This is an interesting idea for waste heat. Is the waste heat a nuclear power plant produces significant? My understanding is you want all your heat working to spin your turbine.
That’s not really the argument monkeybutton is making, the point is lobsters’ neural complexity is similar to ants, and orcas are comparable to humans.
It is true that photonic systems can multiply/add very efficiently. The limiting factor for optical neural networks are activation functions. Non-linear relationships are hard for photonics. State-of-the-art nonlinear features require optical elements that are difficult to manufacture or op-amps which slow the computational potential of the optical neural network by orders of magnitude.
I concur with many other commenters here, this is a fantastic read. Though, I find the value in this book is not the discrete proposals Jaynes makes - his conclusions on schizophrenia are dubious at best. Jayne’s achievement is in his explaining of the mindset and thought patterns (what Jaynes calls consciousness) of the ancients.
So often ancient man felt alien to me. Not until reading this book have I felt I understand what it was like to have lived millennia ago.
But where does it end? Is all reason not based on a set of axioms? You can comment on your presuppositions, if you throw them all out then there is no (classical) logic.
Philosophy is a conversation, and valid argumentation is that starting point of any treatise. The work of contending philosophers is to challenge one another, so there should be no hesitation in using less-than-certain (that is to say, all) presuppositions.
Moreover, Feser does comment on his presuppositions in this very article.
> I would qualify this by saying that metaphysics is prior to logic if “logic” is understood in sense (b) described above, though not if understood in sense (a). Naturally, we have to presuppose certain canons of reasoning when reasoning about anything, including metaphysics. But it doesn’t follow that we have to presuppose the codification enshrined in some particular formal system – such as, for example, modern propositional and predicate logic rather than traditional Aristotelian logic, or rather than some system that tries to capture the best of both worlds (such as that of Fred Sommers).
I understand caution when stating opinions - it is a good instinct, but I'm not sure what you're arguing.
> I think that sometimes being overly opinionated and incapable of changing your mind is potentially harmful to others, yes… Is it not potentially dangerous to advocate for various political realities based solely on unexamined/individual opinion-based constructs?
How can I disagree with this? Yes there is hazard in advocating for anything. Moreover, there is hazard in doing anything. But I see what you're getting at. There is some line we draw in our own minds between philosophy, that is the pursuit of truth, and political - the realm of opinions.
Where is the line? Most would say that it is when the philosopher argues in good or bad faith. Thus, we are in the realm of the unknowable, the motivations of all around us. Also, not to comment on the notions of whether it's possible for an individual's to be "good" or "bad", but I don't want to digress.
To return, I think you're saying that making statements result in harm to individuals is bad. I agree, but this is a political question, not a philosophical one. Thus providing a philosophical justification or contradiction for your statement is moot.
Is it wrong to be opinionated? Feser quickly remarks on a problem of math: some mathematical constructs reflect the system of math more than reality. If your philosophy never touches the political, the reality, aren’t you merely creating a system of reasoning for its own sake?
Moreover, does he need to challenge his own presuppositions? We can do that!