CogSci's "Frame Problem"; Cato Releases Major Work; Revelations

"The Frame Problem."
Where is the tolerance, not to mention the "creator's" credentials?
December 18, 2007 "Over the past few months and for the foreseeable future, significant attention has and will continue to be focused on the Cult of Scientology." L. Ron Brown http://theframeproblem.wordpress.com/about/

Brown wrote this in reference to "The Frame Problem," (TPF) where the focus "is on the intersections of religion with politics, culture, science, ethics, and cognition." This does not explain, exactly or inexactly, its relationship to the "cult" of Scientology. But not calling it by its name of "Church" shows a distinct prejudice. How does Brown get to that "intersection" where Scientology is included in the scope of TPF?

"Major areas of interest," he writes, "include unsecularism, human rights, Intelligent Design/Creationism, evolution, religious apologetics, the secularist movement, religious cognition, secular approaches to ethics, meaning and wisdom, and Scientology."

Ok, so now a lot of things are thrown into the "frame problem" basket, including ID/Creationism; but Scientology is the only "cult," let alone religion, of which there are none others included. Why is "significant attention" under the heading of TPF focused on Scientology?

Brown never does say, not on this webpage, but he does say, "The issue of framing is highly relevant to considerations of politics, prudence, ethics, rationality, and wisdom."

Am I detecting a super-bias against this "cult"? Does he consider Scientologists to be impolitic, imprudent, unethical, irrational, and unwise? Under the linked sub-title of "Who is the Frame Problem?", where I was expecting to see a perspicacious detailing of perhaps the leadership of the Church of Scientology, we see this:

"L. Ron Brown (Creator). I am a 25 year old graduate of the University of Toronto (Hon B.Sc in Psychology Research and Cognitive Science) living in the Toronto area." After which he goes on to illuminate his interests, and to tell us that the "L" in his name "stands for luscious." In other words, Luscious Ron Brown is the Frame Problem.

"Lucious" Brown gives us a very broad overview of "what" TPF is, in language that could be read one way or the other, such as, "'the frame problem' refers to a problem that cognitive agents like us [I guess he means we humans, because he doesn't ever say what he means] solve all the time. In a given instance we face an infinite supply of potentially relevant and irrelevant information. If one were to consider every possible contingency behind an act, they would never do a thing."

True enough. I cannot disagree. What does this have to do with this creation of his? "TFP gets its name from Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence." Hmmmm, I see no resemblance at all in those, so "Lucious" must mean that within the science of CSAI there is something called TPF.

The U. of Toronto "CogSci" website does not list him as "Core Faculty" or as "Cognitive Scientist." There is only one "staffer." And there are only five alumni. He isn't one of them. But getting an Honorary isn't easy.

"The number of credits required [ ] are as follows for CogSci-AI Specialist: 13 full course equivalents, 2.5 of these will be the core cognitive science courses. The rest are to be taken from the cognate deparments of Cognitive Science." There are five enrollment combinations that give the student plenty of options in the areas they wish to study." This was published by the CogSci department, not by Brown.

Well, I must admit, that "honorary" with those credentials is more of a degree than I have at this moment, but what does his knowledge-base actually entail? He tells us nothing. Which of the five enrollment combinations did he finish?

So I looked up " CogSci @ U of T," http://www.utoronto.ca/cognitivesci/ , where I discovered that, "CASA, or the U of T CogSci AI Students' Association, includes all students currently in the program as well as U of T undergraduate students who are on the CASA mailing list, " and "Joining CASA is as simple as subscribing to the CASA mailing list. " [italics added]

Well, that sounds like something I'd join myself, if I was a student at the U. of Toronto. I don't blame "Luscious" for joining. I think as an obvious subscriber to their mailing list he's building himself up with generalized descriptions of his "creation" such as, "The task for a functional and adaptive cognitive system is to process relevant information exclusively, intelligently ignoring the rest. The problem of zooming in on the relevant information while leaving everything else unconsidered is the frame problem."

Coming from a young person who grew up from the very beginning of what turned into The Information Age (127,000,000 references to it on Google,) and given that we now live in a time when statistics are everything--"Don't bring me your suggestion for improving performance without some numbers or studies to back it up!"--it's not surprising that anyone would want to turn such a "problem" into an exact science, which sounds like Brown's purpose.

But what ever happened to formal syllogistic logic, or symbolic logic if Brown has the background for it? In formal logic there are a limited number of methods to put a problem together in words--256 methods, to be exact, called "moods" and "figures." Out of the 256 only 15 are "valid," unless you use one of Aristotle's old categories, and then you get 24. And out of these 15 or 24, not all valid forms are even "sound." They are valid only because they fit the form without any contradictions. I can "validly" say that my Uncle Harry who married a girl named Maureen, is a raven. But it isn't "sound," and so we know it isn't true. "Soundness" indicates truthfulness of statements.

Everyone uses formal logic every day of his life. They may not know it. But it is the deductive method by which the mind works. The mind is limited to 256 ways of thinking about things deductively. "The problem of zooming in on the relevant information while leaving everything else unconsidered," is what we use logic for and we do it pretty accurately, especially the big winners in life. But studying formal logic formally would serve a person well. I mean, it served Aristotle well, because he discovered and gave us the 256 forms and they have not changed in all the millenia, in any language.

I hope Brown's efforts are not ivory tower. Perhaps they will be like the quality control principles of W. Edwards Deming, and change the face of man's methods of "zooming in on the relevant information while leaving everything else unconsidered."

But what is up with the bias--sound or not, which Brown never proves--against Scientology, ID, and Creationism? Yes, I have problems with those subjects. I have my own arguments against them. But I state the argument, where appropriate. Brown never does, not on his own website.

It seems these days that no faction can leave any other faction alone without picking it out for scrutiny. If Brown is not a Scientologist--and I must assume he is not a member of that "cult,"--then where is his problem? Where is his intolerance coming from? I wish he would state it for the record.

[Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Church of Scientology. But what ever happened to religious tolerance?]


Major Reference Work on Libertarianism Released
"The Cato Institute is pleased to announce the release of The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, a compilation of and introduction to libertarian scholarship. This comprehensive book, years in the making, includes more than 300 succinct, original articles on libertarian ideas, institutions, and thinkers. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism belongs on every libertarian's bookshelf." Cato Institute news release


On Revelations: Thomas Paine [Republished from 8.18.08]
I PUT the following work under your protection. It contains my opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their JesusChrist, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, andconsequently they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication- after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me tobelieve it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it.
When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this- for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so- it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.
Thomas Paine; "The Age of Reason"; 1794 http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm

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The Semantic Problem With a Church Full of Atheists

The Semantics
"Atheism is not a religion in the sense that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are," states a religious site.i This site is about "tolerance," but it actively sells Christian literature, promoting religion containing a deity.

Atheism by definition contains no deity.
That a religious site can state that atheism is not religious in the same sense as deified religions are religious, presupposes and confirms the conviction that atheism is a different kind of religion.

"[A]n Atheist's belief system is confined to one factor: the existence or non-existence of a deity.”ii But this idea belies the fact that atheism is the distinctive lack of any belief in a deity. Atheists will say they do not believe a deity exists; not, that they believe a deity does not exist.

Yet in a strange apparition in the English language, one statement may be substituted for the other, usually without this distinction making any difference in the purpose of the statement.
“I don't believe there is a table in that room,” can mean the same as “I believe there is no table in that room.”

But about that table there is no belief “system.” No one has to go through the process of deciding on the merits of whether tables exist before making either statement. But about God that process of systematizing one's beliefs is inherent in the subject. It requires many more processes of logic—and religious faith—before one has a belief “system” about God. So the distinction about “believing no god exists,” versus “not believing a god exists” is more than a slip of the English language.

It should not be presumed that when an atheist says he “believes there is no god,” that he means it. A belief that there is no god really defines the agnostic. But for the atheist, who by definition cannot have any belief about a deity, that slip of the tongue is only a slip of the tongue. If he has thought about this oddity in the English language, he will argue against you when you point out his “belief.” Otherwise, he will agree, not having seen the error in the semantics.

There is a large distinction to be made in this semantic difference. You can choose to believe that something exists. On the other hand, you may have a total lack of belief in that same thing without making the attempt not to believe. I for one make no active attempt to disbelieve in Santa or the tooth fairy. This is not because I set out to disbelieve, but because I set out to use my faculty of Reason, which will not allow me the suspension of disbeliefiii which is automatic to every person when he/she hears a new theory or other idea. The suspension of disbelief as a phrase is usually applied to fiction or drama; but drama does not need to be fiction, and my disbelief is no longer suspended when I hear ideas that do not conform to my Reason.

My disbelief is not the same as belief in the opposite of what I cannot disbelieve. I cannot believe in the opposite of Santa or the tooth fairy; but I can find a disbelief in them. The mind cannot believe in the opposite of anything that does not exist.
But god exists as a concept, if not as a real god, for all persons in all cultures, in all languages. Therefore, the contrary at least, if not the outright opposite of “god”, is Metaphysical Naturalism. In such a theory there can be, for the atheist and others, a belief in the system inherent in that concept.

The Atheist in A Church
It is hard for many to believe that an atheist can feel any spiritual needs—but we do. Not all of call it “spiritual.” Not all atheists can find a reason to call what they find within their consciousness a “spirit” or a “soul.” Some will loudly proclaim that no such thing exists, because as part of their system of belief such an admission would be contradictory to atheism itself.
Yet many atheists have no problem identifying the soul within them.

“My hands . . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . My forest . . . This earth of mine. . . .
“This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest,” wrote Ayn Rand, in her novelette Anthem. “I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before! And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.' ” iv

In many of my previous and unattributed blogs I used much the same language to describe the incredible feeling within my bosom when I look at the sunrise or the sunset; at the faun, who was born in my backyard, and the doe who I kept fed with corn and carrots all winter while I watched her belly growing; and at the million people gathered in my former hometown to watch the fireworks. Of course, I could not see all the million-plus; I could see only a few thousands at a time as I walked from park to parking lot and from one block to another through public and private areas full of people sitting on blankets or in chairs.

But I knew that million-plus was there because the city said so every year and to know that many people could gather in one general area with peace and goodwill toward all others because it was the Fourth of July is something one can feel the spirit of. That begs the question: one “feels” it where?

My answer is that it is felt in the soul.
An assemblage of like-minded people, whether assembled in a building or in cyberspace, with perhaps hundreds or thousands all reading the same blog at the same time—or at separate times—has been defined as a church by many famous accounts.

But there is controversy about the origin of the word religion.
“The derivation of the word 'religion' has been a matter of dispute from ancient times. Not even today is it a closed question.”v

It is surprising to me that such an admission comes from a religious encyclopedia, but I have always found this volume to be objective in its reporting.
It agrees with other authorities that the word is often attributed to relegare, which Cicero defined as “to treat carefully.” It states that this is not the Catholic definition, but admits it is not “a closed question.”

If one acceptable definition of religion is “to treat carefully,” then it can be said with confidence that many atheists have treated the subject of the nature of the supernatural with utmost consideration for everything contained in the idea.
It will be the purpose of the Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists to “treat carefully” these ideas of god, of nature, of naturalism, of supernaturalism, and most specifically of the nature of Man himself, and to describe the “system of belief” that admits of nothing supernatural in the origin of existence nor of anything within existence itself.
And that assemblage of ideas into a system “treated carefully” is already admitted by other accounts than this one to be a religion and a church.

A System of Carefully Treated Beliefs
The website for the World Union of Deists defines a "cult" as "an embracing of unreasonable beliefs by a group of people. Based on this definition, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all cults because their members suspend their God-given reason in order to believe or accept the unreasonable dogmas and teachings such as God giving real estate as a gift to the Jews, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and Mohammed among many more false and unreasonable claims."vi

An atheist finds the Deist to be as "embracing of unreasonable beliefs" as any other religion is embracing; the Deist is a dyed-in-the-wool theist who believes in God. It is, however, as difficult to call Deism a "religion" as it is to call atheism "religion." Religions are generally defined as an organized practice of rituals such as prayer, kneeling, genuflecting, etc. Neither the Deist nor the atheist practices such rituals. Yet Deism believes in a supreme deity; atheism does not.
And there is the crux of the definition. An atheist's belief system is that there is no deity in which to place one's belief; rather, that since nothing exists in which to place one's belief, that no belief exists. Can a church be a place for people for whom no beliefs exist?
The very word atheism implies that no theism exists in that system. But does that mean that no theology exists in it?

If the church is a conceptual entity existing previously to, or in place of, a building in which an assemblage examines beliefs, then the conclusion from specious reasoning that the universe and the existence in which it exists is eternal and not of supernatural origin, is a belief, and where ever that belief is “treated carefully” or used in a heated debate, a church exists.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism (tm), which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

Address on file

i http://www.religioustolerance.org/atheist1.htm
ii ibid
iii The temporary acceptance as believable of events or characters that would ordinarily be seen as incredible. [C]oined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817... http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/suspension-of-disbelief.html
iv http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/anthem/complete.html Edited for this blog text.
v http://www.newadvent.org/
vi http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm