Main Entry: sa·pi·ent Pronunciation: 'sA-pE-&nt, 'sa- Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin sapient-, sapiens, from present participle of sapere to taste, be wise -- more at SAGE Date: 15th century : possessing or expressing great sagacity synonym see WISE - sa·pi·ent·ly adverb
Main Entry: sa·ga·cious Pronunciation: s&-'gA-sh&s, si- Function: adjective Etymology: Latin sagac-, sagax, from sagire to perceive keenly; akin to Latin sagus prophetic -- more at SEEK Date: 1607 1 obsolete : keen in sense perception 2 a : of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment : DISCERNING <sagacious judge of character> b : caused by or indicating acute discernment <sagacious purchase of stock> synonym see SHREWD - sa·ga·cious·ly adverb - sa·ga·cious·ness noun
I wish to introduce a new concept into the doctrine:
You are sapient to the extent that your assumptions are true, your goals are ethical and your choices are rational.
The idea is that Virians will strive to be sapient in the same way the xtians strive for salvation and Scientologists strive to be Clear.
Make sense?
It sounds like an interesting idea. I only have reservations about the truth of our assumptions. I see truth as a worthy, but to actually have true assumptions comes down at least as much to happenstance as it does to sapience. Perhaps you wish to keep it this way just to reflect the general randomness of evolution, but as a concept of something we should strive for, I don't see the wisdom of including things which we generally have no control over. Make sense?
It sounds like an interesting idea. I only have reservations about the truth of our assumptions. I see truth as a worthy, but to actually have true assumptions comes down at least as much to happenstance as it does to sapience. Perhaps you wish to keep it this way just to reflect the general randomness of evolution, but as a concept of something we should strive for, I don't see the wisdom of including things which we generally have no control over. Make sense?
If our assumptions are consistent with the evidence, then that is the best we can hope for. If you still don't think we have control over that, I don't understand what your position.
[Jake] It sounds like an interesting idea. I only have reservations about the truth of our assumptions. I see truth as a worthy, but to actually have true assumptions comes down at least as much to happenstance as it does to sapience. Perhaps you wish to keep it this way just to reflect the general randomness of evolution, but as a concept of something we should strive for, I don't see the wisdom of including things which we generally have no control over. Make sense?
[Lucifer] If our assumptions are consistent with the evidence, then that is the best we can hope for. If you still don't think we have control over that, I don't understand what your position.
[Jake] If instead of UU/atheist I grew up in a fundamentalist family, I might hold many false assumptions simply because I memetically inherited them. Not because I had any deeper commitment to them. Would this make me incapable of sapience?
Furthermore reasonable people can hold differing assumptions of truth. Does this mean we would hold one as more sapient than another despite the fact that both value truth, ethical goals, and rationality?
[Lucifer] You are sapient to the extent that your assumptions are true, your goals are ethical and your choices are rational.
[Jake] We demonstrate sapience to the extent that we value truth, choose ethical goals, and make rational choices.
Perhaps this seems quibbling. I generally like the idea of Sapience, but I found myself focussing rather quickly on these issues.
Love,
-Jake
« Last Edit: 2003-02-28 16:13:20 by Jake Sapiens »
If instead of UU/atheist I grew up in a fundamentalist family, I might hold many false assumptions simply because I memetically inherited them. Not because I had any deeper commitment to them. Would this make me incapable of sapience?
Sapience is a continuum as defined here, not a binary property. If you grew up in a fundamentalist family and believe many things that are not true, then you are less sapient that someone whose assumptions are more true. That doesn't make you incapable of sapience, you are still sapient to some (lesser) extent.
Quote:
Furthermore reasonable people can hold differing assumptions of truth. Does this mean we would hold one as more sapient than another despite the fact that both value truth, ethical goals, and rationality?
What do you mean by "differing assumptions of truth"? Different definitions of truth? Or just different assumptions about what is true?
If both of their belief sets are equally consistent with their experience, then they are equally sapient all other things being equal. Their belief sets may differ because their experiences differ, but assuming that they live in the same world, most of their beliefs should be consistent.
I wish to introduce a new concept into the doctrine:
You are sapient to the extent that your assumptions are true, your goals are ethical and your choices are rational.
The idea is that Virians will strive to be sapient in the same way the xtians strive for salvation and Scientologists strive to be Clear.
Make sense?
I support the motivation behind this move, but believe it will run into problems due to underspecification. I think Jake's issues are a result of this as well.
What I mean by underspecification is the large number of presupposed concepts that lay behind the definition of sapient.
For example:
(1) How is one to know whether one's assumptions are true? (I think you assume a primarily evidentialist stance, but I don't think that will be obvious to everyone that comes across the definition.)
(2) What makes a goal ethical? Prior CoV shared beliefs (the 3 & 3) don't clearly demarcate a Virian ethical/moral philosophy. Sure, we can try to extrapolate based on the virtues and sins, but, as with the epistemological issue in (1), it won't be very obvious to many people, which will lead to unnecessary squabbles, unfounded criticisms of CoV based on uncharitable or unwise interpretations of what ethical means (but harder to refute because the issue being criticized is vaguely defined), and less fluidity of memetic moment (ideas that are unclear are apt to disappear).
(3) What makes a choice rational? This is still one of the more debated points in modern epistemology, so it's not clear which criterion is to be used.
(1) How is one to know whether one's assumptions are true? (I think you assume a primarily evidentialist stance, but I don't think that will be obvious to everyone that comes across the definition.)
How would you make it more obvious?
Quote:
(2) What makes a goal ethical?
I don't have any easy answers to this question. I think it has something to do with fairness and justice, but that just moves the focus to other terms. In any case, do we need a complete theory of ethics before commiting to be ethical?
Quote:
(3) What makes a choice rational? This is still one of the more debated points in modern epistemology, so it's not clear which criterion is to be used.
A choice is rational if and only if it can be rationally justified, that is if you can show that the choice follows logically from the assumptions. Of course you can never know with certainty whether your assumptions are true, each assumption will have a truth value or degree of confidence.
What is the debate about?
« Last Edit: 2003-05-03 12:56:49 by David Lucifer »
I wish to introduce a new concept into the doctrine:
You are sapient to the extent that your assumptions are true, your goals are ethical and your choices are rational.
The idea is that Virians will strive to be sapient in the same way the xtians strive for salvation and Scientologists strive to be Clear.
Make sense?
Each of us can quibble about the wording to express the concept, but I think the concept proves more important than the wording.
"You are sapient to the extent that you seek truthful assumptions, your goals are ethical, and your choices are rational."
I think this wording is expansive enough to include both my own concerns about "truth" as well as Lucifer's idea, and as close to his original wording as possible (some of my other alternative wording was more of an E-Prime issue which doesn't really need addressing at this point).
I wish to introduce a new concept into the doctrine:
You are sapient to the extent that your assumptions are true, your goals are ethical and your choices are rational.
The idea is that Virians will strive to be sapient in the same way the xtians strive for salvation and Scientologists strive to be Clear.
Make sense?
I support the motivation behind this move, but believe it will run into problems due to underspecification. I think Jake's issues are a result of this as well.
What I mean by underspecification is the large number of presupposed concepts that lay behind the definition of sapient.
For example:
(1) How is one to know whether one's assumptions are true? (I think you assume a primarily evidentialist stance, but I don't think that will be obvious to everyone that comes across the definition.)
(2) What makes a goal ethical? Prior CoV shared beliefs (the 3 & 3) don't clearly demarcate a Virian ethical/moral philosophy. Sure, we can try to extrapolate based on the virtues and sins, but, as with the epistemological issue in (1), it won't be very obvious to many people, which will lead to unnecessary squabbles, unfounded criticisms of CoV based on uncharitable or unwise interpretations of what ethical means (but harder to refute because the issue being criticized is vaguely defined), and less fluidity of memetic moment (ideas that are unclear are apt to disappear).
(3) What makes a choice rational? This is still one of the more debated points in modern epistemology, so it's not clear which criterion is to be used.
Jeff
I appreciate Jeff's carrying out some of my points, perhaps a bit further than I would have. But now it seems that I have backtracked a bit. I see this as part of the major challenge of developing a doctrine. It appears clear to me that for any statement of doctrine we could make, we can always parse the meaning down, find points of confusion, criticize the underlying epistemology or other ontological assumptions. However, such practice taken to an extreme can 1) wrongly imply an assumption of the impossibility of a coherent doctrine in the first place and 2) seem to imply that people, specifically Virians, disagree more than they agree. While I accept the fact that many Virians enjoy disagreeing quite a bit, the fact that we can coherently disagree at all, and quite frequently at that, suggests an awful lot of underlying implicit agreement.
I personally try to approach the creation of doctrine with 1) the assumption of the possibility of a coherent doctrine and 2) the assumption (despite contrarian overtures) that we, humans and specifically Virians, actually agree on more than we disagree. I would suggest that the reason for this lies in the necessities created by the fact that we all essentially share the same reality, as Lucifer pointed out earlier. True, some people may prefer a more foundationalist rational approach, eg Ayn Rand's Objectivism, while many other Virians may prefer a pancritical rationalist approach, eg. W.W. Bartley's Retreat to Commitment, and still others may prefer to stick to Popper. But I assert that the differences of these approaches really comes down mostly to semantic preferences, and the true disagreements between them really come to just a few relatively minor differences. Sure, we find it entertaining to make large these differences, but at some point we have to put them back into perspective, and move on. At what point? I don't really know, but I think those of us intending to create a doctrine have to commit ourselves to the assumption that such a point exists and not just theoretically.
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