How many words do we have and how many distinct concepts do we have?
In another message, I suggested that, given how many cultures we have to borrow from, that our language may include multiple words from various sources that apply to a single concept.
An example is Reality, or Existence, or Being, or Universe, or Cosmos, or Nature, ect.
Another is Subjectivity, Mind, Consciousness, Experience, Qualia, Phenomenal, Mental, ect
Is there any problem with accepting these claims so far? Curious what case would be made to the contrary.
(Here’s a bit of a contextual aside, between quantum mechanics and cosmology, the words “universe”, “multiverse”, and “observable universe” mean at least 10 different things, depending on who you ask. People often say the Multiverse comes from Hugh Everett. But what they are calling the multiverse, Everett called “universal wave function”, or “universe”. How did Everett’s universe become the Multiverse? DeWitt came along and emphasized some part of the wave function branching into different worlds. So, if you’re following, one Universe, many worlds. Over the next few decades, this idea was popularized as having “many parallel universes”, which is obviously inaccurate. Well, a Scottish chap decided to correct this. He stated the Universe was the Universal Wave Function, where it was “a complete one”, because that’s what “uni” means. And that our perceived worlds of various objects is a “multiverse”. One Universe, many Multiverses. Again, the “parallel universes” idea seemed cooler, so as it became more popular the Multiverse became one and the universe became many. What’s my point? The use of these words is legitimate fiasco, and I suggest we abandon them altogether.)
If these claims are found to be palatable, what do they suggest?
I propose, respectfully and humbly as I can imagine there may be compelling alternatives presented here, that in the 21st century, we make a decision about which concepts are necessary, which term we will use to describe that concept, and respectfully leave the remaining terms for the domain of poetry.
Here are the words I think we need:
reality
model
absolute
relative
subjective
objective
measurement
observer
With these terms I feel we can construct a concise metaphysical framework, consistent with the great rationalists of history, and that accurately described Everett’s “Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics”.
Absolute reality is what is. It is relative to no observer. It is real prior to measurement.
Subjective reality is what is, relative to a single observer. It exists at measurement.
Objective reality is the model relative to all observers. It exists post-measurement.
Everett’s Relative State formulation, is roughly this:
The wave function is the “absolute state” of the model
The wave function contains an observer and their measurement apparatus
An observer makes a measurements and records the result in a memory
those measurement records are the “relative state” of the model
Here we see that the words multiverse and universe are abandoned for absolute and relative states, which is actually the language used in the Relative State Formulation.
My conclusion then, for you consideration and comment, is that a technical view of reality can be attained by having a select set of terms, and this view is not only consistent with themes of philosophy (which I didn’t really explain) but also the proper framework in which to interpret quantum mechanics (ala Everett).
(I’m not sure how familiar everyone here is with Everett specifically or not. His thesis depended on “automatically function machines” that make measurements with sensory gear and record them. After receiving his PhD, he left theoretical physics, and had a life long fascination with computer vision and computer hearing. That suggests to me, the reason his papers have been largely confounding to the general physicists, is because they didn’t realize the extent to which Everett really thought he could mathematically model an observer.)
I should note, it may clarify things to add another term “truth”, though this would in general be taken as an analog of “real”. For example, if something is absolute true, then it is of absolute reality. If something is objectively true, then it is of objective reality. The word “knowledge” in this sense is a poetic word for objective truth, understood on the premise that objective truth is not absolute truth.
May I humbly suggest that you learn more about the issues before suggesting weird linguistic reforms filled with applause lights?
That is a very good suggestion.
I guess I am pretty confused. And as I said, I’d be very open to the proper way to view such things.
It seems we’ve got one group of words (reality, universe, multiverse, world, nature,..) and another group of words (experience, and consciousness, and mind) and I am very confused at what each of these words refer to, and how they are related.
Is there something the way of a standard lexicon for that you can point me to?
I think one solution is to break it down, first beginning with only reality. We can then split reality into absolute reality and relative reality, which correspond to the absolute states and relative states of Everett’s model.
At this point, we haven’t made any distinct deviations from what our most general physics models are, nor from the traditions of philosophy (Kant, Plato, Leibniz, ect ect).
Has a mistep been made?
For the record, when Newton essentially defined the study of physics, he said “it will be convenient to distinguish reality into absolute and relative.” I’m paraphrasing by using “reality” where he said “time and space”. My point is the consistency of my suggestions with physics and philosophy and rational though in general are not some casual comment, but the consequence of an inquirey of the type you suggest.
If you want to discuss the nature of reality using a similar lexicon to what philosophers use, I recommend consulting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/
I have a very strong philosophical background. I’ve discussed many of those topics with the authors.
Basically, what I’m trying to do is draw the attention to something that is usually missed by people engaging in these topics.
That is: absolute is not objective.
There is a fundamental disconnect with the way most people organize truth and reality.
They do no have clear concepts of objective and absolute. The sequence on how to use words, is basically 6 parables that state words are not absolute. It’s such a simple point, but most people can look right at that sentence, and not have the foggiest clue what it means.
Traditionally (in the history of philosophy) the Rationalist is the lone defender of the distinction between objective and absolute.
I’m curious if that tradition is held up by contemporary rationalists.
It may help if you stop focusing on words which seem to be tripping you up when they are used in different contexts. The word “rationalist” means very different things in different context. Don’t conflate “rationalist” in the strict philosophical sense with rationalist in the sense meant generally on LW.
Yeah, I made a huge mistake.
First, regarding word usage, http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human%27s_Guide_to_Words is a good sequence to start with, assuming you haven’t read it yet.
Second, there is no universally accepted rationalist ontology. Some believe in Everett’s worlds, others don’t. A new interpretation, Interacting Many Worlds, seems to be gaining popularity. Also, not everyone here is a physical realist, so the same term “absolute reality” would mean different things to different people. And pushing Everett (which might well be proven a less-than-useful model at some point) is certainly a separate issue from standardizing the terminology.
On a mildly related point, you seem to consider “absolute reality” without regard to the observers being a part of it. This AIXI-like dualism fails once you dig a bit deeper. So8res talks about it in his recent post in Main about decision theories. Consider reading his posts.
Thank you for thet pointers.
My paragraph on QM got dense there and tried to cram a lot into a sidenote, which deserves more of an explanation.
I’m not advocating Many Worlds, which was something that DeWitt introduced.
Everett’s Relative State Formulation hinges on the difference between an absolute state (which is quantumly indetermine) and a relative state (which is a determinate measurement record produced by a neural net operating on the physics of the model).
Hugh Everett’s general model doesn’t predict “parallel worlds”. He predicted the measurement records acheived without the wave function collapsing are the same as what you would get if you apply the “special rule” of collapsing the wave function.
So when AIXI says something like this:
This would actually be in direct violation of Everett’s Relative State Formulation, which says there can be no special rules besides the physics engine that produces a measurement. Just as the Copenhagen had a special collapse event for a measurment, here is a special line of code (presumably) to initiate the measurement. In Everett’s views, the measurement must occur as an interaction according to the physics engine.
Now, “physical” is not a word I used in my original post. It is a word Everett used however. A purely physical observer interacting with its object in a purely physical way. I think it is important to understand that no metaphysical implication is made by the use of the word physical, except to say that it must be capable of being described by physics (ie, part of the physics engine).
That’s not really how word usages spread in English. Policing usage is almost a guaranteed failure. What would work much better would be for you to use these words consistently with your ideals, and then if doing so helps you achieve things or write things that people want to mimic, they will also mimic your words. Compare to how this community has adopted all manner of jargon due to the influence of EY’s weirdly-written but thought-reshaping Sequences! SSC is now spreading Yvain’s linguistic habits among us, too, in a similar way: by creating new associations between them and some good ideas.
Yes, indeed. And I hope I have and do.
However, how would I ever know if my use of “reality” is exactly what others mean by “universe” or “nature”, if I didn’t ask the question. How do you put reality together? Where does meaurement fit in? How does objectivity get accounted for? What does such a view have in common with physics and philosophy contemporarily and historically?
I guess that’s where I was headed with this discussion. Compare the structure of reality I’ve come up with to others here.
This is not an unreasonable question to ask, and I believe you are referring to an Ontology. OpenCyc is probably the best one of many that does this, though it has its own criticisms.
There are many other ontologies and I did a short summary when I was trying to find an answer the same question myself.
I think what is interesting, is my ontology has 8 or 9 words, and there is no concept of all about physical objects.
Are we actually intending on building AI that uses physical objects as absolutes in the ontology we give them?
That seems to programmatically preclude the possibility of an Enlightened AI, which is basically the solution to Friendly AI.
No language has two words that mean exactly the same thing. No two languages have words that mean exactly the same thing. There will always be differences in connotation, and the edge cases will change slightly. Also, the meaning of each word shifts over time.
Killer Whale, Orca. I give you these do have connotations, but in general, we’re talking about one name that is decidedly technical, and one that is colloquial, common, or poetic and dramatic.
Do we need Cosmos, Nature, Universe, World, Being, Existence, if we have “reality”? If so, what is the argument for them?
One thing to keep into consideration is that what I say about “mind” and “consciousness” being redundant terms, is that this doesn’t necessarily imply that we have redundant terms for apples and oranges.
You can hold an apple in your hand, and bite it. It’s pretty easy to get a single term for apple, when you get taste the difference between an apple and an orange.
Can you “taste” the difference between mind and consciousness? Maybe the redundancy of terms for this particular concept is only evidence of how tricky this concept actually is, unlike “orange”.
I’m reminded of Lojban which is a constructed language designed to be unambiguous. I think there’s an underemphasis on semantics in a lot of fields. Errors like this should just not happen. I don’t see much reason to require it outside of academia however. Where would life be without double entendre? Also, I don’t think you realize how many different definitions of model there are.
If you’re never ambiguous, your vocabulary is too large.
Leaving aside “Model” as a proper name, I think there is just one concept there, specialised in many different ways.
E-minimal language aims to use set of (human) root concepts and thereby get away with ~300 one-syllable words which can be combined to form any concept conceivable. It is actually possible to use it to talk about arbitrary topics. But it is not an efficient or fluid language. Some constructions needed to express simple things are unpractical in everyday use.
Are these two statement contradictory:
“Words are not absolute. Words are objective.”
Or are they both true?
Now, I’m not saying words are the end all to be all.
But in the history of mankind it seems there are two types of people.
The common man, and the rational philosopher.
And throughout history, the only time there seems to be a clear, coherent distinction between “absolute” truth and “objective” truth, is when the rational philosopher decides it’s time to correct the common man’s confusion between them.
The common man seems to think “objective” means “independent of a mind”. That as our understanding changes, it has no affect on objective truth or objective reality.
However, that means the knowledge we do have might be completely wrong, as tomorrow we have new theories.
Therefore, to the common man, objectivity is some unattainable ideal.
The issue is “independent of a mind” is ambiguous.There are two types of independence.
Not dependent on a single mind, and not dependent on a mind at all.
How it works is something like this.
Subjective is dependent on a single mind.
Objective is independent a single mind, but dependent on all minds
Absolute is independent minds
In the sequence about how to use words, there is some folksy advice and not taking words too seriously. That said, if we have a proper understanding of absolute and objective, then we gain the understanding that every single word (besides absolute, relative, objective, and subjective) is fair game.
Personally, I’ve struggled to find people whose eyes don’t glaze over when you say something like “objective != absolute”.
I thought “This idea is historically called rationalism, I wonder if contemporary rationalists will understand”.
It seems I’ve been banned from starting new topics now. So I guess not.
Your ability to “start new topics” depends on your karma (local reputation currency). At the moment you have negative karma and so cannot make new top-level posts.