A longer response to Dave's question

[thompnickson2]

Geez, Dave,

 

There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 

Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 

But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 

This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 

Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 

Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 8:48 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

 

Politically charged question to follow. Unlike my usual wont, I am not trying to be provocative. I pick a difficult example for my question in the hope that it will generate enough heat to produce light with the hope that the light will illuminate clarity.

 

Pierce said:

 

"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

 

The Donald is our object.

 

1- Can we enumerate the "effects with conceivably practical bearings" we expect our object to have?

2- Must the enumeration include both "positive" and "negative" effects?

  2a- does the answer to #2 depend on the definition of "our?" If 'our' is defined inclusively the answer to #2 would seem to be yes, but if 'our' is exclusive or restricted to only those with pro or anti perspectives/convictions, maybe not.

3- Must the effects we conceive have some threshold measure of a quality we might call 'truthiness', 'likelihood', 'believe-ability', reality'? [T becoming a dictator is a conceivable effect, but, I for one, see no possibility of that effectuating.]

4- If we had a "consensus" enumeration of plausible effects does our "conception of the object" have any relation to the ontology of the object?

5- If we have myriad enumerations does that mean "we" cannot possess a conception of the object, merely multiple conceptions of caricatures of the object?

 

I'm working on a paper with an epistemological focus and that brought me to Pierce and prompted the above questions.

 

Another question for the evolutionists who are also pragmatists: why pragmatism over "naturalized epistemology?"

 

davew

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[gepr]

But the point this misses is that the *tests* change the world. If you only do a test once, then you only change the world a tiny bit. If you do a test an infinity of times, then the world will stabilize to give results to the test. This long-term convergence thing is self-fulfilling.

On 2/20/20 9:01 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated,
> etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
>
> [...]
>
> Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.



--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Prof David West]

Happy to make your day. What would you think about where it not for I?

Transubstantiation is a happy example for what i am asking and why I said I feel I must leave Peirce behind.

Take your first paragraph as a given except that I am not Nick, but an alchemist, a master of a tradition with all kinds of "knowledge" of transformation.

We hie to the lab where "A" science begins. In the preliminaries I posit five effects and you posit five effects.

However, the scientist, almost certainly, did not write down my five. When pushed to provide alternatives I would not posit such as you did, but re-assert what I believe to be perfectly valid effects of my conception.

Muttering to himself, the scientist does the tests he can do and the results are null, null, null, null, null and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

The question, is it really blood or wine becomes, for all intents and purposes, unanswerable — at least within the framework of what Peirce is willing to admit as Science.

If I were to convene a panel of alchemists and give them both my list and your list and they performed appropriate tests — the results would be: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

This is unacceptable to Peirce's Scientist, but not at all remarkable to the alchemist.

I already accept an ontology that allows the substance in the chalice to be BloodWine/WineBlood, I am curious about the possibility of developing a complementary epistemology.

I do not believe that Peirce can assist in this quest. I do acknowledge, as Glen points out, that Peirce has been helpful in identifying questions to be asked that provide a useful foundation from which the quest can begin, and that is appreciated.

And it is not just Peirce, the whole of classical epistemology is not leading to edification.

*******

Now as to Trump. Yes, the hardest case is the most useful. Your oft stated goal for "conversations" that lead to convergence, ala Peirce, and hence some kind of truth of the matter is sorely tested by this particular example.

[there was more here but I deleted it]

davew

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020, at 6:01 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 

There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 

Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 

But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 

This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 

Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 

Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 8:48 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

 

Politically charged question to follow. Unlike my usual wont, I am not trying to be provocative. I pick a difficult example for my question in the hope that it will generate enough heat to produce light with the hope that the light will illuminate clarity.

 

Pierce said:

 

"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

 

The Donald is our object.

 

1- Can we enumerate the "effects with conceivably practical bearings" we expect our object to have?

2- Must the enumeration include both "positive" and "negative" effects?

  2a- does the answer to #2 depend on the definition of "our?" If 'our' is defined inclusively the answer to #2 would seem to be yes, but if 'our' is exclusive or restricted to only those with pro or anti perspectives/convictions, maybe not.

3- Must the effects we conceive have some threshold measure of a quality we might call 'truthiness', 'likelihood', 'believe-ability', reality'? [T becoming a dictator is a conceivable effect, but, I for one, see no possibility of that effectuating.]

4- If we had a "consensus" enumeration of plausible effects does our "conception of the object" have any relation to the ontology of the object?

5- If we have myriad enumerations does that mean "we" cannot possess a conception of the object, merely multiple conceptions of caricatures of the object?

 

I'm working on a paper with an epistemological focus and that brought me to Pierce and prompted the above questions.

 

Another question for the evolutionists who are also pragmatists: why pragmatism over "naturalized epistemology?"

 

davew

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Dave,

 

Now that Glen points it out, I am beginning to feel a bit trapped, here.

 

Peirce is looking at exactly the transition from alchemy to chemistry as an example of how, if one keep spinning out the practicial consequences of ones attributions, eventually minds will be changed and convergence will be achieved.   I  have no doubt that when you take drugs you have experiences, any more than I doubt that when you smash the alarm clock, it makes a sound.  I am just not at all sure what you can take from such experiences, other than that, if you take the drug, they may happen again.  What future do they predict outside the realm of drug-taking?

 

Why did you delete what you wrote?

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2020 12:45 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Happy to make your day. What would you think about where it not for I?

 

Transubstantiation is a happy example for what i am asking and why I said I feel I must leave Peirce behind.

 

Take your first paragraph as a given except that I am not Nick, but an alchemist, a master of a tradition with all kinds of "knowledge" of transformation.

 

We hie to the lab where "A" science begins. In the preliminaries I posit five effects and you posit five effects.

 

However, the scientist, almost certainly, did not write down my five. When pushed to provide alternatives I would not posit such as you did, but re-assert what I believe to be perfectly valid effects of my conception.

 

Muttering to himself, the scientist does the tests he can do and the results are null, null, null, null, null and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

The question, is it really blood or wine becomes, for all intents and purposes, unanswerable — at least within the framework of what Peirce is willing to admit as Science.

 

If I were to convene a panel of alchemists and give them both my list and your list and they performed appropriate tests — the results would be: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

This is unacceptable to Peirce's Scientist, but not at all remarkable to the alchemist.

 

I already accept an ontology that allows the substance in the chalice to be BloodWine/WineBlood, I am curious about the possibility of developing a complementary epistemology.

 

I do not believe that Peirce can assist in this quest. I do acknowledge, as Glen points out, that Peirce has been helpful in identifying questions to be asked that provide a useful foundation from which the quest can begin, and that is appreciated.

 

And it is not just Peirce, the whole of classical epistemology is not leading to edification.

 

*******

 

Now as to Trump. Yes, the hardest case is the most useful. Your oft stated goal for "conversations" that lead to convergence, ala Peirce, and hence some kind of truth of the matter is sorely tested by this particular example.

 

[there was more here but I deleted it]

 

davew

 

 

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020, at 6:01 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 

There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 

Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 

But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 

This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 

Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 

Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 8:48 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

 

 

Politically charged question to follow. Unlike my usual wont, I am not trying to be provocative. I pick a difficult example for my question in the hope that it will generate enough heat to produce light with the hope that the light will illuminate clarity.

 

Pierce said:

 

"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

 

The Donald is our object.

 

1- Can we enumerate the "effects with conceivably practical bearings" we expect our object to have?

2- Must the enumeration include both "positive" and "negative" effects?

  2a- does the answer to #2 depend on the definition of "our?" If 'our' is defined inclusively the answer to #2 would seem to be yes, but if 'our' is exclusive or restricted to only those with pro or anti perspectives/convictions, maybe not.

3- Must the effects we conceive have some threshold measure of a quality we might call 'truthiness', 'likelihood', 'believe-ability', reality'? [T becoming a dictator is a conceivable effect, but, I for one, see no possibility of that effectuating.]

4- If we had a "consensus" enumeration of plausible effects does our "conception of the object" have any relation to the ontology of the object?

5- If we have myriad enumerations does that mean "we" cannot possess a conception of the object, merely multiple conceptions of caricatures of the object?

 

I'm working on a paper with an epistemological focus and that brought me to Pierce and prompted the above questions.

 

Another question for the evolutionists who are also pragmatists: why pragmatism over "naturalized epistemology?"

 

davew

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Prof David West]

Blending the "question" thread into this one,

I promise: no more kidney punches and no more crocodile tears.

From the other thread:  "4- If we had a "consensus" enumeration of plausible effects does our "conception of the object" have any relation to the ontology of the object? [NST===>] I don’t think so.  Increasing the number of people who think that “unicorn” means “a horse with a narwhale horn on his forehead” has no implications for the existence or non existence of unicorns."

This is why I said that Peirce, et. al. cannot tell us that Trump is, let alone that Trump is a y. 

Now to this thread —

Despite what Peirce may have said, (and a book on the history of chemistry I remember you were reading` a year or so back), Chemistry did not evolve from Alchemy. I am being pedantic here, because when I used alchemy in my narrative, I meant the real thing not the pseudo-alchemists playing with mercury and promising gold. Psychology (Jung and to a lesser degree Freud) derives more from Alchemy than chemistry. Newton was an alchemist but don't think it influenced his physics, and don't know how it influenced other aspects of his scientific endeavors.

But the point I was trying to make: it is impossible to use Peirce's 'method' to advance my quest because that method precludes\dismisses the subject matter of interest.

I need to be clearer about my subject matter as well. It is not drug experience, or even mystical experience, although both are significant aspects.

Consider:  Descartes' analytic geometry was conceived while sleeping in an oven and then rigorously explained after the fact; 2) Kekule "discovered' the structure of the benzene ring via a "vision" of Ouroboros — and a whole lot of organic chemistry with "visions" of dancing atoms forming chains; Jung's psychology and therapeutic method was significantly grounded "visions" and "dreams;" etc.

What kind of vocabulary can we apply to the substance/essence of altered-states-of-consciousness experiences? Metaphor certainly, but "concept," "idea," or even "knowledge?" is it possible to develop a philosophy, an epistemology, that would be inclusive of "experience" beyond the mundane sort addressed by science, or by Peirce's method?

Peirce, like all scientists, seems content to tackle only the easiest cases, and therefore is not likely to be a helpful guide.

[ I deleted an attempt to apply "close reading" to a body of sentences and the egregious interpretations of those sentences — attempting an analog of the scientific evaluation of blood and wine — to see if it might be possible to have a reasoned/rational discussion of current politics. Decided it was pointless to try. ]

davew

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020, at 9:18 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

 

Now that Glen points it out, I am beginning to feel a bit trapped, here.

 

Peirce is looking at exactly the transition from alchemy to chemistry as an example of how, if one keep spinning out the practicial consequences of ones attributions, eventually minds will be changed and convergence will be achieved.   I  have no doubt that when you take drugs you have experiences, any more than I doubt that when you smash the alarm clock, it makes a sound.  I am just not at all sure what you can take from such experiences, other than that, if you take the drug, they may happen again.  What future do they predict outside the realm of drug-taking?

 

Why did you delete what you wrote?

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2020 12:45 PM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Happy to make your day. What would you think about where it not for I?

 

Transubstantiation is a happy example for what i am asking and why I said I feel I must leave Peirce behind.

 

Take your first paragraph as a given except that I am not Nick, but an alchemist, a master of a tradition with all kinds of "knowledge" of transformation.

 

We hie to the lab where "A" science begins. In the preliminaries I posit five effects and you posit five effects.

 

However, the scientist, almost certainly, did not write down my five. When pushed to provide alternatives I would not posit such as you did, but re-assert what I believe to be perfectly valid effects of my conception.

 

Muttering to himself, the scientist does the tests he can do and the results are null, null, null, null, null and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

The question, is it really blood or wine becomes, for all intents and purposes, unanswerable — at least within the framework of what Peirce is willing to admit as Science.

 

If I were to convene a panel of alchemists and give them both my list and your list and they performed appropriate tests — the results would be: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

This is unacceptable to Peirce's Scientist, but not at all remarkable to the alchemist.

 

I already accept an ontology that allows the substance in the chalice to be BloodWine/WineBlood, I am curious about the possibility of developing a complementary epistemology.

 

I do not believe that Peirce can assist in this quest. I do acknowledge, as Glen points out, that Peirce has been helpful in identifying questions to be asked that provide a useful foundation from which the quest can begin, and that is appreciated.

 

And it is not just Peirce, the whole of classical epistemology is not leading to edification.

 

*******

 

Now as to Trump. Yes, the hardest case is the most useful. Your oft stated goal for "conversations" that lead to convergence, ala Peirce, and hence some kind of truth of the matter is sorely tested by this particular example.

 

[there was more here but I deleted it]

 

davew

 

 

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020, at 6:01 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 

There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 

Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 

But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 

This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 

Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 

Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 8:48 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

 

 

Politically charged question to follow. Unlike my usual wont, I am not trying to be provocative. I pick a difficult example for my question in the hope that it will generate enough heat to produce light with the hope that the light will illuminate clarity.

 

Pierce said:

 

"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

 

The Donald is our object.

 

1- Can we enumerate the "effects with conceivably practical bearings" we expect our object to have?

2- Must the enumeration include both "positive" and "negative" effects?

  2a- does the answer to #2 depend on the definition of "our?" If 'our' is defined inclusively the answer to #2 would seem to be yes, but if 'our' is exclusive or restricted to only those with pro or anti perspectives/convictions, maybe not.

3- Must the effects we conceive have some threshold measure of a quality we might call 'truthiness', 'likelihood', 'believe-ability', reality'? [T becoming a dictator is a conceivable effect, but, I for one, see no possibility of that effectuating.]

4- If we had a "consensus" enumeration of plausible effects does our "conception of the object" have any relation to the ontology of the object?

5- If we have myriad enumerations does that mean "we" cannot possess a conception of the object, merely multiple conceptions of caricatures of the object?

 

I'm working on a paper with an epistemological focus and that brought me to Pierce and prompted the above questions.

 

Another question for the evolutionists who are also pragmatists: why pragmatism over "naturalized epistemology?"

 

davew

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[David Eric Smith]

So Dave,

> What kind of vocabulary can we apply to the substance/essence of altered-states-of-consciousness experiences? Metaphor certainly, but "concept," "idea," or even "knowledge?" is it possible to develop a philosophy, an epistemology, that would be inclusive of "experience" beyond the mundane sort addressed by science, or by Peirce's method?

Does Husserl do any of what you want?  Or his student Fink?  (I am told by people who have spent a lot of time on this that the rest of Husserl’s followers were sort of technicians who missed Husserl’s main concerns, but that Fink got the point.)

I ask because I know other people who sound like you, and for one of them Husserl is the unique writer from the modern period whom they group with Longchenpa, Nagarjuna, and various others who are not writing in European languages.

They are after a theory of consciousness that they consider “fully empirical”.

Eric






============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Dave,

 

Rushing off to FRIAM, but I don’t want to leave this hang.  See larding.

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 3:05 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Blending the "question" thread into this one,

 

I promise: no more kidney punches and no more crocodile tears.

 

From the other thread:  "4- If we had a "consensus" enumeration of plausible effects does our "conception of the object" have any relation to the ontology of the object? [NST===>] I don’t think so.  Increasing the number of people who think that “unicorn” means “a horse with a narwhale horn on his forehead” has no implications for the existence or non existence of unicorns."

 

This is why I said that Peirce, et. al. cannot tell us that Trump is, let alone that Trump is a y. 

[NST===>]This makes no sense tome..  What I say, on my account, leaves you absolutely free to say that Trump is a y. The pragmatic maxim is a thesis about what we MEAN when we say that Trump is a y. Or it can tell us what we  MEAN when we say that Trump exists.   It just can’t tell us THAT Trump exists.  Of course, saying what we MEAN when we say Trump exists, is a long way along the road to saying what it is to saying whether he exists or not, but it does not get us there.  That’s the empirical step.

 

Did I make a terrible mistake in my exposition: Unicorn means to me  (a horse-LIKE creature) with a unicorn-horn (sort of LIKE a narwhale tusk) in the middle of its forehead. It’s not any kind of horse nor does it have any kind of a whale horn.   That’s what the word means to me: to picture it, I have to make a chimera of two other creatures. 

 

Now to this thread —

 

Despite what Peirce may have said, (and a book on the history of chemistry I remember you were reading` a year or so back), Chemistry did not evolve from Alchemy. I am being pedantic here, because when I used alchemy in my narrative, I meant the real thing not the pseudo-alchemists playing with mercury and promising gold. Psychology (Jung and to a lesser degree Freud) derives more from Alchemy than chemistry. Newton was an alchemist but don't think it influenced his physics, and don't know how it influenced other aspects of his scientific endeavors.

 

But the point I was trying to make: it is impossible to use Peirce's 'method' to advance my quest because that method precludes\dismisses the subject matter of interest.

 

I need to be clearer about my subject matter as well. It is not drug experience, or even mystical experience, although both are significant aspects.

 

Consider:  Descartes' analytic geometry was conceived while sleeping in an oven and then rigorously explained after the fact; 2) Kekule "discovered' the structure of the benzene ring via a "vision" of Ouroboros — and a whole lot of organic chemistry with "visions" of dancing atoms forming chains; Jung's psychology and therapeutic method was significantly grounded "visions" and "dreams;" etc.

 

What kind of vocabulary can we apply to the substance/essence of altered-states-of-consciousness experiences? Metaphor certainly, but "concept," "idea," or even "knowledge?" is it possible to develop a philosophy, an epistemology, that would be inclusive of "experience" beyond the mundane sort addressed by science, or by Peirce's method?

 

Peirce, like all scientists, seems content to tackle only the easiest cases, and therefore is not likely to be a helpful guide.

 

 

[ I deleted an attempt to apply "close reading" to a body of sentences and the egregious interpretations of those sentences — attempting an analog of the scientific evaluation of blood and wine — to see if it might be possible to have a reasoned/rational discussion of current politics. Decided it was pointless to try. ]

 

davew

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020, at 9:18 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Dave,

 

Now that Glen points it out, I am beginning to feel a bit trapped, here.

 

Peirce is looking at exactly the transition from alchemy to chemistry as an example of how, if one keep spinning out the practicial consequences of ones attributions, eventually minds will be changed and convergence will be achieved.   I  have no doubt that when you take drugs you have experiences, any more than I doubt that when you smash the alarm clock, it makes a sound.  I am just not at all sure what you can take from such experiences, other than that, if you take the drug, they may happen again.  What future do they predict outside the realm of drug-taking?

 

Why did you delete what you wrote?

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2020 12:45 PM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

 

Happy to make your day. What would you think about where it not for I?

 

Transubstantiation is a happy example for what i am asking and why I said I feel I must leave Peirce behind.

 

Take your first paragraph as a given except that I am not Nick, but an alchemist, a master of a tradition with all kinds of "knowledge" of transformation.

 

We hie to the lab where "A" science begins. In the preliminaries I posit five effects and you posit five effects.

 

However, the scientist, almost certainly, did not write down my five. When pushed to provide alternatives I would not posit such as you did, but re-assert what I believe to be perfectly valid effects of my conception.

 

Muttering to himself, the scientist does the tests he can do and the results are null, null, null, null, null and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

The question, is it really blood or wine becomes, for all intents and purposes, unanswerable — at least within the framework of what Peirce is willing to admit as Science.

 

If I were to convene a panel of alchemists and give them both my list and your list and they performed appropriate tests — the results would be: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

This is unacceptable to Peirce's Scientist, but not at all remarkable to the alchemist.

 

I already accept an ontology that allows the substance in the chalice to be BloodWine/WineBlood, I am curious about the possibility of developing a complementary epistemology.

 

I do not believe that Peirce can assist in this quest. I do acknowledge, as Glen points out, that Peirce has been helpful in identifying questions to be asked that provide a useful foundation from which the quest can begin, and that is appreciated.

 

And it is not just Peirce, the whole of classical epistemology is not leading to edification.

 

*******

 

Now as to Trump. Yes, the hardest case is the most useful. Your oft stated goal for "conversations" that lead to convergence, ala Peirce, and hence some kind of truth of the matter is sorely tested by this particular example.

 

[there was more here but I deleted it]

 

davew

 

 

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020, at 6:01 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 

There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 

Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 

But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 

This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 

Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 

Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 8:48 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: [FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

 

 

Politically charged question to follow. Unlike my usual wont, I am not trying to be provocative. I pick a difficult example for my question in the hope that it will generate enough heat to produce light with the hope that the light will illuminate clarity.

 

Pierce said:

 

"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

 

The Donald is our object.

 

1- Can we enumerate the "effects with conceivably practical bearings" we expect our object to have?

2- Must the enumeration include both "positive" and "negative" effects?

  2a- does the answer to #2 depend on the definition of "our?" If 'our' is defined inclusively the answer to #2 would seem to be yes, but if 'our' is exclusive or restricted to only those with pro or anti perspectives/convictions, maybe not.

3- Must the effects we conceive have some threshold measure of a quality we might call 'truthiness', 'likelihood', 'believe-ability', reality'? [T becoming a dictator is a conceivable effect, but, I for one, see no possibility of that effectuating.]

4- If we had a "consensus" enumeration of plausible effects does our "conception of the object" have any relation to the ontology of the object?

5- If we have myriad enumerations does that mean "we" cannot possess a conception of the object, merely multiple conceptions of caricatures of the object?

 

I'm working on a paper with an epistemological focus and that brought me to Pierce and prompted the above questions.

 

Another question for the evolutionists who are also pragmatists: why pragmatism over "naturalized epistemology?"

 

davew

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Sarbajit Roy (testing)]

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Enclosing every elephant in the room is a larger, more hideous, elephant in the room.  It’s elephants-in-the-room all the way down. 

 

Sarbajit, human to human.  If you lived in the United States, what would you now be doing? 

 

N

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 8:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Marcus G. Daniels]

A Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association poll in 2017 [1] found  that 39% of Americans are irreligious, and another study [2] estimates 26% are actually atheists.  Yes, the US does have long way to go to catch up with Sweden (73%) or the UK (69%) or Israel (58%).    The targets of U.S. bombing are not in that category. 

 

  Yugoslavia 1999  (21% irreligious)

  Yemen 2002, 2009, 2011  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Yemen  -- death penalty)

  Iraq 1991-2003, 2003-2015 (US/UK on regular basis)    (34% irreligious)

  Afghanistan 2001-2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Afghanistan – death penalty)

  Pakistan 2007-2015 (6%)

  Somalia 2007-8, 2011 (2%)

  Libya 2011, 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheists -- death penalty)

  Syria 2014-2015 (1%) https://areyouforsyria.weebly.com/

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligion

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550617707015?journalCode=sppa

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, February 21, 2020 at 7:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Sarbajit Roy (testing)]

Hi Nick

To reply to your question,

a) I would not be living in the US if I could help it  In fact I have never come anywhere close to the USA for a variety of reasons.

b) If I were living in the US I would be very scared of dictators

Sarbajit

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 9:58 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Enclosing every elephant in the room is a larger, more hideous, elephant in the room.  It’s elephants-in-the-room all the way down. 

 

Sarbajit, human to human.  If you lived in the United States, what would you now be doing? 

 

N

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 8:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Sarbajit Roy (testing)]

Marcus,

Thanks for your info.

As a non-American, I ask - what happened to the USA's  "One nation under God ?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

Sarbajit

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 10:07 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

A Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association poll in 2017 [1] found  that 39% of Americans are irreligious, and another study [2] estimates 26% are actually atheists.  Yes, the US does have long way to go to catch up with Sweden (73%) or the UK (69%) or Israel (58%).    The targets of U.S. bombing are not in that category. 

 

  Yugoslavia 1999  (21% irreligious)

  Yemen 2002, 2009, 2011  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Yemen  -- death penalty)

  Iraq 1991-2003, 2003-2015 (US/UK on regular basis)    (34% irreligious)

  Afghanistan 2001-2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Afghanistan – death penalty)

  Pakistan 2007-2015 (6%)

  Somalia 2007-8, 2011 (2%)

  Libya 2011, 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheists -- death penalty)

  Syria 2014-2015 (1%) https://areyouforsyria.weebly.com/

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligion

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550617707015?journalCode=sppa

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, February 21, 2020 at 7:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

I suppose, as a behaviorist, I have to conclude that “being afraid” is a doing.  What else would you do? 

 

Are you afraid of dictators where you are?  Where ARE you, by the way.  I am guessing UK or India, but I don’t want to presume.

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 9:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Hi Nick

 

To reply to your question,

 

a) I would not be living in the US if I could help it  In fact I have never come anywhere close to the USA for a variety of reasons.

b) If I were living in the US I would be very scared of dictators

 

Sarbajit

 

 

 

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 9:58 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Enclosing every elephant in the room is a larger, more hideous, elephant in the room.  It’s elephants-in-the-room all the way down. 

 

Sarbajit, human to human.  If you lived in the United States, what would you now be doing? 

 

N

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 8:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

That was added to the Pledge during the McCarthy Era in the 50’s, no? 

 

I don’t think God is mentioned in the Constitution, and only comes into the Declaration in a theistic sort of way. 

 

I never said the words “under god’ when I said the pledge in school.  I just mumbled at that point.

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 9:48 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Marcus,

 

Thanks for your info.

 

As a non-American, I ask - what happened to the USA's  "One nation under God ?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

Sarbajit

 

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 10:07 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

A Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association poll in 2017 [1] found  that 39% of Americans are irreligious, and another study [2] estimates 26% are actually atheists.  Yes, the US does have long way to go to catch up with Sweden (73%) or the UK (69%) or Israel (58%).    The targets of U.S. bombing are not in that category. 

 

·  Yugoslavia 1999  (21% irreligious)

·  Yemen 2002, 2009, 2011  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Yemen  -- death penalty)

·  Iraq 1991-2003, 2003-2015 (US/UK on regular basis)    (34% irreligious)

·  Afghanistan 2001-2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Afghanistan – death penalty)

·  Pakistan 2007-2015 (6%)

·  Somalia 2007-8, 2011 (2%)

·  Libya 2011, 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheists -- death penalty)

·  Syria 2014-2015 (1%) https://areyouforsyria.weebly.com/

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligion

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550617707015?journalCode=sppa

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Friday, February 21, 2020 at 7:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Sarbajit wrote:

 

< As a non-American, I ask - what happened to the USA's  "One nation under God ?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance >

 

I don’t have a sense of how many schools still do this, in practice.   Yes, it’s wacky!    My wife used to get in trouble in grade school for refusing to get up from her desk and say the pledge.   Her dad, a Jewish veteran of WWII, would bail her out from the principal’s office and they’d get ice cream.

 

I remember doing it a few times, and thinking, “Seriously?”

 

https://undergod.procon.org/additional-resources/state-requirements-on-pledge-of-allegiance-in-schools/#2

 

Marcus

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Sarbajit Roy (testing)]

India.

Being afraid is a good thing. It heightens our senses, causes us to be better prepared to react against threats (dictators) when they happen.

As of now our 2 mutual (respective ?) dictators are confabulating.

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 10:23 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

I suppose, as a behaviorist, I have to conclude that “being afraid” is a doing.  What else would you do? 

 

Are you afraid of dictators where you are?  Where ARE you, by the way.  I am guessing UK or India, but I don’t want to presume.

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 9:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Hi Nick

 

To reply to your question,

 

a) I would not be living in the US if I could help it  In fact I have never come anywhere close to the USA for a variety of reasons.

b) If I were living in the US I would be very scared of dictators

 

Sarbajit

 

 

 

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 9:58 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Enclosing every elephant in the room is a larger, more hideous, elephant in the room.  It’s elephants-in-the-room all the way down. 

 

Sarbajit, human to human.  If you lived in the United States, what would you now be doing? 

 

N

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 8:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

So, how do you understand the authoritarian pandemic. 

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 10:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

India.

 

Being afraid is a good thing. It heightens our senses, causes us to be better prepared to react against threats (dictators) when they happen.

As of now our 2 mutual (respective ?) dictators are confabulating.

 

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 10:23 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

I suppose, as a behaviorist, I have to conclude that “being afraid” is a doing.  What else would you do? 

 

Are you afraid of dictators where you are?  Where ARE you, by the way.  I am guessing UK or India, but I don’t want to presume.

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 9:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Hi Nick

 

To reply to your question,

 

a) I would not be living in the US if I could help it  In fact I have never come anywhere close to the USA for a variety of reasons.

b) If I were living in the US I would be very scared of dictators

 

Sarbajit

 

 

 

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 9:58 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Enclosing every elephant in the room is a larger, more hideous, elephant in the room.  It’s elephants-in-the-room all the way down. 

 

Sarbajit, human to human.  If you lived in the United States, what would you now be doing? 

 

N

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 8:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Our goon’s people will die-off soon enough.

Modi’s seem to be younger? 

On Feb 21, 2020, at 9:09 PM, Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:



India.

Being afraid is a good thing. It heightens our senses, causes us to be better prepared to react against threats (dictators) when they happen.

As of now our 2 mutual (respective ?) dictators are confabulating.

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 10:23 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

I suppose, as a behaviorist, I have to conclude that “being afraid” is a doing.  What else would you do? 

 

Are you afraid of dictators where you are?  Where ARE you, by the way.  I am guessing UK or India, but I don’t want to presume.

 

Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 9:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Hi Nick

 

To reply to your question,

 

a) I would not be living in the US if I could help it  In fact I have never come anywhere close to the USA for a variety of reasons.

b) If I were living in the US I would be very scared of dictators

 

Sarbajit

 

 

 

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 9:58 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Enclosing every elephant in the room is a larger, more hideous, elephant in the room.  It’s elephants-in-the-room all the way down. 

 

Sarbajit, human to human.  If you lived in the United States, what would you now be doing? 

 

N

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 8:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Eric Charles-2]

Assertion: 

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

Reply: I mean.... transubstantiation is one of the first examples Peirce uses to illuminate thinking that can be improved via the pragmatic maxim....

As Nick points out, for Peirce, Pragmatism is, first and foremost, a means of figuring out what your ideas mean. Two important benefits of this are figuring out when you have vacuous thoughts, and gaining the ability to avoid what Orwell would label "doublethink". That is, being able to figure out when your ideas are meaningless and when they contradict each other.  

------ How to make your ideas clear, 1878 -----------

To see what this principle leads to, consider in the light of it such a doctrine as that of transubstantiation. The Protestant churches generally hold that the elements of the sacrament are flesh and blood only in a tropical sense; they nourish our souls as meat and the juice of it would our bodies. But the Catholics maintain that they are literally just meat and blood; although they possess all the sensible qualities of wafercakes and diluted wine. But we can have no conception of wine except what may enter into a belief, either --

1. That this, that, or the other, is wine; or,
2. That wine possesses certain properties.
Such beliefs are nothing but self-notifications that we should, upon occasion, act in regard to such things as we believe to be wine according to the qualities which we believe wine to possess. The occasion of such action would be some sensible perception, the motive of it to produce some sensible result. Thus our action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief; and we can consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses; and to talk of something as having all the sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon. Now, it is not my object to pursue the theological question; and having used it as a logical example I drop it, without caring to anticipate the theologian's reply. I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself. It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to its only function. It is foolish for Catholics and Protestants to fancy themselves in disagreement about the elements of the sacrament, if they agree in regard to all their sensible effects, here and hereafter.

It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 10:20 PM Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[thompnickson2]

Hi, Eric, ‘n all,

 

Thanks for the citation. 

 

Here’s where I think we need you. I think Dave West and others in the group are interested in the notion of truth beyond experience, or truth in extraordinary experience, or truth found through drugs or pain, or through intense meditations, or when dreaming or at the threshold of death or (as I would put it) at other times when the system isn’t fully functioning.  My prejudices tell me that these folks, among them my dearest colleagues,  are descending down the Jamesian Rat Hole.  We need you because you are both more knowledgeable about William James than I am and more forgiving.  I suspect you may be able to … um … modulate the rather harsh sentiment expressed below.

 

First, let me stipulate that all experiences endured under extremis ARE experiences and can (by abduction) be the origin of good hunches.  I give you, courtesy of my great wisdom AND Wikipedia, Kekule’s dream.

 

Here is a wonderful example of an extreme experience that “proved out”.   “Proved out” means that when the chemist worked out all the practicial implications of the abduction that benzene was a ring, and carried those implications into laboratory practice, his expectations were confirmed.   

 

What I object to is the notion that such experiences in extremis are èin principleç more likely to be true than ordinary ones, or, further, that there is any way to confirm the implications of one experience except through further experiences. 

 

Let me put this as clearly as I can.

 

Transcendence = bullpucky

 

 

Nick

 

PS :  Eric:  Please stop using the word “practical” and adopt the more accurate term, “practicial”.  “Practical” was a mistake when Peirce used it, and is a mistake everytime you use it.  Peirce an you are both referring to consequences to knowledge-gathering practices, broadly conceived.  The pragmatic maxim of meaning should be,

 

Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practicial bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

 

Pps:  Do I have more or less evidence that Christ Existed than I do that Marcus exists.  I have never met either of them, but of both, I can say, “I have read a lot of his writings and I know a lot of people who believe in him and speak highly of him. “ What would constitute indoubitable proof of the Existence of Marcus. 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2020 5:59 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

 

Assertion: 

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

Reply: I mean.... transubstantiation is one of the first examples Peirce uses to illuminate thinking that can be improved via the pragmatic maxim....

 

As Nick points out, for Peirce, Pragmatism is, first and foremost, a means of figuring out what your ideas mean. Two important benefits of this are figuring out when you have vacuous thoughts, and gaining the ability to avoid what Orwell would label "doublethink". That is, being able to figure out when your ideas are meaningless and when they contradict each other.  

 

------ How to make your ideas clear, 1878 -----------

To see what this principle leads to, consider in the light of it such a doctrine as that of transubstantiation. The Protestant churches generally hold that the elements of the sacrament are flesh and blood only in a tropical sense; they nourish our souls as meat and the juice of it would our bodies. But the Catholics maintain that they are literally just meat and blood; although they possess all the sensible qualities of wafercakes and diluted wine. But we can have no conception of wine except what may enter into a belief, either --

1. That this, that, or the other, is wine; or,
2. That wine possesses certain properties.
Such beliefs are nothing but self-notifications that we should, upon occasion, act in regard to such things as we believe to be wine according to the qualities which we believe wine to possess. The occasion of such action would be some sensible perception, the motive of it to produce some sensible result. Thus our action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief; and we can consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses; and to talk of something as having all the sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon. Now, it is not my object to pursue the theological question; and having used it as a logical example I drop it, without caring to anticipate the theologian's reply. I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself. It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to its only function. It is foolish for Catholics and Protestants to fancy themselves in disagreement about the elements of the sacrament, if they agree in regard to all their sensible effects, here and hereafter.

It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

------------

 

So, the first question is NOT "Did Jesus exist?" nor "Does wine transform into his blood." The first question is "What does it mean, practically speaking, to claim Jesus had existed?" and "What does it mean, practically speaking, for the wine to be transformed into blood?"  In both cases, by "practically speaking" I mean, "what consequences would it have for possible outcomes of our actions?" which could also be translated pretty reasonably to "what could a scientist investigate based on that claim". Nick is fond of asking questions like "If the wine is blood, can we use it for a transfusion?" Where as I, a bit more petulant, prefer questions like "Given that one can still get drunk off of communion wine, how far over the DUI limit must He have been at all times, and what implications does that have for the rest of His physiology?" 

 

After you have some idea what your ideas mean, Peirce has ideas about how we (in the very long run) find out which of your clear-ideas are true, but that is a separate conversation. 

 

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

 

 

On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 10:20 PM Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion.

 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

 

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

 

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Geez, Dave,

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all? 

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me. 

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond. 

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it. 

 Nick

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove