Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
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". -- 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. 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. The creature believes that these alterations of its course will bring it closer to you (than if it didn't alter its course). There is no action-relative-to-the-world, that doesn't entail some degree of belief. Or, to phrase it differently: To alter my course as if that will lead me to catch you, is some degree of faith. Thus, Step 3, should be a person admitting how good they are at misleading you down a philosophical rabbit hole. Note that this way of thinking separates what it is to have belief, want, faith, etc., from an (causal) explanation of that phenomenon. Eric On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 08:18 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" wrote: > > > > > > > > >> > > >Glen Wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > >. In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute "faith". If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. > > > > > > > > > > > > > >This is a really good question. Nobody has ever asked me to do that before. I am suddenly made aware of why Peirce wrote some of the tortured passages he wrote. I am going to have to think about this. > > > > > > > > > > > > > >In the meantime, Eric may be able to tell you what an evolved Nick will say. > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Nick > > > > > > >-Original Message- >From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen >Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 7:48 PM >To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people > > > > > > > > > >Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM: > > > > > > >> But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the > > > > > > >> uncompressible class? > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. > > > > > > >2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively. > > > > > > > > > > > > > >> It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you > > > > > > >> say in your second paragraph. > > > > > > > > > > > > > >I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. > > > > > > > > > > >
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
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. 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
Re: [FRIAM] One more, I'm afraid. Who started this, anyhow?
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 09/17/2012 05:07 PM: > In this way, tolerance can be mapped to organizational rules. If the > abuse is described by shared rules there's a mechanism to stop the > abuse. If it is not described by shared rules, the (silent) bullied > individuals need to work to make their organization serve their needs > better -- or be better at being invisible -- or change their philosophy. As usual, I'm compelled to disagree even though I agree with everything you said. ;-) Perhaps the bullied (or misidentified troll) serves a purpose to the group? And perhaps it's in both the group's and the victim's best interest to maintain the status quo. Hence, the bullied need to tolerate or even encourage the bullies to bully more. This might be a way to understand that strange desire on the part of some protesters to be pepper sprayed and roughed up by paramilitary riot police. What better way to stimulate the mirror neurons of your peers than to exacerbate the bullying? Go ahead. Taunt that cop! -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
> > It's something > else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of > action ... perhaps something called "state", which is distinguishable > from process? Well, if we are being literalists, it could be construed as the chemical actions taking place in a brain, or perhaps electrical actions taking place microprocessor (depending on who we are talking about). -Arlo James Barnes 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
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/18/2012 10:45 AM: >> >> It's something >> else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of >> action ... perhaps something called "state", which is distinguishable >> from process? > > Well, if we are being literalists, it could be construed as the chemical > actions taking place in a brain, or perhaps electrical actions taking place > microprocessor (depending on who we are talking about). Yep, any of those actions would be fine, I think. But in order for the zombie to have a belief about something that hasn't happened yet, we need some higher order structure, like memory. So, it's not merely chemical or electrical actions ... it's chemical or electrical actions grouped in a particular way, with particular, higher order properties. We could probably even get away with an artificial chemistry or physics, as long as we could synthesize something analogous to what we normally call "belief" or "intention". -- 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
