Having tried to go back into the earliest history of
the charliehobbs discussion group
and having been frustrated by "not available"
messages from eGroups.com, I decided to try to keep an archive
of some charliehobbs discussion group threads here. Notes to users.

Philosophy of Science Thread
Wittgenstein Thread
AI and robots


Philosophy of Mind Thread
This thread sprouted off of the Wittgenstein Thread.
mind as a machine   Plato     science/religion   subjectivity/objectivity

Metaphor (see Tree of Knowledge [#182] and Dog [#185], #203, #233 in the Wittgenstein thread)

see #309-#339 dealing with metaphor in the Wittgenstein thread
#439 Re: All is Metaphor (Bill Doxey) "Thing in itself" doesn't register with me
The human mind as a machine (see origins of this in Metaphor)
#348 The human mind as machine; some questions (Mark Brown) "the entire universe is a machine"
#349 Human mind as machine; addition (Mark Brown) "Maybe the mind is just a brute fact"
#351 Human mind as machine (Schmidt) replies to #134, #348, #349
#355 Re: The human mind as machine; some questions (Saicho) "the nub of the issue -- design"
#360 mind, machines, design, souls II (Schmidt) Another meaning of the word "design"
#367 Re: mind, machines, design, souls II (Angie) "currently acceptable definition of 'machine'?"
#370 J.R. Lucas, Hofstadter, Dennett (Schmidt) Turing + problem of defining "machine"
#380 Re: J.R. Lucas, Hofstadter, Dennett (Angie) criticisms on Lucas' argument
#386 Re: mind, machines, design, souls II (Robert Parr) Godel's Theorem in Focus, S.G. Shanker, editor
#392 Re: mind, machines, design, souls II (Angie) "That's one I haven't looked at yet"
#356 Re: Human mind as machine (Saicho) "machines always less smart than their designers?"
#357 Re: Human mind as machine (Traxler) "A computer can never reach enlightenment?"
#361 mind, machines, design, souls III (Schmidt) at the molecular level, the human brain is a "logical device"
#358 Re: Human mind as machine (Saicho) "Dividing the mind into empathetic and sympathetic [see #357] compartments of activity is a western concept"
#363 mind, machines, design, souls IV (Schmidt) robots will need something to provide them with "motivation", the functional equivalents of pain and pleasure.
#359 mind, machines, design, souls (Schmidt) "robots will take charge of their own future development"
#364 design (Mark Brown) questions we should ask along the way
#365 Design (JMC) knowledge is realized in [a blind evolutionary] process- see Hagel
#368 RE: Design (Mark Brown) the goal for life -- to keep on living
#369 The Puppet Talks Back (Schmidt) "Organization without a plan is offensive to the sensibilities of left-brain dominated philosophers, but it is how the universe works."
#371 Talking Back to the Puppet (Mark Brown) Organization...is inherent to the evolutionary process.
#388 Re: Talking Back to the Puppet (Robert Parr) information, exformation, consciousness
#394 Information and Organization "Tor Norretranders seems to follow the physics of Freud"
#406 Re: Information and Organization (Robert Parr) No (to #394), to talk of Freudian physics is to denigrate the book
#420 On Freud (JMC) "rather than metaphor, Freud constructs the realm of the symbolic"
#421 Re: Information and Organization (JMC) Meaning is a function of complexity?
#426 Re: Information and Organization (Charles Hobbs) this kind of model is often referred to as the Shannon/Wiener theory
#431 Re: On Freud (Robert Parr) "I've found a world of clarity and humanity in Wittgenstein and I won't be going back to Freud, except perhaps to note to Platonic dualisms that I suspect are there."
#437 Re: On Freud (Schmidt) Freud, metaphor, Wittgenstein, PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH

Return to the Wittgenstein Thread with: #438 magic decoder ring



#468 Re: On Freud (Robert Parr) I prefer the neuroscience of William H. Calvin......
you seem to want to read Wittgenstein as much as I want to read Hegel

Follow below in the Philosophy of Mind Thread with: #489



#434 Re: Information and Organization (Robert Parr) Meaning is a function of complexity.
#441 one more lash of the whip (Schmidt) My favorite book about this topic is The Origins of Order by Stuart Kauffman
#448 Am Freud(e) (JMC) it [is] interesting to see how models--system theories if you will--play themselves out historically
#479 Re: Am Freud(e) (Robert Parr) Freud as science?  I remain a (healthy) skeptic.
#455 Re: One Idea, Fifeteen Minutes of Fame (Bill Doxey) why do humans experience boredom?
#458 Re: One Idea, Fifeteen Minutes of Fame (Charles Hobbs) humans experience boredom because they choose it
#459 Re: One Idea, Fifeteen Minutes of Fame (Saicho) there exists no compelling need or desire to do anything.
#461 the evolution of boredom (Schmidt)
#470 Boredom Because They Choose It (JMC) "Out of boredom,  a compelling senselessness, a sense of
compulsion--what Poe calls the spirit of perversity."
#482 Re: One Idea, Fifeteen Minutes of Fame (Robert Parr) required for life: stimulation
#488 Territorial Imperative (JMC) Are you referring to the ideas in the book THE NAKED APE by Morris?
#511 Re: Territorial Imperative (Robert Parr) No, but he was a contemporary
 
Plato rears his ugly head
#372 ..Re: Human mind as machine (Traxler) "Plato high-jaked western thought......a trend i would love to see turned on its head"
#375 The Dead Hand of Plato (Schmidt) anti-Platonic efforts of Ernst Mayr and Antonio Damasio. Who [else has] worked to counter the Dead Hand of Plato?
#378 Re: Human mind as machine (Saicho) "our deepest understanding is actually non-rational"
#381 Re: The Dead Hand of Plato (Traxler) I found the most fascinating treatment of this subject in the book "A History of God."
Wittgenstein vs. Plato
#401 Re: The Dead Hand of Plato (Robert Parr) "Wittgenstein cut Plato off at the knees"


science/religion off-shoot
#384 Re: The Dead Hand of Plato (Saicho) "What is the face of the science-god?"
#390 looking for answers (Schmidt) Carl Sagan and the struggle between rationality and revelation
#395 Re: looking for answers (Saicho) rational awareness of natural laws... this too is faith.
#396 Re: looking for answers (Traxler) defining the spheres within which science and spirituality operate
#397 Re: looking for answers (Saicho) somewhere down the road [science and spirituality] will merge
#398 Re: looking for answers (Traxler) I'm a bit wary of merging science and spirituality
#399 Re: looking for answers (Saicho) "somewhere in the psyche of the scientist -- the drive for understanding the world is really the search for the first cause."
#402 A Speculation on Picture Religion (JMC) "science and religion compete for the authority to represent the truth."
#405 Re: looking for answers:To Saicho and Traxler (Robert Parr) What is Faith, by Anthony Kenny
#407 Re: looking for answers: To Saicho and Traxler (Dawn Williams) more Anthony Kenny
#408 dealing with "the facts" (Schmidt) E. O. Wilson has handed us a road map to the continuing battle between science and religion
#409 Re: dealing with "the facts" (Saicho) "science and religion....are attempts to understand the world"
#410 Re: The Dead Hand of Plato (Mark Brown) without the control of religion, will everyone continue to show up for work Monday morning?
#415 Re: looking for answers:To Saicho and Traxler (Traxler) if there is one drop of truth to what the world religions are saying about existence, I don't want  my nose to be so far up in the air that I miss it.
#423 On Faith - was: looking for answers (David Cloutman) "everything we believe as truth ultimately reduces to faith"
#424 to split or to lump? (Schmidt) "what is the point in saying that Boeing is building airplane 35,934 on 'faith' that Bernouli's Principle is true?
#427 Re: On Faith - was: looking for answers (Charles Hobbs) "to have 'faith' to have something be true for you"     James in THE WILL TO BELIEVE
#432 Re: looking for answers:To Saicho and Traxler (Robert Parr) "we can't take the future existence of a pluralistic society for granted"
#435 Re: looking for answers: To Saicho and Traxler (Robert Parr) A Brief History of Western Philosophy
#447 Re: On Faith - was: looking for answers:To Saicho (Robert Parr) Kenny: "The special nature of belief that is faith is that it is a belief in something revealed by God

Return to the Wittgenstein Thread with: #464 and meta-language

#451 on the meaning of 'belief' (Christopher Furlong) what is involved is the assent to the truth of a proposition
#480 Re: on the meaning of 'belief' (Robert Parr) the giving of credentials in the process of justifying  claims to knowledge


#373 Re: bunch of stuff about minds, etc. (Saicho) reductionism, human characteristics, teleology, pragmatism, subjectivity/objectivity
#374 Re: bunch of stuff about minds, etc. (Mark Brown) teleology, subjectivity/objectivity
#376 logic in the mother load (Schmidt) "logical components can organize to produce unpredictable behavior, unpredictable components can also organize to produce logical behavior"
#377 Re: logic in the mother load (Saicho) free will..... I'd like to see a definition of it.
#379 Re: Objective/subjective (Saicho) "the human mind is an integral part of whatever the outcome [of an experiment] is."
#382 Re: Human mind as machine (Sueko Sakai) "I'm trying to get at Keyes' notion of cosmic consciousness"
#383 pragmatism v. romanticism (Mark Brown) "Some would say realism/idealism."
#385 Re: Human mind as machine (Saicho) comments on the mindfulness practice in Buddhism
#389 A Robot Ontology (JMC) teleology and Popper
#391 Re: A Robot Ontology (Saicho) Popper on the topic of design
#393 Poe (JMC) someone who combines both Romanticism and Pragmatism
#400 Re: logic in the mother load (Robert Parr) two kinds of motives: in-order-to motives and because motives
#403 Teleology, Natural Selection, and Popper (JMC) Popper, as an indeterminist, believes that to have free choice, selection itself cannot be strictly random though the choices it involves can be.
#418 Re: Several topics (Saicho) Popper, determinism, consciousness, order/disorder, repeatability
#422 Popper Stopper (JMC) your thinking in relationship to his On the repeatability of experience, Henri Bergson is fascinating.
#429 Re: Popper Stopper (Saicho) the similarity of my method to that of Heidegger?
#430 Popper Stopper and Heidegger (JMC) "Heidegger places Dasein (being there) at the center"
#436 Re: Popper Stopper and Heidegger (Saicho) "I do not agree with some of what he says regarding language"
Follow #437 back to the Wittgenstein Thread
#449 The Funny Thing About the "Letter on Humanism" (JMC) watching Heidegger attempt a conversation
#477 Being There (JMC) Heidegger creates his language in order to make you read/understand in a certain way.
#493 Re: Being There (Saicho) how limiting the traditional concept of humanism really is
 
subjectivity/objectivity discussion
#404 Repetition (JMC) "Science shows us how to repeat events."
#413 repeatability, objectivity, progress (Schmidt) I am usually less impressed by repeatability than I am by results that can be reached by several independent approaches.
#416 Re: repeatability, objectivity, progress (Traxler) If that meaning is anywhere, its within ourselves, and is that place, that crucially important place, not a place beyond the limits of scientific inquiry?
#417 repeatability vs. spritual experience (Schmidt) There can be a science of spiritual experiences.
 

More on brain/mind from the Wittgenstein Thread.
#489 important people in neuroscience (Schmidt)   Eric Kandel, Gerald Edelman and Francis Crick
#512 Re: important people in neuroscience (Robert Parr) Wittgenstein as a critical philosopher, carefully
watching the line between science and philosophy, would serve neurosciences better that any philosophy infected with the dualisms of our culture.    also: the need to reevaluate Calvin
#532 comments on Calvin (Schmidt) Some problems with Calvin's "How Brains Think".
#563 Re: important people in neuroscience (Robert Parr) I see nothing egocentric in seeing neuroscience at the center of
science
#566 Calvin, group selection (Schmidt)  I think Calvin missed the correct time scale for copying patterns of neuronal activity
#572 Re: Calvin, group selection (Robert Parr) Darwitt. Calvin's ideas work great with Lakoff linguistics and Shannon information in The User Illusion.
 
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1