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Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
 
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Glen.... of course.... the next step in a discussion like this is for someone
to ask you what evidence you have that any actual thing has more "actor
status" than a thermostat. Answering this questions adequately requires 1)
taking into account the complexity of what a thermostat accomplishes and 2) not
pretending than everything people do is magically undetermined.
And... you have to avoid inter-defining "show's purpose" and "has actor status". If they are synonyms, then your claim that "the only objects capable of expressing purpose or tending toward a goal are those with actor status"doesn't help explain anything. Eric On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 10:29 AM, glen ropella <[hidden email]> wrote: On 09/15/2012 06:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. > Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the > background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts > in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my > furnace: we are telic systems. I disagree about the furnace, obviously. I could argue from the dictionary, but I'll spare you that. ;-) How about if I launch the argument from the concept of "stigmergy"? Any artifact, however intuitive it's interface, will be [mis-|ab-]used. To boot, its use (proper or not) will produce side effects not intended by the designer. Hence, any artifact like your furnace doesn't _express_ or _have_ a goal or purpose so much as one is ascribed to it by observers. It's this perspective that allows me to enjoy graffiti, even gangster tags, so much more than some people. I even enjoy some forms of vandalism (though I can't bring myself to participate). A more benign form of vandalism are the relatively new "unconferences" and things like collaborative fiction. Hell, even open-ended nonlinear games like grand theft auto help demonstrate the (absence of) telos in artifacts. No, I maintain that the only objects capable of expressing purpose or tending toward a goal are those with actor status, those identifiable (but non-atomic) units who act as their own agents. Everything else is premature conclusion and wishful thinking on the part of some observer. (Perhaps your furnace is not really a furnace! It just acts that way when you're not around.) -- glen =><= Hail Eris! ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ------------ Eric Charles Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
You guys clearly know too much about philosophy and not enough about zombies. Your notion that there is a single type of zombie has long been discredited. Here's a handy chart that I hope can inform your discussion.
http://www.geekologie.com/image.php?path=/2010/10/05/zombie-chart-full.jpg
—R
On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: Glen, ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
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On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Robert Holmes <[hidden email]> wrote: You guys clearly know too much about philosophy and not enough about zombies. Your notion that there is a single type of zombie has long been discredited. Not to mention the original meaning, which is somebody who was slipped a poison that gives the appearance of death, but can be reversed later after they are dug out of the grave and drugged to become servants - often to be the motive force of a crime so that the schemer can act with impunity due to the zombie scapegoat.
It brings another whole level to the discussion about free will. -Arlo James Barnes ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
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In reply to this post by Robert Holmes-3
And to tie this into the other discussion:
The CDC is looking out for you: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies/#/page/1 Curt
On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Robert Holmes <[hidden email]> wrote: You guys clearly know too much about philosophy and not enough about zombies. Your notion that there is a single type of zombie has long been discredited. Here's a handy chart that I hope can inform your discussion. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
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In reply to this post by Robert Holmes-3
Robert, You are quite right about the Original Zombie. But I want to continue the conversation about Cartesian Zombies. These are the ones that look like a duck, quack like a duck, walk like a duck, but they aren’t ducks. I say I am a [Cartesian] Zombie. [I say you are, also, but that is irrelevant at the moment.] In other words, I do not “have” consciousness in the way you think non-zombies have consciousness. [You don’t either, but that is also irrelevant, at the moment.] Now, perhaps you might be tempted to assert that I AM, TOO, conscious. But be careful, there. Because, if I AM conscious, then where do you stand to say that I am not? The essence, after all, of a Cartesian non-Zombie is that he, and only he, has access to his own mental states, right? So, there can be no grounds (that I can think off), for denying a non-zombie’s account that he is a zombie. To put it another way, the test you use to determine that a fake zombie is actually a non-zombie is the same test you would use to determine that a zombie has consciousness. Thus, you can only contract my assertion that I am not a zombie if believe me to be a zombie. By induction from your single case, I conclude that everybody on this list who would deny that I am a Zombie, thinks me a Zombie. [And, by the way, you are all [Cartesian] Zombies, but that is irrelevant to the present discussion.] I have only known a few people on this list who are consistent on this point, and they will now speak up, I hope. They will say, “Geez, everything I know about people suggests that Thompson is not a Zombie, but if he says so, he must be.” Now oddly enough, my position does not entail that the question, what is it like to be Nick Thompson [or Robert Holmes, for that matter] makes no sense. We are both points in space from which the world is seen. What it is like to BE Robert Holmes is to stand where you are standing and do what you do. And God Knows, I love you for it. (};-)} Nick From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes You guys clearly know too much about philosophy and not enough about zombies. Your notion that there is a single type of zombie has long been discredited. Here's a handy chart that I hope can inform your discussion. http://www.geekologie.com/image.php?path=/2010/10/05/zombie-chart-full.jpg On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: Glen,
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Re: Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Me too.. (glad and excited about your return)... I think you have a different curmudgeon in you whilst int he high dry air than in the low wet kind... both welcome, but markedly different? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist
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I have noticed that one is crankier than the other, now that you mention it, Steve.
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 9:45 AM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Doug Roberts [hidden email] [hidden email] ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Here's some grounds for denying the non-zombie's account of his zombieness: the non-zombie is mad or pig-headed or over-familiar with solipsism. Or a combination of all three.
—R
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
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Robert, I am sure my colleagues will see immediately the fallacy in your argument: that it is a case of an Ad-Zombium argument. Furthermore, it stipulates that Zombies have a mental life, since a mental life would seem to be necessary for pigheadedness, madness, OR solipsism. And since a Cartesian Zombie is defined as something without a mental life, your argument concerns a zero set. So there! Nick PS. Did you mean sophistry? Or Sollipsism. I have to get my insults straight, here. From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes Here's some grounds for denying the non-zombie's account of his zombieness: the non-zombie is mad or pig-headed or over-familiar with solipsism. Or a combination of all three. —R On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: Robert, <snip>So, there can be no grounds (that I can think off), for denying a non-zombie’s account that he is a zombie. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/15/2012 07:51 AM:
> the next step in a discussion like this is for someone > to ask you what evidence you have that any actual thing has more "actor status" > than a thermostat. My evidence is, like *all* evidence, subject to interpretation. Unlike most people, I don't believe there are such things as "facts". ;-) With that preamble, I'll set up my evidence. There seem to be unpredictable processes. Either they are actually unpredictable, or we're just not smart enough to predict them. If the former, we're talking Truth. If the latter, we're talking practicality. Some of these systems are chaotic, some are stochastic. Regardless, they are unpredictable. There are also some processes that are predictable. We can infer "laws" and then show that those systems (usually) follow them. These laws allow compressed models (analogs[*]) of the referent system, ways of describing those systems that are reasonably accurate. I'll call these systems "compressible" to indicate that there exists at least one [+] _accurate_ (enough) description of them that's shorter than a fully detailed description (i.e. the referent system itself). Zombies and tools are compressible. (You'll remember that I'm defining "tool" as an artifact whose purpose has been inscribed/imputed by an actor.) Actors are _incompressible_ in the sense that you can't define a short-cut law that accurately describes what how the system will evolve. We can call the incompressible part "free will" or "general intelligence" or "soul" or whatever we want to call it. That doesn't matter. But what's important is that you cannot get high confidence validation out of a model of such a system _unless_ you implement the incompressible part in all its gory detail. You have to execute it in order to know what it's going to do. (You might recognize this as the halting problem.) Now, what evidence do I have that incompressible systems exist? Well, there's plenty, from the radioactive decay of matter to meteorology. Whether you'd accept any of this evidence depends, I'd say, on whether you [dis]like my rhetoric. [*] All models, in order to do their work, need implementations. So I'm not really talking about the laws, per se. I'm talking about any machines you might use to implement the laws. E.g. not the equations, the computer and program used to implement the equations. E.g. not the indefinite equations in pencil, the definite equations without variables like "x" and "y" ... plus your fingers and such to push the pencil. [+] To be more correct, I'd have to say that actors are composite and have at least one component that is incompressible. So, while the whole actor may submit to a compression, at least part of her will not. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the uncompressible class? It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you say in your second paragraph.
What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] believe there is a world if there is nobody to model it? COuld there not be the objective fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least not correctly or fully? -Arlo James Barnes ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM:
> But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the > uncompressible class? Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. 2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively. > It seems the only way to tell is to test every > possible case, as you say in your second paragraph. I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. > What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking > about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] believe there > is a world if there is nobody to model it? Let me rephrase it to avoid the whole "conscious observer" thing. Is there a super system if all sub-systems are compressible? Yes, absolutely. Just because there exists some part of the universe that can adequately model any given part of the universe does _not_ imply that the universe doesn't exist. The real problem we face if there are no incompressible sub-sytems is one of "first cause" or ad infinitum. If every detail out there is completely explainable from its initial conditions, then what was the cause of the initial conditions? (We'll find ourselves looking for "the one true Actor" in patterns in the cosmic background radiation!) But if we posit that, say, empty space is really a dense foam of incompressible systems, then all we need do is look for a way to scale up. > COuld there not be the objective > fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least not > correctly or fully? No, not the way I'm using the word "law" (and based on my own private definition of "articulated" ;-). An unimplemented "law" is a "thought", which as I said a few posts ago, in this rhetoric anyway, is not real. It's a convenient fiction that helps some of our subsystems maintain control over other of our subsystems. But an implemented law (like a computer program and the machine that executes it) _is_ what's objective. Not only are implementations what is real, they are the _only_ thing that's real. (The word "implementation" is unfortunate because it implies the existence of an abstract thing that's being implemented. So I really shouldn't use that word ... I should use "realization" or somesuch that has a higher ontological status.) Note that I started this rhetorical position in response to Nick's assertion that there always exists "faith" at the bottom of any justification. In order to make my rhetoric interesting, I have to take a hard line and agree with Nick that things like beliefs are simply collections of actions. Hence, all things in the class containing beliefs (including laws) are not really things, at least not in and of themselves. In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute "faith". If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. As usual, the conversation hasn't gone the way I wanted. Dammit. >8D But I'll still hold my final trump card to my chest just in case it takes a turn back in my favor. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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Glen Wrote: . In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute "faith". If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. This is a really good question. Nobody has ever asked me to do that before. I am suddenly made aware of why Peirce wrote some of the tortured passages he wrote. I am going to have to think about this. In the meantime, Eric may be able to tell you what an evolved Nick will say. Nick -----Original Message----- Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM: > But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the > uncompressible class? Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. 2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively. > It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you > say in your second paragraph. I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. > What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are > talking about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] > believe there is a world if there is nobody to model it? Let me rephrase it to avoid the whole "conscious observer" thing. Is there a super system if all sub-systems are compressible? Yes, absolutely. Just because there exists some part of the universe that can adequately model any given part of the universe does _not_ imply that the universe doesn't exist. The real problem we face if there are no incompressible sub-sytems is one of "first cause" or ad infinitum. If every detail out there is completely explainable from its initial conditions, then what was the cause of the initial conditions? (We'll find ourselves looking for "the one true Actor" in patterns in the cosmic background radiation!) But if we posit that, say, empty space is really a dense foam of incompressible systems, then all we need do is look for a way to scale up. > COuld there not be the objective > fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least > not correctly or fully? No, not the way I'm using the word "law" (and based on my own private definition of "articulated" ;-). An unimplemented "law" is a "thought", which as I said a few posts ago, in this rhetoric anyway, is not real. It's a convenient fiction that helps some of our subsystems maintain control over other of our subsystems. But an implemented law (like a computer program and the machine that executes it) _is_ what's objective. Not only are implementations what is real, they are the _only_ thing that's real. (The word "implementation" is unfortunate because it implies the existence of an abstract thing that's being implemented. So I really shouldn't use that word ... I should use "realization" or somesuch that has a higher ontological status.) Note that I started this rhetorical position in response to Nick's assertion that there always exists "faith" at the bottom of any justification. In order to make my rhetoric interesting, I have to take a hard line and agree with Nick that things like beliefs are simply collections of actions. Hence, all things in the class containing beliefs (including laws) are not really things, at least not in and of themselves. In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute "faith". If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. As usual, the conversation hasn't gone the way I wanted. Dammit. >8D But I'll still hold my final trump card to my chest just in case it takes a turn back in my favor. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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I hope an evolved Nick still has eyebrows. I'd miss the eyebrows. On Sep 17, 2012 6:19 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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In reply to this post by glen ropella
Trying to be a "sophisticated" Nick:
Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by "experience", I mean it underlies all "the way you act and react towards reality". This doesn't give you a "theory of everything", but it might give you a "theory of everything psychological". ------ To return to the zombies... the usual riddle of the Cartesian zombie goes something like this: 1. Imagine a Person who is trying to catch you, perhaps to eat you. You run through the woods, twisting and turning, but your adversary always changes to stay on your trail. Let us all agree from the beginning that said Person stays on your trail BECAUSE he intends to catch and eat you. 2. Now imagine a Zombie who is trying to catch you and eat you. The Zombie makes all the same alterations of course to stay on your trail that the Person would have made in the same situation. But now, let us all agree that the Zombie has no intention. 3. <Insert mystery music here.> Aha! How would you ever know the difference? If we can imagine a Zombie doing everything it can to stay on your trail, but without wanting to catch you, then we can never know anything about the mind of another. Because I thought of this mystery, I am really smart! But you'll have to take my word on it, because a Zombie could have said all the same things without any smarts. Ooooh, see, I made it a meta-mystery - super clever points achieved! ---------- Nick's assertion is to declare point 2 a blatant falsity. To be "trying to catch you" or to "want to catch you", is nothing other than to be varying behavior so as to stay on your trail. That is, you can imagine a "try-less and want-less" thing coming towards you, for as long as you run in a straight line. As soon as you start turning, and the thing chasing you turns as a function of the changes in your trajectory, such that it is always moving to intersect you, then you are imagining that the thing is trying to catch you. The creature believes that these alterations of its course will bring it closer to you (than if it didn't alter its course). There is no action-relative-to-the-world, that doesn't entail some degree of belief. Or, to phrase it differently: To alter my course as if that will lead me to catch you, is some degree of faith. Thus, Step 3, should be a person admitting how good they are at misleading you down a philosophical rabbit hole. Note that this way of thinking separates what it is to have belief, want, faith, etc., from an (causal) explanation of that phenomenon. Eric On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 08:18 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:
------------ Eric Charles Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/18/2012 07:46 AM:
> Trying to be a "sophisticated" Nick: > > Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by > "experience", I mean it underlies all "the way you act and react towards > reality". This doesn't give you a "theory of everything", but it might give > you a "theory of everything psychological". I could tolerate that position. But I'm not going to. The whole question of ascribing the potentiality for sane actions to crazy people (be they Muslim or Atheist) hinges on the Cartesian partition. Nick (sophisticated or not) argues against the partition: mind is matter, no more no less. Hence, if faith underlies experience and experience is matter, then either we can separate experience from non-experience or all matter is experience. By accusing Nick of claiming that faith underlies all reality, I am pressing for _his_ technique for separating experience from everything else. Zombies are one rhetorical tool for doing that. > ------ > > To return to the zombies... the usual riddle of the Cartesian zombie goes > something like this: > 1. Imagine a Person who is trying to catch you, perhaps to eat you. You run > through the woods, twisting and turning, but your adversary always changes to > stay on your trail. Let us all agree from the beginning that said Person stays > on your trail BECAUSE he intends to catch and eat you. > > 2. Now imagine a Zombie who is trying to catch you and eat you. The Zombie > makes all the same alterations of course to stay on your trail that the Person > would have made in the same situation. But now, let us all agree that the > Zombie has no intention. > > 3. <Insert mystery music here.> Aha! How would you ever know the difference? If > we can imagine a Zombie doing everything it can to stay on your trail, but > without wanting to catch you, then we can never know anything about the mind of > another. Because I thought of this mystery, I am really smart! But you'll have > to take my word on it, because a Zombie could have said all the same things > without any smarts. Ooooh, see, I made it a meta-mystery - super clever points > achieved! > > ---------- > > Nick's assertion is to declare point 2 a blatant falsity. To be "trying to > catch you" or to "want to catch you", is nothing other than to be varying > behavior so as to stay on your trail. That is, you can imagine a "try-less and > want-less" thing coming towards you, for as long as you run in a straight line. > As soon as you start turning, and the thing chasing you turns as a function of > the changes in your trajectory, such that it is always moving to intersect you, > then you are imagining that the thing is trying to catch you. I'm with you up to here. However, I do know someone who tailgates other drivers just out of habit ... as soon as you point out that she's following a person, she immediately changes lanes. Of course, I have no idea what that means. > The creature > believes that these alterations of its course will bring it closer to you (than > if it didn't alter its course). You lost me here. The creature is tracking you. If belief is a collection of actions, then the creature does not YET _believe_ it's trying to catch you. It can't believe that until it actually does it ... wait for it ... because belief is action. Now, had you said that belief is a _memory_ of past action, then I might tolerate a claim that the creature believes it's tracking you. But that would mean that belief isn't a collection of actions. It's something else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of action ... perhaps something called "state", which is distinguishable from process? -- -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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It's somethingWell, if we are being literalists, it could be construed as the chemical actions taking place in a brain, or perhaps electrical actions taking place microprocessor (depending on who we are talking about). -Arlo James Barnes ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/18/2012 10:45 AM:
>> >> It's something >> else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of >> action ... perhaps something called "state", which is distinguishable >> from process? > > Well, if we are being literalists, it could be construed as the chemical > actions taking place in a brain, or perhaps electrical actions taking place > microprocessor (depending on who we are talking about). Yep, any of those actions would be fine, I think. But in order for the zombie to have a belief about something that hasn't happened yet, we need some higher order structure, like memory. So, it's not merely chemical or electrical actions ... it's chemical or electrical actions grouped in a particular way, with particular, higher order properties. We could probably even get away with an artificial chemistry or physics, as long as we could synthesize something analogous to what we normally call "belief" or "intention". -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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In reply to this post by glen ropella
Glen,
I am honestly confused at this point about what you are looking for in your main question. To be "experiencing something" or "reacting to something" requires two entities with a relationship between them. How do you separate "that table" from "the experience of that table"? Well, one is the table, the other is a particular type of relationship between an organism and the table. Your question strikes me as roughly akin to asking how we distinguish between "that table" and "me standing on the table." In both cases there is a table, but in the latter we are interested in a relationship between me and the table. I don't think Zombies are any particular help in understand the "standing on" relationship, and I also don't think they are of any particular help in understanding the "reacting to" relationship. On other notes: 1) Your friend clearly wants to tailgate. We know she does because, she does so when given the opportunity, and she expends effort to continue doing so (i.e., she regulates her speed with the person she is closely following, etc.). Now, I fully agree with you - it is fascinating that her behavior changes when it is pointed out. We could have a great time analyzing that. However, whatever our analysis revealed wouldn't undo the original observation that (until someone points out the behavior) she clearly wants to tailgate. 2) This way of thinking leads to suspicion of the often-assumed-to-be-clear distinction between mental processes labeled with different terms. For example, we might see a person raising a full cup to their mouths and ask them why they were doing it. The person says "because I was thirsty". If we further asked them, perhaps posing as a person with poor English skills, what "thirsty" meant, then they might elaborate to "I wanted liquid." But, of course, that answer alone is incoherent. The raising-cup-to-mouth behavior is not just the "want" of liquid, it is also the "belief" that raising-cup-to-mouth will result in having-liquid. That is, if we are looking at behavior, there might not be as clear a distinction between "want" and "belief" as we have been lead to believe/desire. Does that clarify anything? Eric P.S. In the second note above, we could have gone straight to the "belief" that drinking would relieve "thirst", but given our current example, it seemed better to get the word "want" involved. On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 11:53 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote: ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/18/2012 07:46 AM: > Trying to be a "sophisticated" Nick: > > Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by > "experience", I mean it underlies all "the way you act and react towards > reality". This doesn't give you a "theory of everything", but it might give > you a "theory of everything psychological". I could tolerate that position. But I'm not going to. The whole question of ascribing the potentiality for sane actions to crazy people (be they Muslim or Atheist) hinges on the Cartesian partition. Nick (sophisticated or not) argues against the partition: mind is matter, no more no less. Hence, if faith underlies experience and experience is matter, then either we can separate experience from non-experience or all matter is experience. By accusing Nick of claiming that faith underlies all reality, I am pressing for _his_ technique for separating experience from everything else. Zombies are one rhetorical tool for doing that. > ------ > > To return to the zombies... the usual riddle of the Cartesian zombie goes > something like this: > 1. Imagine a Person who is trying to catch you, perhaps to eat you. You run > through the woods, twisting and turning, but your adversary always changes to > stay on your trail. Let us all agree from the beginning that said Person stays > on your trail BECAUSE he intends to catch and eat you. > > 2. Now imagine a Zombie who is trying to catch you and eat you. The Zombie > makes all the same alterations of course to stay on your trail that the Person > would have made in the same situation. But now, let us all agree that the > Zombie has no intention. > > 3. <Insert mystery music here.> Aha! How would you ever know the difference? If > we can imagine a Zombie doing everything it can to stay on your trail, but > without wanting to catch you, then we can never know anything about the mind of > another. Because I thought of this mystery, I am really smart! But you'll have > to take my word on it, because a Zombie could have said all the same things > without any smarts. Ooooh, see, I made it a meta-mystery - super clever points > achieved! > > ---------- > > Nick's assertion is to declare point 2 a blatant falsity. To be "trying to > catch you" or to "want to catch you", is nothing other than to be varying > behavior so as to stay on your trail. That is, you can imagine a "try-less and > want-less" thing coming towards you, for as long as you run in a straight line. > As soon as you start turning, and the thing chasing you turns as a function of > the changes in your trajectory, such that it is always moving to intersect you, > then you are imagining that the thing is trying to catch you. I'm with you up to here. However, I do know someone who tailgates other drivers just out of habit ... as soon as you point out that she's following a person, she immediately changes lanes. Of course, I have no idea what that means. > The creature > believes that these alterations of its course will bring it closer to you (than > if it didn't alter its course). You lost me here. The creature is tracking you. If belief is a collection of actions, then the creature does not YET _believe_ it's trying to catch you. It can't believe that until it actually does it ... wait for it ... because belief is action. Now, had you said that belief is a _memory_ of past action, then I might tolerate a claim that the creature believes it's tracking you. But that would mean that belief isn't a collection of actions. It's something else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of action ... perhaps something called "state", which is distinguishable from process? -- -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ------------ Eric Charles Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: faith, zombies, and crazy people
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ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/19/2012 07:05 AM: > I am honestly confused at this point about what you are looking for in your > main question. Hm. I feel like we've wandered down some semantic rat hole. Let me restate my main question: What is the difference between thought and action? The original question involved faith and crazy people because that's the particular context we were in. But I assert that faith is just a specific type of thought. So, I broadened it to thought. And I also asserted that we ascribe "crazy" to people when we can't tell a believable story about their motivations. Nick asserted that faith underlies all justification _and_ that belief is action. That lead me to challenge the combination of those by inferring (from those 2 assertions of Nick's) that faith must underlie all reality. So, the question in full context becomes: What specific actions constitute faith? All the rest of the below are distracting tangents, I think. > I don't think Zombies are any particular help in understand the "standing on" > relationship, and I also don't think they are of any particular help in > understanding the "reacting to" relationship. I brought up zombies solely in the context of distinguishing between some thing that is an "end in itself" versus some thing whose purpose is imputed by another thing. They help in that discussion, but not the one you want to have. A zombie is a person who's actions are perfectly predictable from her inputs and initial conditions. An actor is a person who's actions are only approximable from inputs and initial conditions. This relates to belief and intention only in the sense that some of us claim beliefs and intentions (examples of thought) are reducible to actions. All I want is at least one, preferably many, forward and inverse maps from actions to thoughts and from thoughts to actions. I ask for that because I'm a big believer in Feynman's aphorism: "What I cannot create, I do not understand." It's all fine and dandy to assert that thoughts are actions, but unless we can synthesize at least one thought from some set of actions, we're just blowing smoke. I don't know how to do it. And frankly, I believe thoughts are not reducible to actions. But I'd love to try if I could get some help from those of us who do believe in the reduction. > On other notes: > 1) Your friend clearly wants to tailgate. We know she does because, she does so > when given the opportunity, and she expends effort to continue doing so (i.e., > she regulates her speed with the person she is closely following, etc.). Now, I > fully agree with you - it is fascinating that her behavior changes when it is > pointed out. We could have a great time analyzing that. However, whatever our > analysis revealed wouldn't undo the original observation that (until someone > points out the behavior) she clearly wants to tailgate. I disagree. She does NOT want to tailgate. Her want is something else. Her S.O. claims that she tailgates because it frees her up to think about other things. She tailgates because she feels "safer" following someone else down the road. It limits the number of ways she might get in an accident. In fact, what she does is only considered tailgating when the density of cars on the road is low. When it's high and the space buffer between any two cars is, in general, small, she wouldn't be considered to be tailgating. But I suspect if we measured her distance, it would be about the same as it is in low density traffic. The reason I point that out is because ascriptive words like "want", "belief", and "intention" are all inadequate for describing action. They are not actions. They are something more. Merely measuring actions fails to compose a measure for thought (and vice versa). I.e. not only do thoughts not reduce to actions, measures of thoughts do not reduce to measures of actions. They come close, but are not complete. And it's in that incompleteness that I propose "actor status" ... incompressibility ... lies. > 2) This way of thinking leads to suspicion of the often-assumed-to-be-clear > distinction between mental processes labeled with different terms. For example, > we might see a person raising a full cup to their mouths and ask them why they > were doing it. The person says "because I was thirsty". If we further asked > them, perhaps posing as a person with poor English skills, what "thirsty" > meant, then they might elaborate to "I wanted liquid." But, of course, that > answer alone is incoherent. The raising-cup-to-mouth behavior is not just the > "want" of liquid, it is also the "belief" that raising-cup-to-mouth will result > in having-liquid. That is, if we are looking at behavior, there might not be as > clear a distinction between "want" and "belief" as we have been lead to > believe/desire. > > Does that clarify anything? Not to me. What I want is a set of steps, a procedure, for generating a belief (or any thought) from a set of actions. If you said something like: "Forcing/convincing/training a person to raise a full cup of water to their mouth _generates_ the belief that full cups of water satisfy thirst.", then we'd be getting somewhere. The forward map is always easier than the inverse map. Going from belief to the actions that generated it is a much harder problem and tends to lead us down philosophical rat holes. > P.S. In the second note above, we could have gone straight to the "belief" that > drinking would relieve "thirst", but given our current example, it seemed > better to get the word "want" involved. I don't want "want" to be involved. 8^) I'm trying to simplify the discussion down to an actionable point. Which is why I'll ask again: If faith is a collection of actions, what actions constitute faith? Is there a training program consisting of actions the person should execute that we can put a person through, by making them _do_ various things in a [non]ritualized way so that after the training, they will have faith? If so, what are those actions? -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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