Nicholas Thompson wrote at 09/14/2012 12:18 PM: > gepr wrote: >> It always surprises me the extent to which people (yes! people in >> general) over-simplify complex things. One of my pet peeves is the >> conviction that religion is identical with belief or doctrine. >> > [NST ==>] one'mans oversimplification is another's clarification.
Exactly! Such is the plight of people who believe thought plays a role in action. Those of us who never think, only act don't have that problem. There are no (accurate) compressions or models that do a good enough job of looking ahead. (Can you tell I make my living building simulations? ;-) >> Most religion is an individualized convolution of belief and practice. >> It's not merely belief and it's not merely practice. The extent to which >> any individual's religion is belief vs. practice varies dramatically. >> > [NST ==>] Well, I really don't distinguish between belief and practice. If > I believe that my child will die if and only if it is God's will AND I > believe that it is a sin to oppose god's will, then I will not give my child > anti-biotics. If I give my child antibiotics, I don't believe that. > Beliefs are what we act on. No, we act on the previous state of our bodies and the rules that govern the transition from one state to another ... no thoughts or beliefs are required, only memory. If you do not give your child antibiotics, it is because your history pre-programmed you to not do that and vice versa. >> So, to people like Doug, I can justifiably counter that religion is not >> (merely) reducible to belief or faith. And we know he already knows this by >> his statement that Islam was tightly woven into the fabric of western Libya. >> Yet, he contradicts himself almost immediately and claims that religion >> (yes, all religion, everywhere and everyone) requires faith. Which is it? >> Can religion be woven deeply into one's actions? Or not? And if not, then >> how deeply can a religion be woven into the actions of animals? What is the >> most habitual, instinctively, >> epigenetic(?) action into which religion can be woven? >> > [NST ==>] Is it possible Doug and I agree on something? That the > distinction between belief and action is ill drawn? If so, we'd all agree that the distinction is ill-drawn. But we'd probably disagree on where it should properly be drawn. ;-) >> I posit that those scientists who self identify as religious hold doctrine >> as _less_ central to their religion than practice. Interacting with the >> real world probably takes precedence over navel-gazing. >> > [NST ==>] I see, Glen, that you want to perjoratize one kind of intellectual > behavior and prioritize another, but why? On what grounds. If navels is > what I want to learn about, some navel gazing might be really useful. Well, the real reason I chose to pejoratize (?) what I did is to make the argument interesting. I have faith that Doug believes he is not a zombie. Yet he argues in one context that he is a zombie and in another context that he is not a zombie. You are consistent in your denial of the existence of zombies, yet you argue vociferously in defense of behaviorism. (Not that there's a contradiction there ... but it is curious.) As for the type of intellectual behavior the generalized "scientist" holds dear and distinguishing it from religious doctrine, I really don't intend to draw that distinction. I am equally against both. (Yet, magically, I will defend the idea that philosophy is useful! So, I am not free of my own contradictions.) >> Anyway, this is why I chose to quote Nick's comment. ;-) Faith is just an >> idea ... a thought. To claim that faith always lies somewhere down there is >> to claim that our universe is somehow _rooted_ in or at least heavily >> dependent on thought. I disagree completely. I believe in zombies. I >> believe animals exist who either have no thoughts or in whom thought is >> purely epiphenomenal. These animals do not require faith at any layer. > [NST ==>] > Ok. Our horns are nicely locked here, let's push a bit and see where we > get. That on a moonless night I reach out for my glasses on the bedstand is > evidence for my belief that that the glasses are on the bedstand? (for > myself, I would put it even more strongly: that I reach out CONSTITUTES my > belief that the glasses are on the bedstand. There is no separate idea > followed by an act. If anything, the act creates the idea. I disagree. I believe you reach out for your glasses because the t-1 state of your body forces you to do so, not because your mind (whatever that is) holds a belief that they are there. Often, when I sleep in a strange place, I do things like reach out for my phone, or the door knob, or whatever without having thought about whether it's there at all. My body is just used to such motorized actions producing good result. I am open to the idea that the concept of a "belief" is a kind of short-cut or ideological compression of all the trillions of tiny actions my body will take in various circumstances ... a lossy compression. So, I'm open to the idea that there are no such things as beliefs, that they are only convenient fictions. And, in that sense, I'm open to one type of argument that would allow you to say "the act creates/constitutes the idea". But the idea is a delusion at worst and an inaccurate model at best. > But I thought I was having a different sort of conversation with Doug. I > thought he and I were discussing the justification of belief. And > justification I took to be something we do with words and propositions. And > all I was doing was making the [obvious] point that eventually, in any > argument, no matter how fairly and well conducted, we reach a point where we > have to appeal to a proposition we cannot justify. That may well be. But it didn't sound that way to me. It sounded to me as if Doug claimed that faith is not necessary for (his) life and you claimed that it is necessary to every (human) life -- the implication being that it's also necessary for Doug. The extent to which justification and rhetoric are important to any life is my attempt to toss off all the noise and get to the point. If Doug is right and faith is unnecessary, then perhaps, since faith is just a thought, all thought is unnecessary. If my caricature of your argument is right, that faith is necessary, then how deep does the necessity go? ... all the way to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics? To boot, even if your point is that, in all justification and rhetoric, there are _axioms_, we can take two sides: 1) the universe is a formal system and, hence, requires axioms or 2) the universe contains or is independent of formal systems and, hence, requires no axioms. (I.e. 1- justification/rhetoric/thought/faith is fundamental or 2- it's 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
