Tim Tyler said:Phil Roberts, Jr. <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:
Quoted message said:What I am saying however, is that there is no reason to
assume that everything produced by natural selection is
adaptive and, in particular, flying airplanes into
skyscrapers looks like one of those most precious of all
scientific commodities, a full-fledged evolutionary
anomaly. [...]
"Evolution" never said organisms would not malfunction.
Organisms malfunction all the time.
Only a minority of them get to become long-term ancestors
after all - most of them screw-up (in reproductive terms)
somewhere along the line.
We're not talking about an organism malfunctioning, Tim, but
rather about A SPECIES "malfunctioning". Why is their a
species of naturally selected organism expending huge
resources on its emotional well-being (maintiaing an
adequate sense of self- worth) rather than reserving them
exclusively for maintaining its physical well-being (DNA
being the physical stuff that it
is). If you want to understand the 9/11 terrorists, it seems
to me that you have address this question sooner or
later, don't you?
"Terrorism is the result of poverty. Not a poverty of
material things, but a poverty of dignity" (Egyptian
philosopher).
In case you're wondering, I already have an answer that I am
championing.
A Sketch of a Divergent Theory of Emotional
Instability
Objective: To account for self-worth related emotion (i.e.,
needs for love, acceptance, moral integrity, recognition,
achievement, purpose, meaning, etc.) and emotional disorder
(e.g., depression, suicide, etc.) within the context of an
evolutionary scenario; i.e., to synthesize natural science
and the humanities; i.e., to answer the question: 'Why is
there a species of naturally selected organism expending
huge quantities of effort and energy on the
survivalistically bizarre non-physical objective of
maximizing self-worth?'
"There is no value-judgment more important to man -- no
factor more decisive in his psychological development
and motivation -- than the estimate he passes on
himself. This estimate is ordinarily experienced by
him, not in the form of a conscious, verbalized
judgment, but in the form of a feeling, a feeling that
can be hard to isolate and identify because he
experiences it constantly: it is part of every other
feeling, it is involved in his every emotional
response. ... it is the single most significant key to
his behavior." (Nathaniel Branden).
Observation: The species in which rationality is most
developed is also the one in which individuals have the
greatest difficulty in maintaining an adequate sense of self-
worth, often going to extraordinary lengths in doing so
(e.g., Evel Knievel, celibate monks, self endangering
Greenpeacers, etc.).
Hypothesis: Rationality is antagonistic to psycho
centric stability (i.e., maintaining an adequate sense
of self-worth).
Explanation #1: In much the manner reasoning allows for the
subordination
to more global concerns (concern for the self as a
whole), so too, these more global concerns and values
can themselves become reevaluated and subordinated to
other more global, more objective considerations. And if
this is so, and assuming that emotional disorder
emanates from a deficiency in self-worth resulting from
precisely this sort of experientially based
reevaluation, then it can reasonably be construed as a
natural malfunction resulting from one's rational
faculties functioning a tad too well.
Explanation #2: Being the blind arational [censored] that she is,
mother nature instills in all her creatures a sense of their
own importance (or of the importance of their needs) that is
rationally inordinate. And, as a species reaches a certain
stage in its rational/ cultural/memetic development, its
members increasingly come to question this inordinancy, and
increasingly come to require reasons for maintaining it
(needs for love, acceptance, moral integrity, purpose,
meaning, status, wealth, etc.).
"Special concern for one's own future would be selected
by evolution: Animals without such concern would be more
likely to die before passing on their genes. Such
concern would remain, as a natural fact, even if we
decided that it was not justified. By thinking hard
about the arguments, we might be able briefly to stun
this natural concern. But it would soon revive... The
fact that we have this attitude cannot therefore be a
reason for thinking it justified. Whether it is
justified [i.e. rational] is an open question, waiting
to be answered." (Derek Parfit)
Normalcy and Disorder: Assuming this is correct, then some
explanation for the relative "normalcy" of most individuals
would seem necessary. This is accomplished simply by
postulating different levels or degrees of consciousness.
From this perspective, emotional disorder would then be
construed as a valuative affliction resulting from an
increase in semantic content in the engram indexed by the
linguistic expression, "I am insignificant", which all
persons of common sense "know" to be true, but which the
"emotionally disturbed" have come to "realize", through
abstract thought, devaluing experience, etc.
Implications: So-called "free will" and the incessant
activity presumed to emanate from it is simply the
insatiable appetite we all have for self-significating
experience which, in turn, is simply nature's way of
attempting to counter the objectifying influences of our
rational faculties. This also implies that the engine in the
first "free-thinking" artifact is probably going to be a
diesel (i.e., the cure produces more of the disease).
"Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than
critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a
neutron entering the pile from without. Each such
neutron will cause a certain disturbance which
eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile
is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by
such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on
increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there a
corresponding phenomenon for minds?" (A. M. Turing).
Additional Implications: Since the explanation I have
proposed amounts to the contention that nature's most
rational species (presumably) is beginning to exhibit signs
of transcending the formalism of nature's fixed objective
(accomplished in man via intentional self concern, i.e., the
prudence program) it can reasonably be construed as
providing evidence and argumentation in support of Lucas
(1961) and Penrose (1989, 1994). Not only does this imply
that the aforementioned artifact probably won't be a
computer, but it would also explain why a question such as
"Can Human Irrationality Be Experimentally Demonstrated?"
(Cohen, 1981) has led to controversy, in that it presupposes
the possibility of a discrete (formalizable) answer to a
question which can only be addressed in comparative (non-
formalizable) terms (e.g. X is more rational than Y, the
norm, etc.). Along these same lines, the theory can also be
construed as an endorsement or metajustification for
comparative approaches in epistemology (explanationism,
plausiblism, etc.)
"So even if mathematicians are superb cognizers of
mathematical truth, and even if there is no algorithm,
practical or otherwise, for cognizing mathematical
truth, it does not follow that the power of
mathematicians to cognize mathematical truth is not
entirely explicable in terms of their brain's executing
an algorithm. Not an algorithm for intuiting
mathematical truth -- we can suppose that Penrose [via
Godel] has proved that there could be no such thing.
What would the algorithm be for, then? Most plausibly it
would be an algorithm -- one of very many -- for trying
to stay alive ... " (D. C. Dennett).
Oops! Sorry! Wrong program, old bean. [me again, in response
to Dennett's knee-jerk assumption that [censored] sapiens is
running the same program as other species]
"My ruling passion is the love of literary fame"
(David Hume).
"I have often felt as though I had inherited all the
defiance and all the passions with which our ancestors
defended their Temple and could gladly sacrifice my life
for one great moment in history" (Sigmund Freud).
"He, too [Ludwig Wittgenstein], suffered from
depressions and for long periods considered killing
himself because he considered his life worthless, but
the stubbornness inherited from his father may have
helped him to survive" (Hans Sluga).
"The inquest [Alan Turing's] established that it was
suicide. The evidence was perfunctory, not for any
irregular reason, but because it was so transparently
clear a case" (Andrew Hodges)
"Its not about the mountain. Its about what the mountain
tells you about yourself" (Edmund Hillary).
REFERENCES
1. Cohen, L. Jonathan, Can Human Irrationality be
Experimentally Demonstrated?, The Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 1981, 4, 317-370.
Reprinted in Anderson's, Minds and Machines, and
engagingly explored in Hofstadter's Pulitzer prize
winner, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
2. Penrose, Roger, The Emperor's New Mind, 1989; Shadows of
the Mind, 1994.
--
Phil Roberts, Jr.
Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock:
The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism
fortunecity.comKirk.htmOpen ↗
