[FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

Thu Sep 21 17:20:59 EDT 2017

Thanks, Eric.  Great as always to hear from you. 

One of the surest ways to avoid packing and winterizing a house is to make a dumb statement and then spend the next week defending it on a list-serv. I am not quite sure I am in that territory, yet, but I am entertaining doubts. 

As a behaviorist, I have to concede that it is possible to act tentatively.  When I am meeting a dog for the first time, I extend the back of my hand into the danger zone near its muzzle, rather than putting out my hand confidently and stroking its neck, head, or flank.  This allows the dog a chance to smell my hand and me a chance to gauge its intentions.  Am I acting in doubt.  I guess it depends on what the proposition is.  If the proposition is that I am safe to reach out and pet the dog, I definitely doubt that.  If the proposition is that no dog is safe to touch on the first meeting, then my tentative behavior affirms that belief.  

Peirce defined belief as that upon which we act and doubt as the absence of belief.  It follows logically that anything we act on affirms some belief and, therefore, at the moment of action, extinguishes all contrary beliefs.  If you follow me here, I may appear to win the argument, but only on sophistic points.  

Allow me to go for a KO.  When you are interacting with humans, how exactly DO you decide what they believe?  What are the practices you would engage in to test the belief of somebody.  Can you imagine a test of some belief that would allow you to infer that I believe something even though my actions are inconsistent with that belief?  Would that be rational on your part, or just evidence of your Christian good nature?  Or your belief in a non-material mind?  

All the best, 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2017 4:44 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia

Somehow I imagine that Nick means to say there are costly signals in this game — that motor action is thicker than conversation or reflection.

If I am walking across a snowfield that I know to be filled with crevasses, and I know I can’t tell which snow holds weight and which doesn’t, my movement is really different than it is putting my feet on the floor beside the bed in the morning.

To take a different example that is counterfactual but easier to use in invoking the real physiological paralysis, if Thank God Ledge on halfdome were not actually a solid ledge, but a fragile bridge, or if there had been a rockfall that left part of it missing and I were blindfolded, or if I were a prisoner of pirates blindfolded and made to walk the plank, my steps would land differently than they do when I get out of bed in the morning.

There I didn’t say what anyone else would do in any circumstance, but did claim that my own motions have different regimes that are viscerally _very_ distinct.  I’m not sure I can think about whether I would fight for air when being drowned.  It might be atavistic and beyond anything I normally refer to as “thought”.  I certainly have had people claim to me that that is the case.

Those distinctions may occupy a different plane than the distinction between reasonableness and dogmatism all in the world of conversation and the social exchange.

But I should not speak for others.  Only for myself as a spectator.

Eric

> On Sep 21, 2017, at 4:32 PM, gⅼеɳ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> No regrets or apology are needed.  And even if we are about to "argue about words" ... I forget what famous dead white guy said that ... it's still useful to me.
> 
> You say: "if one acts in the assurance that some fact is the case, one cannot be said to really doubt it"  The answer is clarified by reading Marcus' post.  If you act with assurance, then you're not open to changing your mind.  So, you've simply moved the goal posts or passed the buck.
> 
> I *never* act with assurance, as far as I can tell.  Every thing I do seems plagued with doubt.  I can force myself out of this state with some activities.  Running more than 3 miles does it.  Math sometimes does it.  Beer does it.  Etc.  But for almost every other action, I do doubt it.  So, I don't think we're having the discussion James and Peirce might have.  I think we're talking about two different types of people, those with a tendency to believe their own beliefs and those who tend to disbelieve their own beliefs.
> 
> Maybe it's because people who act with assurance are just smarter than people like me?  I don't know.  It's important in this modern world, what with our affirmation bubbles, fake news, and whatnot.  What is it that makes people prefer to associate with people whose beliefs they share?  What makes some people prefer the company of people different from them?  Etc.
> 
> 
> On 09/21/2017 01:20 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> I am afraid this discussion is about to dissolve into a quibble about the meaning of the words "doubt" and "belief", but let's take it one more round.    In my use of the words ... and I think Peirce's ... one can entertain a doubt without "really" having one.  Knowledge of perception tells us that every perceived "fact" is an inference subject to doubt and yet, if one acts in the assurance that some fact is the case, one cannot be said to really doubt it, can one?   It follows, then, that to the extent that we act on our perceptions, we act without doubt on expectations that are doubtable.  
>> 
>> Eric Charles may be able to help me with this:  there is some debate between William  James and Peirce about whether the man, being chased by the bear who pauses at the edge of the chasm, and then leaps across it, doubted at the moment of leaping that he could make the jump.  I think James says Yes and Peirce says No.  If that is the argument we are having, then I am satisfied we have wrung everything we can out of it.  
>> 
>> Anyway.  I regret being cranky, but I can't seem to stop.  Is that another example of what we are talking about here?  
> 
> --
> ☣ gⅼеɳ
> 
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