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

Wed Jun 1 12:11:42 EDT 2022

So, like, exactly what you just said. That is a serious empirical question.
Let's say that you believe something to be real, or not-real. Are there *
*any** subsequent interactions in the world that would lead you to
re-evaluate that belief? If we could, ever, get at **all** the subsequent
interactions that might lead you to re-evaluate that belief, we would have
a very good idea what "real" meant to you.

If we just do you, then it is solid "idiographic" science. We **might**
also hypothesize that if we did that with a lot of people, across a lot of
beliefs, that we would see some similarities emerge. If so, we
**could* *abstract
those similarities and try to create prescriptive guidance for word usage,
a "definition" if you will.

If we did a cross-cultural study, we could examine the accuracy of whatever
word we might translate as "real" by seeing if it actually maps on to the
same re-evaluation criteria that "real" does in our culture.

Etc.

It is also important to note that the subsequent interactions don't have to
be limited in the way conventional Western science would like them to be.
For example, if someone said "I wouldn't believe some particular God was
real unless I died and found myself before him" that is a totally viable
criteria for the purposes of our study.

Note also that in practice we will likely run into the usual problems with
self-report, but that is a different discussion altogether. The question is
whether there are conditions under which your belief in the reality of
something could change, not whether you can **perfectly** self-report on
what those conditions are.

(And, as a final note: When Peirce gives the "pragmatic definition of
truth", he is making an assertion about what the result of the above study
would be, if we could run it as comprehensively as possible. Peirce is
great, IMHO, when he admits that's what he's doing, and he's a jackass when
he just asserts his definition without that context.)

<echarles at american.edu>

On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 9:42 PM ⛧ glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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