Bowzer

Surely such intersubjective agreement is proof that what we said is true! Seriously though, it's always good to hear important points stated another way.

There is no room in Objectivism for the arbitrary. "Arbitrary" means "devoid of evidence" and this exactly describes the state of artificial intelligence and robotics today with respect to non-living conscious beings. As Dr. Peikoff identifies, arbitrary claims are "automatically invalidated." (OPAR, p.164) So even though I am familiar with computer models of cognition and robots that possess optical sensors and walk, I realize that they present no evidence whatsoever of non-living things being conscious. Neither do sci-fi movies or someone's imagination in case anyone is wondering... I am certainly not presenting a false dichotomy between proven knowledge and arbitrary speculation with nothing in between. There is a progression from possible to probable to certain (see OPAR pp. 171-81). But arbitrary claims fit nowhere in this progression, that is, they represent a statement that is altogether disconnected from the path of knowledge. Non-biological life, non-living conscious beings and the statement "there are furry creatures on Mars that speak French" are neither possible, probable nor certain. Pure speculation, i.e., giving cognitive credence to arbitrary claims, is exactly the opposite of what scientists do. You may be getting this notion from Kuhn (who got it from Popper). Such claims have no relationship to reality and you should imagine that this presents difficulties to the scientific method. Scientists begin with evidence and a universal law of gravitation gave evidence or grounds for astronomers to consider planets orbiting stars other than the sun. In other words, it was possible knowledge at that time (now it is certain). This is not analogous to your claims for non-biological life or for non-living conscious beings since there is no evidence whatsoever for either. In fact, as I have argued in this thread, all of the evidence that we have points to an inextricable link between life and consciousness.

Greetings! So I take it your nick is ironic since you like proper thoughts and definitions? Why the brain avatar? I'm asking because I'm a big fan of brains!

If you're trying to make a case for animal rights, you'll have to do better than that.

Perhaps reading Galt's words will help you to put this issue into perspective? The section that that quote comes from is on page 931 and it has been the subject of some debates here as of late.

Dr. Peikoff has given the fundamentals of the art of induction in his audio course, Induction in Philosophy and Physics. I have only been through the course once but perhaps someone familiar with this material can give a terse summary.

I have a similar story. A few years ago I was in a graduate program in philosophy of science. One of my classmates had little previous knowledge of philosophy but she did have a biology degree and a knack for abstract thought. When she was lucky enough to get an internship in a biology lab over the summer (and this is at one of world's leading medical institutions), the professor demanded that she withdraw herself from the internship. He flatly stated that if she didn't spend the summer reading philosophy books (and getting "caught up") that she could forget about getting a recommendation from him in the future (a veritable death sentence in the field of philosophy). This is the end that rationalism brings about: there is no use for induction (i.e., making observations and drawing conclusions from them), rather, one should gain knowledge from books and deduce from that. Observe Dr. Peikoff's revolutionary discoveries concerning the nature of induction and how he was able to gain this knowledge: by observing actual instances of people making inductions--the exact opposite of what a noted philosopher of science was demanding from my friend. It is no wonder that modern philosophers have had nothing to offer us on the nature of induction since they have all been just like my old professor. It took a giant of reason to grasp what scientists have been taking for granted and what philosophers have been destroying through the ages.

Since all of these things hold true of my laptop computer, I suppose that I have just inherited a new pet.

You've completely missed my point and I see now that I should ammend my statement to read "You won't find that scenario convincing unless you understand the Objectivist theory of concepts. A concept's meaning is in the units that it subsumes..." In including hunks of metal powered by batteries under the concept of "life," you are making the same error identified by Dr. Peikoff in his "encirclement" example in OPAR (p. 100).

What the heck is "non-biological life?" My argument is not that machines will never be conscious because of how I define "machine." I have stressed time and time again that all of the evidence that we have at hand points to the fact that we only find consciousness where we find life. You can speculate about arbitrary future possibilities all that you want, just admit that it's arbitrary. I, on the other hand, will continue to form my generalizations based on evidence and until we have evidence of non-living things being conscious, I will form no such generalizations.

Reasoning through probabilities is the predominant view of induction in universities these days. It is also known as Bayesian reasoning after an eighteenth-century clergyman named Thomas Bayes. Bayes proposed a statistical theorem that fits modern rationalists' gloves as well as the infamous black glove of death fit O.J.'s hand. And philosophers use this theorem not to kill ex-lovers but to kill inductive reasoning, indeed reasoning as such. Plain and simple fact is, Bayes' theorem has nothing to do with reason and nimble's out-of-this-world ramblings on what he thinks induction is just summarize this view at best. Reasoning through probabilities is the predominant view in the universities but so what!? It's thoroughly false and quite ridiculous. Objectivists do have a different source than you, nimble, it's called reality.

That's a good idea since you seem to harbor Kuhnian/Kantian premises in your thinking by suggesting that scientists' conclusions are "colored by their preconceptions about what they expect to see and how they think the world works." If you really want to know how scientists gain knowledge, then I highly recommend Bo Dragsdahl, David Harriman, and especially Dr. Peikoff's courses on science.

This is the quote that I was really looking for:

Godless_Capitalist, you should read this thread and see if it helps your questions. You may be making the same errors that others in that thread made.

And how many arguments did you examine to arrive at this conclusion? (This is a rhetorical question.)

Yes, Kuhn's philosophy is thoroughly Kantian.

I suppose Kant makes sense in the right light as well.

In the universities where he should be.

I must apologize for my hasty attribution. That line came from Ayn Rand and is quoted in "Fact and Value."

Exactly who are you attributing this claim to?

Every action that a living being takes impinges on its life either positively or negatively--there is no neutral ground upon which life can stand, or as Dr. Peikoff aptly put it, "every is implies an ought." See Dr. Peikoff's monumental essay, "Fact and Value". By the way, it would be a good exercise in philosophical integration if you keep in mind the fundamental alternative of life or death while reading that essay because it is there behind every point that he is making.

Per the section I cited above from OPAR, Miss Rand used the example of the idestructible robot to illustrate the point that the concept 'value' has at its root the concept 'life.' An indestructible being could not have values since any action such a being were to take would have no impact on its existence or non-existence; indeeed, there is no alternative between existence and non-existence for something that is indestructible--in other words, it isn't alive. I found Miss Rand's example of the indestructible robot to be quite illustrative of the fundamental alternative that living creatures face (i.e., existence or non-existence). I do, however, have a problem with how this example has been warped and put to "use" in this thread. There is no such thing as immortality and if you understood the nature of life you would understand that were anything actually immortal, it would not be alive (and values would not exist for it).

Yes it did. Thanks everyone, this is a fascinating topic.

The blame is on the regime that left no choice but war. I haven't finished Dr. Brook's talk but that is made clear in all of the essays I recommended above.

Look, dictatorships are a tragic state of affairs. They leave no alternatives for rational individuals and nations other than force. This is all the more reason to wipe them out of existence.