h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Shady guy I think you need to clean up your tongue a bit.

Adib

I have a spare tube of toothpaste he can use! See my pearly whites and my nice, clean tongue!

I think he's quite young, which may be why he talks the way he does...

- Jordan

You wouldent know the half of it D**kless.I'm older than you.
In fact I think its way past your bedtime you niave little
two-year old tosser.

Your less than interesting toothpastseology has me yawning already.

~your worst nightmare~

"I, of course, am a solipsist. I'm just surprised there aren't more of us."


All spaces are logical spaces; inner, outer, cyber etc


There's an objective reality, but not an Objective Reality.


Noggin the gnomic

C'mon Gray,Aint'ya gonna answer me ya liddle P***k?

Hmm. Do you know, that counts as flaming. I could get you moderated for it. Who are you, anyway? I'm guessing you're one of Dan's friends.

Did I say something wrong?

- Jordan

Noggin: perhaps it all collapses into two distinct worlds - inner space and outer space - with information about the outer space being projected into the inner space; and so, it's possible that we're all solipsists by definition.

- Jordan

Dan? you must be joking.Stop with all the inner and outer **** its so unbelieveably boring.

No, that's swearing. Flaming is where you insult someone.

If something bores you, why don't you just ignore it?

- Jordan

Jordan. Whaaaaaat? By definition of what? Take you away from the maths and you get kinda vague - or is it my spex steamin up?

Jordan: Information about outer space is projected into inner space, and indeed vice versa. I don't see that that makes us all solipsists, though. The point of the original remark is that the solipsist sees everything as a figment of his own imagination. So if he's right there AREN'T any other solipsists (by definition.)


Noggin


Sounds to me like attention seeking, Jordan

No, just your inner world!

Well, let's see. Given my proposition (OK, hypothesis, and not a serious one at that - I'm talking to fill up the time until I can leave) that the 'inner world' is all we have access to, we could say that any belief in the reality of a given entity/phenomenon is in fact referring to something we perceive in our inner worlds. Therefore, we can't realistically believe in anything external to that world since it doesn't actually exist, so far as we're concerned. All that's happening is that the external world is affecting the inner world, though any perception it thinks it has is illusory, since all we can actually /see/ or know about is the inner world.

I don't actually like that reasoning too much, so I'm going to leave it to fester. I don't want to touch it in case it taints me! Something interesting that I turned up was a book that seems to inadvertantly provide a mathematician's point-of-view of the problem of alternative logics. In fact, it seems that there was rather more truth than I credited you with concerning the arbitrary nature of mathematics when I look at the history of mathematics! Oops... From a historical perspective, it looks far more tentative than it does in the modern day of well defined, standardised equations, operators and predicates. However, I will say this - as a model, mathematical logic in its present form is excellent. Surely you can't have a problem with that?

- Jordan

'Jordan: Information about outer space is projected into inner space, and indeed vice versa.'

Noggin: Sorry about giving you a 'colonic nomination'! It looks so impersonal... Shan't do it again, methinks! I've just had a thought. Could someone define information in this context? There are operationalised definitions used in engineering, but I don't want to start applying Shannon's laws to it! I just think the definition is important.

Here's part of the reason why, and it comes in the form of a question: if the meaning of life were wrote down on a tree in a forest and nobody saw it - or even knew about it - would it still have any meaning? Philosophically speaking, of course.

I think he's logged off. Perhaps it's because I said he was young? Well, sorry if you're not, Shady - I just assumed you were one of Dan's friends from your space, and Dan's... well, quite young, shall we say! I apologise if that's the case. Forgive me?

- Jordan

Jordan: I think the last part of that should have been directed at Toxx, as he mentioned it. My own knowledge of maths doesn't extend that far. I don't think maths is 'arbitrary' exactly, but it could have turned out differently.

It could be argued that the external world consists of our responses to it. We don't have reasons for believing in it, we have justifications for the fact that we DO believe in it.

Noggin

Jordan. Sorry now that I said that mathemetics is arbitrary. Wouldn't have bothered if I'd known that Noggin had already done so. As for Shannon's laws; I think Fred Dretske is the philosopher who has incorporated them into his work most successfully.

Despite lack of a direct answer, I now see that what you meant by 'by definition' was probably 'ex hypothesi'. Noggin has answered the point anyway. Gotta get back to my quiz question. Nobody has answered yet. On second thoughts, I'll hit the boozer and see if they need another clue when I get back.

That's okay, Jordan. I'm not about to be offended by trifles where friends are concerned.

Information is a subset of causality where the object affected is structured to respond to certain effects, but not others.


The meaning of life on a tree in the forest - hmm.... No.


Noggin

Not completely arbitrary, but if you tried using Lebniz's first attempt at logical codification nowadays you would be laughed out of the class!

Here, do 'responses' refer to the external manifestations of our reaction to our internal worlds, or to our internal reaction itself? (Notice contrived attempt to force a definition. Oh, can I be any more subtle? )

- Jordan

I love that last bit, Nogg. I was about to raise the point that Kant has now been absorbed or sidestepped in current philosophy by consideration not of what is out there, but of whether we are justified in believing that something is out there. We've no longer have to concern ourselves about the noumenal!

Strictly, to the internal reaction itself. My point was that we take certain things to be external; we don't start by thinking of them as internal, and inferring that they must actually be external; we START by thinking of them as external.

Noggin

I was apologising to Shady! I don't actually know who he is, I thought he was one of Dan's school friends from what I saw on his page. Guess I was wrong!

I'm going to have to digest that a bit, Noggin. It's a very heavy meal, even if (unlike my own soufflés of logic) it doesn't collapse when you look at it!

- Jordan