ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/18/2012 07:46 AM: > Trying to be a "sophisticated" Nick: > > Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by > "experience", I mean it underlies all "the way you act and react towards > reality". This doesn't give you a "theory of everything", but it might give > you a "theory of everything psychological".
I could tolerate that position. But I'm not going to. The whole question of ascribing the potentiality for sane actions to crazy people (be they Muslim or Atheist) hinges on the Cartesian partition. Nick (sophisticated or not) argues against the partition: mind is matter, no more no less. Hence, if faith underlies experience and experience is matter, then either we can separate experience from non-experience or all matter is experience. By accusing Nick of claiming that faith underlies all reality, I am pressing for _his_ technique for separating experience from everything else. Zombies are one rhetorical tool for doing that. > ------ > > To return to the zombies... the usual riddle of the Cartesian zombie goes > something like this: > 1. Imagine a Person who is trying to catch you, perhaps to eat you. You run > through the woods, twisting and turning, but your adversary always changes to > stay on your trail. Let us all agree from the beginning that said Person stays > on your trail BECAUSE he intends to catch and eat you. > > 2. Now imagine a Zombie who is trying to catch you and eat you. The Zombie > makes all the same alterations of course to stay on your trail that the Person > would have made in the same situation. But now, let us all agree that the > Zombie has no intention. > > 3. <Insert mystery music here.> Aha! How would you ever know the difference? > If > we can imagine a Zombie doing everything it can to stay on your trail, but > without wanting to catch you, then we can never know anything about the mind > of > another. Because I thought of this mystery, I am really smart! But you'll have > to take my word on it, because a Zombie could have said all the same things > without any smarts. Ooooh, see, I made it a meta-mystery - super clever points > achieved! > > ---------- > > Nick's assertion is to declare point 2 a blatant falsity. To be "trying to > catch you" or to "want to catch you", is nothing other than to be varying > behavior so as to stay on your trail. That is, you can imagine a "try-less and > want-less" thing coming towards you, for as long as you run in a straight > line. > As soon as you start turning, and the thing chasing you turns as a function of > the changes in your trajectory, such that it is always moving to intersect > you, > then you are imagining that the thing is trying to catch you. I'm with you up to here. However, I do know someone who tailgates other drivers just out of habit ... as soon as you point out that she's following a person, she immediately changes lanes. Of course, I have no idea what that means. > The creature > believes that these alterations of its course will bring it closer to you > (than > if it didn't alter its course). You lost me here. The creature is tracking you. If belief is a collection of actions, then the creature does not YET _believe_ it's trying to catch you. It can't believe that until it actually does it ... wait for it ... because belief is action. Now, had you said that belief is a _memory_ of past action, then I might tolerate a claim that the creature believes it's tracking you. But that would mean that belief isn't a collection of actions. It's something else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of action ... perhaps something called "state", which is distinguishable from process? -- -- glen ============================================================ 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
