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"Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

psychclassics.yorku.ca

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Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#71

Post by VirusNewbie »

ryanklee wrote: post #69
VirusNewbie wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstood, I was criticizing the majority of people who study humanities in college, because they don’t have the requisite skills to make valid conclusions about what they are learning.

And you think that those individuals are representative of the value of the field of humanities? Sorry, but that's just a red herring. I mean, I'm suspicious of individuals who can't hack it in general, too, but not sure how that's relevant.

you are pointing out I did a poor job of distinguishing the material itself and the current pedagogy surrounding it.

I’m skeptical of the latter, not the former, if that helps clarify my position.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#72

Post by scarecrowbob »

notjoemama wrote: post #65
ryanklee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Tyson dismissed the intellectual value of philosophy in a podcast, which led to criticism from those within the discipline[1]. 2. He has been quoted saying, "What they teach in the humanities is not 'skepticism' or 'critical thinking.' It's mental masturbation disguised as critical thinking"[5]. 3. Tyson warned that philosophy "can really mess you up" and has implied that philosophy does not progress in the way sc…

Back to the concept rather than an individual, isn't part of the problem that STEM fields feed back into actionable ways, but perhaps philosophy doesn't? For example, if a new exo-planet were found to have a certain chemical make up that our current understanding didn't agree with, that would go back to theoretical physics and mathematics, where they might discover a way to better describe the discovery. That then be…

So, when your boss is asking you to design a better way of hiding the waste products from your industrial projects that you know could hurt folks-- that's a good place where having some ethical principles might help.

Without those principles, people are often left with "I am just doing my job" and "this is what any person would do, right"?

Whereas a lot of us won't do certain things because, say, if everybody did them they'd be self contradictory (Kant) or when we look at the overall utility of dumping toxic waste into a river we might it has some larger negative consequences for society (Mill).

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#74

Post by Kim_Bruning »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #70
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an entire field of deterministic mathematics called Chaos Theory, that pretty much encompasses what it says on the tin. It turns out that -innocent, simple looking- finite state deterministic automata can actually be less predictable than the non-deterministic kind. (and it can get pretty wild! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2vgICfQawE )

Sure - not everything that looks random is random. How about Stephan Wolfram's finite automata "Rule 30" for another example. But anyways, neurons don't even APPEAR to be acting randomly - they appear to obeying the laws of chemistry, and behaving in meticulously studied and well understood ways.

Definitely.

It's the behavior an emergence level or two up that can appear to be quite chaotic again.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#75

Post by FrustratedMonky »

lisper wrote: post #44
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #5

1879 These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. To at least be familiar with the science that has come before, either to know what was discarded, to be familiar with past dead ends, or forgotten knowledge that could still have value. A lot of the AI spurred arguments in the last year seem like so much re-hashing since they were being d…

> These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. Sure, but it is also important not to lend too much credence to these arguments, because they were devised from a position of ignorance. In particular, in 1879 we didn't have neurobiology, nor the theory of computation and complexity, and we barely had evolution. OoS had been published just…

I agree. You can't take something from 1800's as gospel, like that was the final word and we shall not progress.

Just saying, shouldn't ignore it either.

It is ok to study Plato or Leibniz, and realize it is historical background, and might spur new thoughts. We don't worship Plato as if that was the end of all thought. But lets not forget it, ignore it like it didn't happen, like all ideas today are new.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#76

Post by FrustratedMonky »

notjoemama wrote: post #65
ryanklee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Tyson dismissed the intellectual value of philosophy in a podcast, which led to criticism from those within the discipline[1]. 2. He has been quoted saying, "What they teach in the humanities is not 'skepticism' or 'critical thinking.' It's mental masturbation disguised as critical thinking"[5]. 3. Tyson warned that philosophy "can really mess you up" and has implied that philosophy does not progress in the way sc…

Back to the concept rather than an individual, isn't part of the problem that STEM fields feed back into actionable ways, but perhaps philosophy doesn't? For example, if a new exo-planet were found to have a certain chemical make up that our current understanding didn't agree with, that would go back to theoretical physics and mathematics, where they might discover a way to better describe the discovery. That then be…

I think this is the point. You are discrediting Philosophy, but that is where science and math came from. You don't go back and say "man Plato was such a waste, lets toss out western civilization".

The point is someone has to start somewhere, and frequently philosophy is the field that tackled open ended questions. Once the questions get 'solved', it gets spun off into another branch of science.

Philosophy is the startup of science, the leading edge. Once it become a 'common' ordinary science, it gets re-named, re-packaged as 'the accepted way'.

It is happening a lot right now, because so many STEM people building AI are suddenly arm-chair philosophers coming up with 'new' questions, that are really 'old'. So the whole field is re-discovering philosophy.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#77

Post by [deleted] »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #76
notjoemama wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back to the concept rather than an individual, isn't part of the problem that STEM fields feed back into actionable ways, but perhaps philosophy doesn't? For example, if a new exo-planet were found to have a certain chemical make up that our current understanding didn't agree with, that would go back to theoretical physics and mathematics, where they might discover a way to better describe the discovery. That then be…

I think this is the point. You are discrediting Philosophy, but that is where science and math came from. You don't go back and say "man Plato was such a waste, lets toss out western civilization". The point is someone has to start somewhere, and frequently philosophy is the field that tackled open ended questions. Once the questions get 'solved', it gets spun off into another branch of science. Philosophy is the sta…

[deleted]

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#78

Post by anon84873628 »

operatingthetan wrote: post #36
kouru225 wrote: post #32

When people say we’re nothing but computers, neurons firing, chemical reactions, etc they think they’re saying that humans aren’t special. But I take it to mean that the rest of the world is way more special than we’ve been giving it credit for.

Sometimes I entertain the idea that inanimate objects have consciousness too and it's pretty disturbing because it would mean we are doing pretty much everything wrong.

Well I wouldn't worry much about inanimate objects (especially looking at how we treat animals already).

But then consider higher order systems like a forest or human society itself. Can those have consciousness or at least some sense of experience?

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#79

Post by robotresearcher »

tempodox wrote: post #35
dnissley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years What does this refer to?

History, for instance, is not part of STEM.

Have you heard of Newton, Pascal, Maxwell, Leibniz, Pythagoras, Einstein, Aristotle, Curie, and Turing? Do you know what they did and a little about their lives?

They were likely all dead before you were born.

Do you know some things about the Manhattan Project, Bell Labs, Bletchley Park, the Apollo Project, the Gutenberg press, the invention of carbon steel?

That’s history.

Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)

#80

Post by anon84873628 »

mgaunard wrote: post #39
operatingthetan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I entertain the idea that inanimate objects have consciousness too and it's pretty disturbing because it would mean we are doing pretty much everything wrong.

Do we even have consciousness or merely the illusion of it?

Call it qualia, or "having experience", or "what our mind does" -- that is subjectively real. Perhaps especially so because of our ability to notice and reflect on the fact.

But that doesn't mean we actually have free will, or aren't automata. Most of the time we are lulled into the "illusion" that we do, to some extent.

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