Philosophy and science

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At the very small (microscopic) scale:
-We can now easily detect discontinuities within the table
-We can now see that the discontinuity between the table and the floor is orders of magnitude larger than any of the discontinuities within the table
-It can be verified independent of the observer for anyone to identify the significant difference between these discontinuities
-Therefore, "the table" can be identified objectively

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Completely wrong. The table has 4 drawers down one site. Each drawer has a discontinuity much greater than the leg to ground. Furthermore the table is constructed, like most tables, from many pieces of wood which interface via nails, pins or pegs. Again the discontinuity here could easily we as much as the leg.You keep repeating that you have shown this or that. You haven't - you simply keep banging the same broken drum. It is, as I said, trivially easy to show that your rules will rarely produce a table. You haven't actually got any workable rule other than discontinuity of unspecified size indicates boundary, except when it doesn't, except when it is a drawer, except then it is a join in the timbers, except when it is a gap between the table-top leafs...and so on. You could not and cannot give me a generalised set of rules for what a table is and each time you will fail because each time you are just adding more special cases.
If you think you can objectively recognise a table then prove it. Write down some scheme - pseudocode, flowchart, whatever...
You will not be able to because it was obvious from the start that the concept of table is highly subjective, and the attempt to replace subjectivity with algorithm/procedures nearly always means imposing severe restrictions on either the model, or the range of objects that are 'tables'.
And before you whine about special cases, I am talking about one of the most common forms of table, found in offices, staff rooms etc the world-over. If I wanted to pick a special case then that would be no challenge at all. What you have to date can't even deal with the normal cases....Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

The point was to demonstrate that your method could never work, not to find odd examples - that would come later if needed (but it wouldn't be). I just have to visualise the range of structures that I would quickly recognise as a table, and that would quickly confound any previous algorithm. I actually doubt whether the problem can be solved in general terms, since table is so highly subjective that without making some link - however it is done - the algorithmic method is doomed. I cannot think of one single characteristic that all tables must share...
As Russell put it

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Each table is different from the next, each chair in a set of chairs, no matter how alike they look, are all in some way dissimilar and individual. What connection is there between all these individual objects, which warrants them to be called by the same name? Is there a mysterious force behind all chairs and tables or within their structure, which makes them chairs or tables, an immaterial Form existing somewhere in Platonic heaven? Since the definition of a table or chair is relative, this cannot be the case. Since there is no absolute essence that all tables or chairs possess, their connection may be attributed to human perceptions and the way the human mind organises the world. Humanity is the only thing that binds tables to tables and chairs to chairs.

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You seemed to get irritated by exceptions and counter cases and you insist that this density method works in each case, when it is clear that it does not. The example of the table on the wood floor is nowhere near addressed by 'edge seeking' strategies.It is a very old problem in philosophy and most of the great names spent time contemplating desks and formulating an answer of their own.
The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russell - Google BooksEdited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

I could not agree more.
We could also expand a couple of those:
Neuroscience expands to cover AI systems of all types. If we want to build intelligent machines then it would be handy to start by understanding intelligence.Ethics expands to cover a very basic question - are all subjects valid areas of study for scientists? Are there any taboos and if so what makes them so? If not then what responsibility has the scientist for the exploitation of his work? Were Oppenheimer & Feynmann right to feel guilt after the Manhattan project, or not?

It's a bit simplistic but it gets it going.
A proper debate on this will split very quickly between cognitives and behaviourists.
The Cogs generally go with representation and the Bevs reject that. So a cog model would be something along the lines of :
imagining and believing are both to be described as representational states in the brain and then there are functions on those representations to produce (behaviour).
Thus if you are daydreaming imagining you are someone else, then you have a representation of that person (p) which is a pretence. So far so obvious. But the cogs then think that if you have a belief, then the belief sits in the same representation space as the pretence does. More accurately they think the two share a representational code. The implication is, of course, testable and therefore scientific. If they are right then the same psychological mechanism (say Fear) should process belief and pretence in similar, if not identical ways.
It passed the first test - the fiction paradox.
For anyone who doesn't know this one: basically it apparently shows that our reaction to fiction is irrational. Consider:
a) We normally require personal knowledge to trigger deep emotions (crying, fear, excitement). This is why (most) people can happily deal with the knowledge that 10,000 people have been killed in a Tsunami/earthquake but may crack up when one person they know dies. The assumption is, therefore, that we need to know that the people and events are real, otherwise it will not hit the limbic system and will be filtered out by the cortex. But we also know that people are frequently moved to tears or joy from reading a book, watching a play, film or TV programme. So this seems wrong.
There are a number of proposed solutions but all of them have problems. The cog solution is to say - the code is the same for belief and pretence and it is only the context or the functional role which makes the difference. This would certainly explain the emotional response to fiction - we pretend using the same representational code which is used for beliefs - thus it is able to generate similar responses when we are pretending and when we believe it is real.That's a really basic introduction to one part of this...not very articulately expressed but you might get a hazy outline between the smoke and clouds...

posted in errorEdited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Of course it is testable. If you watch the MRI and see the same areas of the brain light up with the same intensity/blood flow, the same reported response from the subject and the same observed response then that gets a tick. The ideal case is where a belief and pretence are the same.
It is easy with young kids* but not so easy with adults.*One classic experiment has the kids pretending and believing that the cups for a teddy-bear picnic are full of pop. an adult takes one of the cups and inverts it so the kids can see it must now be empty. They are then asked to point to the full and the empty cup and they always go the same way - inverted up empty, other empty cup full.
They believe and pretend at the same time that the cup is empty.

So when a physicist describes a relationship mathematically, it really looks like that in nature does it? So we really do have a photon crossing every possible path do we? Interesting...I am not saying anything about the MRI code being the same - that is a rather stupid suggestion I'm afraid - of course it won't be the same.
If you see similar patterns of activation when a pretence state is enacted as when a believe state for the same proposition, and the subject displays similar behaviours then it is perfectly reasonable to deduce that the hypothesis is both tenable and supported to some extent. The patterns you get from the MRI just tell you which regions of the brain are in use - they don't speak a secret brain code.

They are defined, but I'm not a neuroscientist and the maths is different.
Shaun Nichols gives an outline, but you'll need to go to the referenced papers for the rigour...
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If you want to have a theory where beliefs and representations are the main variables, then you need to give definitions of those variables that are sufficiently precise that you could in principle go and measure them.

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LOL...tell that to physicists working in cosmology. Most of the variables are unknown, never mind measurable. This is a characterisation of working science - science as engineering, not of a great deal of research in physics where the right questions are still hazy, let alone a precise statement of variables. Compared to neuroscience, physics is simple sums.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Err...is that it? Probably way off target?

Ahh..OK, theoretical=probably way off target, I see.True on a trivial level (in that where there are competing theories it follows that some or all will be wrong), but I thought you were talking from experience - ie that you knew something about the field...It is not unknown for theory to lead experiment - physics is still very much in that state at the moment. The only question is whether the hypotheses are testable in principle....and it seem to me that this model is...

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With philosophy, the theories are about as useful as theories of the IPU or theories of the flying spaghetti monster. They are disconnected from observation.

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Yes, you like to assert, I realise. You assert that cognitivists are likely to be wrong - and yet they more than others use the scientific method which of course includes empirical testing of theory. But since you assert that this is not true then I guess you must be right and the books I read are all inventions...
Never mind that psychophysics is part of the field - it can't be empirical can it?Still, keeping an open mind is not always easy, is it? ...