[FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!

Fri Jun 3 10:24:54 EDT 2022

Jochem,

It feels, to me, that your notions of what makes something real is kind of tautological and often inconsistent.

Tautological in the sense that: if we assume that reality is fundamentally things—particles of matter, or strings of DNA— then what is real is only that which conforms to our assumption. If we assume that Reality is fundamentally nothing but "information" (Wheeler's It from Bit), or Buddha's (et. al.) "consciousness" then conformity to physicality and thingness is not proof of anything.

Inconsistent when you make statements like "people came up with it (fire breathing dragons) when they first stumbled on dinosaur bones"—an assertion that is just as much a fantasy as a story about fire breathing dragons. You have no way to confirm either story, both are "imaginations."

davew

On Fri, Jun 3, 2022, at 12:30 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Maybe it is more useful to define "real" in terms of systems. We know that "emergence" can lead to new systems which can interact and collide with the old one. Here is a recent paper from Oriol Artime and Manilo De Domenico about emergence.
> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rsta/2022/380/2227
> 
> One system is the biological world of DNA, RNA, amino acids and all the stuff you can build from it: animals, plants, bacteria, etc. The other system is the world of words and language. Now we can say an idea in one system is real if there is a corresponding element in the other. The idea of a fire-breathing dragon for instance is unreal. People came up with it when they first stumbled upon dinosaur bones. The idea of a dinosaur like a T-Rex or a Triceratops is probably real, because scientists have evidence for the existence of dinosaurs in the biological world of the past.
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
> Date: 6/3/22 05:28 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!
> 
> We can define it in many ways, but it is still worth considering that the more interesting question might be how the word functions, in practice. 
> 
> What is the role that confirmation-by-others plays in what what you, or I, or someone else ascribes reality to? How sensitive is that ascription to variations in confirmation-by-others? What other factors affect the ascription's strength? What weakens it? 
> 
> As for dreams: Plenty of people believe they have had dreams confirmed, both in their own direct experience and in the experiences of others. It really is a much more mirky topic than most give it credit for. 
> 
> 
 <mailto:echarles at american.edu>
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 5:29 PM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>> If we want to define "real" in terms of observers we could say an experience is real when other observers have the same experience in the same situation or context and can confirm it independently *and* subsequently.
>> 
>> A squirrel we meet in the park can be confirmed by others and if we find out the place where it lives, we can observe it subsequently.
>> 
>> A rainbow in the clouds or a movie in the cinema could be confirmed by other observers, but only for a short time and not subsequently in the time that follows.
>> 
>> A dream at night can neither be confirmed by others nor repeated by oneself subsequently. We experience things that seem to be real, but when we wake up in the morning we see that they are not real. We are not able to confirm the experience. 
>> 
>> -J.
>> 
>> 
>> -------- Original message --------
>> From: ⛧ glen <gepropella at gmail.com>
>> Date: 6/1/22 03:43 (GMT+01:00)
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!
>> 
>> How many subsequent experiences are needed? 2? A google? And is reality defeasible? Eg if some experience is 'real' to me, then I get some brain damage and no longer get repeats, is the now unexperienced experience real?
>> 
>> On May 31, 2022 6:05:40 PM PDT, Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >Dave, I think I disagree. Not all experiences have a character of being real. Only those that are confirm or subsequent experiences.
>> >
>> >Sent from my Dumb Phone
>> >
>> >On May 31, 2022, at 8:27 PM, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >At the risk of becoming a poster boy for glen's comments about cult maintenance and othering;
>> >
>> >It is the body and brain that are Illusion, the self Real.
>> >
>> >The mirage, the rainbow illustrate the emergence of Illusion. Raindrops and neurons are posited as ex post facto "explanations" and "causes" for very real, 'perceptions,' 'apprehensions,' 'experiences' of rainbows and mirages.
>> >
>> >davew
>> >
>> >On Tue, May 31, 2022, at 12:59 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>> >> Interesting episode. Yes, Garfield apparently uses it to advertise his book. I like the mirage example he uses (at 11:00) to illustrate an illusion which is real as an experience and as a dynamic refraction process but unreal as a physical substance. 
>> >> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691220284/losing-ourselves
>> >> 
>> >> Daniel Dennett recently posted on Twitter a link to an article which contains the same idea, but for a rainbow instead of a mirage: perceiving a rainbow is a real experience of a colored arc, but also an illusion because there is of course no real physical arc at the place where we see it. 
>> >> https://www.keithfrankish.com/2022/05/like-a-rainbow/
>> >> 
>> >> Maybe the illusion of the self works indeed in the same way? As whole persons who have bodies and brains we are real, just as raindrops in the sky are real. But when the billions of neurons start to sparkle in the light of conscious thoughts, the experience of a self emerges for a short time like a rainbow which emerges shortly from a million raindrops that bend the light towards the observer.
>> >> 
>> >> I believe Jay Garfield is right when he says that we are able to construct ourselves as embedded beings. It is as if we are 6, 7 or 8 dimensional beings in a 4 dimensional spacetime where the additional dimensions are embedded in the others. This additional dimensions come through language and enable to specify a personality. If we consider a person from a 3rd person point of view, then the personality of a person certainly determines the behavior. This means everyone has a self in form of a character or personality. Even if it is illusionary or an unreachable ideal to be a certain type of person, such a type can be approximated. Our personalities can be considered as embedded abstract person types that we acquire and approximate in the course of time. In this sense we can say we have a self that guides our actions. And the abstract type is independent from us, since it could also be implemented in a sophisticated robot, android or AI.
>> >> 
>> >> -J.
>> >> 
>> >> 
>> >> -------- Original message --------
>> >> From: thompnickson2 at gmail.com
>> >> Date: 5/31/22 11:04 (GMT+01:00)
>> >> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam at redfish.com>
>> >> Cc: 'Mike Bybee' <mikebybee at earthlink.net>, stephenraronson at gmail.com, 'Grant Franks' <grantfranks3 at gmail.com>
>> >> Subject: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my!
>> >> 
>> >> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/282-do-you-really-have-a-self/id733163012?i=1000563340865
>> >> 
>> >>  
>> >> 
>> >> Jay Garfield promotes his book Losing the Self on the Sam Harris Podcast.  I can see no evidence that Garfield ever read a word of Peirce, but It’s fascinating how closely he tracks Peirce’s monism.  Fascinating, also, to see how Harris never quite gets it, repeatedly trying to drag the outside/inside distinction back into the conversation, while slathering praise on Garfield for eliminating it.  Reminds me of James’s failure to ever quite “get” Peirce.  But then it was James who died a neutral monist.  Oh well. 
>> >> 
>> >>  
>> >> 
>> >> Reminded me of all the times that Dave West has accused me of being a closet Buddhist.
>> >> 
>> >>  
>> >> 
>> >> Nick
>> >> 
>> >>  
>> >> 
>> >> Nick Thompson
>> >> 
>> >> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>> >> 
>> >> 
>> -- 
>> glen ⛧
>> 
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