Glen, Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my furnace: we are telic systems.
All the best, Nick -----Original Message----- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ropella Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:49 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist) On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a > point of view. Zombies are telic systems, no? That's a great question. I would answer no. Zombies cannot be telic (as I understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by their context. They are not ends in and of themselves. They are tools whose purpose has been installed in them by some non-zombie actor. FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me. They'd claim that a zombie (were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause (agency). From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation, which, in turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any requirement for _consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for reflective self-reference (aka closure). Getting from reflection to consciousness might not be that hard. And I support them in their quest. ;-) But they haven't proven the closure to me. I believe we organisms are only partially closed (to any of the causes). Complete closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death to me. So, there's something missing from their framework ... to the limited extent to which I understand it. Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its attributes. And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose and be called "telic" ... but that purpose would not be its _own_. Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic. And this is where "faith" and "crazy" enter. When we can't reverse engineer a person's purpose ... or more accurately ... when we can't empathize ... we can't tell ourselves a story in which context their actions make sense, then they're "acting on faith" or they're crazy. It is this ability to empathize ... for your neurons to be stimulated similarly to your referent's by observing their behavior ... that presents us with the zombie paradox. On the one hand, telling a believable story turns you into a _machine_, a tool, without personal responsibility or accountability. ("My parents made me this way!") But on the other hand, not telling a story makes you alien, crazy, a wart that has to be removed. Interesting people walk that fine line between adequately explaining themselves but leaving just enough craziness and mystery to preserve their identity, to avoid being a zombie. I usually fail and am often accused of being a tool. >8^) > Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the > Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached. > > Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it. I will read it. Thanks. But in case it's not obvious, you must know that I don't take this stuff very seriously. I only think/talk about this stuff to distract me from work. ;-) So, it's unlikely that I'll be able to give it the attention that it and you deserve. -- glen =><= Hail Eris! ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
