CJ Stevens - Metaphysiology / is on Nostr

Philosopher & neuroscientist.
Paddy & resident of France.
Research: Myside bias, education, pluralism, experience.
Advocacy: #NoFeeScience

#MarchForBetterScience
Uni de Bordeaux & Bdx-Montaigne

Posts in English & French

Last Notes

2024-04-01 23:10:34

Excellent exposition of the historical and political arc here, and a timely (hopefully not portentous) reminder of how fatally instrumental the League of Nations' loss of credibility ended up being.
#WW2 #history #UN #war #peace
https://youtu.be/d2uyH6cMNb4?si=-HU9ZXShPGRNE4tq

2024-03-31 12:59:10

Happy #Easter:
"If one could combine Arabic faith and Jewish intelligence with an Iraqi education, Christian conduct, Greek knowledge, Indian mysticism and a Sufi way of life, this would be the perfection of humanity."
Pre-Renaissance Muslim scholar as quoted by Michael Wood in his book and documentary series Legacy: The Search For Ancient Cultures.
[Wood doesn't identify the scholar in question, if anyone has any ideas pls let me know.]
#history #pluralism

2024-03-01 22:00:06

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@npub19d9…f02p Edmund Gettier's "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" is 940 words and has been cited (what seems like) over a trillion times per week since its publication.

2024-01-23 00:02:58

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@npub15sw…x855 Eichenbaum conceived of place cells more as spatial relation cells: distance relation to this or that wall, for example. I see they cite one of his papers (oldish one though), but I can't access the paper to see what they cite him as saying or the details of the differing conditions in question.

2024-01-14 11:36:05

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@npub19d9…f02p The global workspace array of explanations of consciousness depict it (simplification incoming) as a blending of perception and memory, with the essential caveat that there is a memory-grounded anticipatory dimension to perception itself and that excitation of memory is also (at least partially) driven by what is perceived. "Declarative" and "procedural" and affective memory can all be taken to send signals to this GW/GN[euronal]W.

2023-09-17 22:08:46

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@npub1skv…aky3 Yes, there's definitely that aspect to it too! I was thinking of these two complementary lessons: 1) Science advances in improbable ways; we should be aware of this and so be as precise and limited as possible when it comes to judgment of scientific practice.
BUT: 2) Reality nevertheless remains the ultimate test zone, and no matter how elegant one's initial model/hypothesis may be, ultimately theory and not reality must bend.

2023-09-17 21:52:49

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@npub1skv…aky3 What I meant by "pseudoscientific" (including the scare quotes) is that the model/hypothesis Kepler initially conceived, and never in fact fully relinquished, was a completely false description of the solar system, based on an epiphany he had that the relative distances between the orbits were explained by a celestial arrangement of the five platonic solids. The sun was indeed at the centre of it though! 🙂

2023-09-17 21:07:45

Though dogged in his desire to confirm this "pseudoscientific" (plain false tbh) model of the solar system, #Kepler also stuck to the data and thus ended up elaborating three robust laws of planetary motion which paved a significant part of the way towards Newton's later laws.
If I've understood the now (imo) become distasteful dispute between #IIT advocates and critics, then I believe this historical example contains important lessons for both.
@npub1gcw…hx0z @npub19g7…0dwd @npub1d6e…vw9g
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/082/042/960/749/752/original/a56120f065d4af70.png

2023-09-17 20:08:52

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@npub1skv…aky3 @npub1zn5…rsnd I only read the section on pseudoscience so far. I wasn't overly impressed, but I also had my priors adjusted with regards to the reliability of the main authors by reading this line-by-line, source-by-source dissection of the original letter from Erik Hoel:
https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/ambitious-theories-of-consciousness
I may have a look at the rest of Hau's paper later, but once things get to a stage where I'm not even sure whose intentions are genuinely for good, as opposed to "being right", it's saddening.

2023-09-16 14:28:39

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@npub1skv…aky3 A hypothetical ideal empirical researcher is one who, for every scientific belief they hold, can tell you which result from an empirical test would lead to them abandoning that belief. An advocate of IIT should be able to tell us what emp result would convince them IIT does not hold (even if the test is not currently practically possible). If none of them can do this, then state so clearly and base the pseudoscience claim on that rather than vague "until it is empirically testable."

2023-09-16 14:00:02

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@npub1skv…aky3 They're absolutely right to raise the points they do. But the point about certain advocates and media taking demonstration of auxiliary elements for proof of the whole (something that unfortunately can + does happen even with solid theories) is independent of the question of IIT being a pseudoscience. To clearly communicate the latter claim, a minimum would be: a) What is IIT? b) What is a pseudoscience? c) Does IIT meet these criteria?
Definitions matter; otherwise we end up here!

2023-09-16 13:37:38

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@npub1skv…aky3 Letter feels oddly light in informational value. Would have been useful to lay out core ideas of IIT, its definition of consciousness, etc. Indeed, we get to the end without any concrete idea what the crux of the disagreement is, just that the theory hasn't been satisfactorily empirically tested. For me, a theory is not a pseudoscience "until" it has been empirically tested. A theory is a pseudoscience if it *cannot* be satisfactorily tested. Is this the case? Letter vague on this.