Friday: Philosophical Dreams

A methodology of philosophy as a system, not a collection of doctrines | Technology, language, intelligence, consciousness - as an evolution of learning itself | The evolution of learning is the evolution of humanity | Learning of the highest order - as the definition of philosophy | On the unreasonable effectiveness of physics and nature in mathematics | The third rule of learning | The fourth rule of learning | The application of the fourth rule to mathematics as a way to solve questions of impossibility | Philosophy of mathematics as learning | Philosophy of science as learning: Instead of paradigms - the second rule of learning ("within the system") | The connection between learning and the Jewish concept of "covenant" | The contribution of historicizing the system to learning, as a continuation of Hegel and Nietzschean genealogy | Future directions for the philosophy of learning | What came before learning in philosophy? - A brief history of learning | Why did we come into the world? - To learn

Thought as a shell - beneath it, learning. Thought as a facade - behind it, learning  (Source)

• Learning will influence all of philosophy because it will become part of the philosophical method: how the philosopher arrived at it. That is, not only their arguments from within their world, but also an external description of how they arrived at their world, will be considered the philosopher's work. Why, for example, specifically the future, and not the past, in the approach of the philosophy of the future. And what would happen if another time were chosen, for example, an ongoing present or a perfect past. Why specifically the "I" in Descartes, and what other options are there (you, he, they, feminine), and how each creates a different philosophy. The philosopher will not only present the interior of their system, but also its external systemic connections within philosophy as a developing field, and explain which directions from the past led to it and present future directions from it. This way, philosophy will be understood not as a collection of methods and works, but as a system, like mathematics.


• In the philosophy of mind - consciousness as a learning mechanism. Learning is what creates consciousness and this is the solution to the puzzle of consciousness. And the next puzzle, of intelligence, will be perceived as impersonal learning, as opposed to personal learning. But what underlies both consciousness and intelligence is the learning mechanism of the brain, and therefore these two seemingly separate, independent phenomena appeared together in evolution. And what led to them? The learning of language. Because unlike animals, language is always learned. And what led to the ability to learn language? Technology, the ability to use tools and learn to use them. In other words, technology is not a new feature of humanity, to be remembered as the end of humanity, but also as its beginning, what created humanity. And language is the first spiritual technology - a social tool. Because learning to use tools is social learning, from teacher to student, and the learning tool is language. And why did social learning precede personal learning? Because learning is always within the system. And society is the system. And only at the end was the individual also created as a system - and therefore learning within it became possible.


• We can see here a rise each time in the order of the learning phenomenon: from first-order learning (technology) to second-order learning of learning (language) to third-order learning of learning of learning (intelligence) to fourth-order learning of learning of learning of learning (consciousness). And all this is made possible by the object-oriented nature of learning as learning of, or learning about, and therefore it's possible to connect to learning about learning, learning about learning about learning, etc. And learning about consciousness is already culture, and within it, third-order learning about language is literature, and fourth-order learning about technology is science. And learning about culture is art. And what is second-order learning about intelligence within culture? Philosophy.


• Physics is the basis for mathematics - not the other way around. The reason there is mathematics is physics. Therefore, the problem of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics and science is a joke problem, stemming from poor philosophical idealism. What's correct is - the effectiveness of physics in mathematics.


• Space-time is not a basic phenomenon, neither is matter, nor the laws of nature, not even mathematics. They all stem from the basic phenomenon of learning. Learning is the mediator between the layer of information, trivial in describing the universe, and the complexity of the universe. Without learning, there would be nothing, nothing would be built or sustained or developed. Learning is the most basic principle of the universe (not even a law, and not even a mathematical property). Time stems from the development of learning, from the fact that it has stages (there is no continuum in the world) and progress - and therefore it has a direction. The unidirectionality of orientation is what causes the time axis, and it emerges as an illusion because of learning. Space stems from learning within a system. Within the system - hence the universe emerges, and therefore there is nothing outside the universe, this is the most general learning, and the largest system. The laws of nature did not undergo fine-tuning by chance, or because of the ridiculous anthropic principle, but as a result of learning. There was a learning stage that logically preceded the Big Bang, and the laws of nature changed at first because they were forming. Laws that did not lead to complexity did not survive, just as mathematics without complexity is not interesting, and therefore the universe converged on complicated, fractal, deep mathematics. Learning strives for the limit which is the most interesting direction. Therefore, it is always unpredictable. The idea of an observer in quantum mechanics is not accurate, the correct idea is a learner. Humans are not random just as evolution is not random just as the universe is not random, but they are not planned, rather results of a learning process. Intelligence is not random, because it is a learning process, and the universe is fundamentally built from learning. A definition of God as the Learner and of the Shekhinah [divine presence] as Learning, and of humans as students and therefore of God as the Teacher, is a valid definition (and this is the religious claim) although also empty (and this is the secular claim).


• The third rule of learning is: Orientation. The atom of learning is a unidirectional arrow, but partial, meaning it doesn't determine learning, like causality, but it also doesn't allow everything in postmodern arbitrariness, rather it orients. This partiality is actually stronger than all or nothing. For example, a previous thought is not the cause of the next thought, but it is an orientation. A new datum in reality is not the cause of a new hypothesis in learning, but an orientation towards new hypotheses. A teacher doesn't give instructions to a student, and doesn't program them, but gives them orientations, and thus the student learns. Learning algorithms are algorithms that treat data as orientations and not as instructions. The difference between programming and learning is a black box that the outside doesn't control, but learns with its own tools, with the help of orientations.


• The fourth rule of learning is: Women and men. In natural learning systems, there are two types of agents, where one type (women) evaluates what the second type (men) did and chooses from it. Each layer of neurons evaluates the performance of the previous one and chooses a weighting from it to pass on to the next generation/layer. Men are search and women are optimization. In men, there are mutations and women critique. Men are creators and women are curators. Men write and women edit. Men are sites and women are "hub" type nodes, of a selection of sites. Philosophers are men and readers are women. Men are students and women are examiners. Men and women together try to solve a non-polynomial problem, meaning one that doesn't have an efficient solution, through solutions (men) that are examined by evaluators (women), who create combinations from them for the next generation, where they will again be evaluated by the women of the next generation. In fact, there is no evolution, only co-evolution. Sometimes predators are the evaluators of the prey. And this is also the social network versus the network of sites: the first network gives evaluations to the second network, or chooses from the second network and shares.


• Learning is the most promising concept for mathematics in the next century. Because of the understanding of mathematics as a language, there is a problem in proving negative results - what cannot be done. These are the great problems in mathematics today, not the constructive problems, and learning can solve them, because it is a conceptualization of the constructive - above it. Thus the question of what cannot be learned, the question of the limits of learning, will allow results. The P = NP problem stems from the inability to find lower bounds, and new definitions of algorithm learning will be able to break down efficient algorithms into constructive and learning construction, and therefore will be able to give negative results - what they cannot do. Just as Galois theory broke down equations into constructive building and therefore gave negative results - what cannot be done. Or the Cartesian coordinate system - on geometry, and there are many examples from the history of mathematics. How, for example, do we build the contradiction? If P equals NP, we'll build an ideal universal learning system, and find a function that it doesn't learn. If it's possible to learn any polynomial in construction, then if it's possible to learn a solution to NP, we'll see that one of its components must also solve an NP problem, and so by induction we'll descend to absurdity. The Riemann hypothesis will also be understood as a problem of learning primes, that is, the problem of bridging between multiplication decomposition and addition decomposition. There are numbers that there's no method to reach except by adding, it's impossible to compress them and present them by multiplication method. That is, is it possible to compress all natural numbers, and therefore learn them as a method? If there were a finite number of primes certainly, and if not, then it depends on their frequency how much it compresses. Therefore learning of natural numbers is understanding primes. Both problems are to prove that there is no method. And therefore results on learning methods are relevant to them.


• Learning will allow results and insights across all of mathematics, for example learning of groups will give results on groups, and so also in logic through definitions of learning logic, which is currently outside formalism, because currently the question of how to prove only refers to the rules of the game and not to how to play well. For example: how to learn to prove in mathematics, how to learn mathematics, that is, learn new proofs, and not just how to prove in mathematics (that is, what is the language game - only the rules of the game). In this sense, mathematics itself will be perceived as learning, and not as a body of knowledge (data), and not as logic or as language, but as learning and proof algorithms. Therefore - a theorem with a proof is a demonstration. It teaches how to prove. The theorem is just the beginning, its meaning is in its use, namely in mathematical learning. This is living and developing mathematics. And in it there is enormous importance to how definitions are learned, not just theorems. Learning is the synthesis between discovery and invention. Discovery is more suitable for proof, and invention is more suitable for definitions. One of the great weaknesses of mathematics education today is the method in which they explain how they arrived at theorems, in a historically incorrect way (and also incorrect in terms of learning), but the explanation is the proof. But an even greater weakness is that they explain even less how they arrived at definitions, when historically the struggle to find the right definitions was the hardest, and theorems are easier. Research in mathematics will always be perceived as searching for proofs, and you can't define research as searching for valuable definitions, and this hinders the creation of new fields.


• Learning in (the abbreviation of the second rule: learning within the system) = choice and then evaluation (covenant), and not evaluation and then choice (date). That is, you try to build a relationship with him and don't check if he's suitable for a relationship. This is what allows learning. As long as he hasn't crossed the gate of choice - he's still outside, and the learning is not within the system, and a system of couplehood hasn't yet been created. Couplehood is feedback loops within the system, and dating is feedback loops outside the system.


• We need more thinking about the future in the method of philosophy, and more thinking about philosophy as a field of learning - and again, not object-oriented learning from outside (learning philosophy as knowledge from a teacher) but philosophical learning (the development of philosophy itself) - learning within philosophy from the inside. Similar to the difference between learning mathematics in school, not in a creative way, to learning mathematics in academic research, learning as creation. Or the difference between learning in proficiency to learning in depth in the world of Torah study, or learning as knowledge in the Mishnah to learning as learning in the Gemara. Therefore, philosophy needs to move to a new type of writing, more meta-poetic, that explains how it was really learned, similar to the difference between presenting the history of mathematics and how the proof was found and what mistakes and stuck points were along the way, versus an ideal picture of the final perfect proofs in mathematics, as mathematics is taught today. This is what creates the fake and sterile idealistic image of mathematics and philosophy as pure spiritual fields - the anti-learning illusion that is teaching. Wittgenstein and Augustine - every serious philosophy opens with a confession, and therefore the honest confession is important: how did your thread of thought actually develop, where did you get stuck and where did you change direction and where didn't you understand, as opposed to the retrospective arguments you found. That is, a true description of your learning, not an ideal one.


• In the next century, several philosophical schools could develop that will emerge from the philosophy of language. In England, the school of legal philosophy and in Continental philosophy, the school of philosophy of thought. Additional concepts on which a school can be built: creativity, future, intelligence, consciousness, technology, art. For example: philosophy of intelligence, philosophy of technology, but in the sense of the philosophy of language - not just philosophy that deals with language (as an object of philosophy), but one that is constituted from the concept of language, where language becomes the basis of all philosophy (i.e., philosophy is an object of language). For example, today there exists a philosophy of art in the first sense but not the second. But - the most important school, the unifying one, is the philosophy of learning.‬ And it is the center of all these schools (which doesn't mean they can't grow from it afterwards). In fact, one of the proofs (learning ones!) of its importance is its being the statistical center of all the arrows around, because it's right on target.


• The historical evolution of perceptions in the philosophy of the learning machine itself: If once there was intellect, then reason, then logic, then logic [formal], then rationality, then intelligence, then thinking, finally - learning. And what comes out? That philosophy itself is learning. Every philosophy contains all those preceding it as a special case, and therefore it's so difficult to deviate from it at first, because it's an all-containing set. And so the history of philosophy is like an inverted matryoshka doll, where each time we find from the outside another hidden doll that contains the previous large one.


• By our very nature, what our brain seeks is not truth, but a new idea, because that's learning. The mistake of all philosophy is that it always sought truth, and always found a new idea. Truth is an old idea, and not particularly successful, because there's really no such thing, but this doesn't abandon us to arbitrariness, precisely because of - learning. Learning is not a search for truth, but a construction of truth. They always sought truth, but what they really wanted was the accumulation and credibility of learning, and wanted to conceptualize them in the idea of truth - because there's something truly frightening about learning. The world is truly open.


• The purpose of life: learning.