Hi, Glen,
I think you are being a little unfair: I merely laid out the understandings that lead ME to think that one cannot doubt and act at the same time: ie, it is entailed by my definition of belief. >We are a having a definitional problem. To a pragmatist (which I seem >to be) there can be no doubt in the presence of action (and no belief >in its absence). So when you say, “I doubt everything” that MEANS to >me that you do nothing. If you have a different understanding of belief, that conclusion would not follow, presumably. How would you decide whether I truly believed something. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2018 6:09 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What's so bad about Scientism? I've answered your question so manu times, it doesn't seem worth it to answer again. But such is life, eh? Doubt is uncertainty. Our bodies (including our minds) deal with uncertainty by maintaining feedback with the environment. Such doubting feedback is present even during actions of which you are as confident as you can be (e.g. stirring coffee or breathing). For actions of which you are minimally confident, such feedback will be largely conscious. Mindfulness is an attempt to keep some of your feedback conscious even if it's a deeply ingrained habit. To be mindful is to doubt everything. When you experience vertigo, it's because your feedback mechanism is biased or different. As Marcus points out, you then intervene consciously to modify or retrain yourself to use the new mechanism. The uncertainty never completely disappears, just increases and decreases as you and your environment change. In cases where you have zero feedback, you won't even be aware of any uncertainty because YOU HAVE NO FEEDBACK. Now, I will concede that cases exist where you may have enough feedback to estimate the uncertainty, but not enough feedback for a confident prediction of the outcome of an action. In such cases, I posit the TWITCH ... a (quite ordinary) sampling process of tiny actions that serve to establish more feedback. An actual example I've cited before is the saccade in vision. Even actual paralytics like suxamethonium chloride don't halt ALL feedback loops. Feedback stops only when you die. And I suspect some feedback persists for a short time after you die. So I have to reject your metaphorical 'paralyzing doubt' on all fronts. And if "I doubt everything" means to you that I do nothing, then you are obviously not reading any of my answers to your questions ... which is OK of course. 8^) On July 7, 2018 5:35:56 PM PDT, Nick Thompson < <mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net> nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: >We are a having a definitional problem. To a pragmatist (which I seem >to be) there can be no doubt in the presence of action (and no belief >in its absence). So when you say, “I doubt everything” that MEANS to >me that you do nothing. > >So, when you put your feet out to the floor in the middle of the night, >do you doubt that the floor is there? Do you doubt when you open the >door the bathroom that the bathroom is there? You can entertain doubts >on such matters, and such entertainment is fun and sometimes >instructive, but in pragmatist terms, you do not doubt them. > >So. How are we to adjust terminology. > >Here’s an example. Because of my recent bout of vertigo, I have >moments of doubting that the world around is stable. Under those >conditions, I cannot walk. REAL doubt (sensu pragmatico) is a nasty >business. -- glen ============================================================ 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> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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