MisterSwig

A great mind once said: "Things having possible attributes or properties can always be mentally inverted with a background of attribute or property having a propensity to manifest as a thing."

Is there an AI with conceptual consciousness? I'm not aware of one.

I'll begin with some specific items: 1. I am puzzled by the use of "infinite" to describe the threads. Do you mean they are "without a limit" or "impossible to count"? If they have a limit, perhaps using "innumerable" in the beginning would help. I notice you used that adjective in the end. 2. Why do gravity threads emerge from points in space? What causes them to emerge and how? You say Earth creates them, but how? 3. How does an object attach to a gravity thread? What does "attach" mean here? 4. When an object shifts from one thread to another, what is its thread status while in transition? Is it attached to a thread even while shifting from one to the other? 5. You say that "absent other influence" an object is attached to its "perfect gravity thread." But isn't an object always influenced by Earth's atmosphere, unless you place it in a vacuum? So, under normal circumstances, would the object ever be attached to its perfect gravity thread? More generally, when I think of gravity, I think of Isaac Newton. What do you think he got wrong, if anything?

Absolutely, any suggestion or criticism is appreciated. Even if someone thinks the theory is ridiculous, I'd like to know why. I have plans for additional essays, but will prioritize responding to reader's points or objections. Thanks.

In response to comments, I've posted a critique of David Hume. I talk about his method and theory on free will, compared to my own. I also provide the introspective evidence for my theory, as well as how it works with the law of causality. https://freewilltheory.blogspot.com/?m=1

Basically we're asking which language has the most words. Oxford Dictionaries thinks it's English. The quality and usefulness of those words is a different question, though. There's a lot of junk in the English language. Of course, a language must serve the needs and abilities of the particular people who speak it. Even their environment might affect the language they develop. But, essentially, a language must communicate the things that exist in reality. So the more of reality observed and identified, including one's own mental phenomena, the better one's language must be. I therefore don't think that it's a coincidence that English, Hindi, Spanish, French and Chinese are some of the top spoken languages, given the history of exploration, conquest, migration, and spiritual investigation of their native speakers. Users of these languages, or the languages from which they sprang, have been some of the great explorers and thinkers of mankind. So, in considering the best language, they should be at the top of the list. I'm naturally biased toward English, but I think it should score bonus points for being the first language spoken on the moon, and for being the language in which Objectivism was first articulated.

Has Veatch stumbled upon the Stolen Concept Fallacy and applied it to every single concept of the relating-logician via his Inverted Intentionality Fallacy? Every concept would be stolen (inverted) because every concept has its roots in existence, yet the relating-logician denies knowledge of existence. If so, this is brilliant. Rand and the professors touch on this in ITOE on page 250, where they argue that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Descartes don't really have a concept of existence.

The idea "viable life" is confusing, unless by "life" you simply mean fetus. Viable means capable of living outside the mother, not actually living inside her. So, are you saying that the fetus is a life that is capable of living outside the mother? If so, wouldn't that suggest two different life forms, fetal life and infant life? In the Lexicon entry, the first quote contained Rand's definition of life: "a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action." This comes from Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged and was used again by Rand in her article The Objectivist Ethics. Do you also claim that a fetus sustains its own action? Now, you claim that the fetus generates its own growth. However, if it were not anatomically attached to the mother, but freely afloat inside her womb, it certainly would stop growing. This fact must mean that its growth is generated by the mother. Otherwise, why would it stop developing? Indeed, in rare cases, something like this happens with complete placental abruptions, where the baby stops growing and is stillborn. The viability argument doesn't interest me anymore. It just gets more and more absurd. I suppose if a fertilized egg could be removed from the mother and developed with "advanced science" in a lab, then would conception become the new birth?

You assume that an abortion destroys life. It would help to know what, in your view, differentiates life from non-life. This has been a matter of some debate on the thread.

The problem is that, in this case, it's the liberals who are defending an individual right, even if they're doing it poorly. So when you attack the small percentage of women whom you consider immoral, and accuse the Dems of bad motives, you give strength to the opponents of abortion rights. The religious conservatives are far worse on this issue, and much more deserving of condemnation.

Thanks. If I write a longer treatise for a general audience, I would definitely need to do that. But I wrote this introduction for Objectivists and people who already share a non-deterministic view of free will, so I did not bother addressing determinism just yet. I also left out a bunch about concept-formation, since Rand wrote a whole book on that already. After listening to others, I apparently also need to address Pavlov's theory. I suppose I could define free will at the start. But I worry about distracting the reader's attention from the process, which does not begin with free will already established. I tried to incorporate induction into my style. In general, I want the reader to use his own concepts and definitions, and be convinced that my theory fits with his own general knowledge. However, I could not resist giving a hint in the title, where I call free will a learned skill.

I created a blog to introduce my theory on free will: https://freewilltheory.blogspot.com/2019/04/free-will-is-learned-skill.html?m=1 My goal is to identify the necessary steps in the development of free will, starting from birth. I briefly discuss reflexes, feelings, and purpose, and how they relate to gaining control over one's body and mind. I appreciate any comments or criticism, placed here or on the blog.

Can you give a couple points that make this a good book? I'm very interested in this topic. Thanks.

I took a look at his introductory paper. The equations are well beyond me, so I have nothing to offer in that regard. However, you say he argues "that the universe can be reduced to only spacetime." If you're speaking loosely, then I get what you're saying. But, literally, I don't think that's the case. Isn't he starting with a huge assumption of "a sea of dipole waves" that make up spacetime, and then showing how these waves produce everything we see in the universe? This isn't reduction. It's imagination, from the bottom up. I'm not saying his theory must be wrong. Just that he's not engaged in reduction. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding. On the dipole waves, themselves: are these waves "caused by transitions in a dipole"? If so, what causes the transitions? I had to look up this concept, so forgive me if I'm asking stupid questions. If a dipole is "a pair of equal and oppositely charged or magnetized poles separated by a distance," then how are they charged or magnetized? It seems like the motion of the dipole wave depends on a force that initially charges or magnetizes its poles. Isn't that impossible, if all that exists are the waves? Is it safe to assume that this electromagnetic property is intrinsic to and uncaused in the wave? Also, this "sea of dipole waves" idea has me wondering how waves can uniformly fill space, so that we have no areas with nothing. And this is a problem I have with any theory that posits "something" as the base of reality. How do you distinguish one dipole wave from another, if there is no space between them or within them? This question is not answered in the paper. In fact, he says that dipole waves cannot be detected.

Can you clarify or reiterate what is meant by "get logic"? I'm wondering if you mean that man starts out without logic and then at some point acquires it. If so, what then is meant by "logic"? For, as Peikoff has argued, without logic man would be stuck at the perceptual level. "[K]nowledge cannot be acquired by experience apart from logic, nor by logic apart from experience. Without the use of logic, man has no method of drawing conclusions from his perceptual data[.]" (The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy) Logic is man's method, or form, of cognition. We use it to form our first concepts. It is only later that we identify it as such, recognize its basic law, and develop it into a system of rules.

You're welcome. Here's a bonus contribution. You say: Rand foresaw your attack and responded in ITOE. But you already know that, right? I hope your paper addresses her actual theory on how we derive conjunctions like "and."

Is that because Rand was also a huge fan of Kant?

I actually bumped it to 2% from 1.3%, because California doesn't report abortion statistics to the CDC, and I'm guessing it has slightly more late-term abortions than the national average. I doubt the overall percentage will get much higher though, because of increased availability and effectiveness of contraception and early-stage abortion pills, the fact that most women actually want their babies or can be convinced to give them up for adoption, and increasing medical options for saving problematic pregnancies, among other factors. To recognize someone's freedom of action. It has nothing to do with emergency situations.

You are talking about a tiny percentage of women. Less than 2% of abortions take place after 21 weeks. Is it your contention that most of these women have abortions as a means of "last minute contraception"? That's simply wrong, literally and figuratively. Most states regulate late-term abortions for the mother's mental or physical health. It's not that simple to get one. Sometimes there needs to be several doctors signing off on it.

I'm talking about induction as a method of cognition, not proof. Even the axioms must be inferred from the facts of reality. You aren't born with such knowledge. You are always within the context of your own knowledge. Like I said, don't be too concerned with the arbitrary. Cats that aren't cats don't exist.

All rules of logic are some sort of reiteration or application of the law of identity. I hope you'll (re-)read the Lexicon entry for "logic," to which I linked. You stated: "Objectivism holds that all knowledge originates from perception..." But that is not the complete Objectivist position. We do not perceive the laws of logic. They come from "a process of reason based on perceptual observation." Modus ponens comes from a process of reason based on the law of identity. So let us ask, which observations convinced us that the law of identity was valid? My simple answer is: all of them. Never have I observed something be itself and not itself. If you expect to know from observation whether identity is valid throughout the universe, then you absolutely will never know, because you, I assume, are not an all-seeing god. However, if you take up a process of reasoning based on real observations, you might reach a valid induction. But keep in mind that your knowledge is still contextual. If you ever encounter a violation of identity, you'll have to modify your knowledge. Until then, though, it will serve you poorly to take the arbitrary too seriously.

The same way we know all rules of logic: by applying the law of identity. If the identity of p includes q, and we have p, then we must also have q. Otherwise, we've made a mistake in identification.

Identity is not a static thing. Things change, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. In due course, life ends from one moment to the next, and it begins from one moment to the next. Is a fresh corpse still a human being, because "identity does not suddenly come into being"? Besides, it can take hours to give birth. Your "infinitesimal time period" argument makes no sense. You're straw-manning, because you don't want to deal with the actual process of birth. You just want to point and blurt out, "Ridiculous!"

I previously answered this question on this thread or the other one, but I'll do it again, since it's important. There is nothing "magical" about the change that occurs during birth. Before birth the fetus is not engaged in a process of self-generated, self-sustaining action. It is contained within the womb of its mother. It is immersed in her amniotic fluid. It is nourished by her blood via an umbilical connection to the placenta. It even relies on the mother to remove its waste (nutrient-depleted blood). At this pre-birth stage the fetus is not a life form. It is systematically, anatomically, physically dependent upon its mother. This should be obvious when you consider the fact that if the mother dies, the fetus will also die, unless it is promptly removed from the dead mother's womb. The pre-birth fetus has not engaged basic, primary systems that are necessary for its potential life form. It has not breathed air, to supply itself with oxygen, and it has not eaten food, to supply itself with nutrients. But that all changes the moment it is born, the moment it becomes a living entity that we call a human being. Now, I suspect that you know all that. You know what life is to the Objectivist. You know that a pre-birth fetus does not qualify as a life form. I think this is why you disregard that information, so you can continue believing that life and rights are all about a hypothetical mental aspect of the fetus. And when I try to address your unsupported assertion with evidence against it, you ignore that too. Do you look at scientific research anymore? It seems like you have little left but distractions and the ability to project your own psychology on to others. I am not the one descending into rationalism and shamanism.

Did you forget to make an actual argument?