cladking

I believe you are overthinking this. We are what we percieve. We are a collection of all of our perceptions. That our perceptions are such a miniscule part of everything that is percievable isn't really relevant. That we are incapable of even percieving more than a tiny partr of that which is percievable is also irrelevant. Human life is largely to increase our ability to percieve ever more. This just happens to be playing right now; "With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world. We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky, and lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye." -Leonard Cohen 1967 Well said. I'm a little inclined to change #2 to 2) The things we know, we don't know ANYthing about. Still well said. Pragmatism needs a lot more weight in philosophy if we're ever to catch up with applying known science to human life.

Some names have meaning on many levels. I'm still learning the levels. No. Probably not. I only computed it to get a feel for a new computer language and the standard was merely "readable". I figure the actual book will almost always have one misprint or error anyway. I think I figured base 30 and you might not even need a z or a q. The point is simply that there isn't room in the universe even for so many atoms much less monkeys and typewriters. I wouln't want to discard a perfect copy just because the Monkey came up with "War and Piece". I believe there was a "natural" human language that has been replaced by modern language. I believe this natural language reflects brain operation which will be similar in most individuals. I believe babies are born with some ability to communicate in this natural language. But even if I'm wrong about these things there should be some thought occuring in all babies. Our inability to comprehend this thought is irrelevant. Babies are not a blank slate except as it relates to learning Chinese, French, or English.

Anyone who will put up with me as a friend is not only a true friend but a saint. A true friend is someone who'll stick with you when you're right and won't make you feel bad when you're wrong. A true friend is usually there when you need them.

It looks like the common ground I thought might exist is quicksand. Some people simply do not share enough definitions, axioms, and perspective to communicate effectively. Normally such differences can be agreed upon with effort but trying to explain every post to every person on a message board is not a good use of time. People are born with a brain and so far as I know it was fully functional for weeks before birth. You say images are upside down but what does a baby know about such things? A baby must think in its own terms and with its own knowledge. But this brain must already have basic programming and some basic way to gain knowledge even before birth. There is probably some internal logic to this programming since nature is logical. If it hurts to touch something then don't touch it. I see no reason to believe that an individual can't attend to this internal logic or a possible expression of that logic (natural language) virtually from birth. That none of us here other than perhaps the OP remembers such a thing doesn't make it impossible any more than his remembering means we should believe it. In my experience some people are strongly predisposed to being philosophical and show this while young. 4.2 x 10 ^ 807,000. Well that's how many you need for "War and Peace". The Koran exists in English and no tool can exceed its nature.

I don't respond to lots of posts because there is no common ground to reach some sort of agreement or even communication. Language meaning is determined by the listener rather than the author so when there is no common ground there is no communication. People can only hear what they want to hear and what they expect so responding under those circumstances will rarely result in communication. One must determine peoples' premises and definitions when there is no common ground and this is not only tedious but usually one-sided so there will still be limited communication. Your other points deserve to be addressed and I intend to address them later. I believe all animals are born with a natural language. Babies have very poor command of this language and it is no longer reinforced and taught by adults. This language has a sort of internal logic and it's the way babies think. It's highly improbable any individual can remember it because it is drilled out by future learning. Some people have very very early memories from before their ability to speak but to my knowledge these memories are invariably smells and sensations or events rather than ideas or memories of situations. No one can remember something outside of his experience, we even have a lot of trouble experiencing things that are completely new and confusion tends to arise. Most of us do have false memories and even our real memories tend to become almost indistinguishable from memories of memories. I'm not confident memories are so much reinforced by coming to the fore as they are recopied though both factors appear to be at work. Can someone actually remember the primal language? I wouldn't rule it out but I'd want to see some of the words and rules. No doubt we all know one word in baby think; mom. Or as my niece says; memmy. But we'll learn her real good. People tend to associate with like minded people. I wouldn't say that those who talk mostly about people are shallow but there is certainly some correlation. Some people may study other people and their reactions. They might know far more about a wider array of things than almost anyone. It's a boring subject to me personally most of the time. To each his own. Societal standards and beliefs are irrelevant to truth. Indeed, they are more likely to stand in the way to discovering truth because they are like blinders on a horse. When a sabre toothed tiger is prowling around the cave it's the individual who has to know how to protect himself. predators don't eat men, they eat an individual. This doesn't mean it's acceptable to toss a baby out to get it to leave but each person has to have a knowledge of ways to protect himself. Societal standards won't save him when he's in the tiger's claws and they'll do almost nothing to keep him out. Everyone's best protection has always been to think for himself. People must be responsible for the outcome of their decisions and outcomes because most of us are not inclined to look beyond the tips of our nose. Of course these ideas seem strange now days in an era that food is adulterated for profit and no one is responsible. It's an era that has simply repudiated all responsibility while malfeasance and driving enterprise to bankruptcy garners bonuses rather than punishment. If your ideas work out and the side effects are no worse than the disease then it was a success.

Don't worry about it in the least. Post if and when it suits. Just make sure you're doing as well as possible. I suppose you may be right. I'm of the opinion that in most practical ways that humans aren't really "intelligent". Or perhaps more accurately we wholly misunderstand the nature of intelligence and greatly overestimate our own and each others' ability to think . I doubt even the tools we use to understand reality are really up to the task so "intelligence" is largely irrelevant anyway. We mistake our awe of nature and our technology as indication of consciousness and intelligence but I doubt either is dramatically different than most other animals. Consciousness, as I'm sure you agree, is nearly universal and intelligence is a misinterpretation of the nature of experimental science to generate technology. While my opinion is that we'd all be better off if we knew this, this is still only opinion. Perhaps people need to believe in things. Children and infants sometimes see things more clearly than adults. Experts are sometimes more likely to be wrong than people with no training and little knowledge. It depends on the subject but "childish" opinions tend to usually be marginalized or ignored. Actually I could speak at great lenght about it but it shouldn't be necessary. This is something I notice because for various reasons I had to teach myself to read minds as a younster. It's not only peoples' phraseology that alerts you to their thoughtprocesses but the subjects on which they speak. Of course on a message board most people are going to be speaking of science and philosophy but it goes deeper than this. It's been said that shallow people talk about other people, most speak about things, events, and places, but then there are some who like to talk about ideas. People who speak almost solely about ideas are almost always very philosophical in nature. Perhaps I should avoid talking about people at this point but I don't give as many clues about myself as most people do. This isn't so much to safegaurd my privacy but rather because it's habit. You may just be picking up on this near total lack of verbal and communication clues. The specific words people choose and the manner they are organized gives a lot of information about a person to those who are adept at picking up on them. It will tell you about a person's upbringing and education. There are even details that can be deduced (provisionally). I don't think I really started out with a philosophical bent as that I was interested in "thought" from a very young age. Most things of any importance or interest to me I could take apart and see how they worked. I had access to great answers for almost any scientific question but no answers at all about thought and what it was. I think my interests in the broader philosophical questions all sprang from this. Then in recent years I've stumbled on a whole different way to view everything and this has affected my perspectives as well. Being a philosopher can be done by anyone probably. All that's required is to think about the questions best addressed philosophically. It seems most people do start young and they tend to be around like-minded people.

I don't think so. I've admitted to knowing the extent of my ignorance in my field. This might be a little arrogant.

I believe a lot of what you're talking about here is more related to perspective than what I mean by arrogance. People in any specialty might have a huge amount of knowledge of that specialty and individuals can also have a lot of knowledge that transcends that specialty. Such a person will naturally be aware of this and will naturally consider himself an expert on matters related to his knowledge base. Some people can wield such knowledge as a weapon or tool but the confidence that is displayed can be taken for arrogance. Perhaps the real problem with this thread is that we each have our own definition of "arrogance". To me a confident self knowledge and knowledge of the natural world, its laws, its processes, and/ or its state is in no way arrogant. "Arrogance" is the belief that the individual is "better" or more "important" than those with less knowledge or whose status is unknown. "Arrogance" is the actions and words of individuals who believe their needs are more important than other peoples' needs and that their pronouncements must be correct because it's what they believe. "Arrogance" is a belief in one's own infalibility. Arrogance isn't really an overestimation of human knowledge because we most all suffer from this. Certainly as we grow older and wiser we learn that we have much less knowledge than we thought we did. As we gain knowledge we gain a new perspective.

I believe the problem is language and the universal unwillingness to share definitions for words. It actually goes even more deeply than this since our words also have nuance and character and these can be misunderstood as well. We make statements that are obviously true but each listener has his own understanding (or lack thereof) so may not see the veracity or even see that it is false. Word definitions are "sloppy" to enable the widest expression of thought but then backfires by being too ambiguous in meaning. Some people take this misunderstanding personally because like religion, logic and reasoning can be at the basis of their beliefs. The only possible "fix" is a vocabulary founded on metaphysics but this is highly improbable since the UN can't even agree on a standard time or on what day midnight falls. We're each our own little nation and there are no interpreters.

I think this is exactly the sort of thing children should be learning. I believe most children who are really paying attention will have many experiences like this. If they think for themselves as many philosophical types do and they don't accept any arguments based merely on the fact that it's made by an authority or is in a book then it's a certainty they will have such experiences. Children need to be taught metaphysics and they need perspective. Much of what we simply take for granted is mere opinion and perspective. They need to learn that the human race is climbing higher on the shoulders of previous generations and that any individual can always be wrong and usually is. It's not intelligence that has gotten us where we are and it is most assuredly not authority. Progress has a tendency to be a sort of refutation of authoritative arguments. Books have a way of being quaint after half a century and obsolete in another century. Perhaps nearly anyone can become a philosopher but most must do it by a young age and most probably have at least some predisposition to it. I don't know how I old I was when I became a philosoper but I was ten when I knew it. I had had a dream that I was sitting still in a tree for so long the animals forgot I was there. A couple birds on a nearby fence started a conversation about whether or not they should let people know that animals can talk. They decided against it. I think it was because they considered human reactions too unpredictable.

Indeed. And now days most decisions are being made by business interests who can't see beyond the bnext quarterly report. In an age that quality of services and products is plummeting to pad the bootom line and line the common land fills the business leaders are taking ever more of the "profits" and wanting our thanks for an economy that hasn't yet fallen off the edge. These are perilous times with numerous trends leading tothe cliff face. The most dangerous aspect of "willfull" ignorance is the belief we know everything. I should have considered war. I came to believe that all out war became impossible in about 1963 but situations change and history is fluid. There may be some madman (men) who believe they can prevail in nuclear war. Certainly populationincrease necessarily increase risk of contagion but there's no real limit on the amount of food trhat can be prodiuced given sufficient energy. Or at the very least this limit is far above current production.

Superstition. Belief kills as do asteroids. Evolutionary decay and economic collapse are a larger threat than ever. The chances of plague go up every year. I believe the greatest threat of a new dark ages is suppression of human freedom by the technological elite and business interests. In a decade or two this fear may be seen dated but don't count on it. Trends in this regard are all highly unfavorable and each year people become less responsible for theior actions and already aren't answerable to results. Generally our leaders are only responsible for what they say. This is very dangerous and gets worse every year. I've always said that we'll find a way to muddle through but this looks less likely than in the past.

I think everyone is logical but most all of us adopt superstitions and these impede logical results. Most superstitions are a form of believing we know everything or reality can be determined with little evidence and intuition. People can believe in almost anything but they think logically in light of these beliefs. A lot of the problem is language because terms are ill defined and language is the mode of thought. It is also communication by which we pick up many superstitions which are passed generation to generation through conditioning and learning. Much superstition is the extrapolation that we know everything because technology has made our lives so easy. People don't notice how slippery language is and some individuals even use poor language to develop ideas and behavior.

I agree somewhat with the contention. It seems most individuals who think about such things do think about the nature of thought and consciousness from a fairly young age but I doubt if this applies broadly. It might mean more that thinking about how we think leads to an interest in philosophy in same cases rather than that they are equivalents. There's also a tendency for such things to run in families so children get exposed to it at younger ages. In other words I suspect a high correlation does exist but it might have relatively little to do with innate characteristics. People often get interested in things in later life or young adulthood that didn't previously appeal to them.

I think you're pretty close to the problem; the status quo. A hundred or two hundred years ago there was a reason for inefficiency and waste but technology has reduced the need for waste. In the past the total amount of waste was more limited because there was far less ability to use resources. Now we have huge machines that can rip vast amounts of valuable material from the earth and ship them almost straight to landfill. It is this flow that powers the modern economy and our leaders are afraid to tinker with it. Instead they make token gestures to increase efficiency or waste more resources for the "good" of people. If we don't have fusion power within the next decade or two there will be an horrendous population decrease caused by all this waste. Our great grandchildren might survive largely by picking through our garbage dumps.

You have several unsupported ideas here if I understand you correctly. But most notable is that in reality health, strenght,and intelligence tend to be strongly positively correlated. It is only through specialization that some traits are forfeited in favor of others. Specialization affects individuals rather than groups. There is some "unnatural" selection that occurs such as Napolean putting the tallest troops on the front lines but height and intelligence are not very closely correlated. Indeed, most unnatural selection is of traits not closely allied with intelligence. If man hasn't actually devolved in terms of intelligence as I believe it is only because women tend to select mates who are more intelligent than they.

Most animals have language. Indeed, it's possible all animals have language as well as some plants. We can't figure out animal language as easily as they learn ours but we have made some inroads into prairie dog language; http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/researcher-decodes-praire-dog-language-discovers-theyve-been-calling-people-fat.html

Individuals can exceed their programming through effort but it's very unlikely that a species can. If some individuals were compounding learning from one generation to the next giving rise to advancements like agriculture then it would benefit all individuals of that species and not necessarily confer a survival advantage. Individuals who were most successful might have larger families or more off-spring but this wouldn't make others smarter or more able to communicate.

Your idea is interesting. I have some reservations but perhaps it can even tie in with my idea. Again though I believe the evidence well supports the concept that the primary difference between humans and other animals is that humans have complex language. The lack of such complexity in animal languages suggests more that they don't have the capacity to generate or understand it. If by some means an individual fish suddely became capable of speech it probably would confer no survival advantage and it would be bred out of the population. But in humans when an individual was born with a super sized speech center it gave him the ability to more easily communicate with others which was an everyday practical advantage. Some of his children were born with this same ability and language was invented. By the time his grandchildren were born there was already a huge evolutionary advantage since learning was already accumulating. Soon the speakers controled and owned the entire gene pool. The concept that humans are "intelligent" is merely a confusion caused by modern language which arose only ~4000 years ago.

I believe we completely misapprehend the nature of intelligence and language. We miss some of the most important aspects of science. We misunderstand other animals and ancient people. The nature of humanity mostly eludes us. There's barely such a thing as intelligence at all and what does exist is much more evenly spread among people and god's creatures than most imagine. It's not intelligence that appears to make people so unique but rather it is language. But it is not only that complex language makes us unique but that the nature of the language we now use is unique among animals where humans once spoke a human animal language. It is language which which allows us to build on the work of previous generations and generates tremendous knowledge which fills our minds and is retrievable at whim. We seek to understand nature but usually can't see the incredible complexity of what we study because of the terms in which we think. We can watch a pan of boiling spaghetti and would never try to predict the various interweavings and where the next wisp of vapor will arise. We don't consider the various molecules in the water and steam or their collisions nor try to consider the differences from one piece of spaghetti to the next or the possible differences in one molecule to the next. We can safely predict it will be done in ten minutes but wouldn't consider predicting which noodle will be on top or which cell of our body an inhaled water molecule will occupy. Even in nature's simplest events there is complexity beyond description and far beyond our understanding. All of nature's laws might be simple but the interactions are impossibly and infinitely complex. The human "animal" which preceded human beings must have been very similar just as the animal that laid the first chicken (egg) must have been very similar to it. But if the difference between humans and the animal that gave rise to us is nothing but language as is apparent in the very definition of human as seen in this light then the likely change was simply the ability to communicate using complex language. All animals have some language so it should follow that the human ancestor had a language as well. Whatever gave rise to complex language affected a spoecies that already had basic communication skills. It is my contention thart this was a simple mutation in the human speech center and the first complex language was an elaboration on our natural animal language. Learning immediately began being passed down and human progress was begun. Obviously we were already a little more clever than most other animals since we took tool making and fire to new levels but it was language that began the race. This language didn't make us more intelligent but merely gave the species the ability to build on the work of individuals. This already existed in other species which manipulated the enviroment and used tools but with complex language and progress we took it to a new level. I bel;ieve these animal languages are all metaphysical in nature. They mimic observation and grammar mimics nature. Most learning was derived from observation and logic and this fit naturally into the way animals think. Humans were no different for tens of thousands of years. They built up an extensive science with language as its metaphysics but this language became increasingly complex especially with the invention of writing and within a 1000 years it collapsed and gave rise to modern language which has almost no restritions in phraseology. The ancient science was lost but its technology survived passed down father to son and its applied science was preserved as religion. Many aspects survive but the science itself was lost and must be redeveloped. Modern humans are likely less intelligent than our ancestors but this is difficult to determine and based largely on logic and anecdotal evidence. Ancient phraseology could be incredibly complex implying the average man could follow. Complexity of a language is not determined solely by the number of words but by the "grammar" as well. Look at computer languages and how very few words can generate extremely complex programming. The ancient language had few words but they could express almost any thought if you could figure out how to phrase it. Modern science, metaphysics, and language are far removed from what once was taken for granted but none of the truly important things ever really change. It will always take a set lenght of time to cook noodles and science will ultimately depend on observation and our ability to apply it to nature and our machines.

At least my "theory" addresses a few of the specific questions asked that are otherwise virtually unanswerable by orthodox theories. By counting the number of words in ancient text and extrapolation it's hardly difficult to make meaningful estimates of the number of words. I did point out that my work does not agree with mainstream belief. Of course, I don't see any "racism" either. I'm not necessarily supporting any idea about naval battles but each modern language has numerous differences, and hence, advantages and disadvantages to every other one.

There are no real answers to your questions but my theory is that humans had a natural animal language that went back some quarter million years. It was composed of sounds and words that were natural to humans and probably had a vocabulary of between 200 and 2000 "words". Babies may have always been born capable of using this language but are not sufficiently proficient to even know it. Sometime around 40,000 years ago a mutation occured which allowed an individual greatly enhanced ability to use and understand language. He was only parly successful at teaching this to others since they lacked the mutation. But it bred true and the new language speakers had a huge evolutionary advantage on their animal cousins because they could pass down knowledge and learning from one generation to the next. This language fascilitated thought and the results became the massive wealth of knowledge in their "unconscious minds". I believe this language was very much distinct from modern language because it was just an "animal language on steroids". It expressed meaning through context rather than the words taking their meaning from context as modern languages do. Context was expressed though the usage of scientific, colloquial, and vulgar term. All knowledge was incorporated into the language as new branches of knowledge were born. Hence in a very real way this language was metaphysics. It was the understanding of science. Apparently this language (there were numerous dialects) had 20,000 to 30,000 words. It became overly complex and modern language was born and the old language forgotten. Modern language has some 100,000 words used "frequently" and another 150,000 extremely esoteric and precise words. An older thread on the subject; http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/78437-ancient-beliefs-and-evolution/ It was pyramid building that gave rise to my theory; http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/78598-pyramids-through-the-eyes-of-the-builders/

There may be some apples and oranges being argued here. Our science is based on observation and experiment. There's been a lot of "fudging" in the last century but "science" has been turning out some crackpot ideas for a century as well. I believe there are at least two sciences and one is based on observation and logic. Of course anyone trying to use such a science today will be employing a lot of data and facts learned from experimental science and confounding results. Perhaps, science is actually taylor made for each user already and it's not apparent. We use careful scientific terminology to communicate ideas and results but I doubt any of us are so careful in the use of such terminology to think, form hypothesis, or even analyze experimental results. Each individual will have his own understanding of words. This isn't to cast doubt of the results of scientific experimentation; merely the purity of the process.

I believe this points to the greatest invention. Like math I consider language a discovery as well. It required the ability to form and understand ideas and a logical system of language might have required some intelligence as well but all these processes are more similar to discovery than invention. In this light I consider Writing to be the greatest invention since it allowed a single teacher to have numerous students even long after his death. Certainly agriculture was of supreme importance and more complicated than language. in terms of the ability of the human race to thrive and increase population agriculture might be the most important invention unless the internet beat it. But in terms of the ability of the human race to progress and learn writing is number one and the printing press that made it ubiquitous was number two.

I was just thinking about a similar question yesterday. It's a safe bet that the lack of time travellers is indicative of the impossibility of time travel (at least backward). But why aren't there aliens everywhere? Perhaps there used to be aliens but at a given point the powers that be forbid interference in primitive cultures. Perhaps it's much simpler and faster than light travel is impossible. Of course it should be mentioned that we are familiar with only a single planet teeming with life and there's no intelligent life on it. Maybe there's no intelligent life in the cosmos either. Maybe intelligence and life are as oxymoronic as intelligence and military. Perhaps it's this that is the impossibility. Maybe we'll build true intelligence and discover why there are no alien stumble bums or death stars.