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thomblake comments on Rationally Irrational - Less Wrong
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Correct.
Incorrect.
To understand the distinction, note this passage from The Simple Truth:
'belief' corresponds to 'map'; 'reality' corresponds to 'territory'.
By what basis are we assuming that beliefs cannot surprise you and determine experimental results. Have you never been thinking about something and suddenly are overcome by some other thought or feeling? Or thought that some idea or line of thinking would take you one place and you end up somewhere radically different, which in turn leads to the need of a new hypothesis?
That's just moving the distinction up one meta-level, not collapsing it. You had beliefs about your beliefs, and they turned out to be wrong as compared to the reality of your beliefs. Your map is also in the territory, and you have a representation of your map on your map. Recurse as necessary.
EDIT: There's a good illustration in A Sketch of an Anti-Realist Metaethics most of the way down the article. We really should have that on the wiki or something.
When reality surprises you, it is not always the case that it has defied a hypothesis, but often times that it reveals some new sliver of experience that is so unexpected it demands the creation of a new hypothesis. I thought that the point of Swimmer's comment was to suggest that EDIT: in reality we undergo this type of surprise, while in our beliefs we do not. Which I continue to suggest that beliefs also can create the above mentioned surprises, so what is the distinction between the two.
That would be stupid. Beliefs are in reality.
Still, I burn down oak trees by changing oak trees, not by changing my beliefs about oak trees.
But changing your beliefs about oak trees can lead to you either burning them down or preserving them, right?
Is your point that every human action happens in belief form before it happens in "reality"? Of course. But when it happens in belief form (I decide to burn down an oak tree), it hasn't necessarily happened yet in reality. I might still get hit by a car on the way to the forest and never end up carrying out my plan, and the oak tree wouldn't burn.
...and, conversely, I might burn down an oak tree without ever deciding to. Indeed, I might even watch the tree burning in consternation, never discovering that I was responsible.
Ok, this is going to be exceedingly difficult to explain...
You say
In some sense, you burning down the tree still is the byproduct of your beliefs. Your beliefs create actions and limit actions. Any voluntary action stems out of either a belief in action or a belief in inaction. Because of some beliefs you have, you were wanton in your handling of fire or some other flammable product.
Perhaps a better example would be the Christian whose strong beliefs lead him to never discover that he or she was responsible for extreme denial and avoidance of the truth. He or she avoided the truth indirectly because of his or her strong beliefs, not out of conscious volition.
I certainly agree that my burning down a tree (intentionally or otherwise) is the byproduct of my mental states, which create and limit my actions. Which mental states it makes sense to call "beliefs", with all of the connotations of that, is a trickier question, and not one I think it's very useful for us to explore without a lot of groundwork being laid first.
Not that EVERY human action happens in belief form first, but that the transition between belief and action is a two way road. Beliefs lead to actions, actions lead to beliefs.
Reality doesn't undergo the surprise. It "knew all along." (Quantum mechanics was a pretty big surprise, but it was true even back in Newton's day...even back in paleolithic days.) Beliefs undergo changes in response to a 'surprise.' But that surprise doesn't happen spontaneously...it happens because new information entered the belief system. Because someone had their eyes open. Reality causes the surprise.
If, in some weird hypothetical world, all physics research had been banned in 1900, no one would've ever kept investigating the surprising results of the black-body radiation problem or the photoelectric effect. No human would've ever written the equations down. Newton would be the final word on everything, and no one would be surprised. But quantum mechanics would still be true. A hundred years later, if the anti-physics laws were reversed, someone might be surprised then, and have to create a new hypothesis.
Sorry that was a typo, I meant to say that in reality we undergo this type of surprise, but in our beliefs we do not.