Intensional definitions work if we think we can "fence off" our ontologies to localised domains - if we're only worried about discussing a theory of some sample space. The mistake this article makes from that perspective is that he tries to give the definition of Life; something intensional definition proponents might discard as a silly idea anyway.
I don't think the search for a single definition of the word "Life" is a fruitful endeavour, even within the field of Evolutionary Biology. (A Doctor, for instance, will have an equally technical but distinct understanding of "living" in accordance with the use to which that notion is going to be put)
Perhaps we are interested in focusing on the evolution of a particular genus of plant. In this case, our theories may be overdetermined if we insist that it should account for how living plants have something in common with humans and something distinguishing it from this wine bottle.
On the other hand, if we think that we should restrict what we say about living things in this model because of the possibility of treating digital life, then this might well negatively impact what we can do in this theory. I don't mean any kind of ethical restriction; I just mean that weakening assumptions about what it takes for a plant to be considered alive could skew our models of how they react and respond to environmental effects.
The search for a "single definition" through consensus is a sign of very bad metaphysics if we have importantly distinct notions at work. If this is taken seriously, we should be looking for philosophers of biology to fire for not doing their job properly.
+1, but I'm not convinced that your point about computers is "a good thing" per se. Computers are tremendously enabling for people with Aspergers, and I don't doubt that it gives people independence and self-governance in a way that is life-affirming and incredibly positive. The problem is that this very enabling is what creates social fragmentation.
Externalising the way we interact with the world is great when we externalise correctly. However, the epistemic gap to the world is always very difficult to bridge, and the problem with such externalisation is that it is so easy to get things wrong. For an example of doing it incorrectly, look at extremist religion. For a (very salient) example of doing it incorrectly online, look at 4-chan.
... people with Asperger around the world are trying HARD to demonstrate that they can behave as normal as anybody else...
It strikes me that this is a really strange thing to say. Surely it is exactly the nature of Asperger's syndrome that they NEED to try hard BECAUSE their natural ability to grasp what is "normal" is different to the other people they interact with!
If your challenge was "he shouldn't be able to avoid prosecution on the grounds of his ability to perceive social standards", then the question is raised as to what the relationship between responsible agency and the comprehension of social standards is. We learn to understand what is right and wrong through our interactions with the social world around us, because that's the feedback mechanism - we get praised as kids for good behaviour and scolded for bad. Although law is a separate mechanism, concepts of consequence and contract (on which theories of law are often grounded) are both learned through the same kinds of channels.
Obviously, Asperger's entails a difficulty with such cognitive mechanisms, rather than a complete failure of them, so people nonethless retain responsibility for their actions. The question is to what extent this responsibility can be diminished in proportion with that difficulty, and there is a positive liberty argument to be made to the effect that you can't be held as a fully reasonable agent under the law when there are blatantly obvious consequences for your actions that you have never learned to formulate. That's also the essence of arguments for public education and not giving kids voting rights.
You are entirely entitled to feel offended that the position hasn't simply been immediately ruled out. After all, it suggests that being on the autism spectrum might affect one's entitlement to equal treatment under the law. But that doesn't make the position wrong. Consider cases of people with severe low-functioning Autism (which, it should be pointed out, are woefully neglected in the general media beyond childhood) - these are people with serious needs that they are not in a position to fulfil for themselves, and it often falls to family members to provide the difficult and expensive care that they require. To state straight-off that the law should be blind to such situations is just callous; it at least deserves consideration.
Finally, it should be entirely anticipated that people with Asperger's syndrome might have trouble seeing why the position could be right. That's what the condition is. So I'm sorry, but I think your judgement of "irresponsibility" is premature. We can't just throw out the argument of diminished responsibility on the grounds of sentiment or intuition. It's a proper legal discussion that needs to be had, and perhaps an important question of moral philosophy too.
There's a problem with this perspective, which is that you assume that collective action must respect some sort of obligation to everybody else. This is a matter of dispute, especially if the happiness of the many comes at the expense of very few.
"Fixing the society" often involves fucking some people over in the short term. Specifically, those people that currently benefit from the hacks put in place to integrate them into the system. A lot of chopping and changing has gone in to establish the comfortable status quo, and any radical overhaul will naturally need to go through a similar process. The transition from "commute" to "accessible working" will not happen immediately, and almost certainly comes at a considerable cost that will rarely be perfectly evenly paid by every member of the populace.
It may well be the case that if you're one of the people that get fucked over, and you're not prepared to adjust to meet the changes involved or tolerate the migration period, your society will simply deny you any say in the matter and make the changes anyway. We've witnessed this in the scapegoating of minorities in revolutionary states and more extreme political movements throughout history, and examples of little guys being walked over by big business ventures are everywhere. Given your response:
Frankly, everyone else can go fuck themselves if they believe I'd sacrifice between one and three hours every day because they can't fix the society so they expect me to fix their problems for them...
... I wonder whether you're quite prepared for the full extent to which "everyone else can go fuck themselves" can be reciprocated during radical change. Maybe they'll just take your driving license, dig up your road and broadcast your name across the tabloid papers as a "Pollution Sympathiser" if that's what it takes to stop you driving. Because, actually, you personally getting to work is not necessarily their problem. The early stages of big projects like you're encouraging are more often about long-term and big-picture strategic issues, and when that's the case, individual people are generally collateral damage. Perhaps that might include yourself.
My final sentence there is more emotive than I would have preferred, and probably undermines much of what I just said. Nonetheless, what value there is in its assertion, I would retain where possible.
I don't think this is supposed to contribute a positive philosophy of Logic at all. In fact it seems distinctly Naturalist - the notions of Model and Proof we consider (especially the frame semantics that much of current logic investigates) are to be discarded as ungrounded in "directly observable phenomena".
This is a reaction against the analytical turn in philosophy itself - preferring to reject semantics and conceptual analysis as unhelpful areas of investigation while happily indulging in the vaguaries of natural language. As a logician, of course, I think it threatens to undermine Philosophy's one remaining avenue of academic respectability, and the one that it alone investigates.
However, this is nothing new. The American academic establishment has been trying to undermine formal philosophy for decades. Comparing the possibility for establishing impersonal clarity the latter suggests with the meritocratic culture of manipulation and half-truth in the politics and media of the former, one can perfectly well see why.
To summarise this suggestion, 0.999... is a number between 0.999... and 1.
I personally suggest taking this as a reductio of 0.999... . Maybe 0.999... does = 1, if the semantics of recurring decimals so describes it, but that being the case, I see little reason to ever use 0.999... over 1, save to deliberately obfuscate.
The only reasons I can see behind the doomsaying are sour grapes (I don't want to buy a new TV), elitism (I enjoy films at a deeper level than visual gimmickry), or just plain lack of imagination. I want to go back sometime and dredge up some anti-HD posts... but it'd be easier to just do a text replace on this thread.
HD is still a marketing con, designed to maintain profit margins, however much people might buy into it. 3D is no different, just another feature to draw you to parting with your cash. Calling a refusal to buy into it "sour grapes" strikes me as the kind of spineless groupthink involved in getting your parents to buy you the latest cool toy so you can show it off for an hour on the playground.
Enjoy films however you want, but each time you yield unquestioningly to a new gimmick, your cash conditions manufacturers to bring out any old modification just to keep you sedated. It's a regressive spiral whose only ultimate contribution will be a huge waste of time and resources. But hey, at least you'll have your 72-inch 3D HD TV to comfort you.
Being socially deficient doesn't make you incapable of determining right and wrong...
Erm... with all due respect, if one is socially deficient to a sufficient extent, then where do they learn to distinguish between right and wrong? If I can't pick up on the cues and hints of others that I've done something inappropriate, what feedback have I to adjust my actions in future?
And incidentally, I dislike the conceptual unification going on here between "illegal" and "wrong". The idea of an Injust Law is not an oxymoron; sometimes, criminality isn't a bad thing.
Though such is probably an overly heavyweight argument to cover a guy looking for aliens on American computer systems.
Great, I'm moving to Sweden and starting The Real Pirate Party. Our platform will include roaming the seas and capturing merchant ships and this Swedish law will grant us complete immunity from prosecution!
Privateers be scummy dogs of the state, not Real Pirates, ya yella'-livered land-lubber!
Should we be concerned that only 30% of scientists adopt a position of agnosticism towards matters of religion? Surely in the absence of reproducible evidence either way, the scientific position is to be non-committal?
... sounds like a bleak and dismal place if an accurate shot and the ability to hunt powerful demons are the kind of skills we look for in the next generation of leaders.
Getting a product to market with a new technology can advance the adoption of a standard.
It is, arguably, the only way to advance it. No matter how efficient a standard is at its job, it doesn't become "Standard" until successful implementation.
Of course. How do you suppose the guys at Saskatchewan made this discovery in the first place? It doesn't take a rocket scientist hooped up on smack to work that one out.
On the flip-side of the coin, though, this could potentially lead to a link between joints and the growth of cancerous cells, which would effectively eliminate its chances of legalisation.
I get the feeling that the Gaming sector is being once again victimised simply because they're a relatively new target. Most of those undertaking the surveys are probably not incredibly familiar with the industry as a whole, for one ("We never had those new-fangled contraptions in my day..."). But you can hardly say they're unfamiliar with violence/explicit imagery, can you? Perhaps this is more of a lunge at a method of transmitting that (already somewhat questionable) content in a format that the policy-makers can't understand? After all, nothing makes people more insecure than something they know nothing about...
Perhaps what these watchdogs need to do is to take a step back and look from the broader perspective. Try asking any of those questions to Magazine columnists, Television writers/producers, film directors or whatever; imagine . Shouldn't we be looking at the entertainment industry as a whole rather than zoning in on just one (albeit popular) section?
... this could become a pretty effective source of unintentional entertainment. Combine excessive corporate advertising with the destructive physics of Vivendi's HL2 engine and you could have a few very satisfying moments of rage against the machine.
Lose another fistful of change to a faulty Coke vendor? Take out your anger by putting a HE Grenade through one in your next CS Source session.
I could see that being extremely theraputic.
>__>;
Slashdot Mirror
Intensional definitions work if we think we can "fence off" our ontologies to localised domains - if we're only worried about discussing a theory of some sample space. The mistake this article makes from that perspective is that he tries to give the definition of Life; something intensional definition proponents might discard as a silly idea anyway.
I don't think the search for a single definition of the word "Life" is a fruitful endeavour, even within the field of Evolutionary Biology. (A Doctor, for instance, will have an equally technical but distinct understanding of "living" in accordance with the use to which that notion is going to be put)
Perhaps we are interested in focusing on the evolution of a particular genus of plant. In this case, our theories may be overdetermined if we insist that it should account for how living plants have something in common with humans and something distinguishing it from this wine bottle.
On the other hand, if we think that we should restrict what we say about living things in this model because of the possibility of treating digital life, then this might well negatively impact what we can do in this theory. I don't mean any kind of ethical restriction; I just mean that weakening assumptions about what it takes for a plant to be considered alive could skew our models of how they react and respond to environmental effects.
The search for a "single definition" through consensus is a sign of very bad metaphysics if we have importantly distinct notions at work. If this is taken seriously, we should be looking for philosophers of biology to fire for not doing their job properly.
+1, but I'm not convinced that your point about computers is "a good thing" per se. Computers are tremendously enabling for people with Aspergers, and I don't doubt that it gives people independence and self-governance in a way that is life-affirming and incredibly positive. The problem is that this very enabling is what creates social fragmentation.
Externalising the way we interact with the world is great when we externalise correctly. However, the epistemic gap to the world is always very difficult to bridge, and the problem with such externalisation is that it is so easy to get things wrong. For an example of doing it incorrectly, look at extremist religion. For a (very salient) example of doing it incorrectly online, look at 4-chan.
... people with Asperger around the world are trying HARD to demonstrate that they can behave as normal as anybody else...
It strikes me that this is a really strange thing to say. Surely it is exactly the nature of Asperger's syndrome that they NEED to try hard BECAUSE their natural ability to grasp what is "normal" is different to the other people they interact with!
If your challenge was "he shouldn't be able to avoid prosecution on the grounds of his ability to perceive social standards", then the question is raised as to what the relationship between responsible agency and the comprehension of social standards is. We learn to understand what is right and wrong through our interactions with the social world around us, because that's the feedback mechanism - we get praised as kids for good behaviour and scolded for bad. Although law is a separate mechanism, concepts of consequence and contract (on which theories of law are often grounded) are both learned through the same kinds of channels.
Obviously, Asperger's entails a difficulty with such cognitive mechanisms, rather than a complete failure of them, so people nonethless retain responsibility for their actions. The question is to what extent this responsibility can be diminished in proportion with that difficulty, and there is a positive liberty argument to be made to the effect that you can't be held as a fully reasonable agent under the law when there are blatantly obvious consequences for your actions that you have never learned to formulate. That's also the essence of arguments for public education and not giving kids voting rights.
You are entirely entitled to feel offended that the position hasn't simply been immediately ruled out. After all, it suggests that being on the autism spectrum might affect one's entitlement to equal treatment under the law. But that doesn't make the position wrong. Consider cases of people with severe low-functioning Autism (which, it should be pointed out, are woefully neglected in the general media beyond childhood) - these are people with serious needs that they are not in a position to fulfil for themselves, and it often falls to family members to provide the difficult and expensive care that they require. To state straight-off that the law should be blind to such situations is just callous; it at least deserves consideration.
Finally, it should be entirely anticipated that people with Asperger's syndrome might have trouble seeing why the position could be right. That's what the condition is. So I'm sorry, but I think your judgement of "irresponsibility" is premature. We can't just throw out the argument of diminished responsibility on the grounds of sentiment or intuition. It's a proper legal discussion that needs to be had, and perhaps an important question of moral philosophy too.
I might, but only if you've had all your shots...
If you've had yours, what's the problem?
There's a problem with this perspective, which is that you assume that collective action must respect some sort of obligation to everybody else. This is a matter of dispute, especially if the happiness of the many comes at the expense of very few.
"Fixing the society" often involves fucking some people over in the short term. Specifically, those people that currently benefit from the hacks put in place to integrate them into the system. A lot of chopping and changing has gone in to establish the comfortable status quo, and any radical overhaul will naturally need to go through a similar process. The transition from "commute" to "accessible working" will not happen immediately, and almost certainly comes at a considerable cost that will rarely be perfectly evenly paid by every member of the populace.
It may well be the case that if you're one of the people that get fucked over, and you're not prepared to adjust to meet the changes involved or tolerate the migration period, your society will simply deny you any say in the matter and make the changes anyway. We've witnessed this in the scapegoating of minorities in revolutionary states and more extreme political movements throughout history, and examples of little guys being walked over by big business ventures are everywhere. Given your response:
Frankly, everyone else can go fuck themselves if they believe I'd sacrifice between one and three hours every day because they can't fix the society so they expect me to fix their problems for them...
... I wonder whether you're quite prepared for the full extent to which "everyone else can go fuck themselves" can be reciprocated during radical change. Maybe they'll just take your driving license, dig up your road and broadcast your name across the tabloid papers as a "Pollution Sympathiser" if that's what it takes to stop you driving. Because, actually, you personally getting to work is not necessarily their problem. The early stages of big projects like you're encouraging are more often about long-term and big-picture strategic issues, and when that's the case, individual people are generally collateral damage. Perhaps that might include yourself.
My final sentence there is more emotive than I would have preferred, and probably undermines much of what I just said. Nonetheless, what value there is in its assertion, I would retain where possible.
I don't think this is supposed to contribute a positive philosophy of Logic at all. In fact it seems distinctly Naturalist - the notions of Model and Proof we consider (especially the frame semantics that much of current logic investigates) are to be discarded as ungrounded in "directly observable phenomena".
This is a reaction against the analytical turn in philosophy itself - preferring to reject semantics and conceptual analysis as unhelpful areas of investigation while happily indulging in the vaguaries of natural language. As a logician, of course, I think it threatens to undermine Philosophy's one remaining avenue of academic respectability, and the one that it alone investigates.
However, this is nothing new. The American academic establishment has been trying to undermine formal philosophy for decades. Comparing the possibility for establishing impersonal clarity the latter suggests with the meritocratic culture of manipulation and half-truth in the politics and media of the former, one can perfectly well see why.
I personally suggest taking this as a reductio of 0.999... . Maybe 0.999... does = 1, if the semantics of recurring decimals so describes it, but that being the case, I see little reason to ever use 0.999... over 1, save to deliberately obfuscate.
The only reasons I can see behind the doomsaying are sour grapes (I don't want to buy a new TV), elitism (I enjoy films at a deeper level than visual gimmickry), or just plain lack of imagination. I want to go back sometime and dredge up some anti-HD posts... but it'd be easier to just do a text replace on this thread.
HD is still a marketing con, designed to maintain profit margins, however much people might buy into it. 3D is no different, just another feature to draw you to parting with your cash. Calling a refusal to buy into it "sour grapes" strikes me as the kind of spineless groupthink involved in getting your parents to buy you the latest cool toy so you can show it off for an hour on the playground.
Enjoy films however you want, but each time you yield unquestioningly to a new gimmick, your cash conditions manufacturers to bring out any old modification just to keep you sedated. It's a regressive spiral whose only ultimate contribution will be a huge waste of time and resources. But hey, at least you'll have your 72-inch 3D HD TV to comfort you.
Being socially deficient doesn't make you incapable of determining right and wrong...
Erm... with all due respect, if one is socially deficient to a sufficient extent, then where do they learn to distinguish between right and wrong? If I can't pick up on the cues and hints of others that I've done something inappropriate, what feedback have I to adjust my actions in future?
And incidentally, I dislike the conceptual unification going on here between "illegal" and "wrong". The idea of an Injust Law is not an oxymoron; sometimes, criminality isn't a bad thing.
Though such is probably an overly heavyweight argument to cover a guy looking for aliens on American computer systems.
Some of them looked pretty up to me.
Great, I'm moving to Sweden and starting The Real Pirate Party. Our platform will include roaming the seas and capturing merchant ships and this Swedish law will grant us complete immunity from prosecution!
Privateers be scummy dogs of the state, not Real Pirates, ya yella'-livered land-lubber!
Should we be concerned that only 30% of scientists adopt a position of agnosticism towards matters of religion? Surely in the absence of reproducible evidence either way, the scientific position is to be non-committal?
... sounds like a bleak and dismal place if an accurate shot and the ability to hunt powerful demons are the kind of skills we look for in the next generation of leaders.
Just a sec... *Rolls* *Natural 20* Yeah, I totally agree.
Getting a product to market with a new technology can advance the adoption of a standard.
It is, arguably, the only way to advance it. No matter how efficient a standard is at its job, it doesn't become "Standard" until successful implementation.
No, it's just the linguistic analysis of rocket science after having been translated into English by non-native-English-speakers. Much less complex.
Of course. How do you suppose the guys at Saskatchewan made this discovery in the first place? It doesn't take a rocket scientist hooped up on smack to work that one out. On the flip-side of the coin, though, this could potentially lead to a link between joints and the growth of cancerous cells, which would effectively eliminate its chances of legalisation.
I get the feeling that the Gaming sector is being once again victimised simply because they're a relatively new target. Most of those undertaking the surveys are probably not incredibly familiar with the industry as a whole, for one ("We never had those new-fangled contraptions in my day..."). But you can hardly say they're unfamiliar with violence/explicit imagery, can you? Perhaps this is more of a lunge at a method of transmitting that (already somewhat questionable) content in a format that the policy-makers can't understand? After all, nothing makes people more insecure than something they know nothing about... Perhaps what these watchdogs need to do is to take a step back and look from the broader perspective. Try asking any of those questions to Magazine columnists, Television writers/producers, film directors or whatever; imagine . Shouldn't we be looking at the entertainment industry as a whole rather than zoning in on just one (albeit popular) section?
... this could become a pretty effective source of unintentional entertainment. Combine excessive corporate advertising with the destructive physics of Vivendi's HL2 engine and you could have a few very satisfying moments of rage against the machine.
Lose another fistful of change to a faulty Coke vendor? Take out your anger by putting a HE Grenade through one in your next CS Source session.
I could see that being extremely theraputic. >__>;