What are some good books about the limits of the scientific knowledge?
pic related
>look! some functions are recursive!
>the universe, that is to say EVERYTHING, must too be recursive!
>therefore it IS recursive!
computational complexity is literally one of those overrated meme fields, along with artificial intelligence.
Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Nietzsche's On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, Lichtenberg's Waste Books.
>>7595553
Anything by Feyerabend.
Kuhn's scientific revolutions, also his copernicus book.
>>7595562
>AI
>meme field
>hurr I can't conceptualise it so it won't happen
Enjoy getting sucker punched with job redundancy.
>>7595706
>implying I haven't worked through multiple AI and computational complexity textbooks
it's literally a meme field, my friend. it's all about fashionable trends and metaphors of the current age. not long ago it was all about the mechanical, now it is all about the electrical and computational. so the retards naturally tend to apply it to everything: oh look some functions appear to be recursive and computational, therefore your mind, among many other things, is computational and recursive!!!!!!! just wait till we reverse-engineer the brain and "upload" our consciousnesses onto supacomputahs and live 4ever xDDDD
>>7595566
I also rec the Hume and Nietzsche, check out Goodman's Fact, Fiction, and Forecast
>>7595715
This guy gets it.
Neural Networks are topmemes reddiy upboate :pointynose)
>>7595715
Stop using "meme" to describe everything. I'm just so tired of everyone saying meme this and meme that. It's a linguistic cane and you can be better than that. Even though your point may be valid.
>>7595715
I think you confused the singularity with general artificial intelligence. The former is just kurzweil making leaps in logic to convince himself he'll be able to see his dad again, and the latter is an absolutely inevitable phenomenon which it's possible, and perhaps likely that we'll see in our lifetime. And humans don't trancend in this scenario, they become redundant.
btw you clearly don't understand what "recursive and computational" mean, and even if you did, the argument in which you use them doesn't make any sense. The biggest problems in ai have nothing to do with what you're talking about.
>>7595919
>jerking this moron off
>>7595920
>valid
>>7595553
Critique of Pure Reason
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Critique of the Power of Judgment
>>7595957
>>7595957
>absolutely inevitable phenomenon
oh ABSOLUTELY inevitable? ooooooooh, you mean that this event that this nebulous, vague, and unarticulated notion that some irrelevant, narrowly-practising subset of applied compsci hacks have termed "singularity" is going to happen with the probability of 1? why am i even responding to such retards like you is beyond me.
btw i'm nearly certain that i know more about recursion theory and computational complexity than you and /sci/, combined, ever will. you're just some irrelevant dimwit that happens to be salivating over shiny gadget-shit without any evident grounding in theory.
singularity was a pipe-dream all along. there's nothing there.
>>7595957
One has to make the assumption that there is nothing special about biological matter that allows it to generate/receive consciousness. And that is a pretty big leap, considering there is 0 evidence for that.
Can someone explain to me how science is different than religion when it comes to existential question and cosmology and eschatology? Don't both, in these regards, require an equal amount of faith, or hope, or just plain guessing?
>>7596079
Goddamn that's some next level autism. Do you even into reading comprehension? In the very post you are quoting the guy made a distinction between Artificial Intelligence and the so called Singularity.
>>7596092
>There is a supernatural explanation for consciousness
Oh dear.
>>7596092
>Don't both, in these regards, require an equal amount of faith, or hope, or just plain guessing?
one doesn't have to be a theoretician to know that it is a mere improbable hypothesis. the hypothesis itself however is not based on faith, it's just a hypothesis like any other--no matter how ridiculous; but the surrounding buzz and fanaticism around it surely is faith-based, for it has now reached the status of an ideology. thank you pop-science!
it's just another fashionable nonsense that will pass with time.
>>7596108
>meme arrows
>no argument
I never said that. I said there is no proof that non biological matter can create/receive consciousness. We know jack shit about consciousness in western science.
And yes, I would argue that DMT tripping shamans and yogis and taoists have a much firmer grasp on what consciousness is. But I also believe that we can physically see why. It's like this new 'mindfulness' shit I keep hearing about now like its new. For fuck's sake, that's been around in documented text for what...2000 years?
>>7596116
>We know jack shit about consciousness in western science.
No, we know jack shit about neuroscience. But we're getting there.
>>7595715
>>7595919
>>7596079
>>7596114
>>7596118
I am fairly certain that neuroscience will only ever get the 'what' of consciousness. It will never get the 'why'. Which could be pretty important in creating a conscious being.
kuhn bachelard castoriadis foucaultburttfeyerabend
>>7595957
love bostrom, AI is literally evil and will destroy humanity t bh
bostrom has a lot of good philosophy stuff on transhumanism in general
>>7596126
>look, if i post a pic indicating shitposting i might actually convince someone that it IS shitposting!!!
>>7596118
the fact that we're getting somewhere in neuroscience doesn't in and of itself entail any fantasy that your scifi-and-pop-science-rotten mind might come up with. there's also still no consensus about how to define 'physical', so don't pretend like neuroscience alone will have the final say in this.
>>7596158
You are literally the dumbest person in this thread strictly because you can't even see just how dumb you are.
>>7596130
I don't know what you mean by the 'what' and 'why' of consciousness. As far as I'm concerned, there is only the 'how'.
Unless you're talking about some kind of religious purpose, but that's obviously not in the realm of neuroscience.
>>7596162
i am actually running circles around everyone ITT. but in case i am mistaken, feel free to attach a proper evaluation of my 'dumbness'.
do you actually have anything worthwhile to contribute to this disaster of a thread? it's seems that you are agitated and struggle to articulate your disagreement
>>7596144
A powerful spiritual being, called "Ahriman" (or "Satan"), will incarnate in a human body. The terms "soul" and "spirit" have clear meanings. Earthly/cosmic evolution is an outcome of the deeds of the Gods. The central event of earth-evolution was the Incarnation of Christ. Spiritual powers of opposition are active: Lucifer, Ahriman, Sorat. Ahriman is the inspirer of materialistic science and commercialism, and permeates modern culture with deadening forces.
Ordinary scientific thinking is only semi-conscious; we can, however, make thinking conscious. The spirits of opposition are necessary in the Gods' evolutionary design. Ahriman manifests especially at 666-year intervals; the contemporary is 1998 AD = 3x666. Goethean science is a life-positive alternative to Ahrimanic science. Ahriman-in-the-flesh will likely present himself as the Christ. The Christ does not reappear in a physical body, but in a super-physical, ethereal form. Ahriman may incarnate "macrocosmically" in our computers.
science is gay; get money, read books
>>7596158
>there's also still no consensus about how to define 'physical'
wut
>>7596182
(You)
>>7596193
wut wut. go ahead -- define it.
>>7596202
not that scienscy douchenerd but uhh anything with mass and/or that responds to gravity gravity
>>7596213
>reductivists
>assuming that your empirical paradigms and conceptual frameworks inhere in the universe itself
consciousness comes from language, language comes from memory and pattern matching, and instinct for social organization...so the first three parts of that are fairly obvious or understood and could be coded up on some electric computer...but what does it mean to be social? what drives species to be social? without this social drive language has no point
>>7596217
>guy defined physical but it doesn't match my preconceived fantasies about reality
>i will disregard it whimsicality
nice religiosity shitlord
>>7596232
>i'm a scientist, that means i don't make truth claims about reality, i only describe it!!! i don't have a metaphysics or ontology and wouldn't presume to!! btw my descriptions are also explanations, everything fundamentally IS my limited explanation of its behavior from my fundamentally biased human perspective
>>7596241
so if ur a mystic go take some drugs and stare at a wall, why the fuck are you here? fuck off loser
>>7596213
this is a naive definition
all of that (except the subatomic theoretical stuff) is perceived with the help of sense-data. how do you distinguish sense-data from physical stuff? what's your theory? can you show it to us?
>>7596202
I seriously doubt that this:
>there's no consensus about how to define 'physical'
is an impediment to neuroscience, or any science for that matter.
It's an esoteric question which doesn't have any tangible impact, if it even is a serious question at all. Given what we can observe, it looks to me like a semantic question.
>>7596254
>how do you distinguish sense-data from physical stuff?
bro it' not 1700 anymore, no one gives a shit about this kind of navel gazing shit that is stupider than post-structuralist deconstruction, philosophy is only a few steps away from astrology
>>7596225
>consciousness comes from language
>feral children aren't conscious
>>7596246
>can you help me hook this flux capacitor into that zero point module? i need to have this interstellar superweapon finished by noon, or the chief technocrat will nerve staple the next iteration of my cloned selves (who are all trivially "me" because they are functionally identical). i hear the war against the sentient reactive alien lifeforms (who don't count as people because they don't meet my arbitrary empirically observed list of "traits that things i suspect a priori to be people often have in common") is going well, but we always need more superweapons. no it's not genocide because technically it's not their entire race and empirically and logically genocide means killing a race, how did you even get your CHIEF SCIENCE MAN degree if oyu aren't familair with this fundamnetal epistemology i mean oops epistemology doesn't exist i don't have an epistemology i'm a scientist i only observe things knowledge is as knowledge does oh shit here comes the chief technocrat look busy or he'll downgrade our utilitarian orgyporgy ration which is all that matters in life because happiness is empirically definable and measurable
>>7596262
feral children develop their own language systems
at least do the basic reading if you're going to participate in the discussion ok
>>7596263
tl;dr
>>7596259
>muh pragmatism and instrumentalism blah fucking blah.
no one "gives a shit about this kind of navel gazing shit" because no one has actually provided a legitimate definition to the satisfaction of everyone.
>>7596258
it isn't an impediment to neuroscience. it is an impediment to those who think mental phenomena can be reduced to physics alone. neuroscience is good for measuring the dimensions of neurons, axons, etc. but not much for anything else.
>>7596241
These mere descriptions are pretty useful.
>>7596274
>no one "gives a shit about this kind of navel gazing shit" because no one has actually provided a legitimate definition to the satisfaction of everyone.
hey bro i'm sorry you decided to your educational years studying philosophy which is to say reading badly written books by autistic males, at least if you had majored in english you could have read some cool stories before working at starbucks
>>7596264
>feral children develop their own language systems
If this is true, I'd guess it would be because we're hardwired to learn language, as it's been a very useful tool evolutionarily.
But saying that language actually causes consciousness is very contentious, and I don't see how you could defend that statement.
>>7596180
As in 'what does it look like in the brain' and 'why do we have consciousness'.
>>7596306
i'm not in the "statement defending business", i'm in the software development business. have a nice day.
>>7596274
>neuroscience is good for measuring the dimensions of neurons, axons, etc. but not much for anything else.
It's good for understanding what consciousness is. It's the only field with the potential to do that.
>it isn't an impediment to neuroscience. it is an impediment to those who think mental phenomena can be reduced to physics alone.
But neuroscientists assume that mental phenoma can be reduced to physics alone, as you say. So is it an impediment to them or not?
>>7596323
The latter can be determined by studying the former.
But I think "how does consciousness arise from neurons" would be a better way of expressing the question.
>>7596328
>But neuroscientists assume that mental phenoma can be reduced to physics alone, as you say. So is it an impediment to them or not?
assumptions =/= truths. time will tell. but at the moment there is no consensus about what consciousness really is. there are many theories. i personally can't conceive how labelling and measuring the soggy matter of the brain can shed light on consciousness and mental phenomena that can only be experienced by the subject.
neuroscience alone won't cut it. there's a lot of interdisciplinary work going on, however
>>7596333
You are assuming it arises from neurons. There is 0 evidence of that.
>>7596343
Well for one thing, when you send electricity through the brain, consciousness functions differently. And when you stimulate certain areas of the brain, consciousness is affected in different ways. So I'd say that's a pretty good indicator that consciousness arises from matter.
![41ZHdJ4PpmL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/1bT70K1.jpg "41ZHdJ4PpmL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_[1].jpg")
>>7595553
>>7596384
The best we can do is observe a correlation between neural matter and the mind, there's no necessary connection there. I'm with the mysterians on this one. There are problems (solvable) and mysteries (we don't even know where to begin). Consciousness belongs to the latter. As Husserl said, consciousness is not a phenomenon. It is the fact that there are phenomena.
We don't even know where to start looking.
>>7596509
>Brain stimulation resulting in a change of state of consciousness isn't necessarily a connection
I'm being rused, aren't I?
>>7595902
phenomenal book.
>>7596182
>i am actually running circles around everyone ITT
>mfw you actually believe this
>>7596343
You're right, it doesn't arise from neurons - it arises from the interaction of neurons.
>>7596338
>assumptions =/= truths
It's really far more than assumptions at this point.
>neuroscience alone won't cut it. there's a lot of interdisciplinary work going on, however
I'm not sure what discipline it would fall into other than neuroscience.
>i personally can't conceive how labelling and measuring the soggy matter of the brain can shed light on consciousness and mental phenomena that can only be experienced by the subject.
It already has, pic related.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_stimulation_mapping
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/207/Electrical-Stimulation-Brain-ESB.html
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329762-700-consciousness-on-off-switch-discovered-deep-in-brain
>>7596867
>It's really far more than assumptions at this point.
no, it really isn't more than assumptions at this point. do you want me to go over how axiomatic truth predicate is defined?
>It already has, pic related.
your pic shows nothing about the area(s) of consciousness. please pinpoint to the exact location of consciousness.
>>7596867
bostrom has a good critique of cortical mapping as insufficient in superintelligence
STEM nerds btfo
>>7596867
my god has /lit/ seriously become this reddit-tier? Overrun by STEM undergrads who have never even touched philosophy of mind.
>>7596158
>no consensus about how to define 'physical',
Of course there is! See Newton-John et al. (1981), a good summary is in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWz9VN40nCA
>>7595553
>Quantum Psychology
>>7596901
Are apes conscious? Are mammals conscious? Are reptiles conscious? Are fish conscious? If you go down the ladder of biological complexity, at what point do you draw the line of what is conscious and what isn't, before you reach a single celled organism?
Consciousness is clearly more nebulous than you admit.
Wittgenstein's Tractatus [yes, I know it deals with language, but it addresses limits of understanding] and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.
>>7596158
>implying he's wrong
