorn has what they say they have. That doesnt take away from the knowledge of modern science, that knowledge is still there, yet it increases our understanding of that knowledge.

Make sense?

Clarity is not just knowledge, it is knowledge and understanding of knowledge known and unknown.

Objective reality is part of the mystery, part of the unknown.
…
Objective reality is just the reality we all can agree on.

That sounds pretty contradictory to me Bubb, care to clarify?

sure, I can see how that would appear contradictory, but it isnt, not within three truth values. Our external reality is a mystery to us collectively. It is utterly complex. Sure, we have made great understanding and have uncovered much knowledge, especially in the past few hundred years as a species, but our reality that we share is a great mystery that science is still uncovering further truth from. Objective Reality, according to modern theory, arose from a singularity smaller than the size of this period at the end of this sentence. Before that? Know one knows, and science 'requests' that we grant them this one miracle of the big bang and if granted, they can attempt to explain the whole of existence. But can they really? We still dont have a unified field theory, which means we dont have a comprehensive understanding of how universe works. Our universe is our objective reality and mystery seems to be there.Even if we have a unified theory, that doesnt mean we know what is occuring throughout the entire universe.

Mystery is also our subjective reality, the mystery of consciousness and being. Mystery is the third value that is both objective and subjective.

Implicit knowledge is something that we know, but that we do not know that we know. Note that this is not the same as “unknown”. In this context your second sentence becomes trivial, since it just describes the passing of knowledge from one party to another. This is very different from the Socratic dialectic which seeks to draw out what is implicitly known. In the example before, Socrates’ opponent already knows (implicitly) everything that is required to refute his own definition of “pious”. Socrates simply makes him aware of this, there is no transfer from the unknown to the known, but only from the implicitly to the explicitly known.

I think we are saying the same thing two different ways. Socrates makes him aware of the 'neccesary truths' of what he already knows, but has not considered, and therefore is not aware of, and is therefore unknown. The opponent has a 'false idea' believed to be true.

Note that this is not mere knowledge that Socrates assists his opponent on, but rather 'understanding' of what he knows so he can transcend his false idea about piety, and have clarity.

Ok, let’s have an example. Using dialectic only, let us establish the truth about the financial state of the Sumatran timber industry, is it healthy? We can’t, because (unless you have a very esoteric set of interests) neither of us know about it, either explicitly or implicitly. It is unknown, and no amount of dialectic can make it known. Nevertheless it either is healthy or it isn’t and a bit of research will tell us. That was my point.

I think you are adhering to a very narrow definition of dialectic. Dialectic is a natural process that occurs both internally and externally. If niether me nor you know anything about the subject matter whatsover does not prevent dialectic from occuring, simply we both agree we dont know about the subject and we come to see that through discussion.

Dialectic is an exchange of truth values between two or more points of view. It's not a hueristic, it's a process, and 'dialectics' simply attempt, often via hueristics, to outline this process in dialouge.

I think ternary logic can work in electronics systems and at an individual level. It’s still not clear how it works objectively nor that it is valid when making objective (observer-independent truth value) statements about the real world.

The ternary process that I am reffering to is happening naturally in the human mind and brain. Our brain circuitry is ternary in nature. Our internal information exchange is ternary in nature. Formalized systems of ternary logic are relevant to their respect applications, which include propositional logic, language translation, and electronics. We cannot confuse a formalized ternary logic with a ternary process whose foundation may be purely biological, rather, we have to formalize that process into a language so we can understand it.

Make sense a little?

FYI, OS 012 was not developed from Socratic. Actually, for the first 6 months of OS 012, I wasnt even sure what dialectic was and did not use dialectic to describe OS 012. I was describing it back then as a communication device. When I began my research, a philosopher came to me and said "oh, this isnt exactly new you know, this is dialectic" "Dialectic?" I replied. And boy was it a big relief to discover dialectic, until then I wasnt sure if I was imagining the whole thing because it all seemed so obvious and easy to me yet I was having difficulty explaining what it was because I had understanding, but NO KNOWLEDGE.

BF