Discussion article for the meetup : Portland Oregon WHEN: 22 September 2012 12:00:00PM (-0700) WHERE: Lucky Labrador Tap Room 1700 North Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR LessWrong Portland Discussion article for the meetup : Portland Oregon
The link to Bruce Schneier's original post. > This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether or not corporations have the same rights to "personal privacy" that individuals do. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a amicus curiae brief in the case. The brief makes...
A recent post by Bruce Schneier on control fraud. Control fraud is a process of optimizing an organization for fraud, utilizing a position of power to suborn controls. From the abstract of the paper Bruce references: > Individual “control frauds” cause greater losses than all other forms of property crime...
This one line response seems generally repetitive to your others. It isn't obvious to me that you are making an effort to address my challenge to your claim that 'experience itself is certain to exist'. If you would like to address that please do, otherwise it seems that we are done.
I believe that the answer depends on the perspective I adopt. This is the answer that makes sense from my current perspective.
If I model what I understand of your perspective within myself I would say that of course all my learning proceeds from some form of sensory experience, other claims are nonsensical.
With another model: The brain structures related to learning depend on more than just sensory experience, they also depend on the action of our DNA, gene networks, the limits of energy availability along with many other factors.
But why does the answer have to sensical from your perspective?
With another model: There is a process called MUP which is imparts knowledge in any... (read more)
I also believe that there are many things that we would agree on; my arguments are just an indication that I currently find certain aspects of this topic interesting to argue about--mind expanding. :)
I want to make the case, though, that experience itself is neither "certain to exist", nor "uncertain to exist". I think that "experience itself" is fundamental to Dasein, and that therefore cannot be subject to either certainty nor uncertainty.
I am happy to hold my arguments against certainty for shiftedShapes--however I will now make similar arguments against your claim that '"experience itself" is fundamental to dasein'.
The identification of a fundamental nature of Dasein requires a perspective and so is contingent... (read more)
Without full access to all possible perspectives of my implementation, how would I know for certain?
I can certainly adopt a perspective that describes how all learning proceeds through my sensory experience. But the identification of this pattern from my adopted limited perspective does not actually exclude other possible perspectives.
I'm not arguing that your model of sensory experience is wrong; I actually believe it has great descriptive value. I'm arguing that it is limited by and dependent on the context from which it appears to emerge.
I am arguing against your claims of certainty, in their various forms.
The map is not the territory. The 'self-evident' nature that you identify is a map; it is an artifact of a process. That process, even though it is you in some sense, has only a perspective limited access to what it is to be you.
Within the walls identified by this process you feel justifiably confident in the existence of your experience, in its 'self-evident' nature. But yet there is no escape from the territory, which includes the as yet unexamined foundational substrates of your perspective.
Only one perspective is possible: one's own perspective.
But even one's own perspective is a dynamic, living and changing perspective; and quite probably it is non-unitary in some ways. We are not locked into the mind we are born with, and the experience that you identify is only a limited and conditional aspect of what goes into the making and modification of the experience of 'what you think you are'.
Thanks for your excellent response to this Argency. I am using one philosophical perspective to challenge another--which can be a bit tricky--so I hope that you will put up with any misinterpretation on my part.
This sounds to me like Kripkenstein's Error. You might just as well despair that you also need a method to verify and confirm each of those methods, and a method-confirmation confirmation method... etc, etc. ... Surely this infinite regress constitutes a reductio ad absurdum.
I'm challenging the claim that 'experience itself is certain to exist' by pointing out that than an identification of existence requires a basis of identification, which at some level of evaluation comes with inherent uncertainty. I'm making... (read 475 more words →)
Nothing can be learned or tested except through sensory experience.
This claim also requires a perspective from which it is identified. The implementation of this perspective is a source of uncertainty if left unexamined.
Thus outside verification is impossible.
There is no need to talk about outside verification. All verification is done from a perspective--it does not limit my argument to assume a 'sensory experience' interface for that perspective.
I don't see how your response supports your claim that 'experience itself is certain to exist', which is the claim that I am challenging. Would you try to clarify this for me?
If a means of transmission is only reliable to a certain limited extent then the media transmitted could approach the limits of that channel's reliability, but never surpass it.
Actually, error free communication can be established over any channel as long as there is some level of signal (plus some other minor requirements).
But perhaps I'm misunderstanding the point you are making?
but the experience itself is certain to exist.
From what perspective is it certain to exist? When you identify 'the experience', this identification is an explanation from a particular perspective. By your argument it is subject to uncertainty.
I only see the certainty you refer to when I adopt a perspective that assumes there is no uncertainty in its own basis. For example if you establish as an axiom that 'primary sensory experience can be confirmed to exist by the experience itself'.
Otherwise I need a method to identify 'primary sensory experience', a method to identify 'the experience' related to it, and a method to verify that the former can be confirmed to exist by the latter. These methods have their own basis of implementation; which introduce uncertainty if left unexamined.
The link to Bruce Schneier's original post.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether or not corporations have the same rights to "personal privacy" that individuals do.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a amicus curiae brief in the case.
The brief makes legal and philosophical arguments for privacy as an important human right, and that it is not a corporate right, and does not need to be. It also contains a number of scholarly references on the topic.
I find the legal arguments against a corporate right to privacy convincing. Corporations in our current legal context are intentionally organized to provide certain types of public accountability.
However, I am not convinced by the... (read 338 more words →)
A recent post by Bruce Schneier on control fraud.
Individual “control frauds” cause greater losses than all other forms of property crime combined. They are financial super-predators. Control frauds are crimes led by the head of state or CEO that use the nation or company as a fraud vehicle. Waves of “control fraud” can cause economic collapses, damage and discredit key institutions vital to good political governance, and erode trust. The defining element of fraud is deceit – the criminal creates and then betrays trust. Fraud, therefore, is the strongest
If you have a point then lay it out. Set a context, make your claims and challenge mine. Expose your beliefs and accept the risks.
I lay out my claims to you because I want you to challenge them from your perspective. I will not follow your leading questions to your chosen point of philosophical ambush.