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> Cognition is discrete There's little evidence even of this, except in the trivial sense that language (minus prosody) is composed of discrete units.

mjburgess 3y ago
It is discrete insofar as we're talking about sequences of thoughts, ie., reasoning. What offends the minds of some people is the world might not be like their mind at all. They want always to analogise everything to Reason. Everything should be countable, everything should be knowable, etc.
- omnicognate 3y ago
  That's the "trivial sense" I'm talking about. If we restrict "cognition" to the stuff we know is discrete then trivially it's discrete. But cognition is a hell of a lot more than that.
  - lupire 3y ago
    I don't see how what we know is discrete. A word doesn't even have a discrete meaning, except locally in relation to other words. Saying A = B + C looks discrete, just by hiding any potential non-discreteness inside B and C.
    - simiones 3y ago
      Discrete here means "non-continuous" - i.e. there is no smooth transition function between ideas/thoughts/rationalizations. For example, a formal proof is a discrete process: it follows step-wise rules that you can assign natural numbers to (this is the first step, this is the second step, this is the third step). A non-discrete process, a continuous one, would have a smooth transition between these steps, which is hard to even imagine. While I am not convinced it is correct to say that "human reasoning is discrete", human language is definitely discrete. Words don't blend smoothly into each other. If you don't believe me, try to define a function f:[0,1] -> Words, such that f(0) = "red" and f(1) = "blue" and tell me what is f(sqrt(2)/2), or what is df/dx.
    - omnicognate 3y ago
      I entirely agree. I wasn't making a statement that "what we know is discrete". I was referring to a particular subset of cognition as "what [i.e. the things that] we know are discrete". There are aspects of cognition that are discrete: a language contains a finite set of phonemes and words, a human mind is capable of (painfully slowly) carrying out purely symbolic algorithms like those a computer performs, etc. My point was that these things are a small subset of cognition, and most of cognition we have no particular reason to think depends on discreteness, which I think is the same point you're making. Personally I strongly suspect that the "discrete" aspects of cognition are things that have evolved on top of / within a system that is fundamentally continuous (analogue) in nature.
      - hnfong 3y ago
        > My point was that these things are a small subset of cognition, and most of cognition we have no particular reason to think depends on discreteness, which I think is the same point you're making. How do you convince yourself that you have thoughts that cannot be accurately written down no matter how many words you use? > Personally I strongly suspect that the "discrete" aspects of cognition are things that have evolved on top of / within a system that is fundamentally continuous (analogue) in nature. How do you tell whether things are really fundamentally continuous, or a really high definition pixel art?
        omnicognate 3y ago
        I can't. That's why said "I personally strongly suspect" rather than presenting my partially-informed intuitions as facts.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  what's a sequence of thoughts?
  - Sardtok 3y ago
    What are thoughts, anyway?
- lupire 3y ago
  And everything should be... "quantizable"? https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsquantum-mechanics https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsquantum-mechanics
hnfong 3y ago
You're technically correct. That said, our Turing Machine model of computation is discrete, and the Church-Turing thesis implies human thought is Turing Complete. It's not empirical evidence, but it's something. (I really doubt an empirical test is possible at all, so it seems philosophizing is all we have, unfortunately.) I'm not aware of any (communicable) model of thought that actually can't be reduced to the Turing model (in fact, that AFAIK precisely the reason he proposed the model). Analog signals can be approximated to arbitrary precision, so while we conventionally think of it as continuous, it doesn't imply our cognition really has infinite precision floats internally... I think it's really unfair to only focus on half of the picture (saying there's no evidence for "Cognition is discrete") where in fact we actually have no evidence at all whether anything is fundamentally continuous or merely approximated as such with high precision. Traditionally the math in physics is continuous, and the math in computing is mostly discrete. If people point to Hilbert space as some kind of justification for believing physics is continuous, then it seems equally valid (or invalid) to use the Turing model as justification to believe cognition is discrete. I think both approaches are misguided, but as I said, it's really unfair to point out only the convenient half of these invalid arguments.

mjburgess 3y ago

It is discrete insofar as we're talking about sequences of thoughts, ie., reasoning. What offends the minds of some people is the world might not be like their mind at all. They want always to analogise everything to Reason. Everything should be countable, everything should be knowable, etc.

omnicognate 3y ago
That's the "trivial sense" I'm talking about. If we restrict "cognition" to the stuff we know is discrete then trivially it's discrete. But cognition is a hell of a lot more than that.
- lupire 3y ago
  I don't see how what we know is discrete. A word doesn't even have a discrete meaning, except locally in relation to other words. Saying A = B + C looks discrete, just by hiding any potential non-discreteness inside B and C.
  - simiones 3y ago
    Discrete here means "non-continuous" - i.e. there is no smooth transition function between ideas/thoughts/rationalizations. For example, a formal proof is a discrete process: it follows step-wise rules that you can assign natural numbers to (this is the first step, this is the second step, this is the third step). A non-discrete process, a continuous one, would have a smooth transition between these steps, which is hard to even imagine. While I am not convinced it is correct to say that "human reasoning is discrete", human language is definitely discrete. Words don't blend smoothly into each other. If you don't believe me, try to define a function f:[0,1] -> Words, such that f(0) = "red" and f(1) = "blue" and tell me what is f(sqrt(2)/2), or what is df/dx.
  - omnicognate 3y ago
    I entirely agree. I wasn't making a statement that "what we know is discrete". I was referring to a particular subset of cognition as "what [i.e. the things that] we know are discrete". There are aspects of cognition that are discrete: a language contains a finite set of phonemes and words, a human mind is capable of (painfully slowly) carrying out purely symbolic algorithms like those a computer performs, etc. My point was that these things are a small subset of cognition, and most of cognition we have no particular reason to think depends on discreteness, which I think is the same point you're making. Personally I strongly suspect that the "discrete" aspects of cognition are things that have evolved on top of / within a system that is fundamentally continuous (analogue) in nature.
    - hnfong 3y ago
      > My point was that these things are a small subset of cognition, and most of cognition we have no particular reason to think depends on discreteness, which I think is the same point you're making. How do you convince yourself that you have thoughts that cannot be accurately written down no matter how many words you use? > Personally I strongly suspect that the "discrete" aspects of cognition are things that have evolved on top of / within a system that is fundamentally continuous (analogue) in nature. How do you tell whether things are really fundamentally continuous, or a really high definition pixel art?
      - omnicognate 3y ago
        I can't. That's why said "I personally strongly suspect" rather than presenting my partially-informed intuitions as facts.
Almondsetat 3y ago
what's a sequence of thoughts?
- Sardtok 3y ago
  What are thoughts, anyway?
lupire 3y ago
And everything should be... "quantizable"? https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsquantum-mechanics https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsquantum-mechanics

hnfong 3y ago

You're technically correct. That said, our Turing Machine model of computation is discrete, and the Church-Turing thesis implies human thought is Turing Complete. It's not empirical evidence, but it's something. (I really doubt an empirical test is possible at all, so it seems philosophizing is all we have, unfortunately.) I'm not aware of any (communicable) model of thought that actually can't be reduced to the Turing model (in fact, that AFAIK precisely the reason he proposed the model). Analog signals can be approximated to arbitrary precision, so while we conventionally think of it as continuous, it doesn't imply our cognition really has infinite precision floats internally... I think it's really unfair to only focus on half of the picture (saying there's no evidence for "Cognition is discrete") where in fact we actually have no evidence at all whether anything is fundamentally continuous or merely approximated as such with high precision. Traditionally the math in physics is continuous, and the math in computing is mostly discrete. If people point to Hilbert space as some kind of justification for believing physics is continuous, then it seems equally valid (or invalid) to use the Turing model as justification to believe cognition is discrete. I think both approaches are misguided, but as I said, it's really unfair to point out only the convenient half of these invalid arguments.