User talk:Lacatosias/Archive5

Gottlob Frege=

Just to let you know, I've taken up your translation request for Gottlob Frege and also converted it to the new format. You can see how it's progressing here. --Lord Gravitron ^{Message | Contrib} 13:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Good work so far. Indeed, I've already learned some interesting things. I'll try to help you out with the English grammar and/or specialized philosophical notions if I can get the chance. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Request for input

If you have a moment:

On the Analytic/Anglophone and Continental Philosophy article, or, more specifically, its deletion page.

Thank you. 271828182 18:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

A moment? DO I HAVE A ****DAMNED MOMENT??!! This is HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!! I ordered an 2M ADSL connection from the semi-state controlled quasi-monolopy Telecom Italia over TWO MONTHS ago. I had my IDSN connection removed and asked for the DSL conncetion to be installed immeditally as an upgrade. Being a typical economically and technologically spoiled American, having been profoundly indoctrinated into the glorious, hedonistic mass-consumerist fast-food, fast-service, cpustumet-first culture which now brings tears to my eyes as I think back on it with regret, I naturally expected the damn thing to be installed the same day. Noho, ladies and gents!! It don't work that way over here. I'm still waiting. I bought an 56k dial-up modem just to get back on line and read my email, etc...while I wait another 7 or 8 decades for these f***ing Commies to resolve some "piccoli disguidi nella rete" or "problemantici amministrativi!!" I can't tell the full (horror) story right now. This modem keeps hanging up on me!! They just disconneted again, for christ's sake!! I can't take it. NUTS!! Fuck this country!!--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Mind/Brain

I know, I know... why is there a mind/body or mind/brain problem, and not a digestion/stomach problem? I think the problem is mostly one of language and mental training. For our entire lives, we talk about "ourselves" as if we are seperate from "our bodies". "I have a toothache"... how are *you* any different from the part of you that feels the pain, or from that other part of you that is generating the pain, your tooth? But, this difficulty is not something we have language to deal with, and so we don't really know how to address it. "My tooth hurts" is better, but in some sense, it still treats the objects of sensation as just that, objects... external and seperate from us. On the other hand, I don't know what English formulation I would like better, so I find that I am stuck with an inherently dualistic description vocabulary, which leads even a died-in-the-wool professional neuroscientist, who spends his days looking at brain images and trying to understand how those bits of the brain provide the mechanisms for mental activity, to talk about mind and brain as if they are different. How did Charles and Boyle change the vocabulary so that we can now talk about heat and mean kinetic energy without any implicit dualism... Oh, that's right, they never really succeeded either. See "The Betty Crocker Theory of the Mind" by the Churchlands here: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/church.neuro.html

ps: It's good to see you back, even if your internet sucks! Edhubbard 15:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that was not quite my point. But, then, you neuros do tend to be far too reductionist/eleiminsativst even for my physicalist tastes. The problem is that if one knows absolutely everything there is to know about the stomach, then eo ipso one knows everything that there can possibly be to know about digestion. On the other hand, along the lines of Frank Jackson's famous knwoledge argument, if one eventually knows everything single detail of electoehcimcal interactions, actions potentionals, signaling, precial mathemtiecal equatiosn to predict the future dvelopments of synaptic conncetions and so on, one will still not KNOW something fundamental: what was it like to be in that brain state (e.g. seeing red) for that particular body at that particualr time in that particular moment.This sensation is extraodinarily context-dependent and therefore defies abtrsaction and mathematical generalization. Seeing red-for-y-at-t-in-l is not the same as seeing red-for-y-at-t1-in-l much seeing red-for-q-at-t-in-p, etc.. You and I may be wired up in the exact same neuroligical configutation, and yet the red that this body sees is what that body has learned to call green and viceversa. The red that this body sees today is almosy certainly not the same red that this body experienced 10 years ago and yet the wavelengths are exactly the same. Anyway, that's one problem. And I don'0t think it's just a question of computational power or of language. Not one of ontology either, of course. I think it is fundamnetally a question of epistemological limitation in principle and nor just as a computational/practical matter.

Anyway, my point was that most of you neuros are so damned confused and confusing on the matters that you can't even get basic stuff sorted out: is depression, for example, a mental or a phsycial disorder. If it is mental, what does this mean?? Where is it? etc.. in my ASS, my teeth, my toes? Why is it a disease or disorder? What exactly has gone wrong with the so-called mind process, how is this fixed, how did it arise,etc. etc,,?? If it is physical (as you must surely agree), why is is categorized as a mental disorder and treated by pschyistrists and phychologiists (i.e. MIND and BEHAVIOR fixers, whatever the hell that means) rather than BRAIN doctors (i,e, neurologists). Is it a disease like diabetes, encaphalitis, Parkinsons, cancer, etc...? If so, why can't it be tested for and localized like these other diseases instead of being first described in terms of undesirable behavioral manifetsations and then controlled by drugs which are determined to work because they have allegedly relieved the symptoms (perhaps by pharmcologically lobotomizing the patient??). What if there are diseases which have not yet been discovered which mimic the behaviroal manifestations of various allegedly pshchyolgocial disorders? What if there are infinitely many and they are all different one from another? How many people may have been locked up, labeled as looney and treated with the wrong medications, even killed, as a conseeuqnce of this fact.

PS: sorry for the extreme sloppiness, but I'm still on this 56 connecetion which lasts for two minutes and I don't have time to type carefully. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

"The mind-body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship, if any, that obtains between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes.[1] One of the aims of philosophers who work in this area is to explain how a supposedly non-material mind can influence a material body and vice-versa."

It's not a non-material mind, but electrochemical stimuli that correlates with Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factors in respect to evolution over very small, or very large sequences of time. This process, or the mind-body problem, can be explained through science. The nature of this article is in strong regard to philosophy, but doesn't the scientific method correlate with philosophy? Isn't rational logical thought fit to encompass all of life/science? --User:InternetHero 14:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, and grass is green in China, too. So what? I agree with part of what you say, I'm what they call a "physicalist". I don't belive that you have quite identified the neural correlate of consciouscess though, and even if you did you still would not have explained why such correlation od neural phenonema with a cerafully restritcted notion of consciouness as awarness gives rise to "qualitative experiences" by any stretch of the imagination. In any case, neither your opions and not mine belong in an the article. Please read WP:NPOV, [WP:Verifiability]], and so on ver, very carefully. You should be ably to see why your edits to POM are inappapropate. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[still would not have explained why such correlation of neural phenonema with a carefully restritcted notion of consciouness as awarness gives rise to "qualitative experiences"]

Simple. Variety of things. For instance, zinc ions have been proven to improve mathematical ability. Woman on the other hand, have much less concentrations through their BDNF. Synaptic plasticity is another variable. Cell potential. Action potential threashold. etc.,

If you knew as much about science as me, you'd leave my edit. I know it's hard to have other people give answers to your questions, and perhaps that is why you keep reverting my edits. Neutrality of the situation calls for answers, not more neutrality (unless your Switzerland).

But thats fine, keep reverting, it just gives me more strength to rid the Tyrant of this article which is you - greedily hoarding his/her connection to the article by preventing other people adding to it.

Again: The nature of this article is in strong regard to philosophy, but doesn't the scientific method correlate with philosophy? Isn't rational logical thought fit to encompass all of life/science? --User:InternetHero 14:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Please stop talking cluttering my user page with meanignless pseudoscientific gobbledygook and stuff that is irrelevant to the article. You're edits violate WP:OR. Period. Get it through your head.

I will revert until you leave the article (and my talk page) alone. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Good to have you back

Thanks for the message, must dash (supper is cooking in the pot). Citizendium was awful so I came back here. Some good new guys around. Let's work on something soon. Dbuckner 18:26, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I expected that. Well, I hate to say I told you so, but....I had serious doubts about Citizendium as soon as I realized that one of the leading cranks (hint: starts with a J) on Wikipedia was somehow assigned a role of extraordinary power over there, and had copied over all and only the philosophy/logic/science articles that he/she had substantially contributed to creating (destroying?) on the 'pedia. I could only glance at two or three articles a few days ago before being cut off: not impressed. Like its predecessor, the legendary Nupedia, it seems well on its way toward the infinitely expanding Museum of failed Web experiments. Sanger seems to have the inverse Midas touch. Or maybe there are just too many damned on-line Encyclopedia experiments as it is. The market niche seems to be over-saturated. Whatever. My ADSL connection should be finally installed sometime this week. After that, I hope we can stay in touch and collaborate some more.

--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:30, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It's installed!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! I'm tripping out on this monster!!! 10M!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAHSAGHAZ>GFGggggk YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! HOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO baby!!

Hello

Well, all help gratefully received on Philosophy, Continental philosophy, Analytic philosophy. Pleased you eventually prevailed over the Italian telecommunications system. Dbuckner 12:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Sempre gli stessi mostri sacri. Managgia la miseria!! Those pages are the primary crank-magnets in all of Wikipedia. They are wonderful for those folks who like being intubated through the penis without an anesthetic and lying in a hospital bed in the mental ward under 11 different erroneous medications with the air-conditioning on maximum 24 hours a day, occasionally pissing and shitting in their pants, unable to pick a spoon to eat, for an entire month (something I actually experienced, BTW). Well, ok, it's not quite that bad. But, it's still a mild form of masochism which might end up causing the described scenario. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

No, I meant catheterization, not intubation in the penis, obviously. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Nihilism, etc.

Of course, under the weight of great suffering, one may be drawn, logically, to a variety of conclusions about (monotheistic) theology. The 'nice, all-knowing, all-forceful God' idea is rejected as an absurdity which makes little to no sense of our experience, even as an exercize in speculation. So either some variety of atheism is correct, or one of the following is:

• God is deux ex machina, a befuddled old magician who lends a hand whenever he is able to know of human suffering;
• God is a passive victim, who knows of human suffering always but only able to exert divine force in a limited way;
• God lives in a box under the ocean, and He would mean well if he knew anything or could do anything; and finally,
• God is evil.

They alternately seem plausible in the "hot hour", in between false hopes, cultish paranoia, and medical invasions (I've had my share of all three), but quickly lose all credibility in the "cool hour" when they seem like arbitrary metaphysical tantrums. So up until now, the way that I've reconciled my experiences with my views is "apatheism" (for Kant, "indifferentism"), a kind of agnosticism which appeals to the fundamental point, that it doesn't damn well matter what God is like. Human suffering is what matters, and the allieviation of suffering is the only thing of significance.

Elsewhere, I have termed my view as a kind of "Apollonian existentialism", where the faculty of pattern-recognition is granted as fundamental to the concept of experience, and demands that we change our slogan from "Existence before essence" to "Order before existence". This has led to unhappy personal results, however, of the sad and human sort. Suffice it to say, now I spend my time thinking that perhaps something like fate exists, but rarely ever comes to fruition because I personally am too flawed to be able to do what needs to be done. And I know that the entertainment of such propositions means I'm in the "hot hour", so I can't even trust what I think. But when you can't trust your thoughts, what's the point in thinking at all?

My formal studies are over for now (got my Bachelor's last June). I feel more free, in many ways, to study what I like, and that was always the point in the first place. The credentials are worthless. Now I have a day job, working for nine dollars an hour, for a company too decadent (and stupid) to even put up security cameras; we're robbed all the time.

I've applied again to some graduate schools, we'll see what happens. Almost finished a paper expanding upon Russell's "Power...", and I will publish in a friend's grad journal. Also reading linguistics texts. Lakoff's "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things" is incredibly interesting, albeit too radical to be accepted in mainsteam philosophy of language. (It's a really interesting puzzle to try to fit prototype effects with necessary and sufficient conditions.) When I'm done that, I'll move on to a text on Cognitive Linguistics. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 01:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, those seem to be the alternatives; all of them completely unsatisfactory in one way or another. If god knows of human suffering and can only intervene occasionally (i.e. not onmipotent), his interventions will inevitable be either wholly arbitrary or unjustly preferential toward some privileged part of the human population that he happens to be able to help. He could choose the most worthy sufferers? Only if he knew who these were beforehand. Hence, no free will. Hence, he must have morally privileged certain humans over others at the outset, knowing that they would be rewarded in the end. That's evil.

Any god who only occasionally KNEW about human suffering would be faced with problems of epistemic justification. How does he know that he knows that p and so on. Not worthy of worship, in any case. The deist god is worse: if he can intervene, but chooses not do.....evil. If he chooses to but can't....impotent.

The evil god hypothesis is the most plausible. It has been defended by Quentin Smith in a nice article. Many non-philosophy writers have flirted with this idea throughout history: Leopardi once wrote a strange, semi-satirical piece called "Hymn to Arimane" (e,g, Satan) wherein he describes Ariman as the creator and destroyer, maker of matter and light (or something along those lines). Mauppassant, in his later writings, rebels against the "outrageous and brutal monster" that created us and allows such horrors, etc.... I, personally, tend to vacillate between the view that religion is such a catastrophically destructive phenomenon that I feel obliged to combat it and he sort of apatheism you prefer.

Good to hear that you will continue your studies, in any case. I just finished reading a novel by the Portugese Nobel winner José Saramago called "The Blind". I wish I could go into it further, but something odd is still happening with my connection. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It's interesting to hear of all the views. Certainly it isn't every day that you hear someone say "God is evil". But ultimately, the consequences of adopting a Satanist view are just as unfounded as the other (relevant) possibilities, and they carry the extra burden of being entirely self-destructive. At least faith gives people some marginal hope and pleasure, even if it is just ultimately smoke and mirrors (often for the gain of some shady immoral figures behind the pulpit). Still, as a metaphysical stoic, I'd rather people choose the lesser of two evils, if it comes down to that. Religion is dementia, but it at least allows for the possibility of something greater, by giving an object lesson in dogmatism -- a thing that science cannot do without, so long as it is within a measure of prudence. (Some sociologists of science, Weber I believe, and likely Comte too, believe that science would be impossible without religion. There are even historians of science, like Pierre Duhem, who would argue that many of the best scientists were religious.)

The last Nobel Prize winners in literature I read were Toni Morrisson's "Beloved", Gunter Grass's "Cat and Mouse", and half of GG Marquez's "100 Years of Solitude". I hated the first, and was bored by the second and third. I have to keep reminding myself that Russell won in that category (IIRC), so it can't be all crap... nevertheless...

One of these days I have to read Borges. He's a beloved figure among philosophers, right up there with Phillip K Dick. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 00:35, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I don't often hear the precise words "God is evil", but I have heard many, many people on many occasions (usually after some tragedy or period of great and pointless suffering) say things like "Leave me alone with you preaching. All this is god's fault" and other words to the same effect. Or, directly toward the sky (always the sky god!! and never the tree god, say): "You bastard. How can you (god) allow such things to happen?" Translate to: "How can you (god) be so evil?"

Such rebelliousness goes back to Job, at least, in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In Greece, we have the defiant Prometheus violating the will of Zeus in favor of man. The notion of Satan comes out of the notion of rational rebellion against unfounded totalitarian authority and control. This is the notion of Satan that Leopardi, Giosue Carducci and other liberal moral reformers were invoking. It's not the caricatural creature with horns and pitchfork that inspires people to become serial killers (or some such). Anyway, that notion of Satan as responsible for evil, as evil incarnate, has always seemed to me to lead to several nonsensical results: either he operates at the service of god and, in that case, he/she/it is not responsible for what it does, but god is; or it is independent of god, but, in that case, it must not have been created by god.Then, we have an evil self-creating being with many of the attributes of god....which created man, one or the other or both? This is polytheism, in any case. But this sort of Satan is just an alibi: "the devil did it, not me". "It's that damn dibbil that causes me to slice people's heads off and so on. Or an ancient tactic of religious manipulation: "you're going to hell if you don't believe this, that, and the other."

Devil-worshippers, in the sense you are talking about, are just a bunch of kids who need to feel "cool" and anti-authority, and, out of ignorance, think that this somehow equates with self-destructive and other-destructive behavior.

"Science could not exist without religion". Many anthropologists also seem to share that view. Certain, Sir James Frazer, author of the magnificent The Golden Bough, believed that societies necessarily go through stages: magic, religion, science. Not many people buy that specific thesis anymore. But there might be some reason that religion is a necessary precondition for science: the negative example of dogmatism you suggested, or something more along Neitzchean lines: long periods of struggle and constraint of reason eventually leads to its great flourishing. Too much freedom of though may be harmful to itself.

Though you can't support this with any evidence, I cannot offer a counterexample of some civilization that has had science without religion. The most one can say in that regard, I think, is that science has never existed without religion on this planet. Maybe it will one day. But we will not be here to find out the answer, one way or the other. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, it just seems to me that the indifference to metaphysics is the least arbitrary option among the lot. The anti-theological perspective is at least as valid as the others, and certainly more valid than the "benevolent omnipotent omniscient" perspective. And debating it on metaphysical grounds is pointless: if a man shows me Pascal's wager, I'll point to every other instance where so-called a priori reasoning on matters of probability has led philosophers to folly.

But certain feelings have to be nurtured to live: love and hate being the best examples. And whatever one's philosophical justifications, I cannot imagine anything but a life of hatred for any reactionary perspective. That criticism can be applied to nuanced anti-theology as much as it can be applied to fanboy Satanism. (For that matter, such pragmatic considerations may be applied to politics, philosophical skepticism, academic cynicism, etc. Russell once wrote (in Power: A new Social Analysis) that philosophy is uniquely able to capture a single feeling and then make a world out of it. His point was to warn against the ideological apparatus that nurtures power-seekers (i.e., he thought, the solipsists). His analysis was too simple to be correct, but his general theme was on target. When he later instructs us to be constructive in our efforts, and not just destructive, I can't help but agree, and again can't help but reject any view that is wholly reactionary - on preventative ethical grounds, not epistemic ones.

What you attribute to Frazer sounds exactly like what Comte said. His sociological "positivism" had a law of historical progression, which tried to make sense of things in essentially those terms. Certainly an interesting discussion. I wrote some musings on these themes for Butterflies and Wheels not too long ago, though my history-of-science acumen is not what one might call extensive. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 20:36, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Testing conection for weird typing problems

Ah hahhhhh!! Yes that is much, much better I'd say. Another nonsensical problem resolved. Those 5 years of CS did not go completely towasteregenksdc

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XCVZXCVM KGFMFKDMòù LLDS,MDSALLSADFMK373JMAD ASASDFKMKSAHNSAKSAddsksdkùllk jjl sdfajdsfjsdf

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Ok, so far, so good. We'll see what happens tomorrow with this self-made monster!!

SD

== Not joking == this was written by chungi lal chu chu chu rasiya

No, he's not joking. He gets quite upset if you challenge any of it. I am really trying to stay away, but grisly fascination draws me back. Dbuckner 15:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Can't this fellow be booted off though an RFC or something?--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh that takes ages. There's also the fact that if you react badly to trolls, it's actually your fault for not being patient enought.

PS On the grandmaster of all cranks, he seems to have long gone. I had a good look around in all the corners, and no sign, so far. Dbuckner 14:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

What I saw over there was not very encouraging. It won't replace Wikipedia in this century. I will go out on a limb and predict its collapse in the next six months. Too much like Nupedia. Beside for TRUE experts, in philosophy at least, there is already the SEP, the IEP, the REP, ad infinitum. When I need to read or study from a reliable tertiary resource, I will always turn to these. I suspect this is the case with the vast majority of people. In other areas, Wikipedia doesn't actually do that badly for a tertiary resource. I realized over the break, that one simply shouldn't take this stuff too seriously. Wikipedia is just a convenient sort of portal and summary to other resources all over the net. The point is: one shouldn't use Encyclopedias in the first place. Perhaps Wikipedia is even useful in teaching people that tertiary resources are NOT RELIABLE GUIDES to anything and are no way to conduct serious research. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, and for that reason I am arguing that the philosophy page should be little more than a thread connecting a set of links to subarticles. There is some acceptance for that. Note our friend got a 6 month ban at last - way overdue.

It always seems to work out better that way on these kinds of (very broad) articles. There's just too much material to cover and a lot of work to egt the stuff to fit together coherently. What inevtably happens is that e.g "The Red Furret" comes along says that the views of Q need space right here at the top of this section. "Nightwarrier" insists that Continental views are underrepreented (often reasonably). Eastern views are missing? Whats' the connection and the difference with science? with religion? What about "Philip Ostrander's interpretations of Wittgenstein"? I hope this approach works better. Glad to hear that Lycanthropus (or whatever) has been blocked. There may be some hope, then. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

If you need any help on the Free Will article, call out. I've been doing some translation of medieval literature. How is it that God created Lucifer, who then went on to do bad things. All that sort of stuff. Augustine, once again, is the main authority for the medievals. Best Dbuckner 09:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

On SEP, &c, yes. I think Larry wants it to be a copy of that, quite forgetting that there already is one. They get experts to write these for the prestige of getting their name at the bottom. Exactly what you don't get, if you do it for Larry. Oh well. Dbuckner 09:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I've just checked out the article, and I see that theological free will is handled separately. Though Augustine is hardly mentioned in the theological one. Dbuckner 09:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Bmorton and I decided that there was no other way to handle it: the theological section alone was weighing in at about 60K (or something) at the time of the FAR. The original plan was to break into into 3 articles: free will (philosophy), free will (science), free will (theology). We managed to break off the theology section into a separate article and try to limit the infinite expansion of the other sections. There is a still a stump section at the bottom of the main article dedicated to (broadly) theological views, however. It would be a matter of your best judgment whether to expand this section a bit to just mention the main medieval views, or to go into more extensive discussion of Augustine, Aquinas, medievals Islamics, etc... in the theological article. Obviously, I agree that these views should go somewhere. The problem is the usual one of extraordinary overlap between theology and philosophy in the Medieval period, and even today to a certain extent. Yet another another possibility is a spin-off "History of the concept free will" or "History of free will debate". --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Some more abominations

I evaluated the articles listed in the philosophy section of WP:VITAL, and here is the result:

• Beauty – this is actually not bad
• Ethics – no tags, and not a bad article
• Epistemology – not so bad, but still has an unsourced claims template.
• Belief – 'may contain original research or unverified claims'
• Knowledge – 'Some information in this article or section has not been verified and may not be reliable. Please check for inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed'. Begins 'Knowledge is what is known'. Indeed.
• Truth – suffered a severe bout of trolling about a year ago, and is now a shattered relic of its original self
• Dialectic – begins 'This article may contain original research or unverified claims.' Quite so.
• Logic – I recruited an expert to tidy this up last year, but he disappeared, and the project was never completed. It's a mess.
• Metaphysics - this has a well-deserved cleanup tag. Starts off OK but rapidly gets worse.
• Existence – I tidied this up a year ago, but was vandalised late last year. I haven't had the energy to revisit it.
• Ontology – good God I never spotted that one on troll patrol. Complete nonsense. An abomination.
• Reality – as the title suggests, this was going to be complete nonsense, and it was. 'This page has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with vandalism.'

Dbuckner 11:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I'll get right on them all this afternoon, Professor!! That's an imtimidating list indeed. Good 'eavens, as you Brits say.! How many credits/money/whatver? (; Now that is a LOT of work, though, even without trolls, vandals, bad writers, one-semester philosphers and so on. I don't feel like writing ANYTHING at the moment. I'm touching up philosophy of mind a bit. But even there, I'm not exactly in a motivated mood. I start reading....and then I just want read more and more, of course!! Dennett was getting downright rude, if not nasty, with Fodor in a recent ecxhange on intentionality, adaptationism, etc.. It was great reading.I'll see if I can find the links. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's Fodor's article: [Against Darwinism]. Here's Dennett's attack/reply: [Fun and Games in Fantasyland]. He obviously points out some serious difficulties. But comparisons to the Dicsovery Institite, Christof

Shonberg, and Mary Midgley are bit over the top!! Personal and professional jealosy? --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Quote and response

"Here's the new boss. Same as the old boss". Reply: That's one of the very few good things about being disabled. ^O^

Talk:Intentional stance

I wanted some clarification about the "strong challenge" to IST that claims a paralyzed person is no different from a lectern. See my questions on the talk page. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-03-05 17:46Z

I asked for your opinion because you added that section. See Talk:Intentional stance. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-03-06 14:07Z

Not dead yet...

Hey Francesco, Sorry for the extremem slowness of my response to your message on my talk page. Thank you for checking on me. I'm ok, but I was so completely snowed under by work and work related travel that I had to more or less completely give up wikipedia for the past three months. I am back now, so please feel free to call on me if you have articles in need of love. I'm going to start working on making the synesthesia article up to FA standards, so if you have any thoughts (aside from "don't do it!", I know, I know...) please feel free to give me feedback either on the talk page, or on my chat page. What's urgent in philosophy? I'll write back to your good question about why I do it later. Best, Edhubbard 16:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Synesthesia, eh? I truly know very little about the subject. I honestly think I experienced something very close to it the very first time that I dropped a hit of LSD back in college. So, some would argue, that I have a kind of irreducible first-person phenomenological knowledge of the matter!! But, even if this is true, I can hardly find words to translate this subjective experience into third-person testable science, even if it were possible. In sum, I don't know anything about the underlying neurology. It's good to hear from you, though. Personally, I've been hovering in this sort of psychological/existential paralytic state for the last few months: feel like I can do nothing really well and therefore all effort and struggle is useless and meaningless. But, on the other hand, what would be the point of doing anything even if I could, since there are billions of others who can do the same thing just as well or better than I. Further, even I could so something useful and interesting with my life, who the hell would notice or care in the immeasurably vast and wacky universe (probably multiverse ad infinitum) that we live in. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Re: Something different

Oh, God! That's too funny. Thanks! Edhubbard 16:01, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I am glad to hear that you were deeply offended by these questi libeli oltraggiosi. This new keyboard mus be thoroughly broken in and tested until I can figure out the ways and workings of the old monster. Given the fact that I cannot type for shit in the first place, you understand, that this is something of a challenging endeavor, It is odd the way that these keys bounce up rather sharply in comparison with my old keyboard and I must so a great deal of jumping around..---this is not the usual Way of working in the beginning was the word e a la prima parola fu srciit al'inizio degl'anni millnovecentoottantsete quando i bambini si raccoglivenao attorno al tavolo del vechhiuo interlocultoo, cioè Aristotle. il maestro di colors che sanguininano oppoer la gente senza sanze....o ti mangi questa minestra ot ti butti dalla finestra, cos dicevano i saggi nei bei temoi andati. But why Ia'0m a i typing i Italiano anyway, might be easier in English ? No's si ,, Cunigunde e signimodno had eaten the headless funky chicken , this was back in the college days , old boy . You see, when I was a young-en twerp, I were not a member of Der Hitler jurgen like ze current Papa Ratzbollah , he is a dangerous and fanatical extremist who almost certainly knows something about the disappearance of the old Pope JP I the liberal.socialista......he has not declared that progressive peoples must be eliminated by treatment them with television appearances every goddamned day in which he declares in the

brutal and profoundly irritating Bavarian accent that all the evils of the world are to be laid at the door of s ecularimt nihilism promoted by people like me and not, e.g., by people like Marcello Pera or Guilaino Ferra /the director of the newpapwr il Fogliosoo . Dammit, I cannot get bused to this things. Also, I am an extremely impatient person....indeed, I am so impatient that I spend hours on end trying, very frequently, interrupting the last thing I was doing only to realize that i should have and could have been doing something else truly important and useful., though I have mi ixea what this thing is, then I socnitinue in in this manner, wondering what i should have been doing and what exactly I am always missing out on (i'0m always missing out in something extraordinary, otherwise what would be the point of all this nonsense)m,, but i must interrupt my self at that point because this experience was indeed completely useless. What? wel,.my cousins and so forth will actually be personally OFFENDED if i don not use this new keyboard that they got for me. as If I am under some sort of moral obligation (but this is outstandingly supernumerary)to use a piece of technology that I don0t feel comfortable with just because it is new and the old one looked ugly and put-of-.dat...Giev us a break, Jerry!! Signore e signore, auitatetemi"" Mi stanno persuitando dapperpertuuto su questa terra. Yeah, right, it was the before I become aware of all the BS, fraud and manipulation that naturally characterized the human species a failed species, I tell you, FAILED!! What has it done for me, lately=? heh? what evidence is there that consciousness and the various other attributes that humans posses? What does this mean ì, for example: It is good that human beings have developed all of these so-called hgiher capacities of cognition and consciounsness ansd so on? It is not good. It is simply a fact that human being are adapted top their enviroment just like every other speiecc that has survived. If the environment changed radically, then consciousness and all of these other good...but we must break this stupid habit of attributing normative attributes to inherently non-normative natural, biological phenomena.-...all these other ahctaretsiztics, I tell you, will disappear because they will no longer be adpative and hecne ni l,onger apporopaiet for radically differenmt circumstances. Good, bad, superios, inferior, all the teleolgovial notions are assinine a poeteriori attrinutuions which makeno sense, sisters and broithere of the im,mortal jazz-bepopoing souljah!! OK! jdna this keyborad really blows, It will take me years to get used to this damned thing. I don't have this time. I have only jours, perhaos minutes at the most beofre ...well, something i must happen becuae I eget boired quite eailyuan and the i get disgusted, which is mush deeper and more isnsdiodue than boredoen,.ì

Weird, I can't trpe with this damned thing, but there basicallt forcing me to use it anyway. HUHH??? Italians!!! Why not free some more terrorists and talibani in exchange for a jorunalists,you damned wimps!! Obama is an ass. The ad was outrageous and I expressed this ina letter tpo the eityrpo of the NYT. Of cousre, it was not published, as usual. Whoi gives a cockaodaoodle doo about the NYT? Censorphip is not accreptable howvere....--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 19:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue I - March 2007

The inaugural March 2007 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter has been published. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss 03:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Would you please review Conatus?

Hello. I'm Rmrfstar, and an admirer of your articles on philosophy (specifically Hilary Putnam): you seem to be quite an expert on the subject. I am not, however, but I'm currently writing a philosophy article, Conatus, and am in need of some specialist assistance... Would you do me the favour of reading through this article and critiquing it? I aim to make it an FAC soon and would greatly appreciate a expert review prior to that! The topic is admittedly esoteric, but I feel one more familiar with philosophy of the mind may be able to detect some errors better than I. -- Rmrfstar 00:11, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't help you, nor anyone else for that matter. I have determined that I am a useless, irremediable idiot who doesn't know anything about anything and can't write his way out of a paper bag.

This, BTW, is not a manisfeation of mental illnes, but an example of what they now call depressive realism. But I don't care about depressive realism becasue, really, I am too stupid to understand such things. I can find nothing useful to do with this worthless existence. Good day. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:07, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

How depressing it is that you think so... I've read what you've written here, and I think you can write. And you're certainly not stupid! -- Rmrfstar 14:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Francesco, I know I'm not part of this conversation, but I saw your note here, and I just wanted to let you know that there are a lot of us out here who think that you are none of those things. You have made substantial contributions to wikipedia, and I assume to many other areas as well. Depressive realism my ass, you just need to get out of that God-forsaken (note the irony there!) country. My thoughts are with you, and I hope that you feel better soon... Edhubbard 16:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, thanks for the encouragment,anyway.During my rougher periods, it's good to know that someone, somewhere appreciates something I have done (even if it is only contributions to Wikipedia).

As usual, I will have to try reason my way out of this current situation, as medication and other such panaceas simply do not work. Hey, there's something bizarre: "I" will have to reason "my" way..." "I will have to use reasoning, thoughts, etc. to persuade I!!

Good heavens. This is a very common intuition. But what the hell does it mean? One part of a particular brain (or some set of synaptic netwotrk connections) will present (represent?) reasons and conisdreations presumably stored somewhere in memory, rearranging the premises and conclusion in some suitable manner, to some other part of the same brain or to the same part or some supervenient property thereof (the self). It has to be a diachronic process. The current self posits ideas for a future construction of the self. Or it could be a question of part whole relations between constituents of the self. Is the self self-identical with itself? But if the self is mental construction, how could it have spatio-temporal parts?

OK, never mind. I will take a look at the article on Conatus when I get some time and see if I can help out in any way, though I haven't done any research on this and am far from an expert on Conatus. Also, Italy is not nearly as horrible as I often make it out to be. If I were in the US, I would be ragging on the Americans. It's just the way I am.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Glad to hear it! -- Rmrfstar 20:39, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

GEB

Heya. What's up? I'm reading Godel, Escher, Bach right now. (Have you read it?) It makes a variety of proposals about the nature of meaning. I was wondering if you knew of anyone who tried to translate them into a serious semantic or grammatical theory. Would like to modify Meaning (ling) if possible, but don't want to fall into OR. { Ben S. Nelson } 16:10, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, GEB, eh?? Of course!! I took five years of CS before switching to philosophy. Not very popular with CS professors, as I recall, but it was THE CLASSIC EVERYTHING FINALLY EXPLAINED AND WITHOUT PARToIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS (; book among the students like myself. It's a lovely book though and excruciatingly well-written. It's been a good while since I read it, but I still have a copy lying around here somewhere. To answer the question,though: I don't know of any such attempt to develop some of the informal ideas on grammars and such into something more formal. You might want to try a search of google scholar or a library or something. When I read the book years ago, I was primarily focused on the AI, paradoxes, emergentism and philosophy of mind stuff. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Haha, yeah, people love the book. And it's all over the map wrt topics. But what's interesting about the new edition is that Hofstadter talks about his take on the central theme of the work, and he pegs it as a theory of meaning -- in slogan form, "meaning arises from meaningless symbols despite themselves". Reading the work with that in mind, you can pick out these random moments where he makes seemingly wacky -- but strangely compelling -- claims, i.e., that meaning is "intrinsic" to the symbols in a certain sense... anyway, I'll check Google Scholar

Also, since I'm here, I was wondering, have you ever heard this argument before? I came up with it on the fly, so I suspect that my brain has just regurgitated some half-remembered idea presented by someone else. { Ben S. Nelson } 01:38, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, that's an interesting point. I don't think I've seen an argument exactly like that, but I'm the kind of person who reads so damned much that I fail to retain or forget about 90% of it P: Anyway, it strikes me that a strict truth-conditional semanticist could (and probably) would respond with some kind of parameterization to indicate gradations or degrees (a hidden variable or hidden quantifier plus variable type of thing) or they could resort to standard responses to vagueness such as so-called epistemicism (the boundaries are not really vague, we are just conceptually limited) in these kinds of cases. Personally, though, I think this kind of case would be much easier to treat with possible-worlds approach, though without seeming ad hoc or stretching. Hence externalism can be defended as degrees of similarity of possible worlds or centered possible worlds, etc... But I have to move on to other matters. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

As I keep reading GEB, I keep wanting to expand on the argument. I'm not sure whether I understand the "epistemicism" argument -- last I encountered anything that went by that kind of name was in Rosanna Keefe's work on vagueness, appealing to the idea that we 'don't know' the boundaries of so-and-so, and that's not the fault of anyone except us for being so conceptually lazy. I guess such persons might attack the "verificationist theory of truth (and falsity)" premise in the argument I gave. But my intuitions are unfavorable to such reactions. If we can stretch our systems to the point where we're talking about such radically unbound terms as "infinity", we can surely bind ourselves with as much zeal, yielding strict category structures.

I'm not exactly hostile to the notion of a possible worlds account. But I wonder about how such an account may make use of the notion of "similarity". Do we even need the intellectual device of "possible worlds" anymore, once we're armed with the notion of "similarity"? It seems as though the merits of the PW approach in the first place is that it preserves a veneer of extensionality to it, while "similarity" deals in the language of qualities. Once we start dealing in the language of qualities, I suspect that a possible worlds account may seem to become moot.

I'm most interested in the point you made about quantification of degrees... { Ben S. Nelson } 02:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not something I've thought about or researched extensively. Just throwing out some possible replies that a truth-conditional semanticist might make. The epistemicist (e.g. Timothy Williamson) would obviously have to provide some justification for insisting on classical two-valued logic and epistemic inadequacy in the face of the general acceptance of ontologically inconventient notions such as infinity. If we can accept the exitence of an infinity of real numbers, why can't we

accept the existence of an infinity of degree of baldness or whatever? I don't know. Maybe the epistemicists have to bite the bullet and reject actual infinity (this is not really THAT uncommon, after all) in order to avoid an ad hoc approach. Personally, I'm a mathematical fictionalist: the notion of the actual existence of any numbers, much less infinity, strikes me as intuitively preposterous (it always comes to ineffable Platonic Forms in the end). So, it's not really a problem for me. There are other ways to approach the thing (e.g. multi-valued logics) without abandoning truth conditional semantics though. I will think some more about the matter later on and get back to you.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it's odd, now that you mention it. I've come across many articles wherein people have argued to the effect that semantics just arises from the syntax of words and their combinations. I always wondered, sort of unconsciously, where I first came across such an idea. It was probably from Hofstadter's book all along, without realizing it. It's implicit throughout the text, but I've never heard anyone emphasize that particular aspect until you mentioned the revised version. Of course, this position is extremely amenable to to project of AI and to the refutation of Searlian-style argument against "original intentionality" and so on. So, it makes perfect sense from the CS point of view. There are many variations on that theme. I argued something very much along those lines in an essay back in undergraduate school, without realizing there was nothing new about it at all,of course. It becomes kind of an untuitive idea when you have been spending a great deal of time arouing computer code.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

While I'm here editing, I have to mention that I, too, am a great lover of all things Hofstadter, beginning with my reading of GEB around 1992 or 1993, at the suggestion of a calculus professor. You know the thing with Hofstadter, even going back to GEB, but becoming clearer in his more recent works is that he was trying to understand how to mechanize creativity... the language, virtual semantic engine out of syntactic engine stuff was sort of a secondary by-product of this overall project, but this is where his thinking links up quite well with Dennett's stuff. He talks a lot about the processes of creativity in his book (really a compilation of his Scientific American columns) Metamagical Themas. If you look into his more recent stuff with the FARG group, you'll see that it's been harder than he would have predicted in those heady days in the late 1970s, early 1980s when he was writing so much of his stuff. I keep meaning to go read Le Ton beau de Marot, as I am working on a translation project right now, from French to English... Edhubbard 14:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh yeah, of course. The heady days of humanoid robots writing Shakespearian poetry and all of that was already over in the late 90s when I started graduate school in the US just before the BEAST first struck (that is, I fell horribly ill and ended up leaving the States completely). Took a course in "prolog in AI" (or something like that) and the first thing the prof said was something like, "Most of us don't even think about ineffable things like consciousness and human intelligence these days. So if you find these books that say 'Consciousness is this, that and the other' just toss them out!!" For him, these were just irresponsible CS folks selling outdated moonshine to gullible non-scientists. His particular fascination was the the details of the way PROLOG works and how to improve it, as well as learning from insect behavior (big thing at that time). I don't really know how the situation with that stuff is in 2007. It seems to go in cycles. Chalmers is, perhaps ironically, one of the more optimistic in the philosophy of AI.

Anyway, there was an interview of Hofstadter recently in NYT and he seems almost gloomier than that nowadays wrt AI and computers in general. The last question was specifically about computers and he said "I'm not really interested in computers. Computers lack concepts. The whole field is way overblown." Something along those lines. Still, in my mind, he helped to annihilate the idea that there was some, in principle, difference between human biological mind and robot consciousness (the Godel-inspired Lucas arguments and other nonsense, for example). --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 18:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Job offer...

Hmmm... Tempting. I could go for a little something, but perhaps not quite that little. I think I'll have to keep the current paying job, but contributing from time to time to your blog sounds like a good use of my time. I just moved back to Paris after three wonderful months sequestered in a little office in London pounding away at my keyboard everyday, trying to force a couple of papers out... My new place doesn't have internet, so my internet access is either through work or cafes. They tell me that I have to wait about two weeks until they can come and flip a switch... But, I'll keep you posted, and if you find something that you think would interest me, let me know. Best wishes. Edhubbard 14:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

In a fit of temporarily liberating nihilism yesterday, I deleted the old blog and started searching for comments that I had made on other blogs to either delete or contradict, thereby effectively nullifying my virtual existence and presence anywhere in the Internet. What can I tell you? I kept examining deep inside the nature of things and I saw "nothing that was not there and the nothing that is (stevens). It was a mild act though...somewhat therapeutic actually. A substitute for the real act which I find myself unable to even attempt at this time, burdened as I am with the moral responsibility of helping take care of my mother who took care of me for most of my useless and horrid life. I don't know. Maybe I'll start another blog about why I prefer certain types of toilet paper to that hard, brown sandpaper that they used to use over here about 20 years ago when I visited at the age of 11. But Italy has advanced much since them. Man,in general, has gone backward in my opinion. Who cares? who knows? --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I concur, much about human civilization can be discerned from their choice of toiletries. I once saw a Cold War poster for a toilet paper company which accused their coarser competition of "breeding Bolsheviks" within companies. { Ben S. Nelson } 16:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

LOL. Haven't seen that one, but I can believe it. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:22, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

==

Buridan had an ass. The ass was unable to choose and hence may have had some damage to the prefrontol cortex. The ass, therfore, was not an ASS. This is the semantic paradox. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC) Kiss my...never mind.

LOL... :-) This might be pretty far down on the semantic paradox list, but it's a lot funnier than Xeno. In all fairness, though, some things just aren't in the choosing game, and I am happy to say that my ass is most certainly not in the choosing game. It has no say in the matter as to where it goes. It stays attached the top of my legs, and *they* go where *I* tell them to... now, that's a real paradox, and one you've raised before. How do *I* tell *my* body to do something? Who is this *I* that is seperate from the rest of *me*? Edhubbard 10:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but is it clear that Buridan's donkey was not in the choosing game? If so, the original paradox can be resolved empirically wrt to donkeys (asses). Still, I think for the case of humans it's quite plausible to suppose that a situaion of exactly qualitively equal preferences is impossible. At any rate, the overriding preference of every being is survival, so even the donkey will respond to the second-order challenge "make a choice or die" without any thought at all. The ass is NO ASS. It will eat one stack of hay, then the other. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I only have a few more minutes of internet time today (I've moved back to Paris and have to depend on the pleasure of internet Cafe's until the French get around to installing my new internet and phone line; it's my turn now) but my longer answer would involve some discussion of the range of possibilities. Buridan clearly is in the choosing business, his donkey perhaps less so, but sufficiently so to survive, and his derriere not at all. I honestly think this is one of Dennett's best points in the Intentional Stance, that Intentionality, and choice are not all-or-none, and that evolutionarily there might be graded degrees of Intentionality, depending on a creatures complexity of input output relationships, and behavioral choice. The complexity of input-output drives representation and Intentionality. What good is a rich model of the world if you don't do anything with it... take the input-output relation of my derriere... It's not very complicated, and so doesn't need any representing. Buridan's donkey, on the other hand has a pretty limited behavioral repetoire, but plenty complicated enough for the world he found himself in. So, he can be an ass, but not an ASS at all. Best wishes, Edhubbard 10:46, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

(edit-conflict: responding to myself above)

No, wait a second. That's ass-backwards (0:. The point is that the donkey will almost certainly not have such complex "rational" preferences OR that it is not able to sit there and calculate its prefercnes to be quantitively equal. It's first-order "decision" is simply eat or die. It will eat and hence the conundrum is preposretous when applied to a donkey. For humans, there is persumably more possibility for such calculation and thought. Assume free will doesn't exist. But the same thing still appilies to the human as to the donkey. Untutively, at least, it is reaosnable to suppose that it will FIRST experience the instinct to eat and not die, and this is entirely predtermined; then it will think about prferences only later. Very weak argument against determinism, i think. --~

I agree with the view about degrees of intentionality, consciousness, so on on the animal world. I just think he's confused in saying, for example, infants are not conscious sicne they don't have langauge and therefore intentuinaltiy. Not conscious?? They're too damn conscious for me!! Long discussion though. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Just to say that I agree with you... it makes no sense to think that infants aren't conscious. I have to admire his willingness to bite the bullet on one of the odd implications of his ideas, but I think that it makes it a reductio to say that babies must be unconscious. It seems to me the same graded approach he so willingly applies in the evolutionary domain could fruitfully be applied in the developmental domain, too, but he doesn't seem to take that option. Ah well, at least we're not worried about infant's asses... :-) Edhubbard 19:31, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Reminded

A campus shooting at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA leaves at least 22 students dead and another 28 injured.

Hmm....Yeah, it's all coming back now. Now I remember one of the biggest of the infinite horrors of the United States: that damned love endless affair with weapons, violence and death which filters down to the young from the highest quarters.

Putnam

My expertise on functionalism is limited; really, I hadn't done a very good job of copyediting it. I appreciate your contribution. However, it seems to me that to say that functionalism is the foundations for modern cognitive psychology is itself misleading. I'd check the source, but I guess I'm at a disadvantage since I don't read French. Functionalists might have adopted cognitive methods. However, wouldn't you say that modern cognitive thinking really begins with Descartes? Also, while cognitive methods were not prominent in Gestalt psychology, there are Gestalts that explored cognitive methods well before functionalism in the philosophy of science. I was just casually trying to reword the article better in reading it, but I'm not sure that I would agree modern cognitive psychology is to be credited to the philosophers mentioned.--Kenneth M Burke 16:06, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

You seem to me to be confusing several things. But, then, these things are not really all that clear-cut. By cognitive methods, I suppose you're thinking of any approach that posits mental states and examines the nature of ideas (e,g, associationism, introspectionism and so on). This certainly goes back pretty far. Cognitive science, as a specific "field" or whatever you want to call it, traces back, according to all the sources I have read, to the 1950s convergence of AI research (McCarthy, H. Simon an so on ) and Chomskyan cognitive revolution at MIT. Just as important though, at the beginning of the early 60s was the formulation of functionalism and the "computer analogy": the brain is the hardware and the mind is the software. These were all essential elements in the beginnings of the interdisciplinary (AI, philosophy, psychology, linguist, anthropology, neurobiology, information science, etc..) study of the mind that eventually acquired the label "cognitive science".--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, there's another historical quirk that causes an unbelievable amount of confusion, even among people who should know better. Functionalism is historically ambiguous. There is NO relation, beside the name, between the pshycological functionalism of William James and some others at the beginning of the 20th century and the more recent functionalisms which derives from Sellars (according to some interprteations) Putnam, Fodor and so on. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess sometimes its simply not possible to summarize a web of knowledge on an encyclopedia page. Not going to write a letter to Putnam about it or anything; but if I read French, I think I would raise good questions over: "Functionalism helped lay the foundations for modern cognitive science." --Kenneth M Burke 16:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That's Italian. I will look for an equally solid English reference that backs the claim. I don't think it will be much of a problem. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

From Joseph LeDoux's "The Emotional Brain"; ISBN: 0684836599; 1996; p. 27—

One of the most important conceptual developments in the establishment of cognitive science was a philosophical position known as functionalism, which holds that intelligent functions carried out by different machines reflect the same underlying process.

--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm a stereotypical English speaker from the Midwest USA. All I did was glance and know I couldn't read it - must be French. Yet, now, that's different, isn't it? French is not Italian and functionalism as an important development is not the same as functionalism laying the foundations of modern cognitive science. Change it? Is it misleading? Not to make it a discussion on your talk page. It is a nice quote, thanks for taking the time. --Kenneth M Burke 01:06, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It currently reads functionalism helped (i.e. was one of the most important developments toward) lay(ing) the foundations (i.e. establishment) of cog sci. It's just a minor rewording of what LeDoux is saying. Why make such a big deal out if it? If you really insist, though: Functionalism was one of the most important factors in the establishment of cognitive science. Big difference!!--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias

Not a big deal, it simply caught my attention. However, with an interdisciplinary knowledge base in learning theory and philosophy (though not an expert) I do believe that it is kind of important to cross ts and dot is with such issues; particularly where assumptions in science and underlying philosophical foundations can often lead to unwanted consequences when theorists attempt to justify ideas as "scientific." Thank you for your insight. --Kenneth M Burke 18:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Synesthesia references

Hey Francesco, I agree that it needs to be converted to the ref/note (or cite:php) mechanism. It's been on my list for a while, most importantly in the hopes that now that the majority of the content is up to snuff, I can make a push to make it to FA (although I tend to agree with you that FAs shouldn't be agreed to or not based on their reference style)... Anyway, once my damn Frenchies get around to getting me some sort of internet connection I plan to make a big push on this. Would you mind writing what you were dreaming up, and putting it someplace (here, my talk page, etc) and then when I get the reference format worked out, I can just integrate what you have in mind? Thanks. Edhubbard 13:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Just a paragraph or two that I thought would be appropriate since I came upon and read a few articles

that argue against representationism about consciousness based on synesthesia. Representationism (somtimes called the strong form) is the notion that phenomenal experiences just are the representational content (RC) associated with the experiences. The argument from synesthesia suggests that this phenomenon shows that phenomenal experience can vary (e.g. hearing color images) while RC remains the same. There are several replies to this, but I'm too warn out at the moment. I'll write something more formal up and put it on your talk page or something.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of telecoms, AT&T has bailed out of the bruising, nationalistic battle for control of Telecom Italia srl. I don't know if this is good or bad news. All I can tell you is the Americans, naturally enough, were frightened out by the insane politics of Italy. There is now a large possibility that Silvio Berlusconi will buy it!! Can you imagine a version of Bill Gates with legendary mob connections heading a political party, controlling major media, telecommunications, television, book publishing, newspapers, soccer teams, etc, etc etc,, and running for President of the US at the same time. Yeah, that's what it's like over here. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Now when you block has been expired, I strongly advice you to rethink your approach and remain civil when disagreeing with other users, such as with JHMM13. I wouldn't be hesitant on applying a prolonged (or even indefinite) block in case of further death-threats. Thanks. Michaelas¹⁰ 21:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I don't have a problem with being banned from this place at all. You might want to consider very carefully, however, what an absolute disaster that would be for Wikipedia. I had left Wikipedi completely for about six months due to all the nonsense, trolling and just plian wackiness that dominates this place. I was specifically requested to help out someone on here with a specific article. I think I have done more than my share!! After that, you can do what you like son. I'm out of this madhouse!! It' an enormously unhealthy environment for me. Strong words are usually the only way to get things across to.....certain types of people. That's life. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Supplement

Template:Supplement has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you.

This also affects {{For more}}. — Kevinkor2 06:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)