16 minutes ago, swansont said:

you still can’t hand me a shadow

I can, but it disappears when I walk away. A hole can be transferred by making a bigger hole below it and converting it into a scoop, but your point is taken.

Agreeing with your point about the need for definitions, that applies also to the idea of “not an illusion.” Me typing this and you reading this could both be classified that way as illusions.

Edited September 27Sep 27 by iNow

Galileo, Semmelweis, Tesla...

A small poem for the denizens of the Church of Science in the 21st Century (lifted from the foundation of Western Civilisation):

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.

The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

On 9/27/2025 at 3:07 AM, swansont said:

Which is why I am fond of asking people to define what they mean by “real” when it comes up.

There is something of a problem to this as I consider there to be a missing available word.

One way to attempt definition is to ask if the object of interest can affect something that is uncontroversially real.

But the problem with this is that for instance, someone like Harry Potter does indeed affect millions of people.

So is he real or not ?

He is certainly fictional, but do words on a page or a real actor constitute a material or real representation ?

4 hours ago, Prajna said:

Galileo, Semmelweis, Tesla...

A small poem for the denizens of the Church of Science in the 21st Century (lifted from the foundation of Western Civilisation):

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.

The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

Why are you quoting from the Book of Lamentations (vv. 1-4) in the Old Testament (Authorised Version)? This is about the Babylonian Captivity, the period when the Jews were exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.

What relevance does this have to the thread topic, or to Galileo, Semmelweis or - help us - Tesla?

Or is this just random botshit from your beloved Jyoti?🤪

Edited September 28Sep 28 by exchemist

On 9/27/2025 at 3:00 AM, iNow said:

I am fond of saying that shadows are non physical, but they are very real.

I also like this saying, though one might counterclaim they are physical in several significant ways.

Shadows block light and have a lower temperature than their surroundings. This changes the way air moves. This changes moisture levels and micro humidity. That creates an attraction effect pulling air toward it from more illuminated non-shadowed areas. There’s a temperature gradient radiating from cool to warm from center of the shadow outward. The undulation of that heat creates disturbances in the local atmosphere and intensifies the dancing blur along the boundary between light and dark.

Actually I disagree here.

The surface of a real material object (for instance the path on which you are standing and you yourself shivering) certainly reacts to being in shadow in this fashion.

However I am not aware that the shadow itself has a temperature.

5 minutes ago, studiot said:

I am not aware that the shadow itself has a temperature.

I can see your point. I suppose how we define shadow is relevant. A shadow clearly exists. That existence only makes sense in context of interactions within some local frame. If our definition of shadow, however, subtracts any references or connection to that local frame then things rather quickly and quite clearly become strange. It’s a bit like asking if love is a real thing without reference to feelings, perspectives, and connection to others.

17 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Why are you quoting from the Book of Lamentations (vv. 1-4) in the Old Testament (Authorised Version)? This is about the Babylonian Captivity, the period when the Jews were exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.

What relevance does this have to the thread topic, or to Galileo, Semmelweis or - help us - Tesla?

Or is this just random botshit from your beloved Jyoti?🤪

Sorry, Exchemist, it was just me noting the poetic correlations between today's Academy of Science and ancient Zion.

7 minutes ago, studiot said:

There is something of a problem to this as I consider there to be a missing available word.

One way to attempt definition is to ask if the object of interest can affect something that is uncontroversially real.

But the problem with this is that for instance, someone like Harry Potter does indeed affect millions of people.

So is he real or not ?

He is certainly fictional, but do words on a page or a real actor constitute a material or real representation ?

Optical illusions affect people, too. The impact is real, even if not based on something physical, but it’s our mind doing the heavy lifting. We can also look at a definition of real in terms of not being just a concept. So maybe something to consider in being “real” is whether it exists independently of the mind.

4 minutes ago, swansont said:

Optical illusions affect people, too. The impact is real, even if not based on something physical, but it’s our mind doing the heavy lifting. We can also look at a definition of real in terms of not being just a concept. So maybe something to consider in being “real” is whether it exists independently of the mind.

Does anything exist independently of mind, dear Swansont?

Just now, Prajna said:

Does anything exist independently of mind, dear Swansont?

Yes.

20 minutes ago, swansont said:

Yes.

How would one know?

50 minutes ago, Prajna said:

Sorry, Exchemist, it was just me noting the poetic correlations between today's Academy of Science and ancient Zion.

What are you are on about? What is the "Academy of Science"? Where do Galileo, Semmelweis and Tesla come into it? And what is the parallel you think you see?

Stop speaking in riddles.

26 minutes ago, exchemist said:

What are you are on about? What is the "Academy of Science"? Where do Galileo, Semmelweis and Tesla come into it? And what is the parallel you think you see?

Stop speaking in riddles.

Sorry again, Exchemist, I was speaking in poetry rather than riddles. Poetry is something you have to appreciate rather than understand.

10 minutes ago, Prajna said:

Sorry again, Exchemist, I was speaking in poetry rather than riddles. Poetry is something you have to appreciate rather than understand.

This is hopeless.

17 minutes ago, Prajna said:

Sorry again, Exchemist, I was speaking in poetry rather than riddles. Poetry is something you have to appreciate rather than understand.

Like this ?

Alas Alas poor Willy

His voice we'll hear no more

For what he took for H2O

Was H2SO4

Still on the subject of abstract v concrete, real v imaginary etc

When we write

[math]\int_a^b {f(x)dx} [/math]

The statement is, one of yet another of these pairs - indeterminate / determinate

Yet we happily then write

[math]\left[ {F(x)} \right]_a^b[/math]

[math]F(b) - F(a)[/math] ; where F(x) is the primitive of f(x)

If we are told that a is 0 and b is 1 we write

[math]\int_0^1 {f(x)dx} [/math]

and if we are further told

[math]f(x) = x[/math]

Then we can finally write

[math]F(b) - F(a) = 1 - 0 = 1[/math]

So at what point, if any, does this become real ?

Edited September 28Sep 28 by studiot

24 minutes ago, studiot said:

Like this ?

Alas Alas poor Willy

His voice we'll hear no more

For what he took for H2O

Was H2SO4

That is more of a limerick, Studiot, but it belongs to the same family.

Seems like the topic has diverged into doughnut holes. Semantics can be a bog that traps us when we get lost in descriptions and confuse them with whatever is being described. Sometimes semantic analysis can get us out of the bog - what do we mean when we say unicorn? Are we referring to an existing thing in the world...or are we referring to a cluster of representations of human acts of imagination? When the morning star and evening star were given two names by the Greeks, did they actually refer to two distinct things or just to Venus at different parts of its orbit? Send in the linguistic philosophers! (Pre-Hellenistic Greeks apparently believed they were referring to two different celestial objects) (so they referred to a state of affairs that did not actually exist in the external world outside their heads)(but we refer to one existing planet when we say either Phosphoros or Hesperos)(so reference matters to meaning)

If the topic is consciousness in AI, then we are in a scientific enterprise where precision of language is needed and not poetry. We need to define specifically what is meant by consciousness and what is known about the neural correlates of consciousness and what can be verified regarding any subjective reports of a conscious experience.

OT aside:

Little Willie from the mirror

Licked the mercury all off

Thinking in his childish error

It would cure his whooping cough.

At the funeral, Willie's mother

Smartly said to Mrs. Brown,

"Twas a chilly day for Willie

When the mercury went down!"

25 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Seems like the topic has diverged into doughnut holes. Semantics can be a bog that traps us when we get lost in descriptions and confuse them with whatever is being described. Sometimes semantic analysis can get us out of the bog - what do we mean when we say unicorn? Are we referring to an existing thing in the world...or are we referring to a cluster of representations of human acts of imagination? When the morning star and evening star were given two names by the Greeks, did they actually refer to two distinct things or just to Venus at different parts of its orbit? Send in the linguistic philosophers! (Pre-Hellenistic Greeks apparently believed they were referring to two different celestial objects) (so they referred to a state of affairs that did not actually exist in the external world outside their heads)(but we refer to one existing planet when we say either Phosphoros or Hesperos)(so reference matters to meaning)

If the topic is consciousness in AI, then we are in a scientific enterprise where precision of language is needed and not poetry. We need to define specifically what is meant by consciousness and what is known about the neural correlates of consciousness and what can be verified regarding any subjective reports of a conscious experience.

OT aside:

Little Willie from the mirror

Licked the mercury all off

Thinking in his childish error

It would cure his whooping cough.

At the funeral, Willie's mother

Smartly said to Mrs. Brown,

"Twas a chilly day for Willie

When the mercury went down!"

Splendid OT poem, TheVat, thank you. I like where you are going with the topic. Thank you for that too. Sadly I lack anything like precision in scientific language, which is why I find myself lapsing into poetry, which seems to me to be rather more precise for the topic under discussion; but then I am a poet and philosopher rather than a real scientist.

Since you seem to be something of a philosopher and Swansont only offered me a belief rather than anything weighty and empirical, are you able to answer the question, "Is there anything that exists apart from consciousness?"

15 minutes ago, Prajna said:

Swansont only offered me a belief rather than anything weighty and empirical, are you able to answer the question, "Is there anything that exists apart from consciousness?"

What about death ?

3 minutes ago, Prajna said:

Since you seem to be something of a philosopher and Swansont only offered me a belief rather than anything weighty and empirical, are you able to answer the question, "Is there anything that exists apart from consciousness?"

Our reluctance to step in front of a speeding bus suggests we all carry some belief in an exterior world that exists outside our consciousness. A society of beings which consisted entirely of minds occupying a realm itself composed entirely of mental phenomena would seem to lack an evolutionary push towards fear of onrushing buses - where would be the consequences of physical destruction which drive natural selection? Wouldn't we, perhaps for easing our minds in the presence of illusory buses, rather develop skills like making buses bounce off of us or flying over them or having them pass through us like ghost objects? For that matter, why wouldn't we just scrap buses and rely on flying carpets or teleportation?

It seems like a poor wager to bet that this is all illusion and that the great effectiveness of science is merely a taxonomy of shared hallucinations. It also blithely passes by the question of how brains really work. If all we need is an amorphous blob of "mindstuff" in our mental universe to be conscious, then AI researchers could close their labs, go find an attractive rock, and declare it to be sentient. Wigs and makeup optional. BTW, a good name for a sentient rock is Opal.

2 hours ago, Prajna said:

How would one know?

Things don’t have to involve a conscious observer to know they are there. i.e. e.g. the moon doesn’t disappear when out of my sight, or I’m asleep. I can see tides, or take a picture.

1 hour ago, studiot said:

What about death ?

Tell me about it, Studiot.

52 minutes ago, swansont said:

Things don’t have to involve a conscious observer to know they are there. i.e. e.g. the moon doesn’t disappear when out of my sight, or I’m asleep. I can see tides, or take a picture.

The moon would have to be its own conscious observer to know that it was there. How would you know?

10 minutes ago, Prajna said:

The moon would have to be its own conscious observer to know that it was there. How would you know?

What does that have to do with anything? Things don’t have to be self-aware to exist.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Things don’t have to involve a conscious observer to know they are there

Looks like a statement to me. A statement that I parse as "Things" are somehow able to "know they are there" without the essential element required to perform the action (if it is an action) of knowing they are there (which I take to mean 'existent'.)

7 minutes ago, Prajna said:

Looks like a statement to me. A statement that I parse as "Things" are somehow able to "know they are there" without the essential element required to perform the action (if it is an action) of knowing they are there (which I take to mean 'existent'.)

I gave an example to clarify what I meant and help you parse it, but you apparently ignored it.