[FRIAM] What's so bad about Scientism?

[Prof David West]

Hi Glen,

I think the answer may be in what you just wrote, but a bit of assistance please. If we were to anthropomorphize your autonomous nervous system would you say it 'believed' or 'doubted' the utility of heartbeats, lungs pumping, etc.?

My interest arises from studies of Yoga adepts who "take conscious control of breathing" and upon achieving total conscious control, delegate the control back to the autonomous system which maintains the regularized, 'managed' breathing instead of the 'normal', somewhat chaotic/strange attracter-ish breathing regimen prior to the application of Yoga technique.

dave west


On Mon, Jul 9, 2018, at 9:32 AM, ∄ uǝʃƃ wrote:
> Heh.  No, I've been more than fair, explaining my "different 
> understanding of belief" over and over again.  8^)  You simply ignore 
> what I write.
> 
> I'll try once more, I suppose.  Belief is a thresholded amount of 
> confidence in one's ability to control an interaction with the 
> environment.  Doubt is a thresholded amount of *lack* of confidence in 
> one's ability to control an interaction with the environment.  Because 
> these are differences in *degree* not *kind*, it is completely 
> reasonable to say you doubt everything and/or you believe everything, 
> merely to greater or smaller extents.
> 
> Some people have very high/low thresholds (for belief/doubt, 
> respectively).  Others, like me, have a very high threshold for belief 
> and also a very *high* threshold for doubt.  E.g. let's say both you and 
> I are ~90% confident the floor is there in the morning.  You draw your 
> threshold for belief at 80%.  The you believe the floor is there.  I, 
> however, draw my threshold for belief above 99%.  Hence, I do not 
> believe the floor is there.  Similarly, let's say you and I both have 
> ~25% confidence in the existence of unicorns, let's say you draw your 
> doubt threshold near 10%.  Then you do not doubt the existence of 
> unicorns.  If I draw my threshold near 30%, then I do doubt the 
> existence of unicorns.  (It should be clear that I draw my doubt 
> threshold much higher than 30%, though.  I not only doubt the existence 
> of unicorns, but horses and rhinos, too.  To be clear, I think 
> confidence is *more* ontological than the doubt/belief thresholding. In 
> "hands-on" people, confidence will be correlated with the variation in 
> the particular system.  And the extent to which the thresholds differ 
> from one person to the next, or from one moment to the next, is 
> questionable. And both probably vary between people, cultures, etc.  
> Many men tend to feel the need to *pretend* to believe things they don't 
> actually believe.  I'm sure the same is true for many women.  Teenagers 
> seem to believe more things, like their ability to drive and text at the 
> same time, than octogenarians. Etc.)
> 
> In other words, for me, if there's any conscious effort AT ALL involved 
> in some control process, e.g. sprinting 100 meters or arguing about 
> cosmology, then I *doubt* my handle on that process.  And that means I 
> doubt everything I'm *aware* of.  Granted, there are some things I could 
> be said to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt.  For example, during my 
> chemo, I forgot my master password for one of my databases.  Prior to 
> that episode, I'd never forgotten such things.  In fact, the way I 
> "remembered" it, finally, was that I simply kept trying to type it.  I 
> probably tried 100 times or more, hoping the finger movement would 
> remind my mind of what it was.  It eventually worked.  So, prior to the 
> episode, I *believed* that password and believed in my ability to type 
> it.  I now doubt it ... one more thing to doubt along with everything 
> else.
> 
> My test for whether *you* believe something would depend fundamentally 
> on where you've drawn those thresholds.  If you're like my neighbor, who 
> is a Christian, and claim to believe outlandish things, I'd have no 
> choice but to analyze and (Socratically) question you to see if I could 
> locate your thresholds on the real spectrum we all face: uncertainty/
> variation in our control systems.  I know people who seem to take for 
> granted their ability to, say, flip a coin over their fingers or stand 
> up without sharp pains searing through their lower back.  My guess would 
> be they believe in their dexterity and properly fused sacral vertebrae.  
> I do not.
> 
> [sigh]  I look forward to a response in which you actually discuss some 
> of the ideas I've written, rather than simply restating your position 
> yet again.
> 
> On 07/08/2018 09:28 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > 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. 
> 
> -- 
> ∄ uǝʃƃ
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