Lessons on Causality

No. You are NOT seeing something that you are assuming to be a circle. Rather, you are seeing a circle and assuming that the shape will look exactly the same if you took a closer look at it.
Your logic is backwards.

The feeling of causality comes about due to the feeling of will and power. It feels like we have a will to make actions, and decisions.
We categorize things into events, objects, and entities.

If event X occurs then event Z will happen, and so forth.
There seems to be an identity, a structure, a coherence, lust and beauty for the thing-ness of these entities.

I think what is needed in order to advance this discussion is a deeper understanding regarding the distinction between words, concepts and things.
The three, although different, must be related to each other in a specific way.
Words must point to concepts which must point to things.
This means that every word must point to some kind of thing.
There is no exception to this rule.

Here, we can focus exclusively on written words ignoring all other types of words such as spoken words.
Words can therefore be thought of as a sequence of letters that can either mean something (i.e. point to a concept that points to a thing) or mean nothing (i.e. not point to a concept that points to a thing.)
The majority of the content of Internet posts is words.
I think we can all agree what words are.
It appears to be a bit more difficult to agree that words can be either meaningful or meaningless.
Some people obviously think that it is impossible to construct a sentence out of meaningless words.
I don’t know what to do about that.

That words and concepts are different is best observed in the fact that different words can point to one and the same thing.
For example, both “car” and “automobile” mean one and the same thing.

Concepts are a lot more interesting than words.
Concepts can be thought of as classes or categories of things.
They do not refer to any particular thing.
Rather, they refer to a class or a category of things.
They refer to any of the many different things that are usually related in some way.
In other words, many different things can be represented using one and the same concept.

For example, the following two images are two different things:

Even though they are two different things they belond to one and the same class or category which is that of cars.
In other words, the two different things are both cars.

Classes can be defined as a set of all things that they point to.
But this is generally not how they are defined.
More commonly, they are defined in terms of membership rules.
Every class defines a test that a thing has to pass in order to be considered a representative of that class.
Usually, things that belong to one and the same class do so because they share certain similarities.
For example, the two images above belong to one and the same class – that of cars – because they are similar in certain regards, namely, in that they both possess certain key features that define cars.

Concepts classify things.
They are NOT separate from things.
They are not things themselves but they are not separate from them either.
Things are classified based on certain membership rules.
This is why I demand that every concept is accompanied by a test that allows us to determine which things belong to it and which don’t.
When there is no such a test what that indicates is that the concept is meaningless.

Pretty much every meaningful concept you can think of, no matter how abstract, has a test that can be used in order to determine which things belong to it and which don’t.
Numbers, for example.
A lot of people will tell you that there is no picture that can be classified as a number.
They will tell you this is because numbers have no visual form.
This is quite simply wrong.

When we say that numbers do not have a visual form what this means is that numbers can have ANY visual form.
When you say that a concept does not have some feature what it means is that that feature is not one of the defining characteristics of the concept.
In other words, you cannot define the concept using that feature which means that that feature is not part of the membership rules.
The feature does not have an impact on deciding whether any given thing is a member of the class or not.

For example, we say that cars have no backdrop to mean that whatever surrounds a thing – and it must be surrounded by something! – does not change whether that thing is a car or not.
If we take one of the above two images and change the backdrop to whatever we want the image would still be that of a car.

We can also say that cars have no color because color is not one of the defining features of cars.
If we took any of the above two images and changed the color of the car to any other color we would still have a car.
However, in general, we say that cars DO have color because that feature, although not the defining feature, is often useful to us in a different context.
In the same exact way that we say that circles have straight sides even though straights sides are NOT the defining characteristic of circles (i.e. circles can have any kind of sides, they don’t have to be straight.)

I think this argument is getting circular.

Whether or not something is a circle depends on what definition you consider to be a circle.

The most sensible definition is that a circle is whatever appears to have a super symmetry (at least 2 dimensionally.) DIRECTLY TO THE SENSES (Consciousness.) Since this is the most direct to the senses, it is the most sensible.

James seems to say, the definition of a circle is whatever is a super symmetry no matter at what point in time, outside of the senses and consciousness, remains always a super symmetry. Since this does not exist in most cases then the only definition available is that circles are atoms, but this of course makes the definition redundant so why call atoms circles and circles atoms, perhaps call them microspheres, which have 3 dimensional super symmetry.

We could further refine our definitions and say there are different qualities of circles, visually perfect circles, pixellated circles, or polygonal looking circle. Circle being a simple pronoun, to be further fleshed out and defined using adjectives for precision.

James is right if the definition matches his definition of circle in his head.
Magnus is right if the definition matches his definition of circle in his head.

But I think Magnus is more right because his definition seems better.

Bottom line, James and Magnus are both right, just Magnus is more right.
Both can masturbate to their own glory and philosophical dominance in peace.

If there’s one thing for sure, everybody likes circles. boobs, wheels, butts, balls you name it. People are obsessed with balls.


[size=85]Mostly balls, however ALL are circles (including pucks) on at least the 2 dimensions.[/size]

Yes. I think James fails to understand this at times and at times just likes to feel like he won at an argument. And your post, although you post-ninja’d me, was very good and I hope James takes it to heart.

That is the opposite of Mag’s argument.

Mag argues that “a circle is this … what I see … regardless of any definition because definitions are meaningless unless they agree with what I see..”

It’s a “cart before the horse” argument.

That would be true for the non-philosopher, having already been given the idea of a circle (the geometric definition) by the philosopher(s).

The goal of the philosopher is to add clarity and reduce confusion…usually.
You are just adding confusion.

Mag’s post (with the car pics) was very clear. Go read it again.

Here are our priorities.

  1. Reality=Whatever is directly in our consciousness
    v
  2. Objects, entities, events, thing-ness
    v
  3. Pronouns, or a generally vague form of noun, meant to give a broad sweep categorization of something.
    v
  4. Adjectives, to further classify, categorize and reference nouns and pronouns. Nouns and pronouns are a reference to patterns, phenomenon, based on whether or not they fulfill a set of criterion.

A circle is a phenomenon which exists whether or not you have words to index it with or reference it to. There are perfect circles, imperfect circles, pixellated circles. Get it? You seem to be avoiding / missing step four and say something is not a circle, when it is a circle.

Just like how you say something IS OR ISN"T a philosopher. A philosopher…what type of philosopher? Maybe not your type of philosopher. What are the attributes of philosopher do they not fulfill…specifically?

Do you understand?

That would be your argument.
You are putting the cart (territory) before the horse (map.)
Biguous isn’t wrong when he says that you live in the World of Words.

There is such a thing as meaningless concepts or concepts that do not point to some sort of thing (i.e. phenomenon.) “Perfect circle” might be a meaningful concept provided that you assign to it some kind of meaning (i.e. if you make it point to some sort of thing) but in the case of James, and also S57, it is a statement without any meaning. Basically, it’s just a sequence of words. That’s all it is. Words must refer to something concrete otherwise they are meaningless.

Another thing, which isn’t much relevant, is that people have evolved a common manner in which they determine which shapes are circles and which are not. Definitions are supposed to REFLECT this process and to reflect it with as much precision as it is necessary. The popular definition isn’t bad. It’s pretty good. But it becomes problematic when people take it literally.

They don’t start with what is real. There are circles EVERYWHERE around us. But because they take words literally, they won’t acknowledge this. They don’t understand that when you take the popular definition literally that you strip it of all meaning. There is no way in hell that you can identify a shape that has an infinite number of points on its boundary that are equidistant from the center of that shape.

No. The goal of the philosopher is to pursue wisdom. And when truth gets too far off track, the goal becomes to resist the insanity and reestablish enough truth for wisdom to be pursued again. This all started with Urwrong and Arc arguing over what a circle is, thus I mentioned “definition” to clarify and resolve the issue.

The entire issue is about language and identifying things in accord with whatever language there is.

Mag’s mistake is in presuming that whatever language he inattentively picked up is the language that dictates the identity of what he sees. He now preaches that physical reality determines language. That is in exact reverse. Language is formed by giving portions of reality identities - defined names. It is then from definitions, usually merely connoted from family and society, that anyone has the urge to call anything by any particular name.

A circle is not what the physical universe says that it is. It is often not what the child associated with the word. The universe doesn’t make that determination. People choose what is to be called a circle, whether it is an abstract category of shape or a physically real object.

But that is only half of his failing.

In addition to not understanding that definitions inherently precede perceptive identifications, he has latched onto the idea that abstract notions (categories) “have no meaning”, even while he is using such meanings and categories. Using his theory (void of categories), the first crude “circle” that one sees determines what a circle is. Anything you see afterward not exactly matching that first identification, would not be a circle because it doesn’t exactly match the identifier. There could only be one circle, the first he ever identified. Of course, he hasn’t thought that far, so he merely re-designates whatever he feels like, as a “circle” “because it is what he sees” regardless of what it might really be.

He is merely a corruptor of language with a primitive, grunt-like mind (no doubt a meat-eater). None of this has anything to do with actual philosophy because without a consistent language, with children choosing arbitrary definitions of their words, there can be no communication. And communication is required during philosophical pursuit in order to build secure, enduring thought and the pursuit of wisdom.

This more than proves that you do not listen to what your opponents are saying.

I never said or implied that the universe determines what a circle is. I don’t even know what that means. It is us, humans, who determine whether any given shape is a circle or not and we do so by some kind of procedure. My point is that this procedure (which I often identify with the word “intuition”) is not the same thing as its linguistic descriptions (dictionary definitions.) Your problem is that you take dictionary definitions too literally. When you take them too literally you fail to understand the procedure they are attempting to reflect.

Words do not precede the procedure by which we determine whether some given thing belongs to some given class.
That’s your mistake.

Here’s more proof that you do not listen to what your opponents are saying. I never said that categories are meaningless. I simply said that they CAN be meaningless.

Which ones am I using?

This merely shows how fucked up your brain is.

Whether something is a circle or not is determined by a procedure that takes into account a finite number of points on the boundary of the shape in order to measure their distance from the center of that shape. If every single point is at the same distance, then the procedure declares that the shape is a circle. Otherwise, it declares that it is not. The procedure DOES NOT work by comparing the shape to the first shape we identified as a circle. (By the way, how did we identify this “first circle” shape as a circle? We must have used some other procedure because before identifying this shape as a circle there was no shape that we previously identified as a circle. So what happened to this original procedure? Why did we stop using it?)

What you’re doing here is you are MAKING SHIT UP.

I am glad that I don’t think the way you do.

Noone is corruping language, moron. Noone is choosing arbitrary definitions, fuckface. The problem is that you are an IDIOT who obviously DOES NOT LIKE IT when someone calls him an idiot, whether they are justified in doing so or not, and who does not understand what words mean despite his pretense that he does.

I believe that you wouldn’t know what it meant. That is why I hadn’t said it to you. But what it means is what you have been claiming.

That’s not what it means. That’s what your fucked up brain thinks it means.

This thread is giving me a headache.

Mag I’m gonna cover your ass on this one before James exploits one of your unarmored areas. There are multiple procedures getting a circle, mostly it is a subconscious semi-process of just “seeing” a ring. I am not sure exactly how the neurons go about this, it is possible that they analyze it as a bunch of finite points, or they may use some other method.

James seemed to quote me in an attempt to argue at any and all cost, for example I made a weak post like this which could be misinterpreted.

What I was saying was not that a circle is dependent on words, but that words can fluctuate between people. If someone has a poor definition of what a circle is, then they will argue that you are wrong about what a circle is.

Thus I need to bring a 5th element to the process: communication. One person’s inner world may not match anothers, and thus we have the process of communication, a kind of bridge between inner worlds, only barred by solipsism.

For purposes of communication, a circle is whatever falls into the general range of what a circle is. James has a very, very specific definition in mind when he thinks of “circle” and this definition doesn’t match anyone else’s. But more importantly, his definition is objectively poor because it is inefficient: it is more optimized to have vague definitions of general items, and to have customizable adjectives one can ascribe to these items. James does it backwards: he assigns a very, very precise and inflexible attributes to a general item, completely stopping the possibility of custom adjective clarification. The way he does it, is simply very not good for language.

PS: A philosopher’s goal is to find truths, whether heshe is wise about it is their choice.
The goal of a leader, or politician, is to spread wisdoms. However, most politicians are very unwise.

For instance, my violence thread, I simply state truths of violence. A wise man may say my thread is rubbish, shouldn’t be taken seriously, because it could destroy the very fabric of civilization. Some wise men may hate my thread, even if it is true. Sometimes it is not always considered wise to speak the truth.

You missed the point.

The argument began between Urwrong and Arc. The issue was about a circle having an infinity of sides. The definition of a circle resolves the issue. But then Urwrong didn’t accept that and Mag proclaims that definitions are irrelevant and that it is only observations that count - what something is is entirely how it is perceived (an entirely non-sequitur and irrational response). Then the discussion became about how a circle is defined vs how a circle should be defined (a still different issue).

You are the one missing the point.

UrWrong was simply explaining that Pi cannot be a finite number because circles are infinilateral polygons i.e. they have an infinite number of straight sides.
(Exactly what Nicholas of Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz and others have claimed in the past. But let’s ignore that because you are right by default.)
Then Arc came along and missed the point. Note that she responded in a way that suggested that UrWrong is saying something wrong. Which he didn’t.
Then you came along and sided with Arc who missed the point.
From there on you just kept missing the point.
No doubt because you suffer from some sort of autism.
You take things out of context. That’s what you do. That’s your calling.

When we measure the length of a line, any line, we do so in terms of lines that are 1) smaller than the line we are measuring, 2) equal in length to each other and 3) straight. They can be at any angle but they must be straight.
There are many other possible ways to measure the length of a line but this is generally how we do it.
So if you want to measure the circumference of a circle there is no choice but to think of the circumference as a line composed of a number of sufficiently small straight lines i.e. as some kind of polygon.
The problem is as what kind of polygon? In other words, how many straight sides are there in a circle?
Because different number of straight sides means different length of the circumference.
The answer to the question is: the smallest number of straight sides that are necessary.
Basically, it depends on our needs.
Simple C = d x Pi formula cannot capture it.

Pi is simply a number that when multiplied by the diameter of the center returns the length of the circumference of that circle.
There is no such a number for many reasons one of which is that the number of straight sides the circle has is not specified.

Maybe you should stop pretending you know everything and start paying a little bit more attention to what other people are saying.
Unless you don’t want to cure your autism.

It is humans who determine whether any given shape is a circle or not and they do so by employing some sort of mechanism.
Human behavior is observable so this mechanism can be observed.
Dictionary definitions are simply a bunch of words that try to reflect this mechanism.
They are SECONDARY.
What is PRIMARY is HUMAN BEHAVIOR.

Magnus and James are the yin and yang of ILP because they both say the complete opposite to each other and so the truth is in there somwehere
Shame they cannot co operate instead of engaging in ego stroking and name calling but if one ignores this there is much one can learn from them

Did I ever say that there is only one procedure? Quote me saying it. The fact that you have to choose a finite number of points to test means that there is more than one procedure for determining whether something is a circle or not. There is a procedure that picks a hundred points, a procedure that picks a thousand points, a procedure that picks a million points and so on. It is not me who’s saying that there is only one procedure. If there is someone saying such a thing then it is James.

Yes. We want to understand how that process works. And we only want to do so up to a certain level of precision that is of interest to us.

That’s not important.

That’s a sufficiently precise description of how we differentiate between circles and other shapes. You can derive it on your own using nothing but introspection. But if you want you can also derive it by observing how other people behave.

That’s all he does. And he’s been doing it for years. It’s pathetic.

His definition is all-exclusive. In other words, there is no phenomenon that can be categorized as a circle. According to James, nothing is a circle. Instead, there are phenomena that are more or less close to what a circle really is. Even though nothing is a circle there are phenomena that are more or less close to circles. I think that’s a seriously backwards way of thinking. It’s like how people can’t accept that the concept of Absolute (or Universal) Truth is meaningless and instead cling onto it by making excuses such as “no theory can ever reach Absolute Truth, theories can only come more or less close to it”. The button on my monitor is a circle. The CD on my desk is a circle. It is not close to being a circle. It IS a fucking circle. That’s what a circle is. Sure, some circles are more perfect than others. What this means is that there is a RELATION between more and less perfect circles. In the same way there is a RELATION between taller and shorter people. When we say this or that guy is tall we do not do so in relation to some PERFECTLY or INFINITELY TALL guy. We describe things in terms of other things. Not in terms of meaningless concepts. When we measure the length of a line we do so in relation to some smaller line. We ask: how many of these smaller lines can be synthesized, i.e. put next to each other, in order to form the main line?

The word “circle” does not have an EXCLUSIVE reference to some particular circle. This means that the word does not refer to a particular but to a category of particulars.

The button on my monitor is a particular circle. The CD on my desk is a particular circle. The bottom of my wine barrel is a particular circle. And so on. The word “circle” does not have an EXCLUSIVE reference to any one of these particular circles. For example, it is not true that the button on my monitor is a circle while the CD on my desk and the bottom of my barrel are not circles. They are all circles. This means that the word “circle” refers to ANY of these particular circles. That’s what a category is. A category is something that refers to any particular within some range of particulars.

My point in this thread, or rather one of my points in this thread, is that categories, if they are proper categories, are NOT without a reference to particulars. Categories are merely without an exclusive reference to particulars. Categories, proper categories, refer to any particular within some range of particulars. For example, the word “car” refers to a category that includes both this and this. When I say “includes both” what I mean is that it refers to any of the two images. It does not exclusively refer to one of the two images and it does not exclusively refer to the combination of the two images.

The proposition that my theory is void of categories and that I think that categories are meaningless is simply not true. My theory is merely void of meaningless categories or pseudo-categories by which I mean categories that are all-exclusive i.e. categories that do not refer to any particular either because they explicitly reject all particulars or because they are “hesitant” to refer to any particular. Similarly, I don’t think that categories are meaningless, I merely think that there are categories that are meaningless e.g. the word “perfect circle” as used by James refers to a meaningless category. There are no particular “perfect circles”, not because the environment we live in is void of them, but quite simply because the category “perfect circle” does not refer to any particular thing. Compare that to the word “zombie”. The word “zombie” refers to a category that refers to any of all the possible particular zombies. Not a single one of these zombies is to be found anywhere in the environment we live in, not because the category “zombie” is meaningless, but because the environment we live in is void of what the category “zombie” refers to.

It is possible to conduct an experiment in order to determine what any particular category refers to. For example, you can conduct an experiment in order to determine what the category “circle” refers to. There are many ways to go about it but one way to do it is to choose a subject (e.g. yourself) and a number of images for your subject to separate into a group of those that are associated with the word “circle” and a group of those that are not. At the end of the experiment, you get a set of images that are associated with the word “circle”. By applying the logic of induction to this set, you can measure how much of a circle any given shape is.

The superiority of this approach lies in the fact that it lets you devise a theory on your own. You look at the facts and then make an inference based on them. In the context of this post, it means that you look at the particulars and then derive a category from them. The fact that you discover the category on your own, rather than pick it up from someone else by memorizing its rules, means that you understand it. You know what kind of experience it represents. On the other hand, if you start with dictionary definitions, which are nothing more than crude descriptions of other people’s categories, then it becomes easy to misunderstand the categories they represent. You might not understand what kind of experience the category represents. In fact, you might think that it represents no experience at all. As a consequence, you might become very defensive of the idea that categories do not have to represent experience.

It occured to me that Arc’s statement that circles have no straight sides is analogous to saying that houses have no occupants. The statement that circles have no sides is true in the sense that circles would be circles even if they had no straight sides in the same way that houses would be houses even if they had no occupants. But it is wrong to say that a shape that has straight sides is not a circle in the same way that it is wrong to say that a building that has occupants is not a house.