# Help me untangle this logical paradox involving mental conception **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 9, 2012, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243 "2012-03-09T08:12:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/81 "2012-03-11T22:44:58Z")
Do you think this is true? In order for something to be about X, it must contain information which comes from X. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/82 "2012-03-11T22:49:05Z")
Do you think this is true? In order for something to be about X, its meaning must highly correlate with properties of X. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/83 "2012-03-11T22:57:06Z")
Regarding linguistic creatures, let me in this aside illustrate for you one way in which you are being _completely unclear_ in your explication of your view. Not unclear to me. Unclear simpliciter. You said, > [@](#): > > this definition implies that in order to think about X, you must be able to describe X to someone else in a way that unambiguously identifies it. . I’ve cut out the word “incidentally.” You later seemed to be saying you intended “incidentally” here to have the force of not taking what you said literally, or something–but that is not at all what “incidentally” means. “Incidentally” simply means “The following is true and interesting but probably has no direct implication for our conversation.” Use of “incidentally” before a claim has _no effect_ on the meaning of the claim or its truth value. It affects only the place of the claim in the dialogue. Anyway, what the above says is that your definition “implies” that “in order to” think about X, you “must” be able to describe it to someone. Later on you said you intended this to be a sufficient, not necessary condition. But that makes no sense at all. “In order to X, you must Y” means Y is _necessary_ for X, not sufficient. What you wrote above _does mean_ that non-linguistic creatures can’t think about things. This may not be what you believe, but it _is_ what you said. I know exactly what you’ve been saying throughout this thread. What I can’t figure out is what you actually _think_ because you keep using language that doesn’t cohere together. Not that I don’t understand it, but that it’s not, in a real sense _understandable at all_. And then you have the temerity to condescend to me about how “careful” I need to be about “sementics” etc. I mean sheesh. It is a literal, objective fact that you are not using words in a coherent way in this thread. Whether this is due to a lack of care or something else I won’t speculate. But talk of how “serious” people need to be and how “careful” and how your “patience” is wearing “thin” naturally invites an analysis such as the one I’ve given. Show some humility _at least_ since you’re otherwise just asking to be knocked down. Our patience, our carefulness, our levels of knowledge, etc are _absolutely irrelevant_ and should not even be brought up. Stick to the matters directly relevant to what’s being discussed, or risk appearing very very foolish. To be clear: that’s certainly a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way. Several times before it sunk in… Okay that’s what I have to say about that. ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/84 "2012-03-11T23:42:16Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I appreciate the attempted diplomacy but I actually do think that I can think about the exact object **iamnotbatman** is holding in the described scenario. > > Putting aside “I wonder what he has”, I’ll discuss a different thought I could have. I could think to myself, as a result of what I take (incorrectly) to be a psychic intuition, “I know he is holding a pen in his hand.” In that case, I _am_ thinking of the object in his hand, the object _is_ a piece of paper, and I am thinking something false about it. > > I’m thinking about the piece of paper, and I’m thinking something about it that is incorrect. > > Why do I say I’m thinking about the piece of paper? Because the thought is about the object in his hand (it says, after all, “the object in his hand is such-and-such”) and the object in his hand is a piece of paper. A = B and B = C. > > (I should acknowledge here an awareness of the possibility that there’s stuff under the surface here about the validity of substitution of identicals in opaque contexts etc etc but I don’t think that would actually affect the point in this conversation.) The math doesn’t follow. “Because the thought is about the object in his hand” is a false statement. The true statement is “the thought is about **an** object in his hand.” You have a “B = C” but no “A = B”. From another angle: this argument can be extended to absurd extremes. What if you said “I know he has a lemon in his pocket.” Does this constitue thinking about the apple in his hand? After all, you’re still thinking about the apple in this hand, you’ve just called the apple a lemon, and his hand a pocket. Furthermore, your argument above rests on the assumption that in order to be able to think about _the_ object in his hand, you must first know that _an_ object is in his hand. You claim that by thinking about _any_ object in his hand, you are actually thinking about _the_ object, because despite _the_ object not being the same as _any_ object, they both at least share the property of being objects in his hand. But I can remove that piece of knowledge. Can you think about the contents of my hand? (I have not specified whether there is anything in the hand at all). Finally, another way in which the above doesn’t make sense (related to the above). In your argument “I know he is holding a pen in his hand,” “pen” can be replaced by anything, and the argument still goes through. So you are claiming that the set “I know he is holding X in his hand,” for any X in the universe, represents a statement of knowledge about the object in my hand. Since X is unconstrained, the claim has no information value beyond the thinking about the collection of possible objects he could be holding in his hand. But if you are just thinking about the collection of possible objects in my hand, then it would be wise to change your claim to “I can think about the collection of possible objects in your hand”, because that is precisely what you are doing. The logic above is clear, and I would again refer you to it, though you have repeatedly claimed it is a misrepresentation of your argument. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/85 "2012-03-11T23:56:26Z")
I can think about the contents of your hand. If you have contents in your hand, I’m lucky, and they’re the things I’ve thought about. If you have no contents in your hand, then I’m unlucky, and my thoughts are about mere possibilia or fictions or whatever you prefer. As I said before, the actual state of the world can have a determining effect on the matter of just exactly what I am thinking about. What thing in the world I am thinking about (and whether I am thinking about any thing in the world at all) can vary logically independently from any purely internal description of my relevant mental state. I’m fairly certain you’re confusing “knowledge of” with “thoughts about,” since you said in your last paragrah that my view implies that a thought of X "represents a statement of “knowledge about the object in” your hand. My belief on that matter is the obvious truth: I don’t think that thinking about something has any implications for what I know or don’t know about that thing. I can make a whole lot more sense out of your posts in this thread, though, if I attribute to you a confusion between knowledge-of and thought-about–including some of the strange things you’ve said my views imply. ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/86 "2012-03-12T00:06:36Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Regarding linguistic creatures, let me in this aside illustrate for you one way in which you are being _completely unclear_ in your explication of your view. Not unclear to me. Unclear simpliciter. > > You said, > > . > > I’ve cut out the word “incidentally.” You later seemed to be saying you intended “incidentally” here to have the force of not taking what you said literally, or something–but that is not at all what “incidentally” means. “Incidentally” simply means “The following is true and interesting but probably has no direct implication for our conversation.” Use of “incidentally” before a claim has _no effect_ on the meaning of the claim or its truth value. It affects only the place of the claim in the dialogue. I said: > [@iamnotbatman](#): > > Incidentally, this definition implies that in order to think about X, you must be able to describe X to someone else in a way that unambiguously identifies it. What should have been read as implicit is: > [@iamnotbatman](#): > > Incidentally, this definition implies that in order to think about X, **one who is linguistically capable of it** must be able to describe X to someone else in a way that unambiguously identifies it. I used the word “incidentally” to point out the fact that this corollary refers to a particular case, that of linguistically capable creatures, and should not be confused with the previous, more general definition. The corollary, however, is useful in the examples we have been discussion. > [@Frylock](#): > > Anyway, what the above says is that your definition “implies” that “in order to” think about X, you “must” be able to describe it to someone. What I meant, as I pointed to above, what that **one who is capable** must be able to describe it to someone. > [@Frylock](#): > > Later on you said you intended this to be a sufficient, not necessary condition. But that makes no sense at all. “In order to X, you must Y” means Y is _necessary_ for X, not sufficient. Does it make sense now? Indeed, being able to apply the corollary is sufficient, but not necessary in cases outside of its domain of applicability. > [@Frylock](#): > > What you wrote above _does mean_ that non-linguistic creatures can’t think about things. This may not be what you believe, but it _is_ what you said. Only according to your misunderstanding of what I wrote, which I hope I have cleared up. I admit I could have been more explicit, but even looking back, in the context of what I wrote later, you should have been able to figure out exactly what I meant, and been generous in your interpretation, rather than choosing one to suit your apparent need to try to “put me in my place”) > [@Frylock](#): > > I know exactly what you’ve been saying throughout this thread. What I can’t figure out is what you actually _think_ because you keep using language that doesn’t cohere together. Not that I don’t understand it, but that it’s not, in a real sense _understandable at all_. > > And then you have the temerity to condescend to me about how “careful” I need to be about “sementics” etc. I mean sheesh. > > It is a literal, objective fact that you are not using words in a coherent way in this thread. Whether this is due to a lack of care or something else I won’t speculate. But talk of how “serious” people need to be and how “careful” and how your “patience” is wearing “thin” naturally invites an analysis such as the one I’ve given. Show some humility _at least_ since you’re otherwise just asking to be knocked down. Our patience, our carefulness, our levels of knowledge, etc are _absolutely irrelevant_ and should not even be brought up. Stick to the matters directly relevant to what’s being discussed, or risk appearing very very foolish. To be clear: that’s certainly a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way. Several times before it sunk in… > > Okay that’s what I have to say about that. All I have to say is that the above speaks for itself. The above is condescending, patronizing, incredibly hypocritical, and wrong. Far more condescending than I may or may not have been. Even some of the things you attribute to me (“serious”,“carefulness”, “our levels of knowledge” as purported self-attributions are not true. I have been only sticking to our discussion, trying to move it forward. Apparently it is you who are not. And “It is a literal, objective fact that you are not using words in a coherent way in this thread.”? This is a bizarre and offensive meltdown, **Frylock**. There is no way in hell I am continuing a conversation with someone willing to write the above. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/87 "2012-03-12T00:19:11Z")
> [@iamnotbatman](#): > > I said: > What should have been read as implicit is: > > I used the word “incidentally” to point out the fact that this corollary refers to a particular case, that of linguistically capable creatures, and should not be confused with the previous, more general definition. The corollary, however, is useful in the examples we have been discussion. That is _never_ what "incidentally\* means. > [@](#): > > What I meant, as I pointed to above, what that **one who is capable** must be able to describe it to someone. > > Does it make sense now? Indeed, being able to apply the corollary is sufficient, but not necessary in cases outside of its domain of applicability. “In order to think about it, one who is capable of expressing things through language must be able to describe the thing to someone.” This still gives a _necessary_ not a _sufficient_ condition for “being able to think about something.” Since you’ve been subsequently calling it “sufficient,” I am still unsure what you mean. I do not know whether you mean what you originally said, or what you are now saying. Which is it, between these two choices? A. In order to think about a thing, one capable of language must be able to describe the thing B. If one capable of language can describe the thing, then that one can think about the thing. Which do you mean? If you mean the latter, you’re giving a sufficient condition for thinking about a thing. If you mean the former, you’re giving a necessary condition. The necessary-condition reading is more interesting. I hope it’s the one you mean. But it’s definitely giving a _necessary_ not a sufficient condition, for being able to think about something. > [@](#): > > All I have to say is that the above speaks for itself. The above is condescending, patronizing, incredibly hypocritical, and wrong. Don’t give me that. “Seriously dude,” (not in general but as used by you in the context in which you used it), “be careful about your semantics,” “My patience is wearing thin,” etc are wrongheaded and just a little inappropriate attempts to put _me_ in my place, and it is absolutely fair for me to “put you in your place” right back. If I cranked it up, it’s because of the ludicrousness of _you_, who have failed to communicate a coherent view, offering these particular criticisms. It’s the pot calling the white sheets black. You seem to _need_ a place-putting. I hereby promise to put that matter away, however, on the assumption that it is put away by you as well. On edit: I see you’ve decided to beg off the discussion. That’s fair enough but like I said, I consider the “who’s in what place” conversation to be over. The other one is wide open. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/88 "2012-03-12T00:25:58Z")
> [@](#): > > I consider the “who’s in what place” conversation to be over In fact I shouldn’t claim the last word on that one–when I say I consider it to be over, I should mean (and now I do) that even if you address it, I will feel obligated not to respond. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/89 "2012-03-12T00:29:45Z")
Specifically, I’m still interested to hear whether you think the following two claims are true: A. In order for something to be about X, it must contain information which comes from X. B. In order for something to be about X, its meaning must highly correlate with properties of X. As well as your response to what I said in my last contentful post, quoted below: > [@](#): > > I can think about the contents of your hand. If you have contents in your hand, I’m lucky, and they’re the things I’ve thought about. If you have no contents in your hand, then I’m unlucky, and my thoughts are about mere possibilia or fictions or whatever you prefer. > > As I said before, the actual state of the world can have a determining effect on the matter of just exactly what I am thinking about. What thing in the world I am thinking about (and whether I am thinking about any thing in the world at all) can vary logically independently from any purely internal description of my relevant mental state. > > I’m fairly certain you’re confusing “knowledge of” with “thoughts about,” since you said in your last paragrah that my view implies that a thought of X "represents a statement of “knowledge about the object in” your hand. My belief on that matter is the obvious truth: I don’t think that thinking about something has any implications for what I know or don’t know about that thing. I can make a whole lot more sense out of your posts in this thread, though, if I attribute to you a confusion between knowledge-of and thought-about–including some of the strange things you’ve said my views imply. ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/90 "2012-03-12T00:42:52Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Don’t give me that. “Seriously dude,” (not in general but as used by you in the context in which you used it), “be careful about your semantics,” “My patience is wearing thin,” etc are wrongheaded and just a little inappropriate attempts to put _me_ in my place, and it is absolutely fair for me to “put you in your place” right back. If I cranked it up, it’s because of the ludicrousness of _you_, who have failed to communicate a coherent view, offering these criticisms. You seem to _need_ a place-putting. In your opinion I haven’t presented a coherent view. In my opinion, you haven’t presented a coherent view. You have hardly “put me in my place”, or in any way showed that my viewpoint is incoherent. You gave one example of a minor misunderstanding. In this thread I have repeatedly pointed to places where you are making incoherent arguments, and each time you have failed to address them. Take, for instance, the case where I wrote: > [@iamnotbatman](#): > > My patience is wearing thin. The fact that your son can think about the number 11 has nothing to do with the information content of the phrase “I am thinking of the fifth prime.” If your son says “I am thinking of the fifth prime”, and he has no idea what he is saying, then his statement is vacuous, he is just saying words without understanding them, and what he is thinking about has no correlation with his claim. Perhaps it could have done without the first sentence, but you never addressed the fact that I was CORRECT. You are making these sorts of mistakes, over and over again. I feel the same way about when I told you to be careful with your semantics. You are being demonstrably and even admittedly (!) sloppy, even admitting that you are unwilling to commit to the definitions in the words making up your claims! This, apparently, is acceptable to you, but nonetheless your silly focus on a word “incidentally” apparently “puts me in my place” and allows you to assume some kind of “teacher” role in this argument, rather than an equal participant. This behavior is unacceptable, and there is no way I’m going to continue a conversation in this environment, at least unless you admit that you have not in any way shown that my argument is incoherent. ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/91 "2012-03-12T01:39:27Z")
I should add that “Seriously dude,” “be careful about your semantics,” and “my patience is wearing thin,” (I don’t think there is any “etc”) were not attempts to “put you in your place.” That is something you are reading into them. I say this in all sincerity. “Seriously dude”, for example, was meant to be disarming and candid, sort of intended to be the way two people who consider each other “equals” might talk to each other. I genuinely believed (and still do) that you were not being careful, and frustratingly, I don’t feel that those concerns were ever addressed. Obviously I should be less impatient and choose my words more diplomatically, but you are inappropriately projecting onto them some kind of self-importance and power struggle that never existed on my side of things. I was just sincerely trying to move the conversation forward in the most efficient way I knew how at the time (with frustration and impatience poking through here and there). Sometimes frustration and impatience causes someone to say short things like “be careful about semantics”, because the hope is that the other party is generous enough to take it to heart, rather than requiring that we delve into a protracted and sometimes futile argument over the specific ways in which care was or was not taken, since this process can substantively derail the main thread of argument. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/92 "2012-03-12T01:51:25Z")
Okay, I’m interested to know what your response is to post 89 when you have a chance to respond. In response to this: > [@](#): > > The fact that your son can think about the number 11 has nothing to do with the information content of the phrase “I am thinking of the fifth prime.” If your son says “I am thinking of the fifth prime”, and he has no idea what he is saying, then his statement is vacuous, he is just saying words without understanding them, and what he is thinking about has no correlation with his claim. I agree with you. I agree with each statement in the above quote. But it does not mean that he can’t think about the fifth prime. I’ve demonstrated that he can: He thinks about the number 11 probably at leats once a day at school. This is not an incoherent claim at all. Your sentences above are correct, but they miss the mark as a criticism of my own. They are not relevant. My kid can think, de re, about the fifth prime. What he can’t do is think, de dicto, “the fifth prime.” Do you know the distinction I’m referring to here? I think your criticism of me in the abovequoted runs afoul of a failure to draw that distinction. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/93 "2012-03-12T03:00:17Z")
It is impossible for X to think about Y. What is an XY pair you think makes the above true? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/94 "2012-03-12T03:22:13Z")
Take the schema “thinking about X.” Sometimes X in that schema can be filled in with a name. Sometimes it can be filled in with a description. Y is thinking about X and X is a name iff the thing named by X figures unavoidably in the satisfaction conditions of some occurent mental state Y is in. Y is thinking about X and X is a description iff either the description is instantiated and the thing described figures unavoidably in a description of the segment of the world which constitutes the thought as either satisfied or unsatisfied, or the description is not instantiated and the satisfaction conditions of the thought could only be fulfilled were there to exist something fitting that description.\* Those are some assumptions, which are up for debate. In general I justify them by appeal to common linguistic constructions which include the phrase “think about.” If common usage can be shown to be under some kind of incoherence, that’s a good reason to drop it. If a concept fulfilling the desiderata for “think about” which I listed above can be shown to have no practical use, that’s a good reason to drop it. I haven’t yet seen demonstrations along either line. Put another way: I make the following claims about the above assumptions. They reflect common usage of “think about.” They help us think productively about the relationship between thoughts and reality. They are coherent. I’d be interested in arguments against any of these three claims. From the above, here’s an argument that there’s nothing I (or any normal human being) can’t think aobut. Assume Y to be a mental agent capable of thinking about thinking and about negation. Suppose there were something Y could not think about. Y, being capable of thinking about negation and thinking, can form the thought “There is something I can not think about.” “Something I can not think about” is a description. By hypothesis, it is a description of something that exists. The existence of that something figures unavoidably in a description of the segment of the world which renders Y’s thought satisfied or unsatisfied. Hence Y is thinking about the thing. But by hypothesis, Y can’t think about the thing. Contradiction. So the hypothesis is false. Hence there is nothing Y can not think about. \*These assumptions are pretty old school “present king of france is bald” kinds of assumptions, so very likely, I confess, I’m over fifty years out of date… Nevertheless at present they seem to me to work. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/95 "2012-03-12T03:41:02Z")
**Fry** ,\*\* notbatman\*\*, you guys seem to be arguing about the nature of creativity. I happen to contend there is no real creativity, just an ability to derive new ideas from existing information. Which means that if there are concepts in the universe which cannot be derived from any known information, then the human mind could not concieve of such things. And of course I can’t well describe such things either. Now to get back to the paradox, there is what I believe is the nature of creativity. The ability to abstract and form new concepts based on the components of existing ones. Those new concepts do not have to be simple derivatives, and they may have qualities considered unique. If that qualifies as a new concept, then the initial assumption that we can not concieve a thought which we do not have is false. However you could just as well say that all thoughts, no matter how novel in nature, are still derived from more basic information, and therefore all our thoughts are based on previous concepts. At least down to the bottom turtle, which I assume is built into the hardware of our brains. ETA: > [@Frylock](#): > > Sometimes X in that schema can be filled in with a name. Sometimes it can be filled in with a description. If you include the meta-level, then there is nothing I cannot concieve of. I merely need two labels, ‘the things I can concieve of’ and ‘the things I can’t conceive of’. But there’s no information associated with one of those labels. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/96 "2012-03-12T03:48:55Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > **Fry** ,\*\* notbatman\*\*, you guys seem to be arguing about the nature of creativity. I happen to contend there is no real creativity, just an ability to derive new ideas from existing information. Why say there is no creativity, instead of saying creativity is the derivation of new ideas from existing information? > [@](#): > > ETA: > > If you include the meta-level, then there is nothing I cannot concieve of. I merely need two labels, ‘the things I can concieve of’ and ‘the things I can’t conceive of’. But there’s no information associated with one of those labels. [/quote] I think that sounds right. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/97 "2012-03-12T03:58:15Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Why say there is no creativity, instead of saying creativity is the derivation of new ideas from existing information? Well that’s what I am saying. I just tend to say things creatively. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/98 "2012-03-12T04:10:00Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > No, I think this is right. The OP defines “concieve” as “think about.” Is there anything you can’t think about? No–because for any candidate for a thing that can’t be thought about, it _can_ be thought about by considering it under the label “the candidate for the thing I can’t think about.” Ergo, there’s nothing you can’t think about. > > Now there may be things you can’t think about “effectively” (I’ll define that one later… 😉 ). No paradox arises from that possibility. “Label” (called a tag in [General Semantics](http://www.gestalt.org/semantic.htm) is the key here. Talking about square circles is actually talking about the tag “square circle” which doesn’t map to anything real. However, we can say all sorts of things about the tag, for instance that it is a noun, is two words, etc. We can’t conceive of four dimensional space directly, though we can conceive of the tag for it. We can actually analyze it mathematically, but I don’t know if that counts as directly visualizing or conceiving it. Sometimes tags represent real things, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes there is the same tag for two different things - for instance when the Greeks talked about “atoms” they were describing something very different from what we mean by the term, which makes a lot of people think Democritus discovered something important versus having a conclusion which we filtered out of the wrong ones to seem important to us. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/99 "2012-03-12T04:15:11Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Okay, I’m interested to know what your response is to post 89 when you have a chance to respond. > > In response to this: > > I agree with you. I agree with each statement in the above quote. But it does not mean that he can’t think about the fifth prime. I’ve demonstrated that he can: He thinks about the number 11 probably at leats once a day at school. > > This is not an incoherent claim at all. Your sentences above are correct, but they miss the mark as a criticism of my own. They are not relevant. My kid can think, de re, about the fifth prime. What he can’t do is think, de dicto, “the fifth prime.” Do you know the distinction I’m referring to here? I think your criticism of me in the abovequoted runs afoul of a failure to draw that distinction. It has nothing to do with the dicta. It’s not that your son just doesn’t know the words. Your son is not thinking about the _concept_ of prime numbers. He is thinking about the number (concept) represented by the numerals 11. The sentences “I am thinking about the fifth prime number” and “I am thinking about the number 11” are not equivalent pieces of information. The first sentence conveys the information that the person already knows about the concept of prime numbers. The latter does not. Language, and, yes, semantics, is not equivalent to math. Language is not always substitutional: just because “the fifth prime number” == 11 doesn’t mean that you can replace any use of either term with the other. Language isn’t math. And I don’t see what this has to do with the topic of the thread. Your son is not thinking about something he can’t conceive. He CAN conceive the concept of 11. He CAN’T conceive the concept of a prime number, as he has no information about that topic. And because he can’t conceive it, he can’t “think about” it. The problem with your logic here is that you assume that, just because one person can’t think about something, no one can. There are a lot of concepts you are not aware of, and you currently cannot think about them. Once you learn about these concepts, you can think about them, but, at that point, you are also conceiving them, so the truism holds. To say there is nothing any one person cannot think about is to say that that person knows everything. To say that there is nothing that is inconceivable (by someone) is a far better statement. But if that’s what you are saying, the child analogy has no merit. You know about the fifth prime number, so it’s irrelevant that the child does not. It is obviously conceivable if even only one person can conceive it. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243/100 "2012-03-12T04:30:30Z")
Regarding the “what is in my hand” back and forth: Consider one of those games in which there are three cups and one object under one of the cups. Although we have a belief about what is under each cup, and that belief is based on some information, it is also frequently wrong - to say we weren’t thinking about what was under each cup unless we got it correct tends to trivialize the phrase “think about”. It seems that “thinking about” describes the process not the final answer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-untangle-this-logical-paradox-involving-mental-conception/615243.md?page=6)