h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't understand, Si. My version of "folk science" seems to have more to do both with folk and with science than your version of the term, which seems to have more to do with neural circuits than an actual "understanding" of the world in a scientific sense.

Call it folk craft then. But it's certainly to do with science (an understanding of the way things work) and it's *all* to do with neurons.


" Two Contrasts: Folk Craft versus Folk Science and Belief versus Opinion

Daniel C. Dennett

My contribution to this volume is a commentary on the papers by Churchland; Ramsey, Garon and Stich; and their commentators,
drawing and expanding on some material in The Intentional Stance (Dennett, 1987).

Let us begin with what all of us here agree on: folk psychology is not immune to revision. It has a certain vulnerability in principle. Any
particular part of it might be overthrown and replaced by some other doctrine. Yet we disagree about how likely it is that that
vulnerability in principle will turn into the actual demise of large portions--or all--of folk psychology. I am of the view that folk
psychology is here for the long haul, and for some very good reasons. But I am not going to concentrate on that in my remarks. What
nobody has bothered saying here yet, but is probably worth saying, is that for all of its blemishes, warts and perplexities, folk
psychology is an extraordinarily powerful source of prediction. It is not just prodigiously powerful but remarkably easy for human
beings to use. We are virtuoso exploiters of not so much a theory as a craft. That is, we might better call it a folk craft rather than a
folk theory. The theory of folk psychology is the ideology about the craft, and there is lots of room, as anthropologists will remind us,
for false ideology.

What we learn at mother's knee as we are growing up, and what might be to some degree innate, is a multifarious talent for having
expectations about the world. Much of that never gets articulated into anything remotely like propositions at all. (Here I am in partial
agreement with the new Paul Churchland. He now wants to say that folk psychology is a theory, but theories don't have to be
formulated the way they are in books, whereas I think that's a pretty good reason for not calling it a theory, since it doesn't consist of
any explicit theorems or laws.) But now what is this thing that is folk psychology, if it is not a theory? What kind of a craft is it? I've
certainly had my say about that, in Brainstorms (Dennett, 1978) and The Intentional Stance (Dennett, 1987), and I'm not going to
try to telescope all that I say there into a summary here. Instead, I am going to expand on the similarities between folk psychology and
folk physics--two crafts that repay attention, and that should be studied with the methods of anthropology, not just the informal
methods of philosophers.

If we look at folk physics, we discover some interesting anomalies. Folk physics is as effortless, as second-nature as folk psychology,
and it keeps us one step ahead of harsh reality most of the time. A pioneering analysis of a portion of folk physics is found in Patrick
Hayes' work on what he calls the naive physics of liquids. (Hayes, 1978, 1979). Consider how robust and swift our anticipations are
of the behavior of liquids under normal circumstances.

(The whole paper is now available in Daniel Dennett, Brainchildren, Essays on Designing Minds, MIT Press and
Penguin, 1998.)
"

>second law of thermodynamics, That will work. It will work every time. And yet "it's only a theory that hasn't been disproved".

I heard that a lot theories in physics aren't the most concrete. Like if someone finds something new, then they're all going to tumble down and we'll have to start again. I know that's pretty vague, and at our current level of understanding, things like the laws of thermodynamics and relativity seem to make a whole bunch of sense. We certainly ought to keep dabbling into the inner mechanics of our universe, we can only hope to find new things and perhaps correct some old mistakes.


>(how love is genetic thang)
Love is not a special case. It's just nice

So on the whole nature/nurture thing you're going with the genes huh? I tens towards nurture, I guess if I was going to put a % to it, it'd be something like 65% nurture 35% nature. *DUCK*

Hm. I sure wish I had time to argue with this guy right now. Not that I disagree with his tenets, but I have problems with his terminology. Naive physics is interesting. I'll have to ponder.

Of course it all has to do with neurons, you silly : )

Here's a statement I'd be interesting in seeing you examine:

On a quantum level, everything is true.

I'm beginning to hate living in America. More specifically, I hate living in this time zone. I stay up all day, check the page regularly, don't go to sleep til nearly 1am, get up before 9am, and in that relatively short period of time messages seem to spontaneously form ten at a time! Anyway, I'm sorry I've been so hard on Si because from one of his posts way above it sounds like everything he doesn't like about religion includes exactly what I don't like about it. I never said it was flawless (even if I believe in a higher power that is). One commendable thing that Catholicism (I usually don't argue with the Catholic Church) has done recently is the Pope's admission that evolution is "more than just a theory". It is my personal belief that the medical and not the religious nor the political community should hold sway over abortion. I would never want my child aborted, but then I don't plan to get anyone pregnant when I don't want a child. Yes, we've found an 18 year old american male who believes in abstenance! No, I'm not Mormon. In regard to the comments on my major, I don't know what I want to do with my life, I sort of want to be a rock star, so an English major is as good a place to start as any. My father was an English Major and ended up as a lawyer, he uses the writting skills he learned from his BA daily. So razor boy's first name is William? That just supports my theory that anyone named William is a genius. Maybe I just think that because my name's really William... Wow I got off topic.

fear not, i have no idea(though i have heard the name before) who occam is either. though i'm sure he's very
proud! it's my belief that god is neither dead nor alive. i know this is kind of strange, but you wiccans out there
might be able to identify with a modern day (personally practicing) druid. in essence, the life force that drives
us to debate this subject is the force that created the subject in the first place. whether it has a personality
and ten suggestions for living is neither here nor there in my book. i'm just glad i've got the time to think about
it at all.
anything left of that cosmic muffin. does it come in blueberry? i love blueberry muffins, and a cosmic blueberry
muffin must be really good!

What kind of cosmic muffin would it be if it didn't come in blueberry? I'd list all the flavors it does come in, but I can feel another cult comming on, and I think we've all got enough fanaticism going on with the Righteous Knights of Kettering. I really would like to know something about druids. All I really know is that ever since I was very small the name has sounded ominous because it conjured up images of creepy guys in dark hooded cloaks chanting under Stonehenge. But I've got no idea why I associate that image with the word "druid". Is it a viable association, or did I just see something on a satruday morning cartoon show and allow it to stick with me for the rest of my life?

I've always had a theory that the Catholic Church is secretly agnostic and desires to keep its followers that way. Not in the sense of "agnoso" but in the sense of "a gnosis" .

Up until the 1960's the Bible was on the Catholic Church's banned book list, meaning it didn't want its flock reading and mis/interpreting the scriptures. In other words, you weren't supposed to truly know God, at least not until you were dead. And whenever there is a miraculous event (eg statues weeping, Jesus in a tortilla) scientists from the Vatican swoop down on it, eager as hell to debunk it and explain it away.

On the subject of Science vs Religion, perhaps it should be pointed that William of Occam/Okham as well as being a maker of razors was also a Franciscan monk, proving that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. The world's oldest universities (Christian & Muslim) started out as schools of religion and theology. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas are both patron saints of learning and yes, even science. Priests were more likely to be literate, more prone to discussion and debate on the nature of their faith, and better observers of nature.

Religion can be and has been a basis for rational thinking (though more often, irrational thinking). Religion presents an individual with a certain world view, a model of the universe, incorrect or not. The more structured the religion is and the greater the number of its adherents (and its opponents), the more likely it is that people will go out and try to prove that what they believe is true. Sometimes they'll stumble on to something new in the process. After all, scientific discovery is not always deliberate.

Errm, I think I should clarify my point about William d'Occam...

>perhaps it should be pointed that William of Occam/Okham as well as being a maker of razors was also a Franciscan monk, proving that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive.

While Willy believed that there should be a distinction between religion and science, he nevertheless was what he was, a man of religion as well as science, and arrived at one through the other.

What the heel have I missed? You go away for two weeks and all hell (or other deity related places) breaks loose

Sorry Adz, I missed this one.

> So on the whole nature/nurture thing you're going with the genes
> huh? I tens towards nurture, I guess if I was going to put a % to it, it'd
> be something like 65% nurture 35% nature. *DUCK*

Nature/nurture is a false dichotomy, IMO, as it takes no account of the holistic nature of our construction. As I said in the "secular afterlife" thing, your identity, the stuff that makes you *you*, comes in two flavours - genetic (the genes you inherited from your parents) and memetic (the memes you soak up from your culture). Remove either of these components and you no longer have a human being.

Parent/child love: If evolution has shaped the human brain to recognise and remember the special case "mother" almost as soon as it is born, is that nature, nurture or is this a pointless question?

Well, if you look around, it was breaking loose for only one of those two weeks, as all the other responses are dated at least a week ago.

I was beginning to think God had decided to make his feelings on the subject of his death known...

What, do you think He smote the others? Could be... the Righteous Knights of Kettering Forum has been disused for about that long, too. Perhaps God was selective in his smiting. Maybe he just smote they're internet servers?

All these thingyes are possible. Did he not say "And they came unto the feast dressed in fine raiments in in their hands they bore strange devices, and their host asked them, 'What are these devices you bring before me, and under what laws are they goverened?". And his guests said unto him "They follow the laws of Windows CE." And their host was sore aggrieved and cast them out into the street. And there was weeping and gnashing of dentures."

Stonehenge, yes. Creepy, no. I've got no idea what cartoons you were watching, but I'd like to see them. The
best humor is that aimed at yourself. That's what my grandpa used to say! Then again, grandpa did lie quite a
bit. He also made fun of us kids a lot too. Ah well. No, druids are not creepy guys running around with hoods
on in the middle of the night. That's the KKK! Sorry, I'm from southern USA. To get back to your point, I'm in a
very small group called Gaia's sons and daughters. Fortunately, none of us get together very often, so we're free
to do what we want, when we want. Kinda frees the spirit to worship as was intended. It's basically a reverence
for Mother Nature, and I try to feel and understand Her workings through my natural surroundings. If you're interested,
there's probably a sect of some sort of pagan in your area. You'd probably be surprised who you find there.
peas
chris

Do you get to get naked? An important part of any celebration of seasonal change .

On May Day, yes. The rest of the time, it's up to you. I prefer not to, but sometimes it helps set the mood. I
can only remember maybe three times that I've done this on my own, so it's not a normal thing since I've been
doing this for years. I'm actually excited about Sunday, I've got a big Samhain (Hallowe'en) feast to attend.
Yummy!

Happy Samhain, Happy New Years, Happy Hallowe'en, Happy All Saint's Eve, and if I forgot any other significant name that anyone's religion has for this event, Happy that, too. And for people who don't believe in gods, spirits or spooks, happy day when little kids get dressed up as Teletubbies and ask you for candy!