More thoughts here, especially at the end of the post. I've been thinking along these lines for awhile but would not pretend to have any answers.

I think keiths has said pretty much said it all , I'll just respond to a couple of points .

"Here's a simple question. If a program was written that did nothing but input a few lines of code along these lines:

output = 10 + 20;
print output;

With this psuedocode put in the right syntax for the language, would the ANN print out the number 30? "

I think this shows where we may have been talking past each other . An ANN has no language . To hand program it would require manually setting all the weights . The only practical way I can think off to work out what those weights should be is using another ANN .

"If the ANN has the ability to add, and if the code instructs it to add its inputs, and if the values, which will resolve into electrical pulses, are moved through switch like components (analog to chip-like transistors) that will produce pulses that, when converted into human readable numbers produce correct results, then yes, it will have the ability to meaningfully add numbers, because the meaning will be in the software."

The code does not instruct it to add its inputs . The NN's code instructs it to adjust its synaptic weighting to map the input to the desired output . This could be addition , or it could be an Xor mapping or many other things .

The battle seems to be about which is foundational: matter or mind? But perhaps these options don't exhaust the universe of possibility. Maybe matter and mind are co-emergent and inseparable. Maybe they are two manifestations of something deeper than either.

I think you correctly assess what the battle at least appears to be about—the competing merits of mind and matter as ontologically foundational. I see mind, in the form of reason, exemplified in the mathematics of matter but in many other ways too, as necessary, whereas matter is contingent. So I award the gold medal to mind.

In one of the posts I lost to MS-jittery fingers, I tried to follow up a remark I had made earlier in reply to keiths, to the effect I thought it false that there's only one ontological category, 'the physical', but also false (or at least unhelpfully misleading) that there's two such categories; 'the physical' and 'the mental'. I can't remember exactly all the ontic categories I proposed, but it was something like this list:

The Divine
The Mathematico-Logical
The Microphysical
The Macrophysical
The Conscious/Phenomenal
The Rational/Intentional
The Abstract/Thought Object
The Aesthetic
The Imaginary/Fictional
The Keithslike

It needs work, of course, but I think there's something in it…

19. Finite machines 'keithsknow' all the truths of mathematics even though the truths of mathematics are provably not all provable by such machines. But we humans don't provably 'keithsknow' that 65+1=66! Maybe. Somehow. Or in whatever way is materialistically acceptable. Or not. As the case may, or may not, be, sort of…

And now, once again, ladies and gentlemen, a full-throated, nay, orgasmically shrieking rendition of the"¦

The Matterdidit Chorus

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

OH! OH! OH!

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

OH! OH! OH!

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

OH! OH! OH!

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

MATTERDIDIT

OH! OH! OH!

I try to be an open-minded fellow but academic theology seems like a quaint waste of time to me….
…..

. If you are an expert in academic theology, and want to make a case that it's something worth paying attention to, I must say you're doing a pretty poor job of it.

Chacun a son gout, or jobbie as the case may be.

And, if I'm that boring, it's amazing how many posts you've composed in reply to my 'poor job'. In case you've not noticed, I've written several posts about amazing spiritual experiences.

Still, I'm sure it's not as much fun as statistical analysis or computer circuitry or whatever the hell it is that floats your boat..

Following one of the links stunney posted I found this article on divine simplicity, written I think by BRian Leftow, one of the metaphysicians he admires. It astonishes me that people are still thinking this medieval mode:

stunney:

You shouldn't mock what you don't understand.

Who was mocking? I said it was in a medieval mode (which it is — the very first sentence invokes Augustine, Anelm, and Aquinas as the topic, and it's clearly a pre-enlightenment way of thinking) and that I was astonished to find people still pursuing this style of thought. On the contrary, I think it's quite marvelous, sort of like finding a coealacanth or some other species thought to be long extinct.

OK, now I'm mocking a bit, but you provoked me. When I first mentioned it, it was to take its point of view seriously and point out that it was incompatible with practicing science (which, as you rightly pointed out, is too strong since there are plenty of scientists who manage to reconcile science and theology — they just don't do it in a way I find convincing. I tried to read one of Polkinghorne's books but I got nothing from it, his science and religion did not connect for me).

I try to be an open-minded fellow but academic theology seems like a quaint waste of time to me. It's like religion with all of the spirituality drained from it, leaving only a hollow husk of dry and antiquated logic. If you are an expert in academic theology, and want to make a case that it's something worth paying attention to, I must say you're doing a pretty poor job of it.

Following one of the links stunney posted I found this article on divine simplicity, written I think by BRian Leftow, one of the metaphysicians he admires. It astonishes me that people are still thinking this medieval mode:

You shouldn't mock what you don't understand.

I'm no expert in biology, and so I don't mock biology. I do have a published article in a refereed philosophy journal on the topic of divine simplicity, though for some reason which I can't remember right now (it was published in 1992 or so), I referred to it as 'divine simpleness'.

Is there some profound emotional neediness among atheists to dismiss whatever they can't understand, control, immediately grasp, feel comfortable with, master, etc?

'Cos it sure looks that way from where I'm sitting.

Oddly enough, there may be a selection effect operating here, which makes them (atheists) particularly good at the quantitative, 'hard' sciences and engineering/technology stuff; whereas the rest of us kind of intuitively grasp that the scientific method is inherently and self-evidently limited.

I'd maybe call it 'metaphysical anal-retentive syndrome'.

Or 'jobbie-keeper syndrome', as we say in Glasgow.:eek:

Hey, The Other Side is always–as in forever and a fucking day—psychoanalyzing This Side…

What I'll say is this. After doing some research on neural networks, I'm not quite sure what they are capable of.

Hi AR,

Don't get hung up on neural networks themselves. Remember, they only came up as part of a more general objection to the idea that minds have some special mode of perceiving mathematical truth — a mode that is unavailable to computers, which, according to stunney, "can only 'know' something by mechanically proving it."

By the way, my unorthodox, alternative medicine sources say that sunshine is good for MS.

Let me assure you it isn't, at least in general.

For one thing, I'm not sure what "transcendent reason" is exactly, but there is no reason to suppose that it shares all properties of normal, embodied reason. To analogize from mathematics, let's say there is the Platonic form of 12 floating around in the transecendential world, and then there is the dozen eggs I bought today. The latter is the platonic concept embodied in a particular chunk of matter, but there's no reason to suppose that 12 itself is embodied in some Platonic grocery bag.

Eh? And, indeed, huh?

I've no idea what you're attemping to say.

Yet again, you make me repeat myself.