While qualia are not directly communicable, even they are labelable. All that can be differentiated can be labeled, if only by reference to its differences from other things (or other relations to other things). And if something cannot be differentiated, then there’s no need to have a word/label for it.
We don’t have separate words for red-green and yellow because we perceive them the same way. If we ran into aliens that didn’t, then it’d be relevant to create a word for it, and I just did by calling it “red-green”
When we need a word for something new we create one. And sure sometimes it takes science a while to refine definitions, and yeah, in natural languages words have really blurry definitions which obscures communication, but that’s not a property of the universe or a fundamental flaw in all languages, just our limited experiences and non-formal languages.
Point is: all that is relevant to be communicated via language could be communicated via some language.
Oh you seem fun. The vast body of mathematics describes flowers, from growth patterns to genetic structure to the effect it has on human neurology when observing the colorful patterns made by them. However I am curious; please explain what a virtue is!
But what I was telling to portray, is that there are an infinite number of 'parameters', if you will, that a flower contains. And sure, mathematics can describe each of those parameters. But we will never be able to quantify it completely, as there are an infinite number of ways to relate flowers existence, and to any and every other 'thing' in the universe. Even if the mathematics is still there as the underlying building block.
Just like I can language to 'invent' or 'discover' a new sentence in order to describe anything and everything. But I won't be able to describe it completely, as there are an infinite number of ways to describe something.
I think the misunderstanding (keep in mind this is 3 months on and I am tired) is between hasn't and can't.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems show (in a very reductive description) that we'll never be able to describe all the way mathematics can interact with itself or describe the universe - much as we can never write every sentence in a language (do not @ me formal language nerds) or we can never count every number.
Through the same careful missapplication of those theorms it follows that, while we can't sit down and exhaustively describe a flower, we can describe a flower in all the ways we want.
It is a subtle but extremely critical distinction.
Do you mean the person who tried to use a cliche'd gotcha as a result of their misunderstanding of what mathematics is? Or me who was unimpressed by the aforementioned cliche'd anti-intellectualism in their comment? Because there is no nuance here that I have missed - they pulled out the deeply tired idea that mathematics, which is a descriptive language, has not yet comprehensively described all of what constitutes a "flower" and thus cannot conceivably do that - which is a patently absurd requirement that belies an utter lack of understanding of the fundemental purpose of mathematics or the function of language in general.
"Oh I see you actually responded to what I was saying - I'm not here for a discussion or to be wrong, I'm just here to be smugly superior, so I'm just going to ignore that" - you, apparently?
If you want to discuss the ideas here feel free, I do enjoy doing that, but jeeze I hope you're drunk posting because this is deeply embarassing behavior...
edit:
Man, taking the insults and victim blaming to the DMs, you are way too into this.
Edit 2:
I am looking forward to the apology for your behavior.
Edit 3:
Gonna be real there hamdogger, I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
Edit 4:
Mmm...hmm.
Edit 5:
Yeah...
Edit 6:
Appended without comment.
Edit 7:
Nah, man, this was fun but it's getting boring. Pease puddins' to you.
If we can simply train these machines on all the writings of straight white first-world men, then they'll be free of all bias and produce only objective facts!
Yuuup. And then we turn the words into numbers and run a few bajillion matrix multiplications on em to produce some sentences that bear a similarity to the sentences we make, and go “omg! It can navigate the nature of the universe the same way a human does!”
Also, MFs in the comments relitigating privacy of consciousness and Mary the color scientist lmao
While qualia are not directly communicable, even they are labelable. All that can be differentiated can be labeled, if only by reference to its differences from other things (or other relations to other things). And if something cannot be differentiated, then there’s no need to have a word/label for it.
We don’t have separate words for red-green and yellow because we perceive them the same way. If we ran into aliens that didn’t, then it’d be relevant to create a word for it, and I just did by calling it “red-green”
When we need a word for something new we create one. And sure sometimes it takes science a while to refine definitions, and yeah, in natural languages words have really blurry definitions which obscures communication, but that’s not a property of the universe or a fundamental flaw in all languages, just our limited experiences and non-formal languages.
Point is: all that is relevant to be communicated via language could be communicated via some language.
The universe is eminently describable with language - thats the whole point of mathematics.
Okay. Describe a flower using mathematics. It better entail every detail of the flower and all of its virtues.
Oh you seem fun. The vast body of mathematics describes flowers, from growth patterns to genetic structure to the effect it has on human neurology when observing the colorful patterns made by them. However I am curious; please explain what a virtue is!
I sort of meant it more as a joke.
But what I was telling to portray, is that there are an infinite number of 'parameters', if you will, that a flower contains. And sure, mathematics can describe each of those parameters. But we will never be able to quantify it completely, as there are an infinite number of ways to relate flowers existence, and to any and every other 'thing' in the universe. Even if the mathematics is still there as the underlying building block.
Just like I can language to 'invent' or 'discover' a new sentence in order to describe anything and everything. But I won't be able to describe it completely, as there are an infinite number of ways to describe something.
I think the misunderstanding (keep in mind this is 3 months on and I am tired) is between hasn't and can't.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems show (in a very reductive description) that we'll never be able to describe all the way mathematics can interact with itself or describe the universe - much as we can never write every sentence in a language (do not @ me formal language nerds) or we can never count every number.
Through the same careful missapplication of those theorms it follows that, while we can't sit down and exhaustively describe a flower, we can describe a flower in all the ways we want.
It is a subtle but extremely critical distinction.
Do you mean the person who tried to use a cliche'd gotcha as a result of their misunderstanding of what mathematics is? Or me who was unimpressed by the aforementioned cliche'd anti-intellectualism in their comment? Because there is no nuance here that I have missed - they pulled out the deeply tired idea that mathematics, which is a descriptive language, has not yet comprehensively described all of what constitutes a "flower" and thus cannot conceivably do that - which is a patently absurd requirement that belies an utter lack of understanding of the fundemental purpose of mathematics or the function of language in general.
"Oh I see you actually responded to what I was saying - I'm not here for a discussion or to be wrong, I'm just here to be smugly superior, so I'm just going to ignore that" - you, apparently?
If you want to discuss the ideas here feel free, I do enjoy doing that, but jeeze I hope you're drunk posting because this is deeply embarassing behavior...
edit:
Man, taking the insults and victim blaming to the DMs, you are way too into this.
Edit 2:
I am looking forward to the apology for your behavior.
Edit 3:
Gonna be real there hamdogger, I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
Edit 4:
Mmm...hmm.
Edit 5:
Yeah...
Edit 6:
Appended without comment.
Edit 7:
Nah, man, this was fun but it's getting boring. Pease puddins' to you.
It's not: see Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems.
I am at a loss as to what they have to do with this, do you mean to say that the universe is not exhaustively describable?
Wittgenstein: die Grenzen meiner Sprache sind die Grenzen meiner Welt.
>Using words to undermine using words
And then there's people thinking if we feed computers enough language, they will be able to solve everything
If we can simply train these machines on all the writings of straight white first-world men, then they'll be free of all bias and produce only objective facts!
Yuuup. And then we turn the words into numbers and run a few bajillion matrix multiplications on em to produce some sentences that bear a similarity to the sentences we make, and go “omg! It can navigate the nature of the universe the same way a human does!”
Also, MFs in the comments relitigating privacy of consciousness and Mary the color scientist lmao
No, language is trying to sort the water.