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When I first read about object permanence[0] I wondered whether there are basic truths about reality that we can't perceive because of the way our brains are wi

by rjeli 10y ago

When I first read about object permanence[0] I wondered whether there are basic truths about reality that we can't perceive because of the way our brains are wired. Or, perhaps because we are conscious we can reason arbitrarily and are exempt from these kinds of limitations. I find these kinds of questions fascinating but I always end up with the feeling I'm not quite clever enough to grasp the roots of the issues. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence

westoncb 10y ago
That's a good example—I hadn't though about development of object permanence in this context. I'm definitely leaning more on the side of concepts being limited now—but I still have uncertainty about how significant the limits are. I think that would be an interesting research direction: nail down more definitively the particular structure of human concepts, then use that model to describe more explicitly what their limits and capabilities are. One hypothesis I have is that all concepts are reducible to a finite set of parts (e.g. types and relations), and they can be multiplied together indefinitely through nesting—so the set of concepts is infinite, but it should be the same infinity class as the integers, so they definitely can't cover everything (in the hypothetical). But, who knows? I don't have the resources to do actual research, so it remains quasi-informed speculation :) And I guess even if we know the structure of human concepts more definitively, we still couldn't really use that knowledge to determine whether specific things are amenable to conceptualization or not (e.g. the solution to the 'hard problem' of consciousness), since you would also need to say something about the 'properties' of the other thing, which already requires that the other thing be amenable to conceptualization.

by rjeli 10y ago

westoncb 10y ago

That's a good example—I hadn't though about development of object permanence in this context. I'm definitely leaning more on the side of concepts being limited now—but I still have uncertainty about how significant the limits are. I think that would be an interesting research direction: nail down more definitively the particular structure of human concepts, then use that model to describe more explicitly what their limits and capabilities are. One hypothesis I have is that all concepts are reducible to a finite set of parts (e.g. types and relations), and they can be multiplied together indefinitely through nesting—so the set of concepts is infinite, but it should be the same infinity class as the integers, so they definitely can't cover everything (in the hypothetical). But, who knows? I don't have the resources to do actual research, so it remains quasi-informed speculation :) And I guess even if we know the structure of human concepts more definitively, we still couldn't really use that knowledge to determine whether specific things are amenable to conceptualization or not (e.g. the solution to the 'hard problem' of consciousness), since you would also need to say something about the 'properties' of the other thing, which already requires that the other thing be amenable to conceptualization.