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Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

#29: July - Sept. 2006 (Non-Fiction)
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Chris OConnor

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Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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Ch. 1 - Breaking Which SpellPlease use this thread for discussing Chapter 1.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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Dennett starts off on a pretty hard line...comparing religious belief to a parasite that controls the organisms activity in the world.His example is a parasite that takes over an ant's brains and makes it climb a blade of grass until it reaches the top. The parasite needs to get into a cows intestine in order to complete it life-cycle. He also makes reference to the Sysiphus story (As we also saw in Value and Virtue).He goes on to explain that an idea can act as some sort of parasite that controls our thoughts and thus actions. Mad and I discussed this briefly in regards to the short story "The Swarm" in our Schismatrix discussion. The idea of an idea becoming a force that actually acts against the individual survival and how this may. or may not, act to benefit the social group. The main factor in our discussion was intelligence and it's benecficial or adverse effects on survival.Mad stated: Quote:But on a more intimate level, an intelligence that would lead a person to put the sanctity of a concept above their own needs -- "give me liberty or give me death" -- is also one that could potentially act against the instinct of survival.I replied: Quote:Intelligence in this way, promoting concepts over instincts, has given us morality and ethics. We have figured out that it is better to try to respect life and not go off killing everyone because we can or even because sometimes we must. Now you can say that ethics and morality are grown on whatever system, but the fact is that intelligence produced them.So these parasites are by-products of our intelligence?Anyway...I look forward to reading on and seeing where Dennett takes this. I guess I should pick up the selfish gene too?Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper
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Re: Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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Well, yes, they are products of our intelligence. We have evolved, by moving from primal instincts to intelligence and using that to create tools to civilize ourselves. I think we outgrow these tools of evolution. Like, we are less dependant on primal insticts now than we were thousands years ago since we've used our intellect to create a civilization that dominates nature. We no longer need them, but we now(and did) need a creed to stabilize our new system. Religion is just another one of those tools. It was a handy device that gave all the answers of the world and even the creed we needed to maintain civilized life. The problem now is that our intellect has outgrown religion in almost every way. Due to technology(another product of our intellect) the world is very small, which creates conflicts between religions, therefore disrupting civilized life. We no longer need religion because we've establised governments which enforces laws and science to give all the answer of the world.Haha, I dunno if that answers your question. I hope it does
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Logismoi

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Mr. P: The idea of an idea becoming a force that actually acts against the individual survival and how this may, or may not, act to benefit the social group. The Desert Fathers of Eastern Orthodox Christianity had the term logismoi to make sense of ideas that debilitate their host. These logismoi, as particularly understood by Hesychios, were living, animate, independent forces that invade and disrupt proper connection with God. They were demonic energies hell-bent on separating humans from their source, keeping the soul from her sustenance and salvation. Logismoi unchecked and given free reign lead to profound emotional disturbances, destroyed relationships, and appetites out of control and balance. Plato, in some of his dialogues, describes the Logos as a living being. And the Book of John identifies the Logos with the creative force from which all things arise and return to, that became flesh as Jesus Christ.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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I do not have Breaking the Spell yet. I was just reading through the threads here when I saw Nick's post on the ant parasite. Oddly enough, just this morning I read about that parasite! Dawkins is discussing it as an example of a parasite(fluke) using an intermediate host(ant)to get into the next host(sheep). This is all in the context of how the extended phenotype is at work. Nick, you mentioned reading selfish gene. I have read that and immensely enjoyed it. The book I am reading now with the worm-ant-sheep example is the extended phenotype. The page that example is on is p 218(paperback). For some reason, I do not find extended phenotype as enjoyable as selfish gene. In the chat with Dawkins, I remember him saying something like he suggests people read extended phenotype most. That's why I started reading it(months ago). I am almost done with it though! How weird that I just read that page, then came on here and read that post. Someone call Shermer, there must be something psychic about this!
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Re: Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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Tara:Wow...what a sign...must mean there is a god that directed you here... no?I did not read the Selfish Gene...but I might pick it up and use it as a reference to the Dennett book. I think it may relate.Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper
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Re: Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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I wrote out a long reply to this yesterday, but ezBoard underwent some sort of maintenance just as I was posting it. As long as I've been using these boards, you'd think I'd know to copy long posts to the buffer before I post them.misterpessimistic: He goes on to explain that an idea can act as some sort of parasite that controls our thoughts and thus actions. Mad and I discussed this briefly in regards to the short story "The Swarm" in our Schismatrix discussion.S'funny how these things start to overlap, isn't it?I have some problems with Dennett's analogy. This biggest is the implication that ideas can disrupt voluntary behavior in the same way that a fluke disrupts normative ant behavior. I don't think it's at all correct to suggest than an idea can direct behavior like some sort of mechanistic reaction. A firmly held idea can necessitate certain conclusions, provided that the person holding the idea applies it along logical lines, but there remains some degree of voluntarism.Socialization can complicate the issue, and I think that's a point Dennett could have (and perhaps does) elaborate upon, but it's one that's increasingly less pressing in our society. When the whole apparatus of society is geared towards impressing on its members particular ideas, then it can be difficult to recognize that there's any choice involved. A society in which every member disseminates the ideas of democratic liberty, for example, is a society in which it becomes difficult, though clearly not impossible, to conceive of any alternative view of the world. If we lived in a society that transmitted religious ideas as a matter of course, and with no opposing points of view, then Dennett's analogy to the fluke worm might apply. To extend the analogy, there would be no immune system by which to critique the socialized ideas. But we live in an extremely pluralistic society, and it's difficult to believe that very many people could avoid coming into contact, however slight, with different religious and non-religious traditions.What matters, I think, is conviction, but conviction is not something implicit in any idea itself. Neal Stephenson and others have played with the idea of "information viruses", but until someone can put forward some real proof, I see no reason to regard them as anything but science fiction extrapolations from Dawkin's meme hypothesis.So these parasites are by-products of our intelligence?As I've already said, I think the notion that they're equivalent to parasites is misleading, but yes, the tendency any idea might exhibit to canalize behavior is founded in our particular form of intelligence. At the same time, I don't think it entirely likely that the sort of intelligence that could frame abstract ideas of this sort would lack the apparatus to critique those ideas. That is, if you can construct the idea of God, then you should also be able to deconstruct it. Neither ability implies the truth or falsity of the idea; my point here is just that there is no reason, that I can see, to believe that our ideas have resulted in inescapable behavior.What matters is a person's commitment to an idea. The example I gave in the Bruce Sterling thread, Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty, or give me death", is pretty explicit about its level of commitment -- Henry is more committed to the idea of liberty than he is to his own survival. There may be something in his inidividual character that makes that commitment inescapable, but there's nothing in the idea itself that constrains him to it. At a certain level, I think we have to regard it as a kind of choice, or at the least, a conclusion that's predicated on a prior commitment.This harks back to the intermittant, ongoing conversation that Interbane and I have been having about kinds of faith. I suggested dividing it into simple and complex faith, the difference being that simple faith is irreducible while complex faith is predicated on a logically prior simple faith. We can translate all this talk of faith into terms of commitment without losing too much. So we might assume that Patrick Henry's faith in liberty is simple -- that is, that he believes strongly in the worth of liberty, without predicating that belief on anything else. Or we might decide that his faith in liberty is predicated on a belief that is, to him, more central and irreducible; for example, faith in human reason, or faith in laisse faire economics, or faith in his own ability to guide his personal destiny.(Incidentally, I don't mean to imply anything with all this talk of faith. In this instance, you can assume that I'm using the term innocently as a kind of synonym for belief or conviction.)I guess I should pick up the selfish gene too?Reading the last chapter should give you a great deal of perspective on where Dennett's getting the basics of his early argument. I don't recall how much that chapter depends upon the rest of "The Selfish Gene", so it would probably be better just to read the entire thing. In basic terms, the meme is Dawkins' attempt to recast ideas in an analogy to genes. To understand the import of that, you have to understand Dawkins' argument that genes are the basic unit of not just inheritence but of evolution as a whole.Personally, I find Dawkins' meme idea unconvincing and problematic. It struck me as something of an afterthought: Dawkins' attempt to piggyback onto his evolutionary arguments a dismissal of religious belief. If Dennett's entire thesis is going to depend on Dawkins as a foundation, then I'm not likely to find much to recommend in "Breaking the Spell". Abs7: We have evolved, by moving from primal instincts to intelligence and using that to create tools to civilize ourselves.I wouldn't say that we've abandoned instinct, but by modifying our environments, we've determined (inadvertantly, to some degree) which instincts are to play the biggest role in daily life. We haven't outgrown instinct at all, but we have let certain instinct atrophy.tarav: Dawkins is discussing it as an example of a parasite(fluke) using an intermediate host(ant)to get into the next host(sheep).There's a great deal of interplay between Dawkins and Dennett, so that's probably no coincidence.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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Quote:S'funny how these things start to overlap, isn't it?Yeah...I like that. I was also trying to get people over to the Schismatrix convo!Quote:This biggest is the implication that ideas can disrupt voluntary behavior in the same way that a fluke disrupts normative ant behavior.I lilke the analogy...and I do not insist that the similarities need be 100% apples to apples. I am not sure yet if Dennett is saying this is an air tight example. But ideas can indeed influence people and sometimes one cannot control themselves when they give themselves over to an idea....after a life long submission to that idea. You start to see the world according to your ideas/beliefs and thus your ideas/beliefs are a main deciding factor in your behavior, no? Just look at the power of denial. People can suffer under denial and act according to the 'ideas' within that denial.Quote:If we lived in a society that transmitted religious ideas as a matter of course, and with no opposing points of view, then Dennett's analogy to the fluke worm might apply. But what about individuals? Or sub-cultures...like the Amish? This fluke-ant analogy can then work in this instance. Just because there are competeing ideas out there does not mean that a certain group, or even an individual, is immune to certain enforced (through family units/peer pressure and so on) ideologies? Carried over the course of hundreds or thousands of years, we are seeing the ideas that have managed to hold on, due to the influence on individuals within groups.Quote:coming into contact, however slight, with different religious and non-religious traditions.Coming into contact is one thing, but being able to comprehend, or to even WANT to comprehend is another. Take the devout religious person who has been bashed about the head with Creationist nonesense. I have talked to some of these people and they refuse to even acknowledge the information out there in support of evolution. They choose instead to listen to the few people making the case for Creationism and against evolution. They accept the dogma. Can they be said to be acting involuntarily according to the ideas they already have been infected with? A freethinker may be the "immune system by which to critique the socialized ideas". Those who are simply an ant with a fluke in theirs brains may suffer from a form of ideological 'AIDS' and have had this immune system destroyed.Quote:I see no reason to regard them as anything but science fiction extrapolations from Dawkin's meme hypothesis.Well, you have stated that you have no use for Dawkins' Meme hypothesis anyway...and maybe there is no proof, but it is certainly something that can spark debate and offers a different way to look at the spread of ideas. Not a bad thing generally, even if found to be not quite right. I dont mean to spark our old animosity here...but you defend the idea of religious 'truth' and explain why it has it's place in our existence...and that is all untestable, un-provable myth...with gods and other such things that have no real proof at all. You say it is also a system that is a-logical. I think we can at least accept these theories and talk about them and how they may be useful in understanding why certain ideas and traditions are still with us when much of what they attempted to explain has been explained in other, more reliable ways.I am not saying that (although I do agree with it) religion is totally useless anymore...but you have to admit that much of what religion attempted to explain has been moved to the realm of scientifically testable circles. Or maybe you dont have to admit it...Quote:That is, if you can construct the idea of God, then you should also be able to deconstruct it. That seems self evident to me.Quote:Neither ability implies the truth or falsity of the idea; my point here is just that there is no reason, that I can see, to believe that our ideas have resulted in inescapable behavior. Well...maybe not inescapable...but I would say there is enough we can observe that will show that we can become slaves to our ideas...that we can subconsciously become prone to 'sub-routines' caused by our deeply held ideas/beliefs. (Yes, another Schismatrix reference)Quote:There may be something in his inidividual character that makes that commitment inescapable, but there's nothing in the idea itself that constrains him to it.Well of course. It is not the simple old idea itself, but its ability to influence, via the concept playing out in the mind of the individual (and thus similar individuals), action in the mind. In this way, it can be a source of control. As you say, the character of the individual is a key ingredient. But mix the strong idea with the right personality and you can see how this could lead to a person that will be so focused and so set in their ways that they would stop at nothing to acheive thier goals. In this way, the parasitic infection may not be a permanant affliction, but it can force a course of action that may be very hard to derail. Mutliply this by the number of people who share a certain personality, and we can see that it can cause an idea to spread itself about and last a very long time.Quote:(Incidentally, I don't mean to imply anything with all this talk of faith. In this instance, you can assume that I'm using the term innocently as a kind of synonym for belief or conviction.)Dont worry...I was not going to explode about this. I understand where you are coming from now...after all our battles, it finally clicked.(Incidentally, I know you may have been talking in general...but this aside rung a bell and reminded me about our battles in the past over this. So I wanted to clear that up if that was also on your mind.)Quote:We haven't outgrown instinct at all, but we have let certain instinct atrophy.I have heard a few people say that humans no longer have true instincts and I always disregarded that observation. I have not heard it much...but it has come up. Of course we have instincts. As Mad states though, we have tried and succeeded (more often than not) to control the immediate environment around us and thus we have more control, through the environment being more benign, over which of our instincts are called into play and when they are needed. Mr. P. Mr. P's place. I warned you!!!The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper
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Re: Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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misterpessimistic: I was also trying to get people over to the Schismatrix convo!The more the merrier. It's in the "Additional Fiction Book Discussions" forum, if anyone's looking for it.I lilke the analogy...and I do not insist that the similarities need be 100% apples to apples. I am not sure yet if Dennett is saying this is an air tight example.No, I don't think he is, but then, I only read a little bit in the store. I'm sure he intends to play loose with the analogy -- that's the rhetorical value of analogies, and when you start insisting on a 1:1 ratio of agreement, you start to fall in the sort of error that dominated medieval science.But it isn't the peripheral details that bother me about Dennett's analogy. It's the central gist that I think is distortive and misleading. It's an appealing analogy, and that's another part of the rhetorical value of analogies, but taking pleasure in an analogy isn't enough to make it true.But ideas can indeed influence people and sometimes one cannot control themselves when they give themselves over to an idea....after a life long submission to that idea. You start to see the world according to your ideas/beliefs and thus your ideas/beliefs are a main deciding factor in your behavior, no?Right, but I think that takes a kind of commitment to the idea. You really have to work to think within a paradigm, unless that paradigm is totally ubiquitous to the point that it's improbable for you to think any other way.You can be canalized towards certain ideas, I'd say, but it requires a prior commitment to ideas that necessarily -- that is, logically -- point to that idea. For example, if you believe that it's always wrong to take a human life, and you believe that we're human at the moment of conception, then, so long as you're consistent, you don't have much choice but to believe that abortion is wrong. But in that scenario, you're canalized towards the pro-life point of view only by your commitment to prior ideas. Without the commitment to both of those premises, you're more or less at liberty to decide for yourself how you feel about abortion.But what about individuals? Or sub-cultures...like the Amish?I think a particularly admirable thing about the Amish is that they send their children out of the community to give them the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they'd like to remain with their present faith. Of course, the cards are sometimes stacked against their embracing the outside world in any healthy sort of way, but at least they do insist on the element of choice.As far as I can tell, there aren't many really sealed off sub-cultures in the West. We're a polyphonic society. But even assuming a "thought control" state, like those attempted by certain Communist nations in the later half of the 20th century, it doesn't seem to me that the ant analogy really holds up. Ideas simply don't ride us that way. Even when a society is dominated by a particular set of ideas, there is a tendency among individuals to improvise on those ideas, sometimes leading them to reconsider the original ideas. There's a long history of heretical ideas in Medieval Europe that began pretty much the moment the Catholic Church coalesced into a unified institution. We're restless with our ideas, and so far as I can tell, more often than not it takes a concerted effort to really commit to a single, unchanging principle.Carried over the course of hundreds or thousands of years, we are seeing the ideas that have managed to hold on, due to the influence on individuals within groups.I think that's an illusion, caused mostly by a desire to minimize the differences. If you really look at the history of any given religion, you'll see it undergo both broad and subtle changes, almost from person to person. The persistence of the religion in any sort of recognizable form isn't usually inertial -- that is, it isn't usually due to a passive acceptance of what's been handed down to you -- but rather to a conscious involvement.Drawing on personal experience, I can remember as a teenager when it seemed to me that just about every one of my friends was questioning their religion. The majority of them stuck with their religion, but I don't think it was a lack of struggle that brought them back to it. They each had their own reasons, I'm sure, but with very few exceptions they all seemed to go through a process of doubting and then choosing to affirm their traditions, sometimes with modifications in what they were taught. The few that seemed to never question were so vocal about not questioning religion that I tend to suspect that they were afraid of doubt. But that shows that the tendency was there -- you don't fear doubt unless the questions are already lurking in the back of your mind.Take the devout religious person who has been bashed about the head with Creationist nonesense. I have talked to some of these people and they refuse to even acknowledge the information out there in support of evolution.The maxim that makes the most sense to me is that fanaticism is compensation for doubt. The believers who are most outspoken against alternative theories are usually people who are making a great deal of effort to submerge their own uncertainty beneath a display of unquestioning faith.Can they be said to be acting involuntarily according to the ideas they already have been infected with?I would say no. If anything, I would say that they're asserting their own will to believe a particular dogma over an urge to compare it. Sometimes this draws them into a great deal of internal conflict, particularly when their desire to stick with the dogmatic principle brings them into logical self-contradiction. But it takes a great deal of effort to pull off that sort of tunnel-vision. If anything, I would say that they draw strength from direct opposition, just as any stubborn person will assert something with more vigor when challenged, even if they suspect that they may have been wrong in the first place. But that's an assertion of will, not the result of having one's behavior controlled by an idea.As I suggested a long time ago in discussion with Interbane, most faith of this sort is motivated. Creationists are often motivated by moral concerns. Creationism gives them a firm mythological (not scientific) basis for asserting certain moral claims, so they're willing to fight to uphold that basis.A freethinker may be the "immune system by which to critique the socialized ideas". Those who are simply an ant with a fluke in theirs brains may suffer from a form of ideological 'AIDS' and have had this immune system destroyed.That's all highly conjectural, and beyond the analogies provided by Dawkins and Dennett, I've seen no research that would really support those ideas.Well, you have stated that you have no use for Dawkins' Meme hypothesis anyway...and maybe there is no proof, but it is certainly something that can spark debate and offers a different way to look at the spread of ideas.My concern is that quite a few people seem to have taken these ideas very seriously, and have used them as an excuse to dismiss the ideas of others. That seems to be what Dennett has in mind.I think we can at least accept these theories and talk about them and how they may be useful in understanding why certain ideas and traditions are still with us when much of what they attempted to explain has been explained in other, more reliable ways.I don't mind talking about how they may be useful, but I'm not going to accept them anymore than I'd ask you to accept any particular religion. My major problem with the analogy is that I don't think it does explain why certain ideas and traditions are still with us. And I think that it's designed, moreover, to provide some basis for dismissing the ideas of others. Dennett and Dawkins seem content to use it as a way of undermining religious claims, with the long-term goal of making religious belief untenable. And some of the people on this site have made no bones about agreeing with that agenda, but if we really give this "parasitical ideas" notion its due, then you have to also countenance the suggestion that secular ideas are just as manipulative and dangerous, ideas like Truth, Liberty, Justice, love, morality and so forth. I don't know if Dennett and company have really considered that ramifaction, nor that they would smile on the idea of turning the scapel on the ideas that they hold dear.I am not saying that (although I do agree with it) religion is totally useless anymore...but you have to admit that much of what religion attempted to explain has been moved to the realm of scientifically testable circles. Or maybe you dont have to admit it...I don't. Because I think there's a common tendency to misattribute the purpose of religion. The idea that early myths were meant to explain natural phenomenon, for example, is one that was put forth by early sociologists. It's since been refuted by sociologists and anthropologists, but the public still clings to the idea as though Frazer and Taylor were still the cutting edge. E.E. Evans-Wentz gives a solid survey of the growth of modern theories of primitive religion, and it's worth checking out if you want to clear away a lot of the chaffe that remains despite advances in the field.But mix the strong idea with the right personality and you can see how this could lead to a person that will be so focused and so set in their ways that they would stop at nothing to acheive thier goals.Absolutely. But that's not going to end by putting religion back into Pandora's box. I can't see any way to keep strong-willed people from attempting to rebuild the world according to their own ideals, be they secular or otherwise.Dont worry...I was not going to explode about this. I understand where you are coming from now...after all our battles, it finally clicked.Awesome. I don't know what I said, or even if it was anything I said, but I'm glad we're on the same wavelength, even if we don't totally agree.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Breaking Which Spell

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Aww! It's so nice to see MadArchitect and Mr. P. getting along!
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