All Knowledge
Posted on: April 27, 2009 - 11:09am
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All Knowledge
Is the set of potential knowledge finite or infinite.
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Only if you allow infinitely long sequences of characters.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Gotcha. Thanks.
No, actually I rely not on feelings, but on math.
The article I linked to describes a universe in which there is a limited set of data. Unlike the alphabet example above, each piece of data is concrete, and cannot be repeated. That is, you don't have an infinite set of letters from which to draw; there is a limited number of each. This is not a feeling; it is mathematics and logic. A finite set of physical properties can only be arranged in a finite number of combinations.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Okay, third time's a charm: any example of knowledge that exists outside of a brain? Anyone?
My point regarding the expansion of the universe is no different than the inability and impossiblity
to infallibly predict the outcome infinite chaotic events, and the effect of chaos upon what currently exists. Refer back to my example of predictive models of the weather becoming obsolete due to the immeasurable events effecting global warming and
global dimming.
The universe is not static.
Moreover, there is no measure
of the chotic events in it, nor the effect of those chaotic events to forever change the universe in infinite and immeasurable ways that we can not predict in advance. As the universe infinitely evolves, so to does the infinite "information" forever evolve
in unpredictable ways.
As long as there is chaos, there is no limit to what is "created" or what changes.
So too, as the universe expands, it evolves, and that infinite and unpredictable evolution is evidence that
however you may reasonably choose to define knowledge, it is and will always remain
immeasurably "short" of a chotic, non-static, unpredictable universe of knowledge of proportions that
only a Theist would claim is finite, not immeasurable, static, and most importantly, known to God.
I take it the author you referenced also holds Theistic beliefs suggesting that everything, i.e. all that exists is finite because
God knows and will always know it all.
I've nothing more to say abour the matter, and no vested interest to discuss it further, as this thread and the counter-arguments made are no longer honestly being resposive.
I can't help thinking that we first need to clarify just what the OP was referring to by the word 'knowledge' - it seems to be becoming more confusing as this thread goes on...
Outside the brain, there is only 'information' in the Information Theory sense, the state of the universe as it is. Knowledge is a sub-set of the information describing that state, plus implications and deductions extracted from that set of 'data', encoded/represented in a particular brain, or a communicating group of brains.
A bit like the way there are fundamental relationships between what we perceive as distinguishable 'things' 'out there', which we codify as 'logic' - the codification we refer to as the 'laws of Logic' exists only in our brains. Our brains assign various symbols to each perceptually discrete entity, and then to coherent abstractions ('memes' ?) derived from our observations and contemplation of the raw objects of perception. There is then a further level of concepts involving ideas about perceived relationships and implications from the first level of abstractions, etc.
I guess the question in the OP could be thought of as, given an unbounded set of 'ideal' neuronal units, could such a hierarchy of derived concepts extend indefinitely?
EDIT: And if so, would such indefinite extension of relationships from a finite set of raw perceptions 'really' represent new ideas equal in 'value' to the primary ideas, or some sort of ever-finer 'hair-splitting'?
Leaving 'knowledge' as a purely abstract 'metaphysical' term just allows such open-ended virtually meaningless speculative playing with words and meanings as we have seen here. We really need to nail such things down to some more structured model which allows us to make more fruitful deductions by applying the tools of logic and math.
Anyway, that's how I see it at the moment.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
That was my point. Since there will always be a limited number of brains, with a limited capacity, then pragmatically speaking, the issue is not with "potential" knowledge. If we were really able to stretch our imaginations to a universe with even a nearly infinite number of brains, we still wouldn't hit an infinite amount of capacity. Capacity is intrinsically the "potential knowledge" of a population of brains.
Metaphysics was a branch of philosophy (actually, just a chapter in one of Aristotle's collection of extremely dry writing). Now, it's an unfortunate speedbump.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Information theory (the one which is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering, pioneered by Claude Shannon) by itself is not adequate to answer the question. It is adequate for encoding information. I agree that knowledge can be encoded as information. This is not the same as saying that the state of the universe is encoding all knowledge. The state of the universe can be parameterized. Knowledge is both the set of all possible states of the universe as well as the totality of all physical laws that can act on this state set.
I addressed that already.
The article refers to the finite state and computation ability of the universe. The knowledge in the universe is not the total computation ability of the universe. You are mixing concepts. The computation limits of my laptop do not describe how or why the laptop works.
The state of the universe can be a function of other states of the universe. In this sense the "alphabet" can repeat. Total knowledge is the state plus the laws that govern that state.
I answered already. Your's is a non-sense question. The world existed with out your brain else your brain would not be here. Our brains allow us to perceive, acquire and understand knowledge.
To conclude a subset relationship would require total knowledge, which you do not have. Physics exists whether we are here to understand it or not. To believe otherwise is metaphysics.
Shit! goddamn PDA! I think I just lost my response... which I will now shorten.
Agreed. Given the manner in which we are Now referring to "knowledge" as what we are capable and have the capacity to understanding, retain, etc. In several posts, I've made references to humans not as gods, and our limitations to conceive of the amount of information, our limitations with regard to comprehending abstract information far beyond our experience, etc.
I've no disagreement with the
quoted post and quoted post within it.
What are you saying, though? Knowing something requires a brain. There are no examples of things known outside of brains that I can think of.
I'm aware that the world existed without my brain. That's obvious. But where can there be knowledge outside of brains?
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
That's a compelling statement
The number of elements in the power set of a finite set containing n elements contains 2n elements - still finite. Where do you get infinity here??
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/17535#comment-242720
... wherein you state, "A finite set of facts is not sufficient to conclude finite knowledge." You have not yet demonstrated that to be true, though. That's even outside of the problem of knowledge being limited to brains, which you have not addressed.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Christ! The fucker above answered the question in the 1st response. What the hell are you pea-brains blogging for?
Sit on a vibrator already, for fuck's sake.
Zzzzzzz zzzzzz ....