# Homo Sapians: Part of Nature or Above it



## Makalakumu (May 28, 2004)

heretic888 said:
			
		

> Unlike our less-aware brethren species, we can to a very substantial degree detach ourselves from biological drives, instincts, and impulses.



I'm not so sure about this.  There are rules and then there are rules.  The rules of nature always apply.  The real world exists regardless of any post-modern convolutions.  Primate society is filled with tons of ideosyncratic details.  The reason that a bunch of horney dudes can resists the delectable bared flesh of beautiful females in their midsts is because we evolved a breeding strategy that is interlaced with behavioral restraints.  This happened because controls on the populations of humans needed to be established in order to meet the competition conditions I posted above.  

Heretic888, I'm not sure if there is any situation in the human experience that you couldn't link back to nature.  This conversation could require a thread of its own...

So here is that thread.  Feel free to jump in and offer your viewpoints.

upnorthkyosa

ps - Is it a sign that I started this thread on my 666 post?


----------



## heretic888 (May 28, 2004)

Depends on what you mean by "nature".

You will notice I did not use the word 'nature' in my original post --- I only referred to biological drives and instincts. 

In any event, I feel humans are capable of "transcending" their 'lower impulses' --- at least to a degree. Now, this doesn't mean all humans are completely free of them, or that every human even does this. Its more of a existent potential than anything else.

Laterz.


----------



## Makalakumu (May 28, 2004)

heretic888 said:
			
		

> In any event, I feel humans are capable of "transcending" their 'lower impulses' --- at least to a degree. Now, this doesn't mean all humans are completely free of them, or that every human even does this. Its more of a existent potential than anything else.



How is this done?  What does this look like?  Could you give an example of a human transcending their lower impulses?  This discussion has many parellels between Frank Herberts "Dune" series and the concept of becoming Human rather then being born human.  In actuality, judging this is going to sit on very shifty sands...


----------



## Rich Parsons (May 28, 2004)

upnorthkyosa said:
			
		

> How is this done?  What does this look like?  Could you give an example of a human transcending their lower impulses?  This discussion has many parellels between Frank Herberts "Dune" series and the concept of becoming Human rather then being born human.  In actuality, judging this is going to sit on very shifty sands...




By not attacking another male who has made a move on the female you are after.

By not killing all the politicians for wasting our money and time ? Yes, this is a little sarcastic, yet, it is an instinct, or base impulse, that many people control. Some people never feel these, or so they say. 

I am not putting words into the Heretic's mouth, I am only replying.

 :asian:


----------



## MA-Caver (May 29, 2004)

upnorthkyosa said:
			
		

> How is this done?  What does this look like?  Could you give an example of a human transcending their lower impulses?  This discussion has many parellels between Frank Herberts "Dune" series and the concept of becoming Human rather then being born human.  In actuality, judging this is going to sit on very shifty sands...



We are all victims of society. Society dictates our behavior or else we are subject to whatever punishments society (again) dictates for violating the rules set down by them... jails, fines, whatever. 
Here in the States having sex with a minor is illegal (thank goodness), but in Taiwan it's legal. U.S. society says that it is wrong, Taiwan (or is it Thialand?)says it's okay. 
Put in the right circumstances and situations and without restraints... sure an individual _may_ just "degress" to our "lower impulses" like kicking the *** of the guy who moves in on that gorgeous blonde you had your eye on first. 
Knowledge and understanding of ourselves and our surroundings and fighting to overcome these "lower-impulses" helped us (in part) to rise above the animal within. 
Frank Herbert's Dune _is_ a good example by his thesis of the rise of the Human animal. The entire novel is replete with examples of how certian groups (Bene Gesserit) studied and watched for any degression of the human being reverting back to animalism.
Religion plays also a huge part in our learning to resist our base natures. The dogma of various religions which promised punishment (present and/or eternal) to those violating the principals (commandments, etc.) of the particular sect/faith. By and large it governs our societies to this day, though it is subtler now than it was before. 
Look around and you can see it. Murder, assault, rape, theft, purgery, etc. are generally forbidden by almost every country, look at the base religion or dominate religon and you'll see it's forbidden there as well. 
Thus it could be said that anyone violating the laws of society is an example of a human (not) transcending their lower impulses.


----------



## Cobra (May 29, 2004)

Ya, it does got to do with religions in many cases. Many religions consider humans to be above nature. 

In actuality, we are kinda above nature. I mean, right now we can manipulate nature and as are technology gets better we will be able to control nature I believe. Not only that, if we were apart nature we would shouldn't be accountable for "destroying" ecosytems. Another reason we shouldn't be considered nature, it wouldn't matter if our love ones die, right? I mean animals die everyday in the wild and no one really cares. They call it nature. I don't think when we die it shouldn't be considered "apart of nature".


----------



## someguy (May 29, 2004)

My cat was looking at my food not to long ago and decided not to go for it.  He could have gotten to my food and gotten a couple of good bits in before I could have stopped him.  I'm sure he knew that.  Animals can also get past their desires.  We are not above them in that sense.  Really in the end we are just the mightiest of worms.


----------



## MA-Caver (May 29, 2004)

Cobra said:
			
		

> Ya, it does got to do with religions in many cases. Many religions consider humans to be above nature.
> 
> In actuality, we are kinda above nature. I mean, right now we can manipulate nature and as are technology gets better we will be able to control nature I believe. Not only that, if we were apart nature we would shouldn't be accountable for "destroying" ecosytems. Another reason we shouldn't be considered nature, it wouldn't matter if our love ones die, right? I mean animals die everyday in the wild and no one really cares. They call it nature. I don't think when we die it shouldn't be considered "apart of nature".



It is interesting to think that... one wonders if animals _do_ "mourn for their dead" ? Elephants in Africa (and India) have been observed standing around the bodies/bones of dead elephants moving the bones around, sniffing at the bodies, making sounds and all that. Are they mourning the loss or just doing something animalistic that we don't comprehend? 
I recall one time enroute to work I saw a dead duck off the side of the street, a drake was standing by closely quacking incessantly. His mate was obviously dead (smashed and eww), but he didn't leave...even when I got off work 8 hours later he was still there. Was he mourning? Or was he just too stupid to realize that she was dead and squished? 
It would be noble to apply "_human_" emotions/reactions to animals. We read about people dying all over the world everyday... do we mourn them? Do we even feel the loss? Or is it just a fact of life, a part of nature? We'll mourn the loss of a loved one or a close friend but isn't that a fact of life, a part of nature?


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

Rich Parsons said:
			
		

> By not attacking another male who has made a move on the female you are after.
> 
> By not killing all the politicians for wasting our money and time ? Yes, this is a little sarcastic, yet, it is an instinct, or base impulse, that many people control. Some people never feel these, or so they say.
> 
> ...



You forget that our society is based off of rules and that those rules evolved from our biology also.  How successful would our species be if our interactions in groups were so lax that they allowed rampant violence?


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

MACaver said:
			
		

> Look around and you can see it. Murder, assault, rape, theft, purgery, etc. are generally forbidden by almost every country, look at the base religion or dominate religon and you'll see it's forbidden there as well.  Thus it could be said that anyone violating the laws of society is an example of a human (not) transcending their lower impulses.



When applying biology to human behavior, one doesn't want to look at what people aren't doing.  One must look at what people ARE doing.  Most people follow the laws.  When the laws are broken, punishments are meted out to correct aberent behavior and teach others the penelty for breaking the law.  Laws set the limits on acceptable behavior and they don't just spring out of the vacuum.  Laws are made in response to socio-environmental situations where group interactions are threatened.  Our biology mimics that of primates in this way.  We have two driving influences that dictate our behavior in large groups.  Cooperation and xenophobia.


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

someguy said:
			
		

> My cat was looking at my food not to long ago and decided not to go for it.  He could have gotten to my food and gotten a couple of good bits in before I could have stopped him.  I'm sure he knew that.  Animals can also get past their desires.  We are not above them in that sense.  Really in the end we are just the mightiest of worms.



Putting off desires is not the same as denying them.  If an animal can forgo their desire to eat, so can a human animal.


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

Cobra said:
			
		

> Ya, it does got to do with religions in many cases. Many religions consider humans to be above nature.
> 
> In actuality, we are kinda above nature. I mean, right now we can manipulate nature and as are technology gets better we will be able to control nature I believe. Not only that, if we were apart nature we would shouldn't be accountable for "destroying" ecosytems. Another reason we shouldn't be considered nature, it wouldn't matter if our love ones die, right? I mean animals die everyday in the wild and no one really cares. They call it nature. I don't think when we die it shouldn't be considered "apart of nature".



Can we halt the expansion of the universe?  Could we stop a supernova?  If an asteroid plummeted toward the earth tomorrow, could we do anything to stop it?  Other species can control/shape their environments.  Ants, for instance, even control the climate inside their homes.  The things that humans do are only on a larger scale.  Furthermore, you can expect ET life to control things on even larger scales.  

Hey, I still don't see any transcendence going on...


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

MACaver said:
			
		

> It is interesting to think that... one wonders if animals _do_ "mourn for their dead" ? Elephants in Africa (and India) have been observed standing around the bodies/bones of dead elephants moving the bones around, sniffing at the bodies, making sounds and all that. Are they mourning the loss or just doing something animalistic that we don't comprehend?
> I recall one time enroute to work I saw a dead duck off the side of the street, a drake was standing by closely quacking incessantly. His mate was obviously dead (smashed and eww), but he didn't leave...even when I got off work 8 hours later he was still there. Was he mourning? Or was he just too stupid to realize that she was dead and squished?
> It would be noble to apply "_human_" emotions/reactions to animals. We read about people dying all over the world everyday... do we mourn them? Do we even feel the loss? Or is it just a fact of life, a part of nature? We'll mourn the loss of a loved one or a close friend but isn't that a fact of life, a part of nature?



We mourn those close to us because they are valued members of our groups.  Mourning (and religion) evolved because death weakened (in many cases) the dynamics of a group, its ability to succeed.  By placing value on life, we strengthen our resolve to protect it, strengthening the group.


----------



## Rich Parsons (May 29, 2004)

upnorthkyosa said:
			
		

> You forget that our society is based off of rules and that those rules evolved from our biology also.  How successful would our species be if our interactions in groups were so lax that they allowed rampant violence?



You see those rules and the understanding of the ramifications of breaking them is what I am making my point on. Otherwise, it would be the strongest male only  would mate, and only the strongest would make the rules.

 :asian: 

As to the cat not going after a person's food. Animals make decisions on the amount of energy requried to be abel to hunt. Yes, animals can be trained to avoid food on tables based upon previous responses.

 :asian:


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

Rich Parsons said:
			
		

> You see those rules and the understanding of the ramifications of breaking them is what I am making my point on. Otherwise, it would be the strongest male only  would mate, and only the strongest would make the rules.



One must take into account the many ways populations deal with mating.  There are many strategies that species use.  Your example outlines the herd strategy where males fight among themselves to determine fitness to mate.  The herd strategy contains the (morality) of eurosociality where the group is more important then the individual.  This is also called the hive mentality.  This is how the herd/hive's collective genes are maintained in order to remain competitive with other herd/hives.

Humans have not evolved this way.  Our societies are collections of individuals who work cooperatively.  Among these groups, mating takes place quite freely, except one deals with something called the desireability factor.  Those who are MOST fit among the males and females gravitate toward each other and tend to mate most frequently.  One can see this pattern splayed out over our societies wherever we look.  A good example is the TV show "Average Joe".  Who have the hot chicks picked?  It is also displayed by the selection of mates by undesireable (not necessarily ugly) males.  There chances of landing the hot chicks is quite diminished.

 :asian: 



			
				Rich Parsons said:
			
		

> As to the cat not going after a person's food. Animals make decisions on the amount of energy requried to be abel to hunt. Yes, animals can be trained to avoid food on tables based upon previous responses.



Humans also make decisions on the amount of energy available.  The only difference is that we have replaced physical energy with currency.  Look at how this concept evolved.  At first food was traded back and forth - which is nothing but an exchange of energy.  Then food was traded for tools (in which some human expended energy to make) still an exchange of energy.  Then tools were exchanged for tools.  And finally a proxy system of value was established which quantified units of energy (value) into currency.  

 :asian:


----------



## Rich Parsons (May 29, 2004)

upnorthkyosa said:
			
		

> One must take into account the many ways populations deal with mating.  There are many strategies that species use.  Your example outlines the herd strategy where males fight among themselves to determine fitness to mate.  The herd strategy contains the (morality) of eurosociality where the group is more important then the individual.  This is also called the hive mentality.  This is how the herd/hive's collective genes are maintained in order to remain competitive with other herd/hives.
> 
> Humans have not evolved this way.  Our societies are collections of individuals who work cooperatively.  Among these groups, mating takes place quite freely, except one deals with something called the desireability factor.  Those who are MOST fit among the males and females gravitate toward each other and tend to mate most frequently.  One can see this pattern splayed out over our societies wherever we look.  A good example is the TV show "Average Joe".  Who have the hot chicks picked?  It is also displayed by the selection of mates by undesireable (not necessarily ugly) males.  There chances of landing the hot chicks is quite diminished.
> 
> ...



Does herd also reference the pack, or the primate tribe?


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

Rich Parsons said:
			
		

> Does herd also reference the pack, or the primate tribe?



A herd is different then a pack because there are more rules and roles in the society.  There is also an interchange of individuals through this structure.  (switching roles)  Primates have a different sociality then this.


----------



## Rich Parsons (May 29, 2004)

upnorthkyosa said:
			
		

> A herd is different then a pack because there are more rules and roles in the society.  There is also an interchange of individuals through this structure.  (switching roles)  Primates have a different sociality then this.



I thought

The Alpha Male and Female of the wolf pack are the major breeders.

The Alpha Male in the Primate tribes, has first choice of females.

Am I wrong?


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

It depends on the species.  Those closest to us have a more open system with more rules.  Those further away have specific breeding pairs and less rules.  If one looks at brain size and compares it to breeding strategies, one finds that primates with larger brains follow a more open system.  This is because the rules of such a system are more complex - with the rules governing human breeding, being the most complex among primates.

There is a distinct advantage to allowing more individuals to mate in a group.  The gene pool of the population has more variation and new traits tend to come to the surface more often under those circumstances.  Basically evolution occurs at a faster rate.


----------



## Makalakumu (May 29, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Nothing, "pseudo-spiritual," about it at all. Human beings have language, culture, history, art, marriage, etc. These are not biological categories.



Are these so unique? According to the Drake Equation there are at least 10,000 other intelligent civilizations in this galaxy alone. I'm sure all of those civilizations have language, culture, history, art, marriage, ect...

Could you explain how these things are NOT biological? Especially since they are originated by a biologic organism.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> If you're alive, you've probably already transcended biology: in a, "state of nature," (and we have no record at all of human beings' life in any such state), you'd probably be dead by now. I'd probably have died several years ago, of old age. There wouldn't be farms in the Imperial Valley out here in California....



If anything connects homo sapians to nature it is technology. The evolution of technology directly parallels the evolution of the human brain. There is nothing transcendant about technology. The universe is a large place, considering this, are our creations so unique?



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> However, you are collapsing categories together, and the Drake equation (as Sagan and Shklovskii pointed out, it's all in how you set the values) isn't going to help that. Nor do I see how, "the evolution of technology directly parallels the evolution of the human brain," except in the most trivial sense that the human brain evolved to a certain point, then we started using tools and fire. Correlation doesn't imply causation, and all that...



Unless you have data to back the assertion up...  Take a look at the progression of morphologic characteristics stretching back to homo ergaster and you'll see that as soon as tools pop into the picture, brain size explodes.  As social organization becomes more advanced, there is an even larger explosion.  The step from technology to biology cannot be made in one giant leap.  There are little steps that happen along the way.  For instance, everytime we learn something, we build connections in the gray matter in our skulls.  The more gray matter, the more connections, the more we can learn, the more complex our behavior becomes.  Assumption, yes, but not blind.

The Drake equation is an estimation.  There could be more and their could be less.  With billions and billions of galaxies in our visible _universe _ alone, it doesn't matter much.  My usage of it only illustrates the point that none of the things we do are not unique.  Surely there is some bug eyed monster out there how just might have evolved a complex way of communication...like pheremone poetry...



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> And anyways, the human brain doesn't seem to have evolved much over the last twenty millenia--and our culture, technology, language, etc., all sure have.



Yes it has.  _Homo Sapians_ is the species that arose about 60,000 years ago.  _Homo Sapians Sapians_ is the species that evolved about 10,000 years ago.  The sub-species taxon was added to reflect changes in brain volume.  From then on not enough time has passed to see any more morphologic changes though.  Changes inside the brain have been recorded, though.  New connections can be observed in todays children that would not be seen in a scan our mine or your brain.  As soon as the gray matter that exists in skulls reaches is maximum connection density then we will see another explosion in brain size.  

How long will this take?  I don't know.  I would say that our current expansion of technology creates a short time table.  For instance, in Newton's day it was possible to have a working knowledge that spanned the bredth of human understanding.  These days, that goal would be impossible.  How many of you out there know how to do Tensor Calculus?



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> What's the reason for making it all a matter of biology, anyway?



Biology, more then anything else, truly explains who we are.  One of the reasons there is no coherent theory that ties social sciences together is because of the insertion of these pseudo-religious principals into their postulations.  As long as people cling to this position that "we are more then what we are made of" nothing but confusion will follow.  No one will ever be able to put their finger on the _more _ and agree on what they see.  Where as we can see a strand of DNA and analyze it (and maybe argue for a while) and eventually see what it says about who we are.

Hopefully you'll join in on this discussion.  I've appreciated your insight thus far...


----------



## rmcrobertson (May 30, 2004)

Several problems:

First, bigger is not necessarily better. Using a crude measure like, "Brain volume," (and just incidentally, those studies of volume appear to have been both flawed and racist, since a big aim was to point out the intellectual superiority of white people) simply doesn't tell you anything about the mind. Again, you're collapsing categories.

Second, there  is nothing whatsoever wrong with refusing to make sweeping theories in advance of adequate data. In fact, it's a helluva lot more scientifically accurate NOT to generalize from simple and incomplete data. We haven't adequate data on little things like how the brain works; we don't know how smart our ancestors were or weren't. 

Third, the way you've written it, tool use caused intellectual development, not the other way round.

Fourth: sorry, but I take notes about, 'alpha males," etc., as symptomatic of what the agenda really is: to justify cultural, historical and linguistic developments that led to things like patriarchy.

Fifth: still not gettin' what the heck SETI has to do with this. And neither you nor I have the slightest idea whether these cultures--if they are even cultures in our terms--have art or anything else.

Sixth: there's a very simple analogy available. A computer isn't just its hardware either. 

Personally, I'm a materialist. Of course such positions can hide all sorts of unanalyzed notions, but then, so can the notion of elevating biology into The Grand Unified Pooh-Bah Theory of Everything.


----------



## Rich Parsons (May 30, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> First, bigger is not necessarily better. Using a crude measure like, "Brain volume," (and just incidentally, those studies of volume appear to have been both flawed and racist, since a big aim was to point out the intellectual superiority of white people) simply doesn't tell you anything about the mind. Again, you're collapsing categories.



Robert,

Two things about size. If larger is better than are Dolphins and Porpoises above humans?    As they have larger frontal lobes and brains overall than humans do.

I have also heard, that it is not the size (of the brain)  but how you use it (The Brain). 



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Fourth: sorry, but I take notes about, 'alpha males," etc., as symptomatic of what the agenda really is: to justify cultural, historical and linguistic developments that led to things like patriarchy.



The reason I brought up Alpha males was not to make the point of patriarchy, it was that animals have instinct and follow a leader based upon instinctual survival.

Humans, do not have the same traits, in my mind or opinion. I did not mean it the way you mentioned.


 :asian:


----------



## Makalakumu (May 30, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Personally, I'm a materialist. Of course such positions can hide all sorts of unanalyzed notions, but then, so can the notion of elevating biology into The Grand Unified Pooh-Bah Theory of Everything.



Why the reluctance to make the step?  Are you so certain that the amount of information out there to support the assumption is insufficient?  The field of biologic anthropology is dense with the amount of data on this subject and they regularly make such assumptions.  Look at other theories that explain who we are, they all fail unless they begin to look at our biology.

I'm not sure what you mean by collapsing catagories.  So, I can only shoot from the hip at the rest.  As far as brain volume goes, biologic anthropology has been using this as an evolutionary yard stick for years.  Our development as a species is characterized by our brain development.  It is the feature that sets us apart from other primates.  What it tells us about the mind is that larger brains have the capacity for great complexity.  

I think Rich's comments on this were right on.  What about elephants and dolphins?  They certainly have larger brains.  I would wager that our brains have a higher density of connection though.  

Consequently the old theories said that brain size developed first and then tools.  These became known as the manly ape theories and were more palatable to the scientists of that time.  Then scientists found tools and small brains, so the order WAS reversed recently.  New devolopments led to increases in brain size as our brains learned to better use the tool.  This effectively dethroned the Manly Ape theories, knocking homo sapians from their supernatural perch.

Do you really think that what we have developed is so unique?  I bring up SETI and the Drake equation to hint at the possibility of coevolution.

How can we be more then our hardware?


----------



## rmcrobertson (May 30, 2004)

What, "step?" Why is it an advance to think that human beings are explicable solely in terms of their biology? That seems a lot like ignoring most of our history--at least, the written part.

It is a fantasy to believe that we, "have," to be one way or another, simply because of evolution, or DNA, or what have you. And I find this conversation interesting in large part because this fantasy can be seen for what  it is: an attempt to ground capitalism, and patriarchy too for that matter, upon a reductionist concept of biology.

Moreover, some of the science you're citing isn't science. I mentioned the stuff on brain size, because if you go back and look, most of that, "research," was racist in the extreme...little better than phrenology.

Yes, I've read some arguments about sheer size o'brain, and brain-to-body-weight ratios. And what I read all says, oops, too  simplistic. Among other things, there's the fact that good old Albert Einstein had an average-sized brain. So, unlike other areas of speculation, in this area size ain't all that big a deal. 

Again (and with specific apologies to Rich for my over-reading), there's nothing supernatural about it. And, I'm at a loss to see how you get a claim that human beings are unique in all the universe out of what I wrote.

Let me be explicit. HUMAN BEINGS DO NOT HAVE INSTINCTS UNMEDIATED BY LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND HISTORY. We are, "always already," encoded in such terms. 

The biologistic arguments have, as you probably already know, a long and somewhat ugly history: look up the book, "Bone Wars," check out Galton's weird, "g," factor, look at Cyril Burt's "work," on the heritability of intelligence.

And, you might want to consider the consequences of accepting the "pure biology," theory.


----------



## Rich Parsons (May 30, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Again (and with specific apologies to Rich for my over-reading)



Thank You, NO hard feelings, as I did not explain in detail the first time .

 :asian:


----------



## Makalakumu (May 30, 2004)

Please forgive me for chopping up this post...  :asian: 



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> What, "step?" Why is it an advance to think that human beings are explicable solely in terms of their biology? That seems a lot like ignoring most of our history--at least, the written part.



It is an advance because we will have finally stripped away the metaphysical viels that cloud our reason.  We will see ourselves for what we really are.  Beautifully evolved organisms connected to the environment, shaped by that environment and part of a larger system - never separate.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> It is a fantasy to believe that we, "have," to be one way or another, simply because of evolution, or DNA, or what have you. And I find this conversation interesting in large part because this fantasy can be seen for what  it is: an attempt to ground capitalism, and patriarchy too for that matter, upon a reductionist concept of biology.



Why is it fantasy to acknowledge that a real world exists?  Why is it fantasy to see the interconnectedness in our behavioral patterns and the patterns of every other organism on the planet.  I struggle with the same issue that you  do (forgive my assumption if I am wrong).  I do not want to ground capitolism in anything because I believe it is bad for humanity.  Yet, capitolism is nothing but a reflection of energy flowing through natural populations.  Capitolism is a model based on competition and you cannot deny the similarities.  This does not mean that we cannot move on to another way of operating though... (bias - I know)



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Moreover, some of the science you're citing isn't science. I mentioned the stuff on brain size, because if you go back and look, most of that, "research," was racist in the extreme...little better than phrenology.



Some, but not all.  And not even substantial fraction has been used to support racist propositions.  The things I have cited have not included race.  They have included species - not race.  Homo Ergaster, Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalus, ect, all have increasing brain size which is used as a yard stick to measure their relation to Homo Sapian.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Yes, I've read some arguments about sheer size o'brain, and brain-to-body-weight ratios. And what I read all says, oops, too  simplistic. Among other things, there's the fact that good old Albert Einstein had an average-sized brain. So, unlike other areas of speculation, in this area size ain't all that big a deal.



That is true.  Yet, you are failing to take into account the interconnectedness of the synapses in the gray matter.  Albert Einstein had some of the most densely connected gray matter in existence.  In essense, it allowed him to use his brain more efficiantly then one that had less connections.  A current evolutionary postulation states that there is a certain connection density that the gray matter cannot over come.  When the connection density reaches this point, the brain MUST expand in volume.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Again (and with specific apologies to Rich for my over-reading), there's nothing supernatural about it. And, I'm at a loss to see how you get a claim that human beings are unique in all the universe out of what I wrote.



If the last sentance was addressed to me, then I am sorry, but I did not construe my response to be taken as such.  I brought up other intelligent life for the sake of showing coevolution.  (which is a moot point I realize, since we have no credible sources of ET life as of yet - discounting conspiracy theories of course  )



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Let me be explicit. HUMAN BEINGS DO NOT HAVE INSTINCTS UNMEDIATED BY LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND HISTORY. We are, "always already," encoded in such terms.



And I must ask you this question again, how are Language, Culture, and History separate from our Biology?  My view is that there is no separation.  So I would change that statement to, "HUMAN BEINGS DO NOTHING UNMEDIATED BY THEIR BIOLOGY"



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> The biologistic arguments have, as you probably already know, a long and somewhat ugly history: look up the book, "Bone Wars," check out Galton's weird, "g," factor, look at Cyril Burt's "work," on the heritability of intelligence.



There are a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of prejudice and bias to wade through in science.  This is no different then any other field.  Yet, I believe that we poke our heads through those viels eventually and we are able to see what is on the other side.  In the end, there are no other viable alternatives.  What other then our biology explains who we are?



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> And, you might want to consider the consequences of accepting the "pure biology," theory.



Please elaborate.  I am curious to see what you consider to be the consequences...  :asian: 

upnorthkyosa


----------



## Cthulhu (May 31, 2004)

The human being is an animal.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Though most animals wouldn't take that as much of a compliment.

Cthulhu


----------



## rmcrobertson (May 31, 2004)

"Man is the only animal who  blushes--or needs to." ---Mark Twain


Of course we're part of Nature, whatever the hell that means. And of course, we're not.

What I continue to find much more interesting is WHY folks need to believe in such reductionistic ideas--and it's a real question, not just a case of calling someone else an idiot by another name.

Me, I think it's a reflection of what I'd call capitalist ideology: the system needs to reproduce itself, so the system needs to seem necessary and natural to its human subjects (that's us), so the system aids and abets all sorts of "scientific," notions about why the system exists. 

Two good examples: devout, conservative Christians who believe (like Pat Robertson) in the biologically-grounded morality of  the "free market," and, "money," and, "consumption," and, "social classes," and, "competition," however much these ideas run directly and absolutely counter to every single precept laid out in the Gospels. And, "liberal," "freethinking," folks who believe in the biologically-grounded morality of  the "free market," and, "money," and, "consumption," and, "social classes," and, "competition," however much these ideas run directly and absolutely counter to every single precept they espouse.

Or if you'd like another creepy example, the odd thing is that Louis Farakhan and both George Bushes agree completely about economic self-determination.

And they ALL buy old-fashioned Darwinism--only not as biology, but as sociology; not as a theory of how we got here, but as the one true explanation of why our society has just got to be this way. 

Weird. 

But, perfectly explicable.


----------



## heretic888 (May 31, 2004)

Hrmmmmm.... I'm inclined to agree with Robert again. Although, admittedly, I'm about as far away from "materialism" (depending on how you define it) as you can get.

The simple fact is I despise reductionism of any sort. Its rather disgusting in my eyes, and evinces some trends in academia that we would be better off avoiding.

Basically, _all_ reductionism is is an attempt to _reduce_ the values, truths, and endeavors of certain fields as nothing but delusions and failures falling short of the One Big Truth or Theory of Everything that whatever field the theorist happens to be a part of.

You know, we've see it all before --- the truths and endeavors in art, religion, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and so on aren't _really_ valid themselves, but are just silly bio-chemicals shooting off in your brain. In other words, all truths in all other fields fall short of the truths in the biological ones.

Or, as the Marxists like to say, "all philosophies are just opiates of the masses". Or, as the Foucaldians like to say, "all value systems are just forms of opression created by cultural paradigms". Or, as Freudians like to say about meditative states, "its just infantile regression".

Its just academic arrogance. Its an attempt to say "my field is more important than yours" --- the kind of elitist horsecrap many "hard scientists" often say to psychologists and anthropologists. You'll notice, however, that these positions don't actually have any evidence or proof to support their rather grandiose claims --- as it is actually making claims for a negative (i.e., there is no God, humans are just biomechanical thingies, etc.) --- and is as far away from a "scientific" position as you can get. Its really just another religion-in-disguise, blind faith and all.

This is what happens when you fail to differentiate the scientific process from scientism.

I don't care what kind of reductionism it is --- whether its a Marxist trying to reduce all philosophical and religious endeavors to "ideological forms of opression" in favor of socioeconomic explanations, or Freudians trying to make all human problems out as repressed sex-drives, or Post-structuralists trying to show every value but their own is culturally relative --- it all comes down to attempts to shoot down the truths and claims of EVERY other field of knowledge but one's own. Whether you're making a Theory of Everything in which Biology or Physics or Socioeconomics or Cultural Deconstructionism is King, its still reductionism. Its just another way of saying, "I'm right and everyone else is wrong".

Seriously, what's so wrong with letting art stand along on its own merits, or psychology, or philosophy, or religion?? Why the need to reduce it all to distorted failures to reach your own great One Discipline?? 

I can understand the various disciplines and studies are interrelated (biology and economics clearly _influence_ the findings of art and philosophy), but to have some studies and fields ultimately _reduced_ to others??

Its just silly. In my opinion.


----------



## rmcrobertson (May 31, 2004)

I agree, except you're still wrong about Marx, Freud and Foucault. 

See E.P. Thompson and others on, "vulgar marxism." See Freud, "Furture of an Illusion," and "Civilization and Its Discontents," as well as the stuff on the nature of the dream work and screen-memory back in, "Interpretation of Dreams," (some of Neil Hertz's stuff is also instructive here.) And as for Foucault, you need to take a gander at the famous page in "Discipline and Punish," (it's somewhere around page 189, offhand), which argues that we must once and for all get over the notion of power as merely repressive; "it produces," he says, "orders of knowledge and domains of truth." It is a little like Marcuse's repressive desublimation...

But basically, i agree.

Oh, and GOOD post-modernist/deconstructive theory certainly does NOT argue that it's all just culturally relative. Not even in Richard Rorty's version, I suspect. Again, see Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences."


----------



## RandomPhantom700 (May 31, 2004)

To heretic and robertson:

You know, I'm almost half-tempted to look through this entire thread and find out how the hell you guys got from the topic of whether man is a part of nature to a discussion of post-modernism, reduction, and (big question mark here) capitalism.  

But like I said, only half-tempted.  Later.


----------



## rmcrobertson (May 31, 2004)

Well, yeah, two whole pages. I see your point.


----------



## Makalakumu (May 31, 2004)

A real world exists beyond our perceptions.  Laws exist that dictate the structure and function of everything in the universe.  This is a fundamental rule of science.  The discovery and analysis of these laws is the purpose of science.  In particle physics, one finds new laws that are ever more fundamental when one breaks down a phenomenon into its constituent peices.  Reductionism is how the universe is constructed.  Patterns repeat themselves in nature on very large scales down to very small.  For an interesting treatise on this subject read "The Golden Ratio" by Mario Livio.

Why is anything a human creates so different?  How can anything we create be separate from our biology?  No body has been able to answer this question.  In fact all people have offered so far is a twisting out of philosophy that basically amounts to a rejection of humanity as a part of nature.

So I will ask this questions again and again until someone answers it.  How are we different?  How are we separate?  How is anything a human creates more then the biology that created it?


----------



## rmcrobertson (May 31, 2004)

Didn't twist nothing, didn't separate human beings from nature.

Also left poor old particle physics, quantum mechanics, spooky action at a distance, the Tunguska strike, and the dancing Wu Li masters out of it. 

For the fourth time, here's your answer: we are different because we have  subjectivity, language, culture, history, art, and all the rest of it. None of these are purely biological. I have no idea how the hell all this stuff finally works, and neither do you. 

If you prefer to believe that it's all just biology, your privilege and right. It seems to me, however, that you are reasoning entirely by analogy.

If you're wondering about how  I'd argue ecological issues, it's pretty straightforward: a) the way we're acting in regard to the planet is pretty stupid and lazy, practically speaking; b) it promotes greedy and arrogant thinking; c) it promotes disdain for other human beings; d) it is bound to cause enormous social unrest and even wars; e) I despise the whole aesthetic of the shopping mall, and the World of Endless Work on which that aesthetic is based. 

See? Probably no disagreement there. Didn't need to drag no Gaia into it, neither.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 1, 2004)

Robert

I was referring to the discussion of reductionism and post-modernism.  My intent was to reduce this discussion to observation.  Philosophy is a great subject because it talks about how we percieve the world around us.  Yet, a real world exists and I would like to talk about what is IN that world.  

I would not say my reasoning is entirely analogy.  There is quite a bit of assumption, but that is due to the fact that I certainly do not know everything.  I must counter your claim that subjectivity, language, culture, art, and history stand apart of biology though...

Subjectivity is the action of our perceptions.  Our senses are only so accute.  Therefore our descriptions of our observations will only be as accurate as the instruments we use.  Subjectivity is a reflection of our biologic limits.  And since they are different for every person, we can expect our points of view to differ at the largest extent by the amount individual homo sapians living on the planet.

Language is shaped by our biology.  Our pallet can form certain sounds within the range of frequencies that we can hear.  As time progressed, these sounds became more complex, reflecting a need to express more and more complex ideas.  

Culture is shaped by the environment.  Cultural roots are adaptations that allow that group to live in certain environments.  Complexities develop from these, yet there is always the shadow of nature in every ritual.

Art is a form of expression of ideas.  Art can be pleasing or it can be disturbing.  Many of the things that please us and disturb us are determined by our biology and many of them are determined by culture - which comes from nature.  Biologically speaking, art uses our senses to express itself.  Our eyes, for instance see various combinations of colors and do not see combinations of other colors.  What would you think of a peice of art that used combinations of color that your eyes cannot perceive correctly?

History is a record of our actions through the past.  I can study an ant colony and form a similar record of their actions through the past.  If I compare aspects of their behavior and how their populations interact, I will find that many of my observations are analogous.  

Perhaps there is something metaphysical in the above that I am missing?  If so, what?

Some of the consequences you proposed are valid repercussions of a purely biologic view of our origins.  I would like you to consider this...some actions that we take are adaptive, meaning the help us live in the environment around us, and others are maladaptive, meaning that they hinder our life in the environment around us.  Maladaptive behaviors usually occur when the environment changes but they can spring from mutations (both genetic and behavioral).  I would classify the things that you brought up as maladaptive to life on the planet with each other.  So there is no disagreement, you are correct, and the biologic explanation of our origins remains intact.

upnorthkyosa


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 1, 2004)

In regards to Robert:

*I agree, except you're still wrong about Marx, Freud and Foucault.*

Ah, phooey.

To tell you the truth, though, what I wrote I meant more in the direction of what the "followers" of Marx, Freud, and Foucalt have done with their ideas moreso than Marx, Freud, and Foucalt themselves (i.e., trends rather than specific individuals). Kinda like what some people have done with Thomas Kuhn's "paragidm" idea.

Still, I think that in some areas, Marx and Freud (but maybe not Foucalt) still go a bit too far in their assertions. I agree with their basic truths as far as they go, but feel they mistake their tree for the forest (if you will).

Then again, I'm not a materialist (which I would also maintain is a form of reductionism). So maybe my position is a bit biased.

Then again, most of the "materialists" I know don't advocate meditation or reading D.T. Suzuki. 

*But basically, i agree.*

Well, yippy-ki-yay for me. 

*Oh, and GOOD post-modernist/deconstructive theory certainly does NOT argue that it's all just culturally relative. *

I agree completely. The point I was trying to make, however, was certain trends that have been popping up in academia in recent decades (centuries, even). And "bad" postmodernism just happens to be one of those trends.

As a side note, I personally support theories like contextualism, pluralism (of its various stripes), and structuralism --- I just feel the more extremist and relativistic currents go to far.

*we are different because we have subjectivity, language, culture, history, art, and all the rest of it.*

Hrmmmm..... I partially agree.

In regards to subjectivity, I would say that all objects (even really basic stuff like quarks) have _some_ degree of subjectivity --- but that the complexity and depth of the subjectivity is directly correlative (but not reducible to) the complexity and depth of the objectivity. We humans happen to have incredibly complex and intricate subjectivity because of a correlative evolution (i.e., co-development) of our material brains --- having more neuronal connections than there are stars in the galaxy certainly helps. Likewise, the objective complexity of, say, a prokayrote isn't all that well-developed --- and their correlative subjectivity is likewise.

Now, again, I'm not trying to reduce these subjective domains as being merely the cause or production of the objective domains --- it is simply my position that objectivity and subjectivity have co-evolved since the Big Bang, increasing in complexity and organization. If the object isn't that complex, then the subject isn't that complex --- and vice-versa. They co-evolve, in my opinion.

It really does pose problems for positions like upnorthkyosa's, however, as _if_ you are going to reduce all subjective phenomena as being the result or side-effect of objective phenomena, you have to explain exactly when in the history of the cosmos that subjectivity first "popped" out of objects. You also have to further explain how exactly objects can exist without subjects --- that's like claiming, for the first 5 billion years, the universe just consisted of all ups and no downs, or all hots and no colds.

I personally find the co-evolution of subjects/objects to be a much more cogent explanation.

*None of these are purely biological. *

This I would also agree with.

The key issue, in my mind, is that --- contrary to Gould's Non-Overlapping Magisteria position --- these phenomena are basically inseparable. For example, for every subjective experience we have there is an objective brain state or whatnot that we can record externally.

However, inseparability is _not_ indistinguishability (I apologize if that isn't a real word). I feel our "biology" has a very big influence on our subjective states and accomplishments (and vice-versa), but that they are basically distinct entities.

Let's try and find a balance between inseparability and reductionism, neh?  :asian: 

Laterz.


----------



## rmcrobertson (Jun 1, 2004)

You're simply imposing a reductive biology to argue for a "more-ecological," society. 

There are consequences. If it's all just biology, women need to get their biscuits in the over and their buns in the bed, to quote Kinky Friedman. If it's all just biology, black kids need to quit dreaming of swimming for their country in the Olympics. If it's all just biology...well, you get my point.

Moreover, such arguments have an extremely ugly history.

Sorry, but among other errors, subjectivity is not the action of our perceptions. It's more like our reflection upon the actions of our perceptions.

Yes (again) biology is vital. So's understanding Nature. But human beings haven't lived in a pure state of nature since the Aboriginal population changed the Australian ecosystem by burning everything off some 40, 000 years ago...and longer than that, actually. 

If we'd stayed wholly natural, we'd be extinct. 

And I still don't understand your investment in biology uber alles.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 1, 2004)

In regards to RandomPhantom:

*You know, I'm almost half-tempted to look through this entire thread and find out how the hell you guys got from the topic of whether man is a part of nature to a discussion of post-modernism, reduction, and (big question mark here) capitalism.*

Very simply, because I was commenting on reductionistic trends in academia --- some of which are among postmodern theorists. I don't recall anything about capitalism, I think you have this confused with another thread.

This thread really isn't about "Nature" either, unless your definition of that concept is limited solely to biological phenomena (in which case, "Nature" didn't exist for the first few billion years of the universe).

Laterz.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 1, 2004)

In regards to upnorthkyosa:

*A real world exists beyond our perceptions. *

Common experience dictates this is so, but the simple truth remains that, although a "real world" (I chuckle at this terminology) _may_ (and probably does) exist independent of our observations and perceptions, we sure as hell can't observe or perceive it. Kind of a universal paradox, I suppose --- objectivity and subjectivity co-exist and co-create.

*Laws exist that dictate the structure and function of everything in the universe.*

Poppycock.

Your "biological laws" have little, if anything, to do with socioeconomic modes of production, the creation of art, or explaining how exactly we develop new thoughts and ideas. I'm sure these laws apply to the structure and function of everything _biological_ in the universe --- but when I created the thought just a few moments ago, it had nothing to do with biology.

*Reductionism is how the universe is constructed.*

Balderdash.

Your reductionism can't explain how ANY phenomena is actually created --- despite the bluff of Western biologists, we don't actually know _how_ new adaptations evolve in life. Sure, we can maybe pin down various selection processes as to why certain adaptations outlast others --- but that tells us nothing about how those adaptations arose in the first place.

Just ask any scientist to really create something new, something novel, out of something else in a laboratory setting --- he can't do it. Sure, we can make enzymes out of OTHER enzymes, we can make molecules out of OTHER molecules, and so forth --- but I can't artificially create sentience out of non-sentience, or life out of non-life, and so forth.

Why?? Because, for whatever reasons, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts --- and that's the ticker that reductionists have trouble grasping.

*Why is anything a human creates so different? How can anything we create be separate from our biology? No body has been able to answer this question.*

I don't recall anybody claiming anything about humanity actually being _separate_ from out biology, as opposed to not being reduced to biology. They are inseparable, yet distinct.

*In fact all people have offered so far is a twisting out of philosophy that basically amounts to a rejection of humanity as a part of nature.*

Again, with your "nature" rhetoric --- since when were "nature" and "biology" synonyms??

*I was referring to the discussion of reductionism and post-modernism. My intent was to reduce this discussion to observation.*

None of your philosophical claims have actually been observed in the world, upnorthkyosa. Namely, because the basis of your entire conceptual framework is on the proposition of negatives --- and negatives cannot be observed or proven.

The entire basis for your scientism here is that nothing non-material exists because you believe it doesn't. Its really just blind faith, as a claim like that can never be proven.

*Philosophy is a great subject because it talks about how we percieve the world around us. Yet, a real world exists and I would like to talk about what is IN that world. *

I love the hypocrisy of this statement.   

Here you were going on about how everything human is ultimately reduced to biology and objective phenomena, but now you admit philosophical pursuits as somehow being "other than" your "real world". Joyous.

You are also making the same gross assumption that we know ANYTHING about the objective world independent of our subjective filters and perceptions. Once you've tackled this perceiving without perceiving issue, be sure and explain it to the rest of us --- the postmodernists will be especially attentive, I'm sure.

*Subjectivity is the action of our perceptions. Our senses are only so accute. Therefore our descriptions of our observations will only be as accurate as the instruments we use. Subjectivity is a reflection of our biologic limits.*

Perhaps, but some subjective phenomena operate independently of the observations of our biological five senses --- some forms of mathematics and Aristotlean logic, for example.

*Language is shaped by our biology. Our pallet can form certain sounds within the range of frequencies that we can hear. As time progressed, these sounds became more complex, reflecting a need to express more and more complex ideas. *

There's a difference between something being shaped or influenced by something else, and it being reduced to it.

*Culture is shaped by the environment. Cultural roots are adaptations that allow that group to live in certain environments. Complexities develop from these, yet there is always the shadow of nature in every ritual.*

Once again, there's a difference between something being shaped or influenced by something else, and it being reduced to it.

*Art is a form of expression of ideas. Art can be pleasing or it can be disturbing. Many of the things that please us and disturb us are determined by our biology and many of them are determined by culture - which comes from nature.*

Art as nothing but hedonism on a canvas?? Delightful, an art scholar would eat your alive.  :uhyeah: 

*Perhaps there is something metaphysical in the above that I am missing? If so, what?*

Not our problem. You're the one making the absolutistic claims, thus the burden of proof is on _you_. Its not the critic's duty to provide counterproof for something that doesn't have any proof to begin with.

Once again, all your philosophical (not scientific) claims all basically come down to blind faith.

*Maladaptive behaviors usually occur when the environment changes but they can spring from mutations (both genetic and behavioral). I would classify the things that you brought up as maladaptive to life on the planet with each other. So there is no disagreement, you are correct, and the biologic explanation of our origins remains intact.*

Such explanations, of course, are wholly lacking.

Ask any biologist, and he'll tell you the most well-adapated organism on the planet are prokaryotic bacterium. These also happen to be the FIRST organisms on the planet --- thus all other subsequent organisms and species have been maladaptive evolutions. Kinda throws Neo-Darwinism for a loop, neh??

Laterz.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 1, 2004)

heretic888 said:
			
		

> It really does pose problems for positions like upnorthkyosa's, however, as _if_ you are going to reduce all subjective phenomena as being the result or side-effect of objective phenomena, you have to explain exactly when in the history of the cosmos that subjectivity first "popped" out of objects. You also have to further explain how exactly objects can exist without subjects --- that's like claiming, for the first 5 billion years, the universe just consisted of all ups and no downs, or all hots and no colds.



I am curious as to how you define objectivity and subjectivity.  

Objectivity, as I have learned it, is the real world.  It is what actually exists when no observer is present.  Subjectivity, on the other hand, is what the observer percieves.  The moment we study the objective it becomes subjective.  So, in essence, the moment the universe changed from objective to subjective was the moment we observed it.  This does not mean that an object loses its objectivity though.  It still exists even as we observe it.  All objects are both objective and subjective.

Also, objects exist without subjects because an object remains an object when when no one is there to observe it.  We find particles from the early universe that were clearly around when there was no one to observe them.  That is unless said observer was able to withstand the extreme conditions directly following the Big Bang, which is possible, yet unlikely given our current set of observations.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 1, 2004)

*I am curious as to how you define objectivity and subjectivity.*

Objectivity = external phenomena. Subjectivity = internal phenomena.

*Objectivity, as I have learned it, is the real world. It is what actually exists when no observer is present.*

*chuckles* Assumptions like this are always amusing.

Was there ever a point in the history of the universe where there were "no observers present"?? Sure, an atom has nothing that any _human_ would define as consciousness or awareness --- but it has its own degree of subjectivity, directly correlated with its degree of objective complexity.

The very simple truth is that every object is also a subject. This dualism has been around since the Big Bang.

Also, who is to say the world "out there" is any more "real" than the world "in here"?? That comes off as a gross assumption, from where I'm standing.

*Subjectivity, on the other hand, is what the observer percieves. The moment we study the objective it becomes subjective. *

No, it was never "purely" objective to begin with. That'd be like saying at one time the world was "purely" hot without any cold whatsoever --- a completely unintelligible claim.

Objectivity cannot exist without subjectivity. And vice-versa.

*This does not mean that an object loses its objectivity though. It still exists even as we observe it. All objects are both objective and subjective.*

That's kinda like what I said, except that all objects are also subjects. And vice-versa.

*Also, objects exist without subjects because an object remains an object when when no one is there to observe it. We find particles from the early universe that were clearly around when there was no one to observe them. That is unless said observer was able to withstand the extreme conditions directly following the Big Bang, which is possible, yet unlikely given our current set of observations.*

In that particular example, the particles in question where the observers themselves. Am I saying they are conscious, or sentient, or have feelings?? No such thing. But do they have some level or degree of subjective complexity?? Hell, yeah. Once again, the subjective complexity is directly correlated (and co-evolves) with the objective complexity.

Sorry, bro. But no dice. Laterz.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 1, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> There are consequences. If it's all just biology, women need to get their biscuits in the over and their buns in the bed, to quote Kinky Friedman. If it's all just biology, black kids need to quit dreaming of swimming for their country in the Olympics. If it's all just biology...well, you get my point.
> 
> Moreover, such arguments have an extremely ugly history.
> 
> ...



Science has grown beyond those theories that have proven to be sexist or racist.  By looking at the data and reanalyzing the picture, the ugly history that exists has been rewritten to reflect something more akin to what actually exists.

The moment we study something it is changed.  We cannot look at an object without altering it some way.  This has become known as the objective/subjective transformation and it is a cornerstone of modern physics.  The Heisenberg uncertainty principal was the first thing to cast light on this property of the universe.  So, I disagree that subjectivity is something that can be separated from observation, even if it is just our reflection...of course you could be talking about our brain analyzing the input it gets from the senses and calling THAT reflection...?

How have we not lived in a state of nature?  Everything that we have created and every change that we have done to this earth is natural because we are part of nature.  It is no different then an ant burrowing into the ground and altering the surrounding environment.  I think the reason why you backpeddled on the 40,000 year date is because you realize this.  One of the things that characterize homo sapians is there ability (limited) to change the environment to their needs.  We have remained wholly natural throughout the history of our species and it STILL could lead to our extinction.  Extinction is natural.

Nature Uber Alles.  That is my position because it wipes away the regionalisms and the cultures and reduces homo sapian down to what they really are, biologic organisms interacting and evolving in a changing environment - nothing more and nothing less.  This understanding purifies our understanding of ourselves and gives us a coherent picture of our place on this planet and in the universe.  It is the only thing that makes sense...unless you have something to offer that does a better job?


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 1, 2004)

*The moment we study something it is changed. We cannot look at an object without altering it some way. This has become known as the objective/subjective transformation and it is a cornerstone of modern physics. The Heisenberg uncertainty principal was the first thing to cast light on this property of the universe. So, I disagree that subjectivity is something that can be separated from observation, even if it is just our reflection...of course you could be talking about our brain analyzing the input it gets from the senses and calling THAT reflection...?*

I find it very.... "interesting" how you think that subjectivity can't be separated from objectivity, but objectivity can somehow magically be separated from subjectivity.

You would be interested to know that many New Age and postmodern writers have been making the exact opposite claims that you make, purportedly basing their claims on the same Einsteinian physics you cite --- that all the objective world is ultimately a production of the subjective observer.

I personally think both of those views are hogwash.

*Nature Uber Alles. That is my position because it wipes away the regionalisms and the cultures*

Uhhhh.... no, it doesn't.

If anything, it _intensifies_ the "racial" and "regional" adaptations of the various human cultures and accentuates territorialism and ethnocentrism. I don't see anything but Social Darwinism as being the logical result of your position.

*This understanding purifies our understanding of ourselves and gives us a coherent picture of our place on this planet and in the universe. It is the only thing that makes sense...unless you have something to offer that does a better job?*

Personally, I think Plotinus did a better job 1600 years ago.

Laterz.


----------



## rmcrobertson (Jun 1, 2004)

I'm pretty much with The Heretic (can you be with a heretic?), except that I think there is indeed a real world out there.

I continue not to understand why in the world anybody would want to elide one of the most obvious, observable (yes, Virginia, "observation," rests upon a naive and perhaps finally unprovable phenomenology) facts about human beings: our having language, culture, history, and all the rest that is not wholly biological.

Or to paraphrase Robert Heinlein, don't know about YOU, tovarisch, but I am aware of myself as something separate from the biological program and the meat that program runs on. If we're simply meat machines, where'd self-consciousness come from? 

It did indeed become common in the 1970s to collapse categories, and to con-fuse what Heisenberg had to say about the physics of the very, very small with all sorts of, "quantum," events thought to hold true at a macro level. It's fun to do--but I don't have the math and physics knowledge to even really get what old Werner was talking about (and neither do you, I'll bet). What's more, there's just as much pop physics to be gleaned from, say, a James Hogan novel or two that argues for free will, consciousness and all the rest--you know, the collapsing of the wave front of probabilities to specific outcomes based on the, "many worlds," theory of universes and anyway sf is fun, but not to be taken for serious.

When people write things like, "Everything that we have created and every change that we have done to this earth is natural because we are part of nature. It is no different then an ant burrowing into the ground and altering the surrounding environment," what they are doing is legitimating an awful lot of human stupidity and bad management and short-sightedness. I suppose we're supposed to believe that SUVs, Paxil, nuclear weapons, leaky oil tankers, Dan Quayle, the eradication of the North Atlantic fisheries, and toxic waste are, like, perfectly cool because, like hey? you know? they're just like in the genome.

C'mahn. If you'll actually go read some stuff on say, behavioral genetics (try Robert Plomin, and old teacher of mine), you will find all sorts of warnings against such reductionism and evasion of moral responsibility.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 1, 2004)

heretic888 said:
			
		

> *Laws exist that dictate the structure and function of everything in the universe.*
> 
> Your "biological laws" have little, if anything, to do with socioeconomic modes of production, the creation of art, or explaining how exactly we develop new thoughts and ideas. I'm sure these laws apply to the structure and function of everything _biological_ in the universe --- but when I created the thought just a few moments ago, it had nothing to do with biology.



Although you have not brought God into the picture and I do not mean to cast this comment in that light I would like to say that this argument reminds me of the "God of the Gaps" explanation.  Just because we do not know something does not mean that cannot ever KNOW it.  Something that is unexplanable does not mean anything other then that it is unexplanable.  I have a lot of faith in science.  Its an essential part of the game and I would say that someday, if we are around that long, we WILL know how this thought came into my mind.  I think a good start is to look at the equation that describes the frequency of mutation.  If you plug in extremely large numbers like the number of connections in our brains, the frequency of mutation comes faster and faster indeed until they are constantly occuring.  Remember, I said this was a start...

There is a work written by Dr. James Fetzer on Cognitive Science that does a nice job of reducing creativity to something explanable.  I'll see if I can find some of it.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *Reductionism is how the universe is constructed.*
> 
> Balderdash.
> 
> ...



Although you did not claim to be a person of no faith, I would like to point out that neither did I.  In fact, you show your faith with the statement above...yet we now come to the limits of what we understand and the scale of the phenomena you listed above is incredibly tiny.  Everytime scientists described the above phenomena, they were reduced.  And when we reduce them again, we will know more.  Is there an end in sight or can something be reduced forever?  My _faith _ leads me to believe that we CAN reach that point.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *Why is anything a human creates so different? How can anything we create be separate from our biology? No body has been able to answer this question.*
> 
> I don't recall anybody claiming anything about humanity actually being _separate_ from out biology, as opposed to not being reduced to biology. They are inseparable, yet distinct.



Please explain how they are distinct.  You made the claim, not show me.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *In fact all people have offered so far is a twisting out of philosophy that basically amounts to a rejection of humanity as a part of nature.*
> 
> Again, with your "nature" rhetoric --- since when were "nature" and "biology" synonyms??.



Is it possible to separate nature from biology?  I would say no.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *I was referring to the discussion of reductionism and post-modernism. My intent was to reduce this discussion to observation.*
> 
> None of your philosophical claims have actually been observed in the world, upnorthkyosa. Namely, because the basis of your entire conceptual framework is on the proposition of negatives --- and negatives cannot be observed or proven.
> 
> The entire basis for your scientism here is that nothing non-material exists because you believe it doesn't. Its really just blind faith, as a claim like that can never be proven.



Everything is based upon the proposition of negatives???  I believe that I have only asked for alternatives and have not asked for anyone to prove anything.  On the contrary, I thought I was doing a good job bringing up specific examples of evidence  :idunno: 



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *Philosophy is a great subject because it talks about how we percieve the world around us. Yet, a real world exists and I would like to talk about what is IN that world. *
> 
> I love the hypocrisy of this statement.
> 
> ...



Your criticism is warrented in this case.  When we diverge into these philosophic pursuits, I am fully aware that I could be maked an A$$ out of myself.  I'll do my best.  My intent of the above statement if you can ignore the glaring hypocrisy was to look at observation.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> [Perhaps, but some subjective phenomena operate independently of the observations of our biological five senses --- some forms of mathematics and Aristotlean logic, for example.
> 
> There's a difference between something being shaped or influenced by something else, and it being reduced to it.



In my field, I have studied quite a bit of mathematics and I admit that I do not understand everything, or even enough to go to the top of my field, but from my position, mathematics and even the Aristotlean logic reflect something in the universe.  In fact, some people have even claimed that they are systems predictors.

Again, I am unsure how you define reductionism.  If I use a shovel to make a sand castle, the marks of the shovel will remain and I will be able to see how that castle came to exist.  Why I built the castle...well that is an argument along the anthropic principal now isn't it?  

Am I the castle's God? (no megalomania intended)



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *Art is a form of expression of ideas. Art can be pleasing or it can be disturbing. Many of the things that please us and disturb us are determined by our biology and many of them are determined by culture - which comes from nature.*
> 
> Art as nothing but hedonism on a canvas?? Delightful, an art scholar would eat your alive.  :uhyeah:



Does taking the unknown away from something make it less special?  If we create was reduced to biology would it totally lose its meaning?  Again, art is shaped by our biology and determined by our sense.  Can you imagine what art from a culture totally alien to ours would look like?  If there was a source and I know you didn't claim their was one, would we expect any synchronicity?

*Perhaps there is something metaphysical in the above that I am missing? If so, what?*



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> Not our problem. You're the one making the absolutistic claims, thus the burden of proof is on _you_. Its not the critic's duty to provide counterproof for something that doesn't have any proof to begin with.



Kinda dodgy...I have asked for alternatives.  You have hinted at more, I want to know what you think.  Perhaps, instead of thinking of this as a peer review think of it as a conversation between peers.  Perhaps I should just pin you down...where does creativity come from?



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> Once again, all your philosophical (not scientific) claims all basically come down to blind faith.



I think you've confused science and philosophy.  They are inseparable...anyways.  As to my knowledge, I've provided examples of data to support my assertions.  As we continue this discussion, I will provide more as I think about it.  I'm curious how I have not been _scientific_.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *Maladaptive behaviors usually occur when the environment changes but they can spring from mutations (both genetic and behavioral). I would classify the things that you brought up as maladaptive to life on the planet with each other. So there is no disagreement, you are correct, and the biologic explanation of our origins remains intact.*
> 
> Such explanations, of course, are wholly lacking.
> 
> Ask any biologist, and he'll tell you the most well-adapated organism on the planet are prokaryotic bacterium. These also happen to be the FIRST organisms on the planet --- thus all other subsequent organisms and species have been maladaptive evolutions. Kinda throws Neo-Darwinism for a loop, neh??



All other organisms on the planet have been maladaptive evolutions...I'm not sure this addresses the point I made above.  

I'll reduce this discussion down to energy though.  Life requires energy.  Adaptations that allow an organism to gain more energy are adaptive.  Adaptations that take away from an organisms ability to gather energy are maladaptive.  It is much more useful to think of an organism adapting to take an available source of energy.

Complexity is the killer though.  Complex organisms die quick because of their tendency to overspecialize.  Hence the incredible longevity of said bacteria.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 1, 2004)

heretic888 said:
			
		

> I find it very.... "interesting" how you think that subjectivity can't be separated from objectivity, but objectivity can somehow magically be separated from subjectivity.



At the moment of the big bang, according the Standard Model, there was one object.  This object broke the symmetry of the universe and was a thing of its own that physicists are just now starting to describe.  Can you show me how this one object can be an observer onto itself?



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *Nature Uber Alles. That is my position because it wipes away the regionalisms and the cultures*
> 
> If anything, it _intensifies_ the "racial" and "regional" adaptations of the various human cultures and accentuates territorialism and ethnocentrism. I don't see anything but Social Darwinism as being the logical result of your position.



Could you elaborate on how a purely biologic postion accentuates territorialism and ethnocentrism?  Remember, Social Darwinism is a theory that has been show to be incorrect the methods of science...




			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> *This understanding purifies our understanding of ourselves and gives us a coherent picture of our place on this planet and in the universe. It is the only thing that makes sense...unless you have something to offer that does a better job?*
> 
> Personally, I think Plotinus did a better job 1600 years ago.
> 
> ...


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 1, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> I continue not to understand why in the world anybody would want to elide one of the most obvious, observable (yes, Virginia, "observation," rests upon a naive and perhaps finally unprovable phenomenology) facts about human beings: our having language, culture, history, and all the rest that is not wholly biological.



I don't see how recognizing the roots of everything we do makes us less.  We just ARE.  Ya know what I mean?



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Or to paraphrase Robert Heinlein, don't know about YOU, tovarisch, but I am aware of myself as something separate from the biological program and the meat that program runs on. If we're simply meat machines, where'd self-consciousness come from?



The moment that advanced ET is discovered (or we are discovered by them) the speciality of conciousness will be blown away.  For now, I continue to believe that in a universe as large as ours, sentience is not special.  Look at what sentience has allowed us to accomplish?  Surely this has evolved elsewhere - which was my point before with Drake and SETI.  If there is correspondence, then there is a pattern.  If there is a pattern, then there is a law.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> It did indeed become common in the 1970s to collapse categories, and to con-fuse what Heisenberg had to say about the physics of the very, very small with all sorts of, "quantum," events thought to hold true at a macro level. It's fun to do--but I don't have the math and physics knowledge to even really get what old Werner was talking about (and neither do you, I'll bet). What's more, there's just as much pop physics to be gleaned from, say, a James Hogan novel or two that argues for free will, consciousness and all the rest--you know, the collapsing of the wave front of probabilities to specific outcomes based on the, "many worlds," theory of universes and anyway sf is fun, but not to be taken for serious.



I understand Old Werner.  That is not to bad.  Getting to that understanding is the hard part.  If you can pull the threads together and derive what he did...well that is a different story and well beyond my ability.  Heisenberg works on small scales and is nothing but an analogy on large or philosophic scale.  It is helpful for understanding reductionism though, because one ends up at small phenomenon.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> When people write things like, "Everything that we have created and every change that we have done to this earth is natural because we are part of nature. It is no different then an ant burrowing into the ground and altering the surrounding environment," what they are doing is legitimating an awful lot of human stupidity and bad management and short-sightedness. I suppose we're supposed to believe that SUVs, Paxil, nuclear weapons, leaky oil tankers, Dan Quayle, the eradication of the North Atlantic fisheries, and toxic waste are, like, perfectly cool because, like hey? you know? they're just like in the genome.



I don't think it justifies anything like that.  I think it actually gives a reason as to why people make those decisions rather then letting us delude ourselves by calling them _evil_.  That is what I mean by sharpening our understanding our our place and our effect on the environment around us.  We see our connection to the system and we see how other species have disconnected from the system (gone extinct).  Because everything that we are and everything that we do connects back to nature, that knowledge applies directly to us.



			
				rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> C'mahn. If you'll actually go read some stuff on say, behavioral genetics (try Robert Plomin, and old teacher of mine), you will find all sorts of warnings against such reductionism and evasion of moral responsibility.



I will put it on my reading list.  Thanks.  :asian:


----------



## rmcrobertson (Jun 1, 2004)

Again: I agree that biology is a substrate to what we do as people. Sure. Got it. I agree. No problem.

You get all the Heisenberg? Could you show me the math behind the far-famed Uncertainty Principle stuff?

I don't say how saying that human culture is not simply biological says anything about intelligent life in the universe. 

My argument of SUVs, etc., was precisely to the point. If everything we do is natural, then nothing we do can be wrong because it is part of Nature. If everything we do is natural, then sexism, discrimination, etc., all become part of Nature and therefore uncriticizable.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 1, 2004)

Robert

I know just enough to understand Heisenberg.  I could flash out a few problems...for instance if we have a particle in a box that was one dimension with a known position of x and we take a partial derivitive of the wave function...enough to use it.  Not enough to show how it works...maybe in the future, may never.  When I think about that stuff it makes my head hurt.

Consider extinction.  Some things are good for species and some are bad.  Would pure cut-throat capitalism be something that is maladaptive or adaptive to life on this earth?  How about sexism or racism?  What if we made decisions based upon our current scientific knowledge instead of religion and superstition?

Just because something is natural does not mean that its positive.  Extinction is natural too.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 2, 2004)

In regards to Robert:

*I'm pretty much with The Heretic (can you be with a heretic?)*

Looks like.

*except that I think there is indeed a real world out there.*

Whoa, now. Hold on a second...

I never said there wasn't an objective world "out there", only that we cannot perceive this without it being "contaminated" by our subjective filters (both material and non-material). The entire point I was trying to make all along is the fallacies of "pure objectivism" (trendy in modernism and 'hard scientists') and "pure subjectivism" (trendy in postmodernism and New Agers).

Subjectivity and objectivity, while distinct phenomena, are inexhorably inseparable --- both in an abstract (because objectivity and subjectivity are dualities that define one another) and concrete sense (because there seems to be a subjective correlate for every objective reality, and vice-versa). Thus, every phenomena is _both_ an object _and_ a subject.

That was the point I was trying to make --- that objectivity and subjectivity co-create one another, and co-evolve together.

*I continue not to understand why in the world anybody would want to elide one of the most obvious, observable [...] facts about human beings: our having language, culture, history, and all the rest that is not wholly biological.*

Indeed, it is an _extremely_ counter-intuitive position. 

I mean, speaking for myself, I daily experience what could be called a "self" distinct, or at least disembedded, from my biology --- my biological, organic body. Now, does this mean that body has no effect on this "self"?? No, of course not (but the opposite could be said as well).

But the simple truth is that this "physicalist" position is extremely counter-intuitive, and contradictory to what millions upon millions of human beings experience directly every waking second. It'll take a lot of explaining to do away with all that.

*Or to paraphrase Robert Heinlein, don't know about YOU, tovarisch, but I am aware of myself as something separate from the biological program and the meat that program runs on. If we're simply meat machines, where'd self-consciousness come from? *

Well said.

*When people write things like, "Everything that we have created and every change that we have done to this earth is natural because we are part of nature. It is no different then an ant burrowing into the ground and altering the surrounding environment," what they are doing is legitimating an awful lot of human stupidity and bad management and short-sightedness. I suppose we're supposed to believe that SUVs, Paxil, nuclear weapons, leaky oil tankers, Dan Quayle, the eradication of the North Atlantic fisheries, and toxic waste are, like, perfectly cool because, like hey? you know? they're just like in the genome.*

Yes, that was one of the points I was making beforehand --- that Social Darwinism seems to be the only logical conclusion of these "physicalist" positions. And one of the natural consequences of Social Darwinism is that if the environment suffers, its because it isn't "fit" enough.

It does depend on how you define "nature", though. If by "nature" you are strictly referring to the biosphere, then (most) humans are both a part of it and disembedded from it. The very fact that we can detachedly observe it is testament to this --- if you can step back, detach yourself, and observe something, then you obviously aren't that something.

I think if you're going to argue that humans are indistinct from "nature", then you need to seriously rethink your definition of "nature".

*My argument of SUVs, etc., was precisely to the point. If everything we do is natural, then nothing we do can be wrong because it is part of Nature. If everything we do is natural, then sexism, discrimination, etc., all become part of Nature and therefore uncriticizable.*

I agree.

Laterz.  :asian:


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 2, 2004)

In regards to upnorthkyosa (and this one's gonna be long):

*Although you have not brought God into the picture and I do not mean to cast this comment in that light I would like to say that this argument reminds me of the "God of the Gaps" explanation.*

I actually believe there is a Creative Force underlying the universe, something analogous to Hegel's Spirit-in-Action ideas. But, really, we aren't discussing my beliefs in Kenosis, but yours in reductionism... 

*Just because we do not know something does not mean that cannot ever KNOW it. Something that is unexplanable does not mean anything other then that it is unexplanable.*

Oh, please.   

I'm afraid you're missing the point, man. I wasn't just talking about how new thoughts are formulated in the mind, I am referring to ALL novelty in the universe. Period. This is the point that the physicalist and reductionist has to resort to such contrived arguments as "inexplicable". Or, to put a sharper point on it: "We don't have a clue. We don't even begin to have a clue. But, I am confident we will one day figure it out with my Divine Biology of the One Great Theory because my reductionistic philosophy says so!!" Uh-huh.

Why can't we explain novelty, you say?? Well, let's take it to the laboratory. We've tried recreating life. Didn't work. We've tried recreating sentience (analogous to humans). Didn't work. We even tried recreating, in miniature form, the Big Bang. Didn't work. Seems to me that we can't actually artificially _create_ anything new or novel whatsoever.

The problem is the reductionistic assumptions all these guys have going into the laboratory --- they think that if we put all the right enzymes and molecules together in the right sequence, that we'll get life. Or, that if we program just enough synapses in the right sequence, that we'll get mind.

Sorry, the very simple fact is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And reductionism cannot explain novelty for this very reason.

*Although you did not claim to be a person of no faith, I would like to point out that neither did I. In fact, you show your faith with the statement above...*

Yes. But the difference is that my "faith" doesn't try and explain away common experience and direct observation to try and force every discipline and truth in the world to conform to a type of biology.

*Everytime scientists described the above phenomena, they were reduced. And when we reduce them again, we will know more. Is there an end in sight or can something be reduced forever? My faith leads me to believe that we CAN reach that point*

Cute explanation. But it falls short, I'm afraid.

Reducing atoms to quarks doesn't tell us a damn thing as to _why_ we can't make molecules out of atoms in the first place --- after all, molecules are _just_ atoms, right?? Kinda like consciousness is _just_ a result of the physical organism, right?? 

Oh, but wait, every empirical test thus far has indicated that those assumptions are a big load of dookey.

Okay, so we've reduced atoms to particles. This _must_ mean we can now genuinely create something, something new and novel, a new atom, out of particles, right?? Okay, that didn't work, so let's reduce particles to quarks. Now we _should_ be able to genuinely create something new, something novel, a new particle, out of these pre-existing quarks, right?? Okay, that didn't work, so let's reduce quarks to strings. Now we _hopefully_ will be able to create something genuinely new, something novel, a new quark, out of these pre-existing strings, right?? Damn, that didn't work either --- but, wait, here comes the m-branes...

So on and so on to infinity. I see a trend.

*Please explain how they are distinct. You made the claim, not show me.*

Very simple --- I am observing, with my mind, my biology at this very moment. My hand can't observe itself, my brain can't observe itself --- but my mind can.

*Is it possible to separate nature from biology? I would say no.*

Then you have a very rigid definition of "nature". According to your view, "nature" didn't exist in the universe until Earth popped up a few epochs ago.

If I were you, I'd use more exact and relatable definitions, like biosphere or genome. Not "nature".

*Everything is based upon the proposition of negatives??? I believe that I have only asked for alternatives and have not asked for anyone to prove anything. On the contrary, I thought I was doing a good job bringing up specific examples of evidence *

*LAUGHS* You've brought evidence that _shows_ the mind doesn't really exist?! Or, that _shows_ there is no God?! Please. The only "evidence" you've shown is that there is a _relationship_ between biology and psychology, not a causality.  

You're philosophy is based on the proposition of negatives --- that there is no God, no mind, no soul, no emotion, nothing immaterial. You can't actually prove or test any of that (while I can disprove a negative), so its blind faith.

Causation is not correlation, m'boy. Basic, basic science.

*In my field, I have studied quite a bit of mathematics and I admit that I do not understand everything, or even enough to go to the top of my field, but from my position, mathematics and even the Aristotlean logic reflect something in the universe. In fact, some people have even claimed that they are systems predictors.*

*chuckles* I'll believe that as soon as you put the square root of -1 in front of my face. Until then, I must view it as a creation of the human mind that can influence the material world.

*Again, I am unsure how you define reductionism.*

The philosophical attempt to reduce everything to a single thing (sometimes atoms, sometimes particles, sometimes "sex drives", sometimes socioeconomic forces, etc).

*If I use a shovel to make a sand castle, the marks of the shovel will remain and I will be able to see how that castle came to exist. Why I built the castle...well that is an argument along the anthropic principal now isn't it? 

Am I the castle's God? (no megalomania intended)*

I'm sorry, but I don't see at all how this analogy has anything to do with the discussion --- you didn't actually create anything new or novel. All you did was use pre-existing molecules (the shovel) to rearrange other pre-existing molecules (the sand) to make a pretty shape. Nothing "new" was created, unless you count your psychological countenance engaging in aesthetic pursuits...

*If we create was reduced to biology would it totally lose its meaning?*

Yes, it does. And any artist would agree with me on that.

In fact, according to your physicalist view of the universe, "meaning" does not exist. Therefore, nothing has meaning at all.

*Again, art is shaped by our biology and determined by our sense. Can you imagine what art from a culture totally alien to ours would look like? If there was a source and I know you didn't claim their was one, would we expect any synchronicity?*

Possibly, but I fail to see what this has to do with the discussion. Art as "biology on canvas" is meaningless. That's certainly not why I write music.

*Kinda dodgy...I have asked for alternatives. You have hinted at more, I want to know what you think. Perhaps, instead of thinking of this as a peer review think of it as a conversation between peers. Perhaps I should just pin you down...where does creativity come from?*

My personal view is that it is a manifestation of Spirit --- but that is a discussion for another time.

*I think you've confused science and philosophy. They are inseparable...anyways.*

I think you've confused the scientific method and scientism.

The scientific method, which is what science _is_, is nothing more than a means of acquiring information. Nothing more, nothing less. Your reductionistic assumptions are accretions that _you_ have added to 'science' in an attempt to validate your personal philosophy.

But the scientific method is neither materialistic nor reductionistic in orientation, as any good psychologist will tell you...

*As to my knowledge, I've provided examples of data to support my assertions. As we continue this discussion, I will provide more as I think about it. I'm curious how I have not been scientific.*

Very simply, because you are inanely pretending to show "proof" for negatives. There is no "proof" that a God doesn't exist. There is no "proof" that mind doesn't exist. There is no "proof" that anything other than biology doesn't exist. Proof is, by nature, evidence for a positive assertion --- not a negative.

All you've shown throughout is that there is a _relationship_ between biology and psychology (or, if you like, the biosphere and the noosphere). But you have done nothing to "prove" what that relationship is. Correlation is not causation.

*All other organisms on the planet have been maladaptive evolutions...I'm not sure this addresses the point I made above. *

Because you were trying to use natural selection as an explanation for the "why" that things are created and come about, and I'm simply pointing out that that is a wholly inadequate explanation. Bacterium are the most "adapted" and "fit" organism on the planet --- not humans. Yet, here we are.

Natural selection, at best, explains why when certain adaptations are ALREADY in existence, that they outlast others. It tells us nothing about where, why, and how they came about in the first place.

*At the moment of the big bang, according the Standard Model, there was one object. This object broke the symmetry of the universe and was a thing of its own that physicists are just now starting to describe. Can you show me how this one object can be an observer onto itself?*

Can you show me its not??  :uhyeah: 

Seriously, though, every object is a subject. Objectivity and subjectivity _define_ one another, they _create_ one another. Its like having hot without any cold, or up without any down. Its completely inane and unintelligible.

Now, I'm not saying this first 'particle' or whatever it is supposed to be was conscious, or sentient, or aware, or had feelings, or a soul, or anything like that. Nothing of the sort. I am simply saying it had a degree, a level, of subjectivity directly _correlated_ with its degree and level of objectivity.

'External' has no meaning if there is not an 'internal'.

*Could you elaborate on how a purely biologic postion accentuates territorialism and ethnocentrism?*

Because it accentuates the "biological" variations of humankind (what we call "races"), and results in ethnocentrism. Not worldcentrism.

This might be a shock, but true compassion --- a postconventional, worldcentric vision is a distinctly human trait. And, by Darwinian natural selection standards, it is very "maladaptive". It is something of a biological anomaly. Yet, here we are.

*Remember, Social Darwinism is a theory that has been show to be incorrect the methods of science...*

Not in biology. In biology, Social Darwinism is implicitly accepted (ex: the dodo bird died out because it wasn't "fit enough" for its environment). That's why biologists aren't the ones in psychology, sociology, and anthropology --- disciplines which have pretty much rejected Social Darwinism.

*Interesting. Sarcasm or sincerity?*

Sincerity. I find the Neoplatonic explanation much more cogent than your reductionism.

*I don't see how recognizing the roots of everything we do makes us less. We just ARE. Ya know what I mean?*

Ok. So does our psychology simply have "its roots" in our biology, or is it just a manifestation of our biology?? Which is it??

You seem to be changing your view a little bit here...

*The moment that advanced ET is discovered (or we are discovered by them) the speciality of conciousness will be blown away. For now, I continue to believe that in a universe as large as ours, sentience is not special. Look at what sentience has allowed us to accomplish? Surely this has evolved elsewhere - which was my point before with Drake and SETI. If there is correspondence, then there is a pattern. If there is a pattern, then there is a law.*

Personally, I'm not going to buy into "alien intelligence" until somebody actually has some proof. These hypothetical situations are amusing and all, but don't actually tell us anything.

In any event, even if it did happen, it wouldn't do anything to the "speciality" of self-consciousness. Its still evolution.

*I don't think it justifies anything like that. I think it actually gives a reason as to why people make those decisions rather then letting us delude ourselves by calling them evil.*

Actually, from where I'm standing --- using the logic of your physicalist/pseudo-Freudian position, if a person goes out, screws up his environment, put has a very pleasing life with lots of kids, then he has "adapted" quite well.

Its only with a detachment from the biosphere that we begin to understand that it should be preserved.

*Would pure cut-throat capitalism be something that is maladaptive or adaptive to life on this earth? How about sexism or racism?*

Who said anything about 'life on this earth'. Natural selection applies to the adaptability of individual species and organisms, not life as a whole.

If cut-throat capitalism, sexism, and racism ending up 'strengthening the species' or something like that, then they would be quite 'adaptive'. In fact, using your skewed adaptive vs maladaptive logic, every kid born with a genetically-inherited disease should be killed because it will "strengthen" our species' gene pool.

See how morality cannot be reduced to biology??

*What if we made decisions based upon our current scientific knowledge instead of religion and superstition?*

That'd be nice, but that's not what you're proposing. You're proposing replacing the traditional religions with your new secular religion.

How did somebody put it?? "Marxism became the opiate for the masses"?? 

Sounds very similar to what you're proposing...

Laterz.


----------



## Cruentus (Jun 2, 2004)

Wow...Heretic. That was long!  :ultracool 

I have to chime in and say that while being too lazy right now to formulate my own arguement, I agree with Robert and heretic on this one.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 2, 2004)

Thanks for the reply Heretic888, here is my response...

*I actually believe there is a Creative Force underlying the universe, something analogous to Hegel's Spirit-in-Action ideas. But, really, we aren't discussing my beliefs in Kenosis, but yours in reductionism...* 

But this is the substance driving your arguments.  Your belief in the spirit moves you to counter my arguments.  The difference is that your belief in the spirit has no trail.  It has no arrows that point in that direction unless you count the vast pool of psuedoscience out there.  Reductionist view points, which make assumptions, are not bridging gaps that cannot ever be breached.  Instead of replacing the end of the chain with the spirit, I believe that ALL scientists look for new knowledge.  

*I'm afraid you're missing the point, man. I wasn't just talking about how new thoughts are formulated in the mind, I am referring to ALL novelty in the universe. Period.*

Question.  What if scientists find that M-theory does a nice job in explaning the novelty of the universe?  That is the proposition that is sitting out there right now.  God and the "spirit" have been removed from so many places in our lives by observation that this kind of like the last assault on the fortress.  Can you see the implications of something like this?  Humans will have been able to explain the grandest novelty of them all...

*Why can't we explain novelty, you say?? Well, let's take it to the laboratory. We've tried recreating life. Didn't work. We've tried recreating sentience (analogous to humans). Didn't work. We even tried recreating, in miniature form, the Big Bang. Didn't work. Seems to me that we can't actually artificially create anything new or novel whatsoever.*

All this says is that we didn't have all of the variables.  NOTHING else.

*Sorry, the very simple fact is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And reductionism cannot explain novelty for this very reason.*

But what if it can?  What if the whole is not greater then its parts?  Is anything else in the universe greater then its parts?  I can take apart every single peice of my automobile and put it back together and it will still work.  There are many objects in the universe that I am able to do this with.  Is it too great of an assumption to say that, with the corrected technology, I could disassemble my body to its constituent parts and put it back together and get myself?  It seems as if you have multiple classes for objects in the universe.  One for objects that are the sum of there parts and one for objects that aren't.  My question to you is this...where do you draw the line?  How do you make this deliniation?  What is the criteria for this classification?  

This is where your argument will fail.  :asian: (unless I have totally turned what you said into hamburger...)

*Reducing atoms to quarks doesn't tell us a damn thing as to why we can't make molecules out of atoms in the first place --- after all, molecules are just atoms, right?? Kinda like consciousness is just a result of the physical organism, right?? 

Okay, so we've reduced atoms to particles. This must mean we can now genuinely create something, something new and novel, a new atom, out of particles, right?? Okay, that didn't work, so let's reduce particles to quarks. Now we should be able to genuinely create something new, something novel, a new particle, out of these pre-existing quarks, right?? Okay, that didn't work, so let's reduce quarks to strings. Now we hopefully will be able to create something genuinely new, something novel, a new quark, out of these pre-existing strings, right?? Damn, that didn't work either --- but, wait, here comes the m-branes...*

I don't expect you to know the details of this process because its impossible to know everything these days, but let me straighten out this example.  

We can make ALL of the stuff you mentioned above.  Molecules are made out of atoms and we can put atoms together to make molecules.  As of yet, some have proven to complex, but we do not yet know all of the steps to put them together...

Atoms themselves, are made of sub-atomic particles.  Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons.  Electrons are particles unto themselves, while Protons and Neutrons are made up of other stuff - Quarks.  With a particle accelerator we can disassemble these particles and watch them reassemble.  

Strings take the place of supersymmetric particles.  This abstraction fits the equations better.  There is no creation taking place here because that is not the point.  The point is the taking apart process - which helps us understand the laws that put them together...which brings me back to the question I raised above.

*If I were you, I'd use more exact and relatable definitions, like biosphere or genome. Not "nature".*

Naw, this one works just fine for me.  Nature = The Universe.  What you object to is my claim that everything in the Universe obeys laws and that we can know these laws.

*You're philosophy is based on the proposition of negatives --- that there is no God, no mind, no soul, no emotion, nothing immaterial. You can't actually prove or test any of that (while I can disprove a negative), so its blind faith.*

That is not my philosophy.  I believe ALL of those things exist, except that I believe that they are constructs of our biology.  We created them.  God, Mind, Soul, Emotion, its all in your head...

**chuckles* I'll believe that as soon as you put the square root of -1 in front of my face. Until then, I must view it as a creation of the human mind that can influence the material world.*

Sure.  Quantum Tunnelling.

*I'm sorry, but I don't see at all how this analogy has anything to do with the discussion --- you didn't actually create anything new or novel. All you did was use pre-existing molecules (the shovel) to rearrange other pre-existing molecules (the sand) to make a pretty shape. Nothing "new" was created, unless you count your psychological countenance engaging in aesthetic pursuits...*

The castle is nothing but a code of synapses in my mind that was recreated with my appendages.  This code is contained in my neo-cortex in a specific region on the left side.  You see, we have been able to show the general vicinity of this thought.  In the future, we will be able to pinpoint it.  All we need is better technology.

*If we create was reduced to biology would it totally lose its meaning?*
*Yes, it does. And any artist would agree with me on that.*

Why?  Or is this just a value judgement that you have placed?

*In fact, according to your physicalist view of the universe, "meaning" does not exist. Therefore, nothing has meaning at all.*

Absolute meaning does not exist.  Meaning depends on my definition doesn't it?  (I can feel the flames of your response...be nice  :asian: )

*Possibly, but I fail to see what this has to do with the discussion. Art as "biology on canvas" is meaningless. That's certainly not why I write music.*

Value judgement?  Do you need god/spirit to make what you do meaningful?

*The scientific method, which is what science is, is nothing more than a means of acquiring information. Nothing more, nothing less. Your reductionistic assumptions are accretions that you have added to 'science' in an attempt to validate your personal philosophy.*

1.  Question - question is asked in the face of the unknown.
2.  Observation - A pool of data is examined regarding that question.
3.  Hypothesis - an educated guess is made regarding the question.
4.  Verification - an attempt is made to verify the guess.
5.  Theory - An explanation is formed after multiple verification attempts.
6.  Adaptation - New evidence is fitted into the theory or it is thrown out.

The scientific method is not as cut and dry as you make it sound.  Some phenomenon that we study are incredibly complex and it is impossible (as of yet) for us to recreate all the variables in the lab.  Therefore the jump from verification to explanation is going to be an assumption.  At bet scientists triangulate.  Gathering information is part of this process, but you have missed the point entirely if you think that reductionistic assumption plays no role at all in the scientific method.

All you've shown throughout is that there is a _relationship_ between biology and psychology (or, if you like, the biosphere and the noosphere). But you have done nothing to "prove" what that relationship is. 

First of all, you cannot prove anything with science.  Secondly, I have shown how what we do understand obeys laws.  My assumption is that what we don't understand also obeys laws.  My assumption is that we can know these laws.  If I did not have these assumptions, what would be the point of further research?

*Because you were trying to use natural selection as an explanation for the "why" that things are created and come about, and I'm simply pointing out that that is a wholly inadequate explanation. Bacterium are the most "adapted" and "fit" organism on the planet --- not humans. Yet, here we are.*

Bacteria are the most fit organism _for their niche_ which is not the whole planet.  A niche is like a pocket of energy that an organism can exploit, there are many niches on the planet and they are constantly changing.  Evolution happens in response to these changes.  Adaptive changes allow us to efficiently take/use energy.  Maladaptive changes destroy this ability.

*Natural selection, at best, explains why when certain adaptations are ALREADY in existence, that they outlast others. It tells us nothing about where, why, and how they came about in the first place.*

Nope, but other things do.  Free Radicals, cosmic rays, radio-active decay, all of these and more cause mutations in a DNA strand.  What determines the particular sequence these phenomenon effect?  Now that is a question...

Uh Randomness - how about that for a vagury?  I have no explanation for THAT.  This is where my argument fails.

*'External' has no meaning if there is not an 'internal'.*

I'll buy that.

*This might be a shock, but true compassion --- a postconventional, worldcentric vision is a distinctly human trait. And, by Darwinian natural selection standards, it is very "maladaptive". It is something of a biological anomaly. Yet, here we are.*

If you limit yourself to this solar system.  Which is one of 200,000,000,000 solar systems in a medium sized galaxy in a cluster with 400,000,000 galaxies of similar size...

*Not in biology. In biology, Social Darwinism is implicitly accepted (ex: the dodo bird died out because it wasn't "fit enough" for its environment). That's why biologists aren't the ones in psychology, sociology, and anthropology --- disciplines which have pretty much rejected Social Darwinism.*

Social Darwinism is a theory that says that White people are the best adapted among human races.  Social Darwinism is not Natural Selection.  You confuse the two.  

*Personally, I'm not going to buy into "alien intelligence" until somebody actually has some proof. These hypothetical situations are amusing and all, but don't actually tell us anything.  In any event, even if it did happen, it wouldn't do anything to the "speciality" of self-consciousness. Its still evolution.*

The assumption of other intelligent life is a part of this discussion because it shows that things like sentience/intelligence are not unique.  They evolve just like _anything _ else.  They follow laws just like _everthing _ else.  They are made of peices just like _everything _ else.  And they are _beholden _ to those peices just like everything else in the universe.

*Actually, from where I'm standing --- using the logic of your physicalist/pseudo-Freudian position, if a person goes out, screws up his environment, put has a very pleasing life with lots of kids, then he has "adapted" quite well.*

Then you don't understand biology very well.  If you mess up the environment and have more offspring then the carrying capacity of that environment, then you are reducing your ability to gather the energy you need for life.  You have behaved _maladaptively_.

*Its only with a detachment from the biosphere that we begin to understand that it should be preserved.*

Not so.  When you realize that you are an integral part of a system, then you work to keep that system healthy.  If you are not a part of that system, then you have no responsibility for what happens to that system.  This justification is replete in industrial religions because they needed a religious excuse for despoilation.

*If cut-throat capitalism, sexism, and racism ending up 'strengthening the species' or something like that, then they would be quite 'adaptive'. In fact, using your skewed adaptive vs maladaptive logic, every kid born with a genetically-inherited disease should be killed because it will "strengthen" our species' gene pool.*

First off, the gather of energy into large pools for use by a few weakens a population because those individuals and their actions make such a huge impact on that population.  Spreading the energy out deadens the impact of those actions.

Also, children who are born with genetic mutations are useful.  They provide variation to the gene pool and there may be something else that has been changed that is useful, but beyond a cursory inspection.

*That'd be nice, but that's not what you're proposing. You're proposing replacing the traditional religions with your new secular religion.*

Yes.  All religious practices reflect environmental observation and attempt to give us laws to live in said environment.  They are the attempts of the human brain to explain the unknown phenomena in our lives.  We now know more about the environment then we ever did before, yet we rely on systems of belief that are thousands of years old.  This is the source of the conflict between science and religion.

upnorthkyosa


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 2, 2004)

Tulisan said:
			
		

> Wow...Heretic. That was long!  :ultracool
> 
> I have to chime in and say that while being too lazy right now to formulate my own arguement, I agree with Robert and heretic on this one.



Why


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 2, 2004)

Now that I've had a moment for my mind to breath, I'm going to reduce what I said before and apply it with a broad brush on those who have participated so far...

1.  I think that people are making value judgements based off of their cultural positions regarding spirituality.  We are told that spirit is what makes us special.  Spirit is something that makes us us.  Does this apply to everything then?  Is it something that truly defines us - makes us more then the sum of our parts?  There are so many objects in this universe that we can take apart and put back together and they have the same structure and function.  If we took apart a human and put it back together in exactly the same way it was before we took it apart, is that person still alive?  Is that person still a person?

2.  The other part of this is meaning.  If something becomes beholden to its peices, does it lose meaning?  If something obeys the laws of the universe does this make it less?  If so, why?  Is it because something NEEDS to have this spiritual component in order to be special?  If, yes, then shouldn't everything have spirit?  If, yes, then does this spirit go away when something is assembled and disassembled?  If, no, then does spirit even matter?

upnorthkyosa


----------



## rmcrobertson (Jun 3, 2004)

Sorry, didn't use the word "spirit," even once. 

You are using the word, "biology," when you mean, "materialist."


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 3, 2004)

rmcrobertson said:
			
		

> Sorry, didn't use the word "spirit," even once.
> 
> You are using the word, "biology," when you mean, "materialist."



I know that you did not use the word spirit.  I think that it is implied is some of the resistance you have offered though.  I think that your assertion that we are more then our biology is powered by this concept.  

I agree with the second statement.


----------



## rmcrobertson (Jun 3, 2004)

For the sixth time: I take language, culture, history, etc., as a material, not an abstract, reality. 

So, stop saying, "biology," when that's not what you mean.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 7, 2004)

Yikes. These posts are startin' to get uber-long. Oh well, why stop now??   

In regards to upnorthkyosa:

*But this is the substance driving your arguments.*

Lies, I'm afraid. Not once in my critique of reductionism and physicalism did I ever mention Spirit or anything of the sort. I only brought it up because you asked what I believed as an alternative view. But, as before, this thread is not about my beliefs in Spirit or whatnot --- it is about your belief in biological reductionism.

Come now, man, your arguments are starting to border on silly desperation. Instead of defending your position with logic and evidence, you're _beginning_ to attempt to debunk your critic, me, by attacking my beliefs. This is basic "attack the messenger" tactics. Slippery, slippery slope.

The actual _substance_ driving my arguments is the absolute lack of evidence or logic to support reductionism, and your attempt to reduce science to scientism. Contrary to what you may think, I believe very strongly in _good_ science (not scientism). That has very little to do with my belief in Spirit (set aside that my position is that good science supports that belief, as well).

*Your belief in the spirit moves you to counter my arguments.*

Maybe. Maybe not. Its certainly not the basis of my critiques of your position (meaning, I did not refer to Spirit once in my criticisms of reductionism), and you really have no way of knowing really _what_ I believe or _what_ actually motivates me. Again, this is bordering on silly desperation.

*The difference is that your belief in the spirit has no trail. It has no arrows that point in that direction unless you count the vast pool of psuedoscience out there.*

No trail, huh?? Psueoscience??

*chuckles* Absolute poppycock. I really don't care to get into a defense of my belief in Nondualism here (as its rather off-topic), but suffice to say I have a fair amount of both scientific and logical proofs for my position. Much moreso than your untestable reductionism does.

*Reductionist view points, which make assumptions, are not bridging gaps that cannot ever be breached.*

Actually. Yes, they are. I know you like to think otherwise, but that is your own philosophical beliefs at work again. Your scientism attempting to destroy science.

You cannot prove God does not exist. You cannot prove mind does not exist. You cannot prove Spirit does not exist. You cannot prove emotions or souls do not exist. These are all untestable, not because of their immaterial bases, but because they are negative claims --- negative claims (of these sort, anyway) cannot be proven. Thus, they are untestable.

Given that any of your claims are true, science can find out all the kinks and chinks of the system --- figure all the material stuff out, maybe something even lower than m-branes. But that doesn't prove anything about God or Spirit or mind. At best, it proves that there is a relationship of some sort between the two --- which is not in doubt.

You are once again commiting the most elementary or mistakes in science --- collapsing causation and correlation. You have yet to demonstrate _why_ or even _how_ your claims for biologic causation are not simply examples of correlation.

*Instead of replacing the end of the chain with the spirit, I believe that ALL scientists look for new knowledge.*

New?? Really??

You might be suprised how "new" a lot of the ideas Western science discovered actually are --- principles of evolution were discussed among Hellenistic philosophers for centuries before the Common Era, and many of the notions of quantum mechanics have interesting parallels in Mahayana Buddhist scriptures.

*Question. What if scientists find that M-theory does a nice job in explaning the novelty of the universe? That is the proposition that is sitting out there right now.*

The same things were said about atomism and quantum physics, too. Its a proposition with absolutely no basis whatsoever for belief --- outside of blind faith, that is.

Its basically similar to the arguments like "What if it turns out that THIS century sees the Second Coming?? Wouldn't that be utterly stupendous and novel?!". And, of course, it never happens.

*God and the "spirit" have been removed from so many places in our lives by observation that this kind of like the last assault on the fortress.*

No, you claim they have been removed. But this does not make it so. In fact, you're really just using a lot of rhetoric and polemic from positivism, which was just as "blind faith"-y in the 1800's, too.

*Can you see the implications of something like this? Humans will have been able to explain the grandest novelty of them all...*

Yup. The grandiose narcissism is always the dead giveaway.   

You do realize that the entire basis of your arguments is that biology is the One True Discipline and all other arts and sciences are just jokes, right?? Do you have any idea how egotistically arrogant and inane all that is?? You're literally saying biologists know about the psyche than psychologists do, and know more about art than artists do --- its unbelievably conceited.

And its just the kind of thinking, and arguments, that clergyman used to rationalize religious fundamentalism for centuries, too. As well as rationalize their condemnation of every new scientific discovery we've come across, from heliocentrism to evolution to antibiotics to meteorology to the space program.

*All this says is that we didn't have all of the variables. NOTHING else.*

Apparently, we've never had all the variables for anything we've ever studied. What a rousing success we have here.

*But what if it can? What if the whole is not greater then its parts?*

And what if the moon is really made of cheese and we didn't figure it out until now??

'What ifs' are not the basis for a sound argument. They're the basis for desperation. You can argue for practically anything using 'what if'.

*Is anything else in the universe greater then its parts?*

Actually, everything in the universe is greater than its parts --- if we are referring to holons and not heaps/aggregates (if you'll pardon my use of Whiteheadian terminology).

*I can take apart every single peice of my automobile and put it back together and it will still work. *

Yet another poor analogy, since the automobile is an aggregate --- a collection of holons, and not an individual holon itself.

To put it another way, you can take apart all the molecules that make up the parts of your car and put them back altogether fine. But, you can't create those molecules from pre-existing atoms in the first place. Meaning, I couldn't try and create a car out of "just atoms" without recourse to creating molecules.

*Is it too great of an assumption to say that, with the corrected technology, I could disassemble my body to its constituent parts and put it back together and get myself? It seems as if you have multiple classes for objects in the universe. One for objects that are the sum of there parts and one for objects that aren't. My question to you is this...where do you draw the line? How do you make this deliniation? What is the criteria for this classification? *

I haven't drawn the line anywhere --- I am referring to objective and subjective levels of organization. Many of the "objects" you are referring to actually composed of MILLIONS of objects within a certain level of organization --- a rock, seen as a single "object", is basically just a collection of holons at a single level of organization (the molecular). A prokaryote, on the other hand, is but one holon at a higher level of organization --- and in no way can it be created with constituent molecules.

*This is where your argument will fail.  (unless I have totally turned what you said into hamburger...)*

With a side order of onion rings, to boot. 

* don't expect you to know the details of this process because its impossible to know everything these days, but let me straighten out this example. 

We can make ALL of the stuff you mentioned above. Molecules are made out of atoms and we can put atoms together to make molecules. As of yet, some have proven to complex, but we do not yet know all of the steps to put them together...*

Balderdash. No scientist has, to date, artificially created a new molecule from constituent, pre-existing atoms in any type of laboratory setting. There's a lot of hypothetical framework tossed around, but no novel molecules have been created.

We HAVE created molecules from other molecules, and atoms from other atoms --- but molecules from pre-existing atoms?? Nope, sorry.

*Atoms themselves, are made of sub-atomic particles. Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons. Electrons are particles unto themselves, while Protons and Neutrons are made up of other stuff - Quarks. With a particle accelerator we can disassemble these particles and watch them reassemble. *

That's not the creation of novelty. That's like cutting a piece of flesh from a salamander, and watching the cells divide and re-assemble. Its an already-occuring natural process that we have very little to do with.

I'm talking about taking some subatomic particles and using them to CREATE an atom. I'm not talking about taking an atom apart and putting it back together in a different shape --- I'm talking about CREATING something new, something novel.

*Strings take the place of supersymmetric particles. This abstraction fits the equations better. There is no creation taking place here because that is not the point. The point is the taking apart process [...]*

In other words.... you can't actually create quarks from strings. As I thought.

*Naw, this one works just fine for me. Nature = The Universe. *

You just changed definitions. Before, you were going by nature = the biosphere. Very interesting.

*What you object to is my claim that everything in the Universe obeys laws and that we can know these laws.*

No. What I object to is your contention that the universe is solely made up of valueless matter --- which is, frankly, an untestable and completely unscientific claim (since it directly contradicts every observation any human being has ever made).

*Sure. Quantum Tunnelling.*

Be sure and copy a picture of a quantum tunnel, taken with whatever instrument you need, so that we can all see the material existence of the square root of -1. 

This should be interesting.   

*The castle is nothing but a code of synapses in my mind that was recreated with my appendages. This code is contained in my neo-cortex in a specific region on the left side. You see, we have been able to show the general vicinity of this thought. In the future, we will be able to pinpoint it. All we need is better technology.*

More blind faith. I challenge you to _prove_ any of that.

*Why? Or is this just a value judgement that you have placed?*

You're joking, right?? You wouldn't actually consider something created as a result of biological instinctual drives to actually have 'meaning', would you?? 

That's like saying that when I murdered you last night because you were hitting on my 'mate' (as all significant others would be considered in your system), that it was a deeply meaningful and valued event.

A world of only matter is a world without meaning.

*Absolute meaning does not exist. Meaning depends on my definition doesn't it? (I can feel the flames of your response...be nice  )*

An arrogant and hypocritical stance, as it claims to exclude itself from its own criticism of others.

Translation: Meaning depends on your definition and is relative to the person, except for the position that claims this is so --- for it is the ultimate presentment of meaning.

More ego. Beh.

*Value judgement? Do you need god/spirit to make what you do meaningful?*

Who said anything about God or Spirit?? Sounds like more desperation to me...

No, you don't need God or Spirit to confer meaning, but you need more than matter. Meaning, last time I checked, was an immaterial concept and couldn't be plopped in front of a microscope and dissected.

In your world of matter-only, you certainly don't have any tribalistic gods of spirit-kings. You also don't have any morals, values, meaning, purpose, or love, since these are all subjective phenomena.

Congratulations. You are proposing a world not worth living in.

*1. Question - question is asked in the face of the unknown.
2. Observation - A pool of data is examined regarding that question.
3. Hypothesis - an educated guess is made regarding the question.
4. Verification - an attempt is made to verify the guess.
5. Theory - An explanation is formed after multiple verification attempts.
6. Adaptation - New evidence is fitted into the theory or it is thrown out.

The scientific method is not as cut and dry as you make it sound.*

Actually, yeah. It is.

We can break down all that stuff you typed out in 3 simple steps, following the model of Thomas Kuhn:

1) Exemplar: Also called injunction, paradigm, or practice. Basically, it means --- if you want to know this, then do this (i.e., if you want to see if Galileo was right, look through the telescope and observe/record for yourself).
2) Datum: Also called information or illumination. This is the data gathered from the injunction. Pretty straightforward.
3) Falsifiability: Others that have also performed the prescribed injunction may validate or invalidate the datum you gathered.

Things like hypotheses and theories are useful, but not required, for good science. Only practice, data, and testability are ultimately required.

Of course, I could add that things like 'scientific method', 'theory', and 'hypthesis' are all immaterial concepts and, according to your reductionism, don't have any valid reality. Very interesting, neh?

*Some phenomenon that we study are incredibly complex and it is impossible (as of yet) for us to recreate all the variables in the lab. Therefore the jump from verification to explanation is going to be an assumption. At bet scientists triangulate. Gathering information is part of this process, but you have missed the point entirely if you think that reductionistic assumption plays no role at all in the scientific method.*

*laughs* Delightful. You've collapsed concepts and definitions. Again.

The "reductionism" employed in the laboratory is _not_ the reductionism you've been arguing for. The reductionism used in the laboratory is an experimental procedure, and does not necessarily carry any proclamations about things like gods, spirits, and minds, and their supposed non-existence. The reductionism you've been arguing for is a philosophy that makes untestable, counter-intuitive, and anti-scientic claims.

At no point does the scientist necessarily assume the prokaryotic cell is _just_ a collection of molecules --- he does, through his procedure, assume the cell is composed of molecules. Which, frankly, is a straighforward observation. But, never, not once, would a good scientist assume that they are _just_ that. Because, once again, he couldn't test such a claim.

*First of all, you cannot prove anything with science. Secondly, I have shown how what we do understand obeys laws. My assumption is that what we don't understand also obeys laws. My assumption is that we can know these laws. If I did not have these assumptions, what would be the point of further research?*

Ummmm..... that's nice and all, but it has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I was talking about how you were collapsing causation and correlation, not whether everything follows "laws" or not.

*Bacteria are the most fit organism for their niche which is not the whole planet. A niche is like a pocket of energy that an organism can exploit, there are many niches on the planet and they are constantly changing. Evolution happens in response to these changes. Adaptive changes allow us to efficiently take/use energy. Maladaptive changes destroy this ability.*

Ummmm... that, again, is nice and all, but it has nothing to do with what I was talking about. The point still remains: bacterium, as any high school biology teacher will tell you, are the most well-adapted organism in existence. I didn't claim they could adapt to ANY environment, only they were the most well-adapted currently on earth. Thus making all subsequent organisms expressions of maladaptations. Thus also making your Neo-Darwinian model look pretty silly.

*Nope, but other things do. Free Radicals, cosmic rays, radio-active decay, all of these and more cause mutations in a DNA strand. What determines the particular sequence these phenomenon effect? Now that is a question...*

You've basically just agreed with my view that we don't know how novelty occurs, albeit in a roundabout fashion.

*Uh Randomness - how about that for a vagury? I have no explanation for THAT. This is where my argument fails.*

Ummmmm... ok.

*If you limit yourself to this solar system. Which is one of 200,000,000,000 solar systems in a medium sized galaxy in a cluster with 400,000,000 galaxies of similar size...*

Ok, and this has anything to do with my point (that compassion is "maladaptive" by Neo-Darwinian standards) how??

*Social Darwinism is a theory that says that White people are the best adapted among human races. *

*chuckles* Actually... no, its not. I suggest taking a few sociology classes.

Social Darwinism is the position that societies and cultures that are "less fit" will inevitably falter and collapse. It is a very natural and straightforward application of Darwinian biological theory, and is implicitly accepted in your model.

*The assumption of other intelligent life is a part of this discussion because it shows that things like sentience/intelligence are not unique. They evolve just like anything else. They follow laws just like everthing else. They are made of peices just like everything else. And they are beholden to those peices just like everything else in the universe.*

Did anyone here every say sentience is (or will be) unique to humanity?? Did anyone say sentience does not evolve (I, in fact, am actually aware of the particulars of this from developmental psychology)?? Did anyone say sentience does not follow laws (not necessarily the ones you're subscribing)?? Did anyone say they are not "built" upon earlier, more primitive foundations like matter does??

Sorry, bro, but I'm afraid you're projecting a lot to sustain these arguments.

*Then you don't understand biology very well. If you mess up the environment and have more offspring then the carrying capacity of that environment, then you are reducing your ability to gather the energy you need for life. You have behaved maladaptively.*

By that convoluted argument, any attempt to reproduce is a maladaptation --- since you are introducing new variables into the environment which will inevitably use up more resources and energy.

*Not so. When you realize that you are an integral part of a system, then you work to keep that system healthy. If you are not a part of that system, then you have no responsibility for what happens to that system. This justification is replete in industrial religions because they needed a religious excuse for despoilation.*

*shakes head* The point is you couldn't _observe_ that system in the first place unless you were somehow differentiated or detached from it, at least to some degree. This is basic, basic, basic psychology and shows up all the time in the developmental of children.

*First off, the gather of energy into large pools for use by a few weakens a population because those individuals and their actions make such a huge impact on that population. Spreading the energy out deadens the impact of those actions.*

And that has anything to do with children with genetic diseases being "maladaptive" to the species... _how_??

*Also, children who are born with genetic mutations are useful. They provide variation to the gene pool and there may be something else that has been changed that is useful, but beyond a cursory inspection.*

They also provide genetic diseases that will inevitably kill future generations or inhibit the collective "fitness" of the species. By your warped Neo-Darwinian model, we should then collectively exterminate them, since their lives obviously don't have any meaning in and of themselves --- since meaning itself cannot be reduced to anything material.

What a delightful philosophy.   

*Yes. All religious practices reflect environmental observation and attempt to give us laws to live in said environment. They are the attempts of the human brain to explain the unknown phenomena in our lives. We now know more about the environment then we ever did before, yet we rely on systems of belief that are thousands of years old. This is the source of the conflict between science and religion.*

Yup, just look at all those heated debates between scientists and Buddhists. *laughs*

Laterz.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 7, 2004)

And, regarding your second post:

*I think that people are making value judgements based off of their cultural positions regarding spirituality.*

Cultural?? Sorry, silly boy, but I was raised Baptist and I most certainly don't believe any of that now. Nor do I believe most of the philosophy that gets fed to me in various outlets of the popular culture. But, I can understand why you feel the need to propose such silly arguments to attack others that disagree with you.

*We are told that spirit is what makes us special.*

When you actually know what I meant when I said "Spirit", you would understand the utter idiocy of that statement.

*Spirit is something that makes us us. Does this apply to everything then?*

In my view, yes. It makes everything everything. Sorry if that upsets your criticism there.

*There are so many objects in this universe that we can take apart and put back together and they have the same structure and function.*

And since when did "the same structure and function" equate that object to the same thing?? Assembly lines make objects of virtually identical molecular structure and function. Does that make every roll of toilet paper the "same object"??

*If we took apart a human and put it back together in exactly the same way it was before we took it apart, is that person still alive? Is that person still a person?*

With that convoluted argument, there is no qualitative difference between a person and his/her clone --- because its the same biology, right??   

This is the major problem with this position, the underlying problem. It views human beings not as I's, but as its. And that, to many, is unacceptable.

*The other part of this is meaning. If something becomes beholden to its peices, does it lose meaning? If something obeys the laws of the universe does this make it less? If so, why? Is it because something NEEDS to have this spiritual component in order to be special? If, yes, then shouldn't everything have spirit? If, yes, then does this spirit go away when something is assembled and disassembled? If, no, then does spirit even matter?*

The problem, kyosa, is that "meaning" is an immaterial phenomena, very subjective in orientation. And, according to your system, it therefore does not exist.

And yes, as any good postmodern writer will tell you, "meaning" is conferred by Other. Matter has no meaning in and of itself unless something like mind or emotion or soul gives it a proper context to allow meaning.

Sorry, bucky, but no dice. Laterz.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 10, 2004)

Gawd. What a mouthful, neh?  :uhyeah: 

For those that don't feel like perusing through that list of quotes and retorts, here are some basic criticisms I have of this material reductionism:

1) Self-contradictory: This is one of the major criticisms, and it ends up applying to most forms of reductionism. Namely, the system claims for itself what it denies to all others. In this particular instance (upnorthkyosa's "biophysical reductionism"), it is claimed that all supposedly "non-physical" or subjective phenomena are, in fact, illusory/hallucinatory side-effects of biological processes. The problem, of course, is that the entire philosophy of reductionism is itself _a non-physical entity_ --- its an idea. Thus, by its very own standards, reductionism has no valid reality; it is a hallucinatory side-effect of dopamine or whatnot. The problem is further counfounded when things like hypotheses, theories, logic, mathematics, and the scientific method are seen as having "no validity" either, which is a natural consequence of the system --- since every single one of them is an immaterial, subjective tool or phenomena.

The point is, by its own criteria, reductionism itself has no validity, no reality. Its a self-contradicting system.

2) Anti-scientific: This is another major criticism. Reductionism claims to have science in its corner (even though, by its own standards, science doesn't really "exist" --- see Point 1), and yet, this seems untenable. All the scientific method really is is direct observation and validation taken to their logical finality. Since subjective "I"-ness is the most pervasive and perennial observation/datum that human beings have ever made, and since we observe all other phenomena _through_ our subjective selves, one can hardly claim to being scientific/empirical when denying all subjective phenomena.

3) Untestable: This kinda goes with Point 2. The entire basis for reductionism is the proposition of negative claims --- there is no God, there is no Spirit, there is no mind, there is no soul, there is no "I" (subject). The problem, of course, is that none of those claims can be tested, or proven. Absolutely no evidence can be provided to "disprove" the existence of mind. Thus, the entire foundation of this system is blind faith. Its essentially a religion --- scientism, not science.

4) Inexplicable: Another deep contestion of reductionism --- it just can't explain how stuff, well, happens. How did "something" come out of "nothing", as with the Big Bang?? How do strings create quarks?? How do quarks create protons?? How do protons create atoms?? How do atoms create molecules?? How did molecules create life, beginning with prokaryotic bacterium?? If natural selection is the name of the game, why have all subsequent life forms been less-adapted than prokaryotes?? How did self-reflexive, conscious organisms (i.e., us) come out of those that were not?? How exactly do things like love, pain, pleasure, hate, awareness, and memory really come from organic brains?? How do we really explain genuine novelty in the universe??

The reductionist has no satisfactory answer to any of these questions, other than the equally blind faith-y "we'll figure it out one day!!".

5) A Theory of Everything: This is probably the most annoying claim of all that the reductionist can make. Namely, that biology and/or physics will lead us to the Truth --- that if you want to know the mind, don't study psychology. Study biology. If you want to know what art "really is", don't learn to become an artist --- study biology. If you want to understand human culture, don't waste your time with anthropology and sociology. Study biology. 

The self-inflated, grandiose claims are the giveaway here. Its just another way of saying "no one else is right but me!!", and similar logic was used by fundamentalists to explain away the fossil record as "diabolical mimicry".

6) Counter-intuitive: The deepest, and most underlying, objection to reductionism is simple. It contradicts everything we experience of life. It denies qualia, apparently for no other reason than it can't dissect it under a microscope. It treats human beings, and all other organisms, not as subjects in and of themselves, not as I's. But as objective its. It denies the existence of any sort of meaning or value. 

This is not only counter-intuitive to what we experience out of life --- to many, it is also unfathomable and unacceptable.

Hope that cleans up my arguments some. Laterz.  :asian:


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 10, 2004)

Oh the joy of this discussion... This has been a lot of fun, thanks!

1.  Self-Contradictory - it is not self contradictory.  Reductionism does not present a denial of meaning.  Just because something is reduced to its parts and explained does not mean it has lost its _specialness_.  I think you are painting with a overbroad brush and including parts of other things into reductionism.  What does Robert say, oh yes, "Collapsing Catagories."

Here is a little tidbit I picked up in one of the books Robert suggested.  It takes 80 generations for behavioral evolution to become genetic.  Interesting.  So the things we learned 8000 years ago are now part of the genetic plan for our minds?  Wouldn't it follow then that mathematics, logic and other abstractions would also become part of that plan?  Therefore, it follows that if they can be incorporated in the genetic plans for our brains then they are biological in origin which means they can be reduced to their parts.

2.  Anti-Scientific - _All the scientific method really is is direct observation and validation taken to their logical finality_.  This is reductionism.  You take apart an object and find out how it works.  You make predictions based on what you are able to accomplish and then you wait and see if new discoveries fit those predictions.  I'm not seeing how this is _anti-science_.

3.  Untestable - Switch directions...the mind, the spirit, and God.  If they exist there must be evidence for their existance.  That is a scientific/reductionistic approach.  Saying that reductionism posits that none of the above exists is a mischaracterization.  I don't think any scientist would claim that the above doesn't _exist_ on some level at least.  The difference between science and religion is direction.  According to Hopper, science is deductive.  It goes from the evidence to the theory.  Religion is inductive, moving from theory to the evidence.  You have not shown here how reductionism is scientism.

4.  Inexplicable - _Another deep contestion of reductionism --- it just can't explain how stuff, well, happens. How did "something" come out of "nothing", as with the Big Bang?? _ There are plenty of theories that explain this.  M-theory for one.  The evidence is mounting that this is correct.  _How do strings create quarks?? _ Strings don't create quarks.  They create supersymmetric particles. _How do quarks create protons?? _ We can make protons in the lab and this process is well documented. _How do protons create atoms?? _ Again, this is something we can do in the lab.  Recently a quark/gluon plasma has been prepared and protons condensed from this. _How do atoms create molecules??_ Seriously, are you kidding.  Have you taken a chemistry class?  _How did molecules create life, beginning with prokaryotic bacterium??_ Bubble Theory - the cyclic intergral assemblage of organic molecules. _If natural selection is the name of the game, why have all subsequent life forms been less-adapted than prokaryotes??_ Because they are not less adapted.  They have adapted to take energy in new or more complex ways. _How did self-reflexive, conscious organisms (i.e., us) come out of those that were not??_ Are you assuming that other organisms are not concious to a certain extent?  Perhaps it would help to think of different concious levels and then correllate this to frontal lobe size. _How exactly do things like love, pain, pleasure, hate, awareness, and memory really come from organic brains?? _ They are chemicals whizzing in the synapses.  There is an entire industry that focuses on creating these chemicals in induce these effects.  The drug manufactuers have been successful with some, not all.  My question to you, if we can create one, why not all?  Or is there some special line that divides the special things from the things that we can create?  _How do we really explain genuine novelty in the universe??_ Good Question.

So you see, nearly your entire list is perfectly explanable and backed up with observational data.  Why do you keep insisting that it is not?

5.  Theory of Everything - Take a good look at reality my friend.  Biology is behind all of those things you mentioned.  And I do think that people should study biology to better learn about those things.  Not exclusively, but they should at least know how their biology shaped the things they study.  I sense a lot of protectivism here.  I sense that you like things compartmentalized and separate...that is not how the world works, though.  Its all interconnected.  Everything that we do comes from our biology - it starts with our biology.  This does not mean that can become a great artist by studying biology only though.  Biology will not teach me how to paint or do martial arts, but it will deepen my understanding of that art.  It will make my art better because I understand how my body makes it happen.

6.  Counter-intuitive - reductionism does not destroy meaning.  Just because I can take apart my car and put it back together does not make it less important to me.  Like-wise with a human, if I were able to take apart a human and put it together and preserve its life, does not make it less then what it is.  Perhaps you need to redefine your definition of meaning.  In my opinion meaning is about the connections, its about the impact, its about the place something fits in our lives.  Reductionism does nothing to this definition.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 15, 2004)

*Oh the joy of this discussion... This has been a lot of fun, thanks!*

No problemo. 

Now, on to the discussion...

*1. Self-Contradictory:

a) It is not self contradictory.* Actually, yes it is. I also noticed this was one particular critique you did not bother to really address (as everything else you addressed in Point 1 are things I actually discussed in later points). Let's just re-evaluate this for a second...

Your physicalism (I'm going to try and avoid using the label 'reductionism' as you seem to have a tendency to collapse philosophical reductionism with the 'reductionistic' methodology used in the laboratory) claims that all subjective phenomena (such as feelings, awareness, mind, experience, qualia, and so on) have no valid, substantive reality in and of themselves; that they are all the products or side-effects of biophysical processes. Meaning, that the subject (I) doesn't really exist; only the object (it). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The self-contradictory part of this is that physicalism _itself_ is a subjective phenomena --- it is a point-of-view, a theory, a philosophy, a way of looking at the world. Thus, by the very criteria that physicalism itself sets up, physicalism itself does not have any valid reality or claim to truth. To put it more succinctly ---- _according to physicalism itself, physicalism is just a side-effect of biophysical processes in the brain_. Now, can someone please explain to me how that is _not_ self-contradictory??

This is similar to the "privileged position" that Robert made reference to in another thread. Namely, physicalism makes certain judgments about all philosophical/subjective points-of-view (that they are all "biology-in-disguise"), but then assumes a position of privilege whereby this criteria is magically _not_ applied to itself. To put it in a sentence --- "All subjective viewpoints are merely side-effects of biological processes in the brain, EXCEPT for the subjective viewpoint that says this is so. For it is clearly the Truth, independent of the constraints of human biology." Again, how is this _not_ self-contradictory??

*b) Reductionism does not present a denial of meaning.* Actually, yes it does. Last time I checked, "meaning" is not a biophysical object I can plop in front of a microscope. Thus, according to the criteria of physicalism itself, meaning does not and cannot exist. Its just neurons dancing about.

*c) Just because something is reduced to its parts and explained does not mean it has lost its specialness.* Sorry, but no. Going by that argument, I could murder your son, clone him the next day, artificially implant him with all the same memories, and he would be the "same person".

Unless, of course, there are "parts" to the individual that the hard sciences are having trouble picking up on --- which is really the crux of the objection here. It is not that you are reducing the individual entity to explainable "parts" (which, frankly, most philosophies do), but that you are denying the existence, or validity, of some of these "parts" in the first place (mind, awareness, subjectivity, qualia, etc.).

I have no problem with "reducing" the individual to an explainable subjective "part" and an explainable objective "part". I do have a problem when the physicalist claims that only the objective "part" is real.

*d) It takes 80 generations for behavioral evolution to become genetic. Interesting.* Yes, very. But its also a claim that would require evidence to be taken seriously, although I don't doubt its at least a likely possibility. 

*e) So the things we learned 8000 years ago are now part of the genetic plan for our minds? Wouldn't it follow then that mathematics, logic and other abstractions would also become part of that plan?* Nope. I'm afraid you're collapsing categories again. Don't think that just because the word "evolution" is used, that it exclusively refers to biophysical changes --- psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists all utilize evolutionary principles, as well. Quite often, I might add.

In any event, nowhere in any gene (I'm going to assume this is what you meant by "genetic") have we found anything even remotely resembling qualia --- no emotion, no thoughts, no memories, no experience, nothing of the sort. Now, we may have discovered the objective correlate that grounds those subjective qualia --- but that is a far cry from objectively discovering those qualia in and of themselves.

Also, unlike biophysical evolution, not all subjective lines of evolution have reached the same point in all humans. Every human being has a complex neocortex and all the parts we associate with the higher brain. Not all humans, however, fully engage in rational thought or the like (Piaget's formal-operational stage). Thus, there is clearly a correlation between the organic brain and subjective consciousness ---- but one cannot be reduced to the other, as not everyone with a human brain has subjectivey realized the same qualia.

As Robert pointed out before, the human brain has been fundamentally unchanged (more or less) for the better part of 10,000 years. There have been some changes, of course, but nothing that would quantify an actual evolutionary adaptation (comparable to, say, the development of a complex neocortex among humans some millenia ago --- as opposed to a few more neuronal pathways and connections). Yet, virtually everything else about us --- our cultural values/worldviews, our levels of cognition, our technology, and even our socioeconomic modes of production --- has evolved substantially in that time. But, still, our brains are pretty much the same now as they were 6,000 years ago. Clearly, there is more to mind and subjectivity that neuronal tissue.

*2. Anti-Scientific:

a) This is reductionism. You take apart an object and find out how it works. You make predictions based on what you are able to accomplish and then you wait and see if new discoveries fit those predictions.* Bah, collapsing categories again. This is why I stopped using 'reductionism' in place of 'physicalism'. You are collapsing philosophical reductionism/materialism with the reductionistic methodology used in the laboratory. They are not the same. The laboratory 'reductionist' does not assume that an object has no subjective qualia, as the physicalist does. Nor does the laboratory 'reductionist' collapse correlation and causation, as the physicalist does.

*b) I'm not seeing how this is anti-science.* Laboratory reductionism/discrimination is not, but your physicalism is. As to how, its quite simple: physicalism denies the validity and reality of the most pervasive, perennial, univerally-observed human experience there is --- your own awareness. Denying empirical observations is the epitome of anti-science. On top of this, we don't even observe those phenomena you think really are valid (neurons, synpases, neurotransmitters, etc) except _through_ our own subjective filters. Thus, its rather disengenous to claim that subjectivity is "not really real" based solely on observations made _through_ that subjectivity.

It could also be mentioned that the entire philosophy itself pretty much smacks the scientific method right in the face. Read some of Thomas Kuhn's work concerning the use of scientific "paragidms", and how all scientific injunctions are sociocultural practices (i.e., it is intimately connected with subjective and intersubjective values and perceptions of its environment). I also refer you to the "myth of the given", which you've pretty much been buying into this whole time. There's a reason its called a myth --- namely, its the idea that the objective world exists pristinely "out there" for us to perceive directly, without filtration, as opposed to being intimately influenced and shaped by our subjective perceptions (and vice-versa).

Both extreme objectivism and extreme subjectivism are dead ends.

*3. Untestable: 

a) Switch directions...the mind, the spirit, and God. If they exist there must be evidence for their existance. That is a scientific/reductionistic approach.* Ummm.... that's nice and all, but its not really the point. The point is that physicalism bases its philosophy on the proposition of negatives, claims which can never be tested. We aren't talking about the validity of interactionism, theism, idealism, or what-not --- we're talking about the validity of physicalism; you don't prove your position by attacking the competition. "Switching directions", as you put it, is a diversionary tactic that tries to hide this fact. The simple, raw truth is that the physicalist makes claims he cannot back up --- the burden of proof is on him, not his critics.

To put it succinctly --- if you're going to pass physicalism off as a valid philosophy, then you need to prove that mind actually does not exist. Its not up to me, the critic, to prove that mind does really exist, because the burden of proof is not mine. This the physicalist cannot do.

And also, as a side note, we have just as much "evidence" for the existence of mind as we do for the existence of matter (if not more). We directly experience both, as well as their interactions. You can't say one is "disproven" without invalidating the other.

*b) Saying that reductionism posits that none of the above exists is a mischaracterization. I don't think any scientist would claim that the above doesn't exist on some level at least.* Okay --- so, now you're saying that mind, subjectivity, and qualia really _do_ exist, and have subsantive reality (thus invalidating physicalism/materialism)?? You need to make up your mind here, as you seem to be hopping around all over the place here.

*c) The difference between science and religion is direction. According to Hopper, science is deductive. It goes from the evidence to the theory. Religion is inductive, moving from theory to the evidence. You have not shown here how reductionism is scientism.* Probably because you haven't been talking about philosophical reductionism, as opposed to reductionist methodology. Please stop collapsing concepts here, or we'll be going around in circles forever.

And, also, scientism itself seems to be quite "religious", based on the above criteria.

*4. Inexplicable:

a) Chemistry lesson:* I'm not really going to press this point, as it really isn't that fundamental of a critique. However, the point I was trying to make is that physicalism is utterly incapable of explaining genuine novelty in the universe --- a very severe handicap. This you seemed to have agreed with me on, with your remark of "good question".

*b)Are you assuming that other organisms are not concious to a certain extent? Perhaps it would help to think of different concious levels and then correllate this to frontal lobe size.* Nope, never said other organisms are not conscious --- I believe every object is also a subject, and just as there are levels of objective complexity there are correlative levels of subjective complexity. Thus, you seem to be here agreeing with interactionism, not physicalism.

Although, personally, I would not correlate consciousness levels with frontal lobe size. There are rather specific subjective holons that are correlated with rather specific objective holons. For example: the objective limbic system is correlated with the subjective emotion, the objective simple neocortex is correlated with the subjective concept, and higher, objective structures that are more difficult to exactly pin down are correlated with higher subjective functions like preop, conop, formop, postformal, and so on.

*c) How exactly do things like love, pain, pleasure, hate, awareness, and memory really come from organic brains?? They are chemicals whizzing in the synapses.* Prove it. Prove that those chemical changes are actually causative, as opposed to being merely correlative. Prove that we are not collapsing concepts here.

*5. Theory of Everything: 

a) Take a good look at reality my friend. Biology is behind all of those things you mentioned.* True enough, but there is a _world_ of difference between biology being "behind" subjectivity or "underlining" subjectivity or "influencing" subjectivity --- as opposed to subjectivity being nothing _but_ biology, which is what physicalism claims. Once again, I suggest you actually concretize your position on the matter, as you seem to be hopping all about again.

I suggest you yourself take a good look at reality, my friend. How can objective phenomena be understood without their relation to subjective phenomena?? "Up" and "down" have no meaning, no coherence, without the other. How can we even observe objective phenomena independently of subjective phenomena?? We all see the world through our own personal filters, after all. And relativity theory, as well as postmodern structuralism, seems to be testament of this.

Again, extreme objectivism (with its silly and hypocritical "myth of the given") is just as much a dead end as extreme subjectivism (with its silly and hypocritical "relativism"). Both are merely partial truths.

*b) I sense a lot of protectivism here.* Nah, sorry. What you may sense is a lot of sanity here.

C'mon, now. The entire notion that any one science or discipline has some kind of exclusive, supreme angle on the Truth is inane and ridiculous. What would you think if artists started telling biologists what their studies were "really about"?? Or anthropologists saying how all science is "culturally relative"?? Or psychologists going around with silly things about the cognitive and subjective underpinnings of biology --- to the point that they reduced all hard science to nothing _but_ cognitive disaffections??

Its a dead end both ways. 

*c) I sense that you like things compartmentalized and separate...that is not how the world works, though. Its all interconnected. Everything that we do comes from our biology - it starts with our biology.* Well, then you sense wrong. The underlying problem here, kyosa, is that you have a tendency to collapse concepts again --- saying subjective phenomena and objective phenomena are related, or connected, is _not_ the same thing as saying all subjective phenomena are "just" objective stuff gone awry. I agree with former, not the latter.

I would actually refer you to the Four Quadrant model of Ken Wilber. It is very useful, in my opinion, of demonstrating the correlation of various subjective and objective spheres (while not making the mistake of attempting to reduce one to the other). 

*6. Counter-intuitive:

a) Reductionism does not destroy meaning.* Yes, physicalism "destroys" meaning. Meaning is a subjective, internal phenomena. Thus, according to the criteria of philosophical reductionism, materialism, scientism, and physicalism (different words for the same thing, really), it has no valid or substantive reality. It is, at best, a surivival gimmick or a hallucination (similar to "God").

*b) Just because I can take apart my car and put it back together does not make it less important to me. Like-wise with a human, if I were able to take apart a human and put it together and preserve its life, does not make it less then what it is.* Oh, then you'll have no problem if kill your son, clone him, and speed up his growth to the point where he was when he died. After all, that's "all" he is, right??  

*c) Perhaps you need to redefine your definition of meaning. In my opinion meaning is about the connections, its about the impact, its about the place something fits in our lives. Reductionism does nothing to this definition.* Sorry, but it does. You have a rather intricate and complicated definition there, but its still subjective values and phenomena, all the same. And, according to philosophical reductionism, that's all just frisky neurons going off in your brain --- with no actual cognitive validity itself.

On a final note, upnorthkyosa, I suggest you stop collapsing categories and actually explicitly put forth your position on the relation of subjectivity and objectivity. Biology "influencing" mind, and biology "being" mind are not the same thing. Nor are reductionistic materialism (a philosophy) and reducionistic empirical method (a scientific tool) the same thing. Nor, yet again, are causation and correlation the same thing.

Part of the problem here is that you're dancing all over the place, with no really coherent or stabilizing position. This makes the discussion a bit difficult to progress.

See you soon. Laterz.  :asian:


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 15, 2004)

Wow.

I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty of the back and forth that has been developing in this thread - rather, I would like to contribute my perspective as a longtime student of studying animal behavior, evolution, and development.  

Although we as people seem to LOVE dichotomies, and swoon over them, virtually all scientists agree that the "nature-nurture" debate is ridiculous.  You cannot have one without the other.  This is tangentially related to the initial post here.  Our "nature" (or biology) cannot be disentangled from our "nurture" (culture, and more specific individual development).  Furthermore, discussing one without the other is meaningless.

To get to what I think is the kernel of the question, "Can humans rise above what one might consider their 'basic drives' or 'instincts'?"  Yes, there are plenty of examples of that every day.  There are also plenty of examples, however, of nonhuman animals doing the same thing.  I'm not saying you will easily observe (or observe at all) a bullfrog demonstrating that he will not out-sing a rival male for some other reason.  He will go sing (croak) his little heart out.  But in other species, particularly social species, individuals must often manoeuver around conspecifics in order to maintain the social order, not get whomped, etc.  Why do submissive wolves wait for the alpha pair to finish eating at a kill?  I'm sure they are hungry, but they understand that they must wait.  However, when a subordinate is ready to make the move and challenge the alpha, he or she will.  

As an interesting book directly related to this topic, I certainly recommend Frans de Waal's "The Ape and the Sushi Master", where Dr. de Waal addresses the issue of "biology versus culture", and how for humans (and other species), the two are intertwined.  Our biology reflects and supports our social and cultural "nature", so to speak.  

And please don't get me started on Evolutionary Psychology, 90% of the field is scientific b***s**t.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 15, 2004)

Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> And please don't get me started on Evolutionary Psychology, 90% of the field is scientific b***s**t.



Please Elaborate...this could be an interesting point/counter point to this discussion.  :asian:


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 16, 2004)

heretic888 said:
			
		

> On a final note, upnorthkyosa, I suggest you stop collapsing categories and actually explicitly put forth your position on the relation of subjectivity and objectivity. Biology "influencing" mind, and biology "being" mind are not the same thing. Nor are reductionistic materialism (a philosophy) and reducionistic empirical method (a scientific tool) the same thing. Nor, yet again, are causation and correlation the same thing.
> 
> Part of the problem here is that you're dancing all over the place, with no really coherent or stabilizing position. This makes the discussion a bit difficult to progress.



I'll grant that I may be jumping over lots of fields here and I may not have presented a point of view that is easily catagorized.  Consider this, though, I attempt to think out of the box, which doesn't always work and I find myself in a box that others have already made, but sometimes I actually do make it out.  Maybe that is the case.  Anyway...I'm okay with being confused.  It means that my mind is not static and that, at the very least, I am thinking.

Lets see if I can do this without contradicting myself...

Subjectivity is the property of the objective from the point of view outside of the objective.  Every object can also be a subject.  I'm not seeing the connection where this affects my assertion that the mind is biologic and nothing more.  So, I'll just charge ahead, its just what I do...  

I see the mind as in incredibly complex peice of machinery operating in ways that we just don't have the technology to understand.  Does this mean that we will come to the brink of the unknowable?  I would wager that it doesn't.  In fact, the signs are pointing in the direction that we can know how the mind works.  As our knowledge base grows, we are able to pinpoint more and more about the workings of the brain.  And if we know how the peices work, doesn't that amputate the MORE part of the mind?

One of the biggest problems I can see with your arguments is that you are drawing lines between what we can know and what we can't know.  You claim that the knowledge on one side of the line, is MORE somehow then its parts.  This, like I said before, is very reminiscent of the God of the Gaps argument in which theologens argue that God exists the spaces that are unknown.  I think this is a trap Heretic888.  You're going to go through life and see the unknown world shrink and that MORE that you defend, will become less and less.  The simple fact remains that we are figuring out how the universe works.  We are discovering the laws for the parts that make us who we are.  Your personality, your creativity, the things you do on a regular basis are recorded in the whirring of these parts.  

I'll grant that the originality of those arrangements is not something that we are even close to unraveling and may not ever.  The seemingly random connections that make us different might not be so random - which is one of my justifications for spiritual practice.  If there ever was a MORE, I would say that it lies here.  As a counterpoint, though, I just want to point out the fact that not even a vacuum is empty.  Scientists have observed particles that apparent "pop" into existance and "pop" back into non-existance seemingly violating the laws of conservation.  There just is a lot that we don't know because our minds and technology is so primitive when compared to the complexity of the universe, so you'll just have to excuse my gross assumption.  Seeing something popping out of nothing sure sounds like observing originality occuring.  The ramifications of this are absolutely staggering...

Again, thanks for the discussion  :asian: 

upnorthkyosa


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 16, 2004)

> Your personality, your creativity, the things you do on a regular basis are recorded in the whirring of these parts.


Nope nope nope.  "recorded", as in once you do something, it's likely to be in your muscle memory or in your cognitive memory, OK.  But "recorded" in "it's located in your parts before it happens, and you can see it if you just look for it", no.   In more and more fields, the *emergent* properties of systems are being noticed, and research is focusing on those aspects.  Something really can be more than the sum of its parts, quite literally.  An ant colony can function in ways that appear to be very cognizant, yet each "part" is doing a simple task, following basic rules of behavior.  

What would you like to talk about in terms of Evolutionary Psychology, upnorthkyosa?  It is extemely difficult to do solid Ev. Psych. research.  Most of the field is riddled with "Just So Stories" and reifications of perceived traits in modern humans.  

Example:  a study purports to examine aggression in humans.  This study specifically examines, say, schoolground behavior in children.  (I'll stay away from the example most guys will give - men fighting over the right to "court" (ha ha) a woman)  The researchers observe children and record how many times boys come into physical contact in aggressive ways, compared to girls (regardless of the target of their aggression).  The researchers gather their data, and conclude: boys are more physically aggressive than girls.  THEREFORE, young males are getting ready to physically compete with one another for females (as they get closer to breeding age), and this is a trait which, of course, has been selected for.

Aside from the fact that such an interpretation is flawed (what other kinds of aggression do kids display aside from gross pushing and shoving?  Do some kids actually beat each other up away from the playground, when researchers are not watching them?  Does it count if two sisters, or a sister and brother fight a lot at home?)  (it is over-generalized)....  Most Ev. Psychologists are adaptationists to the extreme.  Meaning, *everything* about us *must* be an adaptation.

That is ridiculous, frankly.  There are adaptations.  There are exaptations.  There are traits that we may simply have because they have not been selected *against* yet.  Just because a person does something - for instance, a serial killer knocking off victims, or a nun taking care of homeless people - does not mean that it is adaptive, or an adaptation.  The error of most of Evolutionary psychology is in assuming a trait, or something that likewise must be operationally defined in a complex manner, is an adaptation. 

It is difficult to marshall one's evidence to demonstrate that something *is* an adaptation.  But it's an important, important step.  Otherwise people are just telling (often poorly researched, often overgeneralized) Just So Stories.  And that's not science.  

But it is a pet peeve of mine, can you tell?  

:ninja: Arrr!  Science ninja!  (lol)

I'd be happy to find the title of a book one of my former professors should be publishing, if it's not already out.  It's an excellent example of what well-done evolutionary psychology should be, and critiques crappy ev. psych in it.  And everyone will run out and read it, of course - the topic is the evolution of female orgasm.  LOTS of people have come up with all sorts of stories for "why" human women can orgasm.  Almost all of them are ...really, quite strange.  And don't hold up to examination.


----------



## hardheadjarhead (Jun 16, 2004)

Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> I'd be happy to find the title of a book one of my former professors should be publishing, if it's not already out.  It's an excellent example of what well-done evolutionary psychology should be, and critiques crappy ev. psych in it.  And everyone will run out and read it, of course - the topic is the evolution of female orgasm.  LOTS of people have come up with all sorts of stories for "why" human women can orgasm.  Almost all of them are ...really, quite strange.  And don't hold up to examination.





Is this really that important, Feisty Mouse?  I'd rather see a study designed to explain why they FAKE it.

Not that this has ever been an issue with me, of course.  

Really.  I swear.


Regards,


Steve


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 16, 2004)

The problem, again, with the above argument is this drawing of lines between what we can know and cannot know.  Like I said before, this is going to end up being a trap.  Where do you put this line?  And when the line is crossed, where do you redraw it?  And when that line is crossed again...see where this is going.  The gap gets smaller and God shrinks by infantesimal amounts until God is contained in only smallest of peices...and then none at all.

I know you didn't bring God into the picture and we don't need to talk about him at all in this context.  I am talking about the _God of the Gaps_ argument though.  The special, the more, the unknown gets smaller everyday and our world gets larger and larger as we are able to explain more and more things.  I think of the things that we do now and wonder what a person 1000 years ago would think.  For instance, if I said that I could detect the fires of creation with a ruby, some lightning, and a bit of loadstone and then proceeded to do so, it would be taken as deep necromancy.  With that being said, what will the technology be like 1000 years in the future?  10,000 years?  We can only imagine because it is, at most, conjecture.  

Yet, I feel like we are babies in the universe.  Our species is barely grasping out at the grossest of objects and we are realizing that this thing is gravid with complexity.  I think the next scientific revolution with be an acknowledgement in how much we don't know.

Now, to specifically address some of your points.  Ants.  Eurosociality is an interaction between organisms in a population where the self is completely supplanted by the whole.  Some scientists have looked at this whole and have said that it is _more _ then its parts.  I think the evidence is showing otherwise.  For instance, any ant can become any other type of ant in the colony just by infusing them with the right chemicals.  When a queen dies, a new queen can be made.  The same can be said of any other type of ant in the colony except the drones.  Those are males and their maleness is determined by genetics that we understand.  They certainly do not qualify as something _more_, especially when the ants eat them during hard times...My point is this, there is a genetic map of every unit in every eurosocial organism and they know the whole because of this.

I agree that a lot of evolutionary psychology is a bit hokey.  So are a lot of other types of psychology - Jungian for instance...In the end, I think evolutionary psychology is a revolutionary way of looking at the mind.  It takes the magic and mysticism that plagues the field away and it puts it lays down the workings of the mind in terms that everyone can see and experiment upon.  Some of the best research that I have read has come from the fields of Behavioral Evolution and Neuroscience.  In my opinion, the mind is one of those things that we can see working and can interact with various observational instruments, but we just do not have the framework yet to even describe its organizational structure.  When millions neurons discharge to type this sentance, you realize that the level of complexity is just too far beyond our grasp.  Yet we can stop the thought from propagating by stopping that discharge, interupting those moving parts.

As far as the female orgasm goes, I've read that the contractions of the pelvic muscles and the arching of the back, dip the cervix of the uterus into a pool of semen.  The pleasurable sensations and the release of dopamine in the brain is said to be an evolutionary incentive for a woman to copulate.  The difficulty in acheving orgasm is said to be a selective mechanism, where only the most fit males can bring about the phenomenon during copulation.  It is assumed, that this helps the woman acheive conception.  This phycical process has been observed on camera with the tilting of the uterus actually dipping into the pooled semen.  Of course, this would only work if the woman were copulating in a position where she were lying on her back...

Anyway, the point is that even the Mystery of Mysteries can be explained by science.  What I want to know, is where the heck do they study this stuff and does the government pay for it?   :asian: 

upnorthkyosa


----------



## hardheadjarhead (Jun 17, 2004)

Upnorth, that sounds a tad weak to me.  Very few women achieve orgasm during coitus.  Women have been getting pregnant without orgasm for centuries.

Feisty Mouse might disagree with this (I can't WAIT to hear what she has to say in this regard) but I'd be more inclined to think that the pertinent nerve endings influencing orgasm, like much of the female genitalia, correspond with a man's.  The labia/scrotum, clitoris/penis, prostate/g-spot, etc.  We are all phenotypically female at some stage of our development as embryos.  Women do not go through those final stages of development that we men do...but they have that cursory structure that could have developed into male genitalia had something gone awry.  I believe this is how hermaphoditism occurs.

Your theory also doesn't explain why women achieve orgasm within seconds of meeting me.  This happens with about 20% of the women I encounter, and the others simply get breathless and flustered.  

It happened in church once, to everyone's embarrassment.  People played it off by pretending the woman was a Pentecostal having one of those ecstatic moments wherein they commune with The Spirit via zenoglossia and speak in tongues.

Given that it was a Greek Orthodox church, this didn't convince many.


Regards,


Steve


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 17, 2004)

> As far as the female orgasm goes, I've read that the contractions of the pelvic muscles and the arching of the back, dip the cervix of the uterus into a pool of semen. The pleasurable sensations and the release of dopamine in the brain is said to be an evolutionary incentive for a woman to copulate. The difficulty in acheving orgasm is said to be a selective mechanism, where only the most fit males can bring about the phenomenon during copulation. It is assumed, that this helps the woman acheive conception. This phycical process has been observed on camera with the tilting of the uterus actually dipping into the pooled semen. Of course, this would only work if the woman were copulating in a position where she were lying on her back...


Debunked.  Not the case.  *Not true.*  Most women a) do not orgasm from vaginal stimulation or vagainal stimulation alone b) the contractions of the uterus actually push matter (semen, whatever) OUT of the uterus and vagianl canal  c) some women simply do not orgasm, regardless of the man they are with (wow, that's quite a male ego behind that statement - "the most fit males bring about (orgasm)", and it hasn't been shown at all) d) after copulation, most human females (and nonhuman female primates who physiologically can orgasm) do not lie on their backs after coitus but instead immediately get up and walk around.  

Guess why women can possibly orgasm?  Because we have to have the same biological, embryological basis that men do, and men need to orgasm to procreate.  The clitoris (which is where the majority of women need to be stimulated to acheive orgasm) is the direct homologue of the penis.  We have the wiring because men have the wiring, and we all start out the same in utero.

Good job, HHJH!!!   



> For instance, any ant can become any other type of ant in the colony just by infusing them with the right chemicals. When a queen dies, a new queen can be made. The same can be said of any other type of ant in the colony except the drones. Those are males and their maleness is determined by genetics that we understand. They certainly do not qualify as something _more_, especially when the ants eat them during hard times...My point is this, there is a genetic map of every unit in every eurosocial organism and they know the whole because of this.


You are missing the point I am trying to make. Just because we can explain a particular ant's chemical signalling or genetics, does not mean we can, from that, explain how a colony will respond in complex ways when, say, under attack from another colony, a predator, or in navigating through a forest.  We understand individual ants, yes.  But the group behavior "is not the sum of its parts"!  Complex and sometimes unexpected behaviors happen that cannot be predicted from our understanding of each ant's individual rules of behavior.  

I am not trying to get into the "god of gaps" argument or draw a line in the sand about what we can and cannot know.  I think that the more we know, the less we know we know.  I think we *can* find out amazing things about the world.  But I would like to do it through rigorous science, not through crap like most of Evolutionary Psychology.  It's not science.  Adaptationist stories are not science, and their popularity makes it harder for people doing good science to get their results out, because the Just So Stories sound so...easy!  So nice!  Of course women orgasm!  They are more fertile this way!  Wrong.  Women who may never orgasm in their lives during, after, or before vaginal intercourse can still have 10 children and 100 grandchildren.  




> In the end, I think evolutionary psychology is a revolutionary way of looking at the mind. It takes the magic and mysticism that plagues the field away and it puts it lays down the workings of the mind in terms that everyone can see and experiment upon.


I'm going to have to disagree with you there.  Unless you are referring to old-school clinical (Jungian, Freudian) psychoanalysis, Psychology is amazingly pretty magic and mysticism free, when done by actual scientists and not quacks.  Tell me how an evolutionary psychologist can run an experiment, by the way.  Tell me how we can do a controlled, experimental manipulation which addresses the evolution of psychological traits, that doesn't fall into the adaptionist/Just So Stories trap, and that is a good experiment or series of experiments.  

Most of the field of Psychology is moving towards cognitive psych, neuroscience, and development.  But even with amazing discoveries being made, we still are realizing how complex things are.  In part, I will continue to argue, it is because we are realizing how much of human development is not preprogrammed, but changes in each individual based on the very local environment.  



> Anyway, the point is that even the Mystery of Mysteries can be explained by science.


I'm sorry, I don't get that.  And most reputable scientists will stay away from trying to prove or disprove someone's religious beliefs.  They are both important systems of thought, but should not be pitted against one another.  



> Your theory also doesn't explain why women achieve orgasm within seconds of meeting me. This happens with about 20% of the women I encounter, and the others simply get breathless and flustered.
> 
> It happened in church once, to everyone's embarrassment. People played it off by pretending the woman was a Pentecostal having one of those ecstatic moments wherein they commune with The Spirit via zenoglossia and speak in tongues.
> 
> Given that it was a Greek Orthodox church, this didn't convince many.


HHJH, I am laughing my tushie off.  Yes, the Orthodox are pretty quiet!  

And one of the problems people had in trying to give adaptationist explanations for female orgasm for so long was the immense individual variation (or complete lack of the event) among individuals.  

For such a variable and non-well-understood physiological activity, it's AMAZING how much time has been spent by different researchers to come up with lousy "explanations" for female orgasm.  

Again, it just cracks me up.  It's funny what people pick to study sometimes, and the explanations they come up with. 

I'll have to dig out my notes for some of the older "explanations".  Some of them were just bizarre.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 17, 2004)

Steve - we should start a support group or something.  I mean, walking down the street and having people all of the sudden fall down and moan...I thought it was because I smelled or something... :asian: 

Anyways, lets stick to the female orgasm they was the Mystery of Mysteries that of which I was speaking.  The morphology of the penis and clitorus are very analagous, I agree.  But the contractions of the pelvic muscles DO NOT push fluids out of the cervix.  You can see this happening in studies, heck they even showed a special with the footage on the Discovery Channel.  I also disagree with the concept that something that has no use remains unchanged.  If the orgasm is a vestigial reaction, shouldn't it be fading and weak?  On the contrary, the difficulty currently experienced fits nicely into the vesigial model...I can't say anything more definitive on this matter.  My knowledge of theory is weaker then my knowledge of details.   :asian: 

The point is that experiments in ev psych are inductive.  People believe in evolution and believe that everything about are morphology and behavior is an adaptation.  Then they go and look for evidence.  Does this means its bad science, not neccessarily?  It depends on how much evidence is collected before the jump to assumption is made.  Question - how are neuroscience, congnitive science and developmental science - not related to evolution?

Lastly, our understanding of the complexity in our universe is infintile.  You don't really get a handle on this until you study physics and attempt to understand the details that describe very simple things.  With that being said, though, we have a long way to grow.  As we learn more, the mystery shrinks.  Why should be expect this to stop and why should we expect this to be any different then the study of physics where beautiful clockwork theories describe the motions of the planets and the motions of curveballs.  An interesting step toward understanding more complex behavior in parts is complexity theory - formerly known as chaos theory.  I think its a first step to showing how something complex can be measured by the interactions of its parts.  For now its just an assumption and I'm just having fun speculating.


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 17, 2004)

I think that as we learn more, the mystery grows.  The more we learn, the more we know we DON'T know, or can't explain it.

Although there are some nifty contractions of the vagina and uterus during female orgasm, there is actually a postive pressure in the uterus (this has been measured in clinical studies) - e.g. anything in the uterus is "encouraged to leave".  This contradicts the popular "upsuck" theory, which claimed that there is negative pressure in the uterus, leading to aiding fertilization.  Nope.



> I also disagree with the concept that something that has no use remains unchanged. If the orgasm is a vestigial reaction, shouldn't it be fading and weak? On the contrary, the difficulty currently experienced fits nicely into the vesigial model...


It is NOT vestigal!  The whole point is that is actively selected for ... in MEN.  Men need to have orgasms to procreate.  The reason women have the "equipment" that can allow an orgasm to happen is that men and women have the same "systems" with a little tweaking here and there.  How does the difficulty of women having orgasms through vaginal penetration = a fading trait?  Are you suggesting that in our past history, all women were incredibly orgasmic through vaginal penetration alone?  Comparative studies would suggest that that is not the case, either.  



> People believe in evolution and believe that everything about are morphology and behavior is an adaptation. Then they go and look for evidence. Does this means its bad science, not neccessarily?


Not necessarily.... well, yes, actually.  If I am looking for evidence to support a belief that everything is an adaptation, _and do lousy or incomplete science to back up mybeliefs_, then it is bad science.  

You don't believe in evolution, you look at the evidence and establish whether or not it is a fact.  You believe in religions, you bend your reasoning (both inductive and deductive) to science.  I think the two are totally compatible, but if something isn't tested, then it remains in the large and fun world of Hypotheses Yet To Be Tested.  There's a lot of good stuff there.  



> You don't really get a handle on this until you study physics and attempt to understand the details that describe very simple things.


I think anyone who would try to study how an infant learns to speak and make the leap to language would feel the same way.  The universe is full of amazing things all the time.  Our understanding is still so small, even though we have come so far.



> Question - how are neuroscience, congnitive science and developmental science - not related to evolution?


I didn't say these aren't related to evolution.  I'm saying that taking a strictly adaptationist stance - that EVERYTHING is an adaptation that was actively selected for - is flawed.  Connecting evolutionary stories with what we know about human development or cognition can be done, but to do it well is difficult, and takes a deep understanding not only of how evolution works (most people don't take intensive classes on evolution and selection), but how to marshall comparative evidence, or run an experiment.  You can either choose to run an evolutionary experiment with an organism that can go through millions of generations in a year or two in the lab, or you can gather experimental and comparative evidence - i.e. studies of other primates, and studies of humans in other cultures.  Then you have the basis to start to make an argument about human evolution.  

The burden of proof is, as always, on the researcher(s).  If he or she or they do a lousy job to get to a neat-o conclusion, they should be blown out of the water by other scientists - since science is of itself, a social and culturally-based and biased pursuit and discipline.

Which is why I have to say that Evolutionary Psych, for the most part, is crap.  Most of the folks in the field are devout strict adaptationists, and they get into pretty tautological arguments in their papers... I picked a trait of agression, I think it's an adaptation, I found a difference between boys and girls or different age groups, now I'm going to tell you why this is an adaptation!  Wrong - there is no demonstration the trait in question is an adaptation to begin with.  That's the hard part.  Ittakes a lot of work, and even among a small group of research scientists, there are a lot of people who are lazy, who want to increase their publications and be famous, or who are just so in love with their ideas that they can't see what they are doing.

Again. why science is (ideally) a societal effort.

And I finally got the "mystery of mysteries" thing - lol - but now that it's not viewed as an adaptation, I hope that won't spoil your enjoyment of it! 

I know that the women I know who know about this work still enjoy their own orgasms every bit as much as before.  :boing2:


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 17, 2004)

Yikes. Quite a lot has been said. Ok, here's my take:

*And please don't get me started on Evolutionary Psychology, 90% of the field is scientific b***s**t.*

Don't know if this is response to something upnorthkyosa said, or something I said. But, for the record, I refer to developmental psychology more specifically for how human psyches develop and evolve over time.

*I'll grant that I may be jumping over lots of fields here and I may not have presented a point of view that is easily catagorized. Consider this, though, I attempt to think out of the box, which doesn't always work and I find myself in a box that others have already made, but sometimes I actually do make it out. Maybe that is the case. Anyway...I'm okay with being confused. It means that my mind is not static and that, at the very least, I am thinking.*

Ummmm... actually, that's not the case at all. You weren't "jumping over lots of fields", you were collapsing concepts into one another and not formulating a coherent position. Not distinguishing between "biology influences psychology" and "biology is psychology" is not being multi-disciplinary. Its being wishy-washy.

And, also, not differentiating between philosophical reductionism and reductionistic methodology is definately not being multi-disciplinary. Its being projectionistic, putting your philosophical beliefs onto a science that does not have them.

And, as for not differentiating causation and correlation?? Pssh... that's the worst of them all. An elementary mistake in science, one of the first things you learn _not_ to do in psychology.

*Subjectivity is the property of the objective from the point of view outside of the objective. Every object can also be a subject. I'm not seeing the connection where this affects my assertion that the mind is biologic and nothing more.*

Because its _inherently_ contradictory. Biology is not a subjective field, its an objective field. There are, of course, fields where the two interlap (such as anthropology or psychology), but biology is not one of them.

Chemicals are not subjective phenomena. Nor are neurons nor synapses nor neurotransmitters nor brainwaves. We experience all these objectively, "from the outside". Subjective phenomena are qualia --- they are emotions, ideas, thoughts, feelings, memories, experience, awareness, and consciousness. I cannot objectively "see" any of those "from the outside". The two domains (objective and subjective), while interconnected and interrelated, are ultimately irreducible to one another.

You also still have to explain how a subjective view that denies the validity of all subjective views could actually be "true". According to physicalism, the idea of physicalism itself is nothing but biological processes having fun and thus has _no substantive reality itself_. Thus, according to its very own premises, physicalism cannot possibly be a true idea because it _is_ an idea.

You also have to explain how objective phenomena can actually _exist_ without subjective phenomena. That's like saying all ups are true, but all downs are false. All hots are correct, all colds flawed. Its a completely incomprehensible position. Subjectivity and objectivity _define_ one another, you cannot have the one without the other.

Then again, you have to further explain why you are basing your philosophy on such plainly inaccurate models of reality. Your arguments just scream "the myth of the given", "truth as correspondence", and "the representational model". Reality is not a perception, its an interpretation. And you can't do any interpreting without a subject.

*I see the mind as in incredibly complex peice of machinery operating in ways that we just don't have the technology to understand. Does this mean that we will come to the brink of the unknowable? I would wager that it doesn't. In fact, the signs are pointing in the direction that we can know how the mind works. As our knowledge base grows, we are able to pinpoint more and more about the workings of the brain. And if we know how the peices work, doesn't that amputate the MORE part of the mind?*

There's the problem, maty. You are talking about "mind" and "brain" as if they are interchangeable. They are not. They are intimately related, for sure, but one cannot be reduced to the other.

Neuroscience actually hasn't told us very much about how the "mind" works. Sure, it tells us about what brainwaves or neurotransmitters or synapses are at work in conjunction with certain subjective phenomena --- but I've never experienced a neurotransmitter in my thoughts, whereas I do experience memories, feelings, awarness, and qualia on a daily basis. So, you're gonna have to do better than that.

I suggest you actually look into what the influential philosophers and scientists supporting physicalism have to say on the matter --- they will gladly admit that we don't have a damn clue how "mind" can possibly issue forth from a physical organism.

And, throughout it all, I still don't see any justification for how all these biophysical processes are _anything_ other than correlates. Correlation is not causation.

*One of the biggest problems I can see with your arguments is that you are drawing lines between what we can know and what we can't know.*

Nope. Never said that. What I did say was that certain methodologies and disciplines will never come to understand certain phenomena, which is true. There are other disciplines and methodologies for studying those phenomena --- which are not always the "hard sciences".

*You claim that the knowledge on one side of the line, is MORE somehow then its parts. This, like I said before, is very reminiscent of the God of the Gaps argument in which theologens argue that God exists the spaces that are unknown. I think this is a trap Heretic888. *

'Fraid you're playing the projectionist game here, dude. That's a sucka's game.

Dude, I will admit that a particular phenomena is "more" than its parts, only if you define the "parts" as reducible biophysical phenomena. If you include other "parts", then I won't make such a claim.

Besides, I notice you still can't explain how genuine novelty occurs in the universe, which is a rather damning hole in your philosophy.

*You're going to go through life and see the unknown world shrink and that MORE that you defend, will become less and less. The simple fact remains that we are figuring out how the universe works. We are discovering the laws for the parts that make us who we are.*

And I never claimed otherwise.

*Your personality, your creativity, the things you do on a regular basis are recorded in the whirring of these parts.*

Depends on which "parts" you are referring to. I have yet to see any hard scientist show me a microscopic slide of a memory or emotion, so you are on a slippery slide here to say the least.

*I'll grant that the originality of those arrangements is not something that we are even close to unraveling and may not ever. The seemingly random connections that make us different might not be so random - which is one of my justifications for spiritual practice.*

This was the point I was trying to bring up with the "creation of novelty" issue, although I don't think its proof or justification for anything. I think its interesting, to say the least, and provocative. But any "proof" for spiritual realities can only be found in spiritual methodologies, and vice versa.

*Again, thanks for the discussion *

No problemo.


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 17, 2004)

> *And please don't get me started on Evolutionary Psychology, 90% of the field is scientific b***s**t.
> 
> *Don't know if this is response to something upnorthkyosa said, or something I said. But, for the record, I refer to developmental psychology more specifically for how human psyches develop and evolve over time.
> 
> ...


 For the first part (which was something I had written)... bravo to you!  I too would go to Developmental Psychology.  I was trying to address (perhaps in a flippant and unclear way) the a field that falls prey to adaptationist beliefs and poor studies.  

And for the second part - bless your heart, better stated than I could.  

All of these posts have been very thought-provoking.  (Now I must scamper back to my experiments like a good Mouse.)


----------



## hardheadjarhead (Jun 17, 2004)

upnorthkyosa said:
			
		

> Steve - we should start a support group or something.  I mean, walking down the street and having people all of the sudden fall down and moan...I thought it was because I smelled or something... :asian:
> 
> Uh...no.  Sorry.  Let me throw my degree into play and correct the grammar.
> 
> ...


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 17, 2004)

*For the first part (which was something I had written)... bravo to you! I too would go to Developmental Psychology. I was trying to address (perhaps in a flippant and unclear way) the a field that falls prey to adaptationist beliefs and poor studies. 

And for the second part - bless your heart, better stated than I could. 

All of these posts have been very thought-provoking. (Now I must scamper back to my experiments like a good Mouse.)*

Thank ye kindly, sir.  :asian: 

May I ask, since you seem to be interested in developmental psyche, which particular theorists you would recommend and/or commend??

Laterz.


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 17, 2004)

Hey HHJD

I'm a PhD student, finished with my coursework, with minors in Molecular Biology and Animal Behavior.  The specific field I work in is Developmental Psychobiology.

No fancy degrees yet, but a lot of time and effort logged so far!   

Or maybe a :jedi1:  is more appropriate for the journey.  lol


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 17, 2004)

Dang - I missed your post, heretic888!



> May I ask, since you seem to be interested in developmental psyche, which particular theorists you would recommend and/or commend??


I would be absolutely delighted to put together a few things.

One relatively new idea floating out there in Developmental Psychology, which actually stems from or is inspired by work in Developmental Biology, is the Dynamic Systems Theory.  Now, please note that I am biased because I have trained with one of the proponents of the theory, and admire her very much for her work.  

Linda Smith and Esther Thelen have a book out on their theory of Dynamic systems.  Interesting stuff, and it tried to address some of the emergent properties you sometimes find in systems.  It's not necessarily a "light" read, though!  lol

I would stay away from Stephen Pinker, he's got a lot of pop press books out that most developmental psych people can't STAND.  And cognitive psychologists have fits when they hear his name.   

So, you know, if you want to bait some cognitive people....

If you're interested in comparative work, Frans de Waal has several pop press books out that are accessible to just about anyone, but not "dumbed down" or anything.  

Were you referring to kind of sticky stuff in the field, or more general names for popular press books?  Sorry, I got a little carried away there.  I enjoy theories that try to capture (or leave room for) both the nitty-gritty of specifics with an overall view.  Which is hard to do. 

Different approaches have yielded (obviously) different perspectives.  I think anyone who keeps in mind the idea of multiple levels within and without an organism, affecting its development, is on the right track.  (i.e. genes, organs, body chemistry, brain chemistry, organism, local family group, larger social group/community, etc).  



> Thank ye kindly, sir. :asian:


lol - you are more than welcome!  But it's m'am.  (or miss.)  (well, really, both are kind of fusty.  Maybe sir-eena?  LOL!)


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 17, 2004)

*lol - you are more than welcome! But it's m'am. (or miss.) (well, really, both are kind of fusty. Maybe sir-eena? LOL!)*

LOL!!  :boing2: 

There goes me and my assumptions again. I guess that's the evil white patriarchy acting through me again (sorry, postmodernism is in the other thread, I know). 

*Were you referring to kind of sticky stuff in the field, or more general names for popular press books? Sorry, I got a little carried away there. I enjoy theories that try to capture (or leave room for) both the nitty-gritty of specifics with an overall view. Which is hard to do.*

A bit of both, actually.

I first got interested in developmental psyche when I read some of Ken Wilber's works. He's more of what you'd call a syncretic philosopher (I guess), and tends to draw on the work of a LOT of theorists --- including Jean Piaget, Jenny Wade, Carol Gilligan, Jean Gebser, Jurgen Habermas, and Don Beck (not all developmental psychologists, I know, but...)  

I was merely interested in furthering my study of the field.

Laterz.  :asian:


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 17, 2004)

> There goes me and my assumptions again. I guess that's the evil white patriarchy acting through me again (sorry, postmodernism is in the other thread, I know).


lmao - hey, don't worry!  Most of the people on this forum are men I think, anyways.  I'm glad I could blend in.  

I like the work or the perspectives that Luria took, and Vygotsky took.  They aren't perfect (I don't think any one theory can be _perfect_), but they are quite interesting.  Luria published a little book - I have to go search for the title.  Very fascinating, cross-cultural look at cognitive differences in people based on local education and culture.  Maybe it sounds boring, but I thought it was a lovely look at how the local environment affects cognitice development - even into adulthood.  
I must admit I don't know every name you've mentioned, but now my curiosity is piqued and I must go look for them! 

I think maybe Thelen and Smith as well as De Waal, with evolutionary theory thrown in by E. Lloyd, would be good people I would highly recommend.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 17, 2004)

Coolz, thanks.  :asian:


----------



## hardheadjarhead (Jun 17, 2004)

Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> Hey HHJD
> 
> I'm a PhD student, finished with my coursework, with minors in Molecular Biology and Animal Behavior.  The specific field I work in is Developmental Psychobiology.
> 
> ...




Yikes.

Someday you MUST tell me why I behave the way I do...

I'd check out that reading list you recommended, but I'm reading The Iliad right now.  Smith and Thelen might be a tad too much for me.  



Regards,


Steve


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 17, 2004)

*thread ganking*

I love The Iliad. I love The Odyssey even more. 

*end of gank*

ETA: But after The Iliad, a little Dynamic Systems Theory might be a nice diversion from all the different characters, and the pathos!!!


----------



## hardheadjarhead (Jun 17, 2004)

Well, I'll stick to the Iliad.  

I promised the absolutely lovely woman who gave it to me that I'd read it...and I shall.  I can't wait to see how it ends...I think Peter O'Toole begs Brad Pitt for the return of Eric Bana's body.  

The other books...yuck.  Carl Sagan is about the hardest "science" book I've ever read.  If it has anything quantitative in it at all, I'm lost.  Can we say "innumerate?"

Regards,


Steve


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 17, 2004)

(imagine wheedling tone) Oh no, I think you'd like DST. It's a lot of conceptual-type stuff.

Or maybe something else science-y without quantitative stuff.   Hmmm....


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 18, 2004)

Forgot to say....



> Someday you MUST tell me why I behave the way I do...


lol!  I wouldn't presume to think I could describe all the mysterious parts and dark nooks-and-crannies of your personality!  But give me 2 years, an endless supply of notebooks, some sort of grant or fellowship to live on, and access to follow you around all the time....  I'd be like one of Leakey's Angels (for those who are not geeks like I am - Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas, who Leakey mentored and sent out to study chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, respectively)!  

And I'm sure no-one would notice the woman following you around, too.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 18, 2004)

I think that I'm going to have to punt on a bunch of the stuff that you guys are bringing out.  I just don't have the tools to fire back or I'm not sure where your coming from.  Here is an overview of things that I don't think have been addressed by the other side.

1.  Where is the line between what we know and what we don't know?  What happens when we cross that line?
2.  If evolution is correct, then everything that makes us who we are evolved.  Assuming this is correct, then how can anything we do be separate from our biology?

I have a friend who is a professor at a local college.  His field is in research design and he specializes in statistics.  One of the methods he teaches is an inductive method for research design.  This method is predicated on the belief that an assumption is true and is dependent on the size of the data pool collected in order to support that assumption.  The statistics for this method are quite complicated, so I won't deal with them here, but the theory behind it...is it science?  This model is most often used to study evolution. Many of the most influcential studies of our day utilize induction.  Good or bad?


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 18, 2004)

Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> We have the wiring because men have the wiring, and we all start out the same in utero.



Interesting point.  I'm not so sure that you've made the distinction between a vestigial effect and something MORE though.  That is what this thread is about.  An orgasm happens because of biology...



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> You are missing the point I am trying to make. Just because we can explain a particular ant's chemical signalling or genetics, does not mean we can, from that, explain how a colony will respond in complex ways when, say, under attack from another colony, a predator, or in navigating through a forest.  We understand individual ants, yes.  But the group behavior "is not the sum of its parts"!  Complex and sometimes unexpected behaviors happen that cannot be predicted from our understanding of each ant's individual rules of behavior.



I disagree, I think that our understanding of eusocial organisms has moved beyond the "need of telepathy" stage.  We can observe that there are rules for behavior in the ant colony and we can observe that ants follow and teach those rules to their offspring.  Is this any different then humans?  The rules are nothing but pathways tracing through the billions of synapses in our brains.  We can alter our perception of these rules with the right chemical cocktails.  If this phenomenon is not the sum of its parts, how come we can alter the behavior of the entire colony by the injection of certain chemicals?



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> I am not trying to get into the "god of gaps" argument or draw a line in the sand about what we can and cannot know.  I think that the more we know, the less we know we know.  I think we *can* find out amazing things about the world.  But I would like to do it through rigorous science, not through crap like most of Evolutionary Psychology.  It's not science.  Adaptationist stories are not science, and their popularity makes it harder for people doing good science to get their results out, because the Just So Stories sound so...easy!  So nice!  Of course women orgasm!  They are more fertile this way!  Wrong.  Women who may never orgasm in their lives during, after, or before vaginal intercourse can still have 10 children and 100 grandchildren.



But isn't that last statement a "just so" story?  I think the problem with the orgasm debate is the lack of good statistics.  Perhaps is we studied the fertility of woman who regularly have orgasm compared to those who don't...



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> I'm going to have to disagree with you there.  Unless you are referring to old-school clinical (Jungian, Freudian) psychoanalysis, Psychology is amazingly pretty magic and mysticism free, when done by actual scientists and not quacks.  Tell me how an evolutionary psychologist can run an experiment, by the way.  Tell me how we can do a controlled, experimental manipulation which addresses the evolution of psychological traits, that doesn't fall into the adaptionist/Just So Stories trap, and that is a good experiment or series of experiments.



Induction.  Inductive research methods exist.  I assume that ev. psych people are utilizing them and that has many people in the scientific community up in arms.  As far as an experiment to analyze psychologic traits goes, does behavior count?  I'm not a psychologist so I don't know, but it it does...take nematodes.  They have a neural ganglia that is capable of adapting new behaviors...a new way of moving or feeding...if we were to observe and breed nematodes that exhibited a behavior that we cultivated for a number of generations and then were able to show how this behavior was incorporated into the nematode's DNA, wouldn't that provide some evidence for similiar effects in humans?  I would say that yes it does.  In fact, much of the behavioral evolution field has been predicated off such experiments.  You know, the rule...80 generations before it becomes part of our genotype...



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> Most of the field of Psychology is moving towards cognitive psych, neuroscience, and development.  But even with amazing discoveries being made, we still are realizing how complex things are.  In part, I will continue to argue, it is because we are realizing how much of human development is not preprogrammed, but changes in each individual based on the very local environment.



This does not make the distinction between our biology and the More.  You are talking about behavoral evolution which happens faster then biologic evolution and is something we can test and measure...just look at martial arts fighting methods for instance.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 18, 2004)

heretic888 said:
			
		

> Ummmm... actually, that's not the case at all. You weren't "jumping over lots of fields", you were collapsing concepts into one another and not formulating a coherent position. Not distinguishing between "biology influences psychology" and "biology is psychology" is not being multi-disciplinary. Its being wishy-washy.



Perhaps a tad bit wishy washy, but you are still drawing lines.  What can we know and what can't we know?  What is special and what isn't?  When we cross a line that you have drawn, what happens then?  I think that a great many drug companies would disagree with you.  The whole concept of "biology is psychology" is what they make their money off of.  Unless we're talking about the placebo effect...but that could just be the mind having more of a control over the body then we thought.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> And, also, not differentiating between philosophical reductionism and reductionistic methodology is definately not being multi-disciplinary. Its being projectionistic, putting your philosophical beliefs onto a science that does not have them.



You haven't shown me how there is a difference.  I don't think that philosophic reductionism exists...



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> And, as for not differentiating causation and correlation?? Pssh... that's the worst of them all. An elementary mistake in science, one of the first things you learn _not_ to do in psychology.



You talk about the burden of proof with this point and that is fine.  If the burden is on me, I think that I can safely say that the cause of psychology is biology.  From a developmental point of view, there was a new study done where children were measured through their formative years and their developments could be seen as both the growth in the complexity of connection and the density of brain tissue.  



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> Because its _inherently_ contradictory. Biology is not a subjective field, its an objective field. There are, of course, fields where the two interlap (such as anthropology or psychology), but biology is not one of them.



Please forgive me, but I have not been able to follow this part of your argument.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> Chemicals are not subjective phenomena. Nor are neurons nor synapses nor neurotransmitters nor brainwaves. We experience all these objectively, "from the outside". Subjective phenomena are qualia --- they are emotions, ideas, thoughts, feelings, memories, experience, awareness, and consciousness. I cannot objectively "see" any of those "from the outside".



I disagree.  You can see an emotion flashing across your brain.  You can locate the section in the brain that shows where you are attracted to a member of the opposite sex.  Sexual thoughts, feelings, mathematics, we can see all of that happening and all we have to do is measure the minute flow of electromagnetic radiation through through your gray matter.  To say that these concepts are completely "subjective" is incorrect.  We can see the parts that make them.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> You also still have to explain how a subjective view that denies the validity of all subjective views could actually be "true". According to physicalism, the idea of physicalism itself is nothing but biological processes having fun and thus has _no substantive reality itself_. Thus, according to its very own premises, physicalism cannot possibly be a true idea because it _is_ an idea.



Look, when it comes right down to it, this is gibberish.  You are arguing in circles and avoiding reality.  Where the circle breaks is with the assumption that all ideas are created equal.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> You also have to explain how objective phenomena can actually _exist_ without subjective phenomena. That's like saying all ups are true, but all downs are false. All hots are correct, all colds flawed. Its a completely incomprehensible position. Subjectivity and objectivity _define_ one another, you cannot have the one without the other.



This is one of the areas that I'm going to have to punt.  I'm not sure what bearing this has on the conversation.  



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> Then again, you have to further explain why you are basing your philosophy on such plainly inaccurate models of reality. Your arguments just scream "the myth of the given", "truth as correspondence", and "the representational model". Reality is not a perception, its an interpretation. And you can't do any interpreting without a subject.



Basic epistomology.  I don't see how I'm violoating any of this.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> There's the problem, maty. You are talking about "mind" and "brain" as if they are interchangeable. They are not. They are intimately related, for sure, but one cannot be reduced to the other.
> 
> Neuroscience actually hasn't told us very much about how the "mind" works. Sure, it tells us about what brainwaves or neurotransmitters or synapses are at work in conjunction with certain subjective phenomena --- but I've never experienced a neurotransmitter in my thoughts, whereas I do experience memories, feelings, awarness, and qualia on a daily basis. So, you're gonna have to do better than that.



Do you think that you can sense a neurotrasmitter firing in your brain as you type your reply?  With the right instruments, we can watch the electromagentism flow over your brain as you type your reply.  We can also measure and record how your brain functions when you remember something, have a feeling, or even contemplate infinite.  We can even take a look at the difference between people who are disabled in some way in these areas and then compare it to how our brain works.  Guess what, the two pictures are different.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> I suggest you actually look into what the influential philosophers and scientists supporting physicalism have to say on the matter --- they will gladly admit that we don't have a damn clue how "mind" can possibly issue forth from a physical organism.



They are not going to say anything on the subject because they don't have the data.  Take a look at some of the stuff that neurosurgeons are doing as well as psychiatrist.  Also, you might want to dissect a brain and learn the parts...It is enlightening to say the least.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> And, throughout it all, I still don't see any justification for how all these biophysical processes are _anything_ other than correlates. Correlation is not causation.



I seriously don't think that it is for any lack of data.  Corellation upon correllation upon correllation upon correllation eventually becomes causation and that is what we are dealing with here.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> Besides, I notice you still can't explain how genuine novelty occurs in the universe, which is a rather damning hole in your philosophy.



Yes, it is, but I made a darn good attempt at an assumption above.  Still, I admit that we may never have a clue to the source of randomness.



			
				heretic888 said:
			
		

> Depends on which "parts" you are referring to. I have yet to see any hard scientist show me a microscopic slide of a memory or emotion, so you are on a slippery slide here to say the least.



Like I said, you have to look at brain scans of people thinking.  You have to dissect the brain and learn its parts.  You have to study how humans affect the brain through drug interactions.  You have to know about brain chemistry.  There is plenty of hard science on this stuff if you look for it.  Don't take my word for it though.  Go and ask someone in the biology department.

Wow its late...


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 18, 2004)

hardheadjarhead said:
			
		

> What is your training in this, if any?  I mean in the science aspect of development....



I was a career student before I decided to teach.  I have a degree in biology, geology, and physical sciences.  I am currently working on my Masters in Physics.  

I have a minor in creative writing.  Maybe that is the liberal part of my education.


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 18, 2004)

> 1. Where is the line between what we know and what we don't know? What happens when we cross that line?
> 2. If evolution is correct, then everything that makes us who we are evolved. Assuming this is correct, then how can anything we do be separate from our biology?
> 
> I have a friend who is a professor at a local college. His field is in research design and he specializes in statistics. One of the methods he teaches is an inductive method for research design. This method is predicated on the belief that an assumption is true and is dependent on the size of the data pool collected in order to support that assumption. The statistics for this method are quite complicated, so I won't deal with them here, but the theory behind it...is it science? This model is most often used to study evolution. Many of the most influcential studies of our day utilize induction. Good or bad?


I think drawing a line between the "known" and "unknown", and then getting in a dither about it is ridiculous.  We are always inching (sometimes in the wrong way) towards the goal of knowing more. 

Please re-read my postings.  I NEVER SAID we are "separate" from our biology.  That is a ludicrous statement to make.  You are making a serious error, taking "genetically-determined traits" or "adaptationist view" as equivalent to "biology".  

That sounds like a perfectly fine research design.  Most Ev. Psych folks use crappy statistics, violating the assumptions of the tests with their data sets.  Most people are pretty dim about statistics.  And most other people don't look hard into the data to call them on their statistics.




> then everything that makes us who we are evolved.


Interesting wording.  You are going to leap from this statement, I think, into saying "everything we are evolved, and therefore everything is an adaptation", which is completely incorrect.  Yes, humans have evolved from "proto-humans".  But can we say that various traits we have today are adaptations?  Some things a good argument can be made for.  For others, not so much.  You keep falling into the fallacy of "change over time = adaptation/under selective pressures".  This is not necessarily the case.



> You know, the rule...80 generations before it becomes part of our genotype...


 I don't know "the rule".  Things don't always work by laws and rules in evolutionary biology, or in psychology, as they seem to do in physics.



> I'm not so sure that you've made the distinction between a vestigial effect and something MORE though. That is what this thread is about. An orgasm happens because of biology...


Ok, *you* tell *me* what the MORE is that you are looking for.  You haven't defined it at all, and my argument about female orgasm wasn't about "MORE" (whatever that is), but about good versus lousy scientific explanations, and the problems inherent in a strict adaptationist view.  "An orgasm happens because of biology" is a ridiculous statement to make.  How?  What biology?  Why?  In everyone?  What does it do?  Those were the things we were talking about before.  Did I ever say it was this non-material, magical thing?   You are misinterpreting my arguments into a different frame of reference.

I said it before, I'll say it again - nature and nurture cannot be disentwined.  Both are critical to our development, and I mean critical.  

I think if you better define what you are looking for - what is "biology" and what is "MORE" - then we all can have a conversation about it.  



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *heretic888*
> _There's the problem, maty. You are talking about "mind" and "brain" as if they are interchangeable. They are not. They are intimately related, for sure, but one cannot be reduced to the other.
> 
> ...


BUT NOT EXPLANATORY.  You usually cannot then experimentally manipulate a "brain" and accurately predict what will happen in the "mind". 

You seem to be reifying events.  Correlation does not equal causation!  Any researcher who recorded neurotransmitter changes at a particular spot in the brain will have to do many many more experiments to gather evidence to support the idea that a NT release "causes" a particular change in cognition.  



> The whole concept of "biology is psychology" is what they make their money off of. Unless we're talking about the placebo effect...but that could just be the mind having more of a control over the body then we thought.


   wishy-washy?



> You can see an emotion flashing across your brain.


 lol.  I don't know a single cognitive neuroscientist who could ever get away with saying this.  We have to be careful with our language about what we are measuring.  You don't measure an "emotion" like that.  You measure the release of nt's or electrical impulses, and look for a corresponding emotion reported by the patient.



> To say that these concepts are completely "subjective" is incorrect. We can see the parts that make them.


  Seeing the parts does not mean measuring the whole and understanding it.  



> Like I said, you have to look at brain scans of people thinking. You have to dissect the brain and learn its parts. You have to study how humans affect the brain through drug interactions. You have to know about brain chemistry. There is plenty of hard science on this stuff if you look for it. Don't take my word for it though. Go and ask someone in the biology department.


What am I doing, standing on my head here?  Guess all that cognitive neuroscience training is pretty meaningless.  



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Feisty Mouse*
> _I am not trying to get into the "god of gaps" argument or draw a line in the sand about what we can and cannot know. I think that the more we know, the less we know we know. I think we *can* find out amazing things about the world. But I would like to do it through rigorous science, not through crap like most of Evolutionary Psychology. It's not science. Adaptationist stories are not science, and their popularity makes it harder for people doing good science to get their results out, because the Just So Stories sound so...easy! So nice! Of course women orgasm! They are more fertile this way! Wrong. Women who may never orgasm in their lives during, after, or before vaginal intercourse can still have 10 children and 100 grandchildren._
> 
> ...


It is another "Just So Story" - just as valid as the crappy adaptationist ones!  However, if you really want to get into the orgasm debate (and I think you have been backing off of it), you'd have to demonstrate that 1) certain women have orgasm through vaginal penetration alone 2) these women have more surviving grandchildren (the measure of "fitness") than women who don't orgasm at all, or orgasm through clitoral stimulation.  

Considering that the vast majority of women studied report orgasms through clitorial stimulation rather than vaginal penetration, you already have a problem.  The "adaptation" you are looking for is extremely rare.  If it's so important, why doesn't it work "right"?    This is putting the cart before the horse.  



> I assume that ev. psych people are utilizing them and that has many people in the scientific community up in arms. As far as an experiment to analyze psychologic traits goes, does behavior count? I'm not a psychologist so I don't know, but it it does...take nematodes. They have a neural ganglia that is capable of adapting new behaviors...a new way of moving or feeding...if we were to observe and breed nematodes that exhibited a behavior that we cultivated for a number of generations and then were able to show how this behavior was incorporated into the nematode's DNA, wouldn't that provide some evidence for similiar effects in humans? I would say that yes it does. In fact, much of the behavioral evolution field has been predicated off such experiments. You know, the rule...80 generations before it becomes part of our genotype...


Tell me this rule. 

Of course behavior counts - that's what most of us measure, or measure in concert with other things.  But your example is simplistic.  Just because a nematode can do something, or just because we know it's possible DOESN'T MEAN it's necessarily so for all human traits!  You have to demonstrate it in each case.  *That's* science.

I would appreciate it if you could define this "MORE" you want to get back to. I wasn't addressing that idea in any of my posts.  Perhaps talking about emergent properties is what you meant?  



> I disagree, I think that our understanding of eusocial organisms has moved beyond the "need of telepathy" stage. We can observe that there are rules for behavior in the ant colony and we can observe that ants follow and teach those rules to their offspring. Is this any different then humans? The rules are nothing but pathways tracing through the billions of synapses in our brains. We can alter our perception of these rules with the right chemical cocktails. If this phenomenon is not the sum of its parts, how come we can alter the behavior of the entire colony by the injection of certain chemicals?


Well thank you very much, I never said telepathy or anything like that.  But thanks for misinterpreting what I said.  Emergent properties does not equal "magical"!   (Ants don't _teach_ rules, as far as I know.)  And yes, ants are very different than humans.  We are both cultural/social animals - but our cultures, and our development, takes a long time and is extremely complex.  

You keep falling back into "study the parts to know the whole" while ignoring the concept that certain properties CANNOT be studied on the level of the individual ant or individual neuron in the human brain.  There are behaviors that emerge from interactions of other parts.  We are learning about them.  But that means (and I know this is no what you want to hear) not everything is directly rooted in genetics or the presence of a particular chemical.   It's much more complex than that.   Life is messy and complicated and fantastic, and it's in the messiness when interesting things happen sometimes.  

But knowing someone's DNA makeup will still never tell you what kind of person they will be or is they'll be nice to their kids.  It just won't, because it leaves out the entire experiential portion of development, which is just as important as their biological background.


----------



## hardheadjarhead (Jun 18, 2004)

upnorthkyosa said:
			
		

> Like I said, you have to look at brain scans of people thinking.  You have to dissect the brain and learn its parts.  You have to study how humans affect the brain through drug interactions.  You have to know about brain chemistry.  There is plenty of hard science on this stuff if you look for it.  Don't take my word for it though.  Go and ask someone in the biology department.




<groan!>

Yo!  UPNORTH!

She's a PhD candidate in psychobiology and has minors in animal behavior and molecular biology.  

I'm just guessing here but I don't think she has to go too far to get the "hard science" you suggest she look for.  It sounds to me like that has been the focus of her graduate work.

WHICH would explain why she's hammering you in this debate.  Sure seems to me she is, anyway.  Me being a liberal arts type, I might be a tad quick in assessing this...but I do believe she's got the edge on you here.




Regards,


Steve


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 18, 2004)

Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> You keep falling into the fallacy of "change over time = adaptation/under selective pressures".  This is not necessarily the case.



This is where you lose me.  I don't understand how it can be anything different.  When I think of humans, I think of two types of evolution.  One that is physical and grounded in your DNA.  And one that is behavioral and grounded in your mind.  There is a connection between the two, but it isn't direct in that it doesn't happen right away.  A learned behavior may become instinctual over a long period of time.  Some scientists have done studies on other examples and extrapolated that data to humans.  The number they come up with is around 80 generations.  You can do this in the lab.  Try it with fruit flies.



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> Ok, *you* tell *me* what the MORE is that you are looking for.



The MORE means an explanation that goes beyond biology.  I have posited that our parts make us who we are.  I am beginning to understand how the mind doesn't fit into the above statement though.  Lets me give this a try, a thought or an idea can be a thing of itself and even though it can zip across the synapses in a certain pattern, this pattern is nothing but a reflection of something very real...is that another misconception?



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> I said it before, I'll say it again - nature and nurture cannot be disentwined.  Both are critical to our development, and I mean critical.



Can both _nature _ and _nurture _ evolve?  I think of _nature _ as the stuff your body is made of.  I think of _nurture _ as the things that we learn, our behavior.



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> BUT NOT EXPLANATORY.  You usually cannot then experimentally manipulate a "brain" and accurately predict what will happen in the "mind".



Yes you can...to a certain extent.  This is what drug companies do when they attempt to treat mental illness with chemicals.  I don't see how this argument is wishy washy.



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> You seem to be reifying events.



I am attempting to learn from people who have done more research then I.  I can throw my ideas into the shark pit and let you chew them up and spit them back at me and it will only help me better understand the world...I'm not so arrogant to think that every thought in my mind is gospel.



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> Seeing the parts does not mean measuring the whole and understanding it.


 
It does in many other fields, though.  That is what the field I am studying is all about in fact.  Seeing the parts, measuring them, figuring out the laws that dictate how they work.  I think that the laws that describe how the parts of a human work are going to be incredibly complex and we may not even have the language to express them.  Yet I do believe that their are laws that govern the parts of a human and that if we see them work and measure them working we can understand the whole.    



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> What am I doing, standing on my head here?  Guess all that cognitive neuroscience training is pretty meaningless.



I did not mean to come of as arrogent here.  I respect your work and the grasp of the subject you have.



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> It is another "Just So Story" - just as valid as the crappy adaptationist ones!  However, if you really want to get into the orgasm debate (and I think you have been backing off of it), you'd have to demonstrate that 1) certain women have orgasm through vaginal penetration alone 2) these women have more surviving grandchildren (the measure of "fitness") than women who don't orgasm at all, or orgasm through clitoral stimulation.  Considering that the vast majority of women studied report orgasms through clitorial stimulation rather than vaginal penetration, you already have a problem.  The "adaptation" you are looking for is extremely rare.  If it's so important, why doesn't it work "right"?  This is putting the cart before the horse.



I can only pass on some of the stuff that I've learned.  I am backing away because I see your point.  So, let me get this straight.  You are saying that the orgasm is a reflection of what happens in a male?  I understand that both the clitorus and penis start out the same way in a developing fetus and that the absense of a certain hormone allows the clitorus to remain unchanged.  To say that the orgasm, or the clitorus for that matter, is not an adaptation seems incorrect to me.  At the very least it a reflection of an adaptation.



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> Of course behavior counts - that's what most of us measure, or measure in concert with other things.  But your example is simplistic.  Just because a nematode can do something, or just because we know it's possible DOESN'T MEAN it's necessarily so for all human traits!  You have to demonstrate it in each case.  *That's* science.



That is not practical.  You just can't test some things with humans because its either immoral or it would take too long.  Therefore you HAVE to use proxies.  That is Reality.  It may not be the best situation, but its the best we can do.  I don't know how you feel about animal research, but the whole purpose of animal research is to provide a substitute for humans.  Unless you are studying the animals themselves...



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> And yes, ants are very different than humans.  We are both cultural/social animals - but our cultures, and our development, takes a long time and is extremely complex.



Ants and humans are not totally dissimiliar though.  We can learn somethings about ourselves by observing ants.  Ants can serve as proxies because of the difficulties you mentioned.  Namely the time factor.  Sometimes seeing a less complex social structure helps us understand the general nature of social structures...the general rules of social structures in nature.  If you can compare these "rules" with other organisms, you may be able to extrapolate this data, to a certain extent to humans.



			
				Feisty Mouse said:
			
		

> You keep falling back into "study the parts to know the whole" while ignoring the concept that certain properties CANNOT be studied on the level of the individual ant or individual neuron in the human brain.  There are behaviors that emerge from interactions of other parts.  We are learning about them.  But that means (and I know this is no what you want to hear) not everything is directly rooted in genetics or the presence of a particular chemical.   It's much more complex than that.   Life is messy and complicated and fantastic, and it's in the messiness when interesting things happen sometimes.
> 
> But knowing someone's DNA makeup will still never tell you what kind of person they will be or is they'll be nice to their kids.  It just won't, because it leaves out the entire experiential portion of development, which is just as important as their biological background.



I have never thought of a _thought _ as a _thing _ before.  In order to understand what you are saying, this is essential.  I think that I am gaining a better understanding of behavior and genetics from this discussion.  Thanks.   :asian: 

upnorthkyosa


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 18, 2004)

hardheadjarhead said:
			
		

> I'm just guessing here but I don't think she has to go too far to get the "hard science" you suggest she look for.  It sounds to me like that has been the focus of her graduate work.
> 
> WHICH would explain why she's hammering you in this debate.  Sure seems to me she is, anyway.  Me being a liberal arts type, I might be a tad quick in assessing this...but I do believe she's got the edge on you here.



Yep, I'm getting slapped around big time.  I guess I'll take my lickings and learn from it...just like any good martial artist.  I'm also using a little tai chi principal called yeilding... :asian: 

I'll take the tiger to the mountain.


----------



## Feisty Mouse (Jun 18, 2004)

> Lets me give this a try, a thought or an idea can be a thing of itself and even though it can zip across the synapses in a certain pattern, this pattern is nothing but a reflection of something very real...is that another misconception?


I think that this sounds like what I've been trying to say - yes, that a thought in and of itself is a thought. We can try to access a thought in multiple ways - neurochemistry, electrophysiology, questionnaire/verbal assessment, behavioral studies - but we cannot "capture" a thought, or point to something and say, "See here? This spike in the EEG = thinking about Mom." They may be correlated, but they are not the same thing. Some of the most careful language has to be used in cognitive neuropsychology.

I understand that the field you are training in is looking for general laws, general priniciples, and that if you observe an event occuring in, say, a particular particle, you can then try to generalize to all particles. (This is a vague example, but the last time I took a physics class was in college, so please bear with me.) The same is not always true of evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology. We can try to understand some general principles - is there genetic drift? what happens to island species and extinction rates? how quickly can we see the effects of artificial selection in the lab? - but the stumbling block is then applying an idea too broadly.

Another difference is that, aside from very short-lived species with quick sucessions of generations, we cannot *watch* evolution (which encompasses both adaptation, as well as other genetic changes such as genetic drift) directly. We can see (possible) consequences of selective pressures, or environmental changes, but it is very hard to actually perform a controlled experiment. 



> Can both _nature _and _nurture _evolve? I think of _nature _as the stuff your body is made of. I think of _nurture _as the things that we learn, our behavior.


Interesting question. If you are interested, pick up a copy of The Ape and the Sushi Master. Dr. de Waal addresses this question with far more experience and eloquence than I can, I think. My short and awkward answer: yes, but in concert. Often behavior leads in changing before genetic changes, as you have mentioned before. There's a good paper or book out on that, but I have to look it up. 



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Feisty Mouse*
> _BUT NOT EXPLANATORY. You usually cannot then experimentally manipulate a "brain" and accurately predict what will happen in the "mind"._
> 
> ...


This is true. I was referring to more specific "mind" events - where the individual weirdness come out. We are learning general principles about, say, dopamine levels in the brain and their effects on perception and behavior. What we can't do is go to a certain person, inject dopamine into a particular part of the cortex, and accurately predict their specfic behavior(s) after that. Personality, individual experience, past experiences with dopamine injections, all color what will happen to the person. 

I would not argue with the point that we are learning some things that we can try to generalize - like the average response to increased dopamine levels. But what I am trying to say is that we don't have a clear-cut system of rules for exactly what happens in the body (brain) and mind of the person experiencing the increase, because everyone is "set up" slightly differently. Again, different from your field - there's a lot of messiness in studying people because of our massive neural development, our varied upbringings, even the different chemicals in the water each of us drinks when growing up. We are constantly being "tweaked" by our own experinces of the world. 



> You are saying that the orgasm is a reflection of what happens in a male? I understand that both the clitorus and penis start out the same way in a developing fetus and that the absense of a certain hormone allows the clitorus to remain unchanged. To say that the orgasm, or the clitorus for that matter, is not an adaptation seems incorrect to me. At the very least it a reflection of an adaptation.


Um, sort of. A female orgasm, I would say, is not a reflection of a male's orgasm - it is her own individual experience (psychologically as well as physiologically). 

(for a funny aside, check out http://img.tapuz.co.il/forums/20208414.htm)

The orgasm is an _adaptation in the male_ - selective pressures exist and existed in the past for male ejaculation to work effectively. (The adaptation argument here is pretty hard to argue against, I think.) For a female human, is it NOT an adaptation - there are no selective pressures on her (as far as we can tell - but this is what hopefully more scientists are working out) for her to be able to orgasm, in terms of her fertility. 

We have to be pretty strict when calling something an "adaptation". We have to be able to, with a fair amount of certainty, point to a trait and explain the selective pressures for that trait, historically (i.e. for thousands of generations, in the past of human history), its function, and that it is related to increased survivorship and/or increased fitness (reproductive success, usually measured as number of grandchildren produced). 



> That is not practical. You just can't test some things with humans because its either immoral or it would take too long. Therefore you HAVE to use proxies. That is Reality. It may not be the best situation, but its the best we can do. I don't know how you feel about animal research, but the whole purpose of animal research is to provide a substitute for humans. Unless you are studying the animals themselves...


I study the animals themselves, actually. Most evolutionary work studies the species for themselves. I completely agree we can't take a couple representatives from human races and put them on an island and put different selective pressures on them. (Also, it would not work because it would take way too long to see any changes.) But we have to be exceptionally careful about our human evolutionary arguments. Once someone purports a trait to be an "adaptation" or "selected for", that usually means that people will attribute quality to that trait. So if I make up a nice story about colicy babies being able to survive better (although there is actually an interesting study on fussy babies in countries with high starvation rates surviving better - but anyways, back to my Just So Story), parents will start to attribute value to this trait - people will brag about how "strong" their baby is because he can't sleep through the night and cries all the time!

A slightly ridiculous example, but hopefully my point comes through. As humans, we will place more value on a trait labelled an "adaptation". And simply because a trait may have been an adaption in our history, does not mean it's being actively selected for now. In part because of our changing social structures and technological advances, I would argue that selection pressures may be changing. So something that, in the History of Mankind was adaptive or an adaptation, may no longer be under selective pressure, and may even at some point start to be detrimental.

Example - say that ancestral humans felt the need to have a large, relatively unpopulated territory. (I have no evidence for this - just an example.) They may have found benefits, possibly nutritional, in covering large areas every day. If that was an adaptation then, and we still have that vague drive, what will happen when a modern-day human moves to Hong Kong, where the density of the population is extraordinary? Is this past adaptation now maladaptive in the new environment? Will the person go, for lack of a better word, bonkers? 



> Ants and humans are not totally dissimiliar though. We can learn somethings about ourselves by observing ants. Ants can serve as proxies because of the difficulties you mentioned. Namely the time factor. Sometimes seeing a less complex social structure helps us understand the general nature of social structures...the general rules of social structures in nature. If you can compare these "rules" with other organisms, you may be able to extrapolate this data, to a certain extent to humans.


Again, we can learn a lot of things from ants, I don't disagree at all. In fact, I wish more people would be interested in non-human organisms to learn about the world! (It's a big world.) But all social structures are not necessarily additive. This is where my "emergence" argument will flare up again. Because we understand one kind of social structure does not mean we will be able to then just "add on" a layer of complexity and understand another social structure. Resulting social structures may have emergent properties from the interactions of different kinds of parts. 



> I have never thought of a _thought _as a _thing _before. In order to understand what you are saying, this is essential. I think that I am gaining a better understanding of behavior and genetics from this discussion. Thanks. :asian:


This is true - in Psychology, in Biology, we have to be careful about distinguishing between someone's internal experience, which we cannot ever directly access, with the things we can measure about them.

(One of my favorite philosophical papers on this kind of thing is Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" About knowing (or not) other minds.) 

 I hope this has been an interesting discussion for you and, maybe, for others as well. I think perhaps one of the main differences is between the kinds of thought different fields encourage - physics is "all about" universal laws. But no-one is even attempting to construct a universal law of biology - there is too much variation, and too much we haven't even looked at yet. That's one of the amazing things about all the species and ecosystems on this planet - the diversity is absolutely incredible and awe-inspiring, I think. Each new system adds more "messiness", rather than confirming an overarching law.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 29, 2004)

Sorry this took so long, guys, but I have been quite occupied as of late. I shall only address the comments directly pointed at me...

*1. Where is the line between what we know and what we don't know?*

Good question --- unfortunately, it isn't one particularly relevant to the discussion at hand.

Y'see, the main contention here is _not_ that humans will never know this-or-that. Rather, it is that humans will never know this-or-that using this particular methodology --- and that seems to be the contention that you have the biggest problem with here.

The main problem you seem to be having, upnorthkyosa, is that the sciences you have pledged allegiance to are not actually the Omniscient Source of All Wisdom. You seem to have a huge problem with the very notion that the human psyche is understood through dialogical, introspective, and phenomonological means --- as opposed to monological, external, empirical-analytic means. Namely, you seem to have this desire to make your favored approach to knowledge as the _only_ valid approach to knowledge.

Which really brings us back to the original issue at hand here: the reductionist claims that if his science(s) or field(s) can't see it, then it doesn't exist. And I'm not just talking about "atomistic" reductionism here either (extreme cultural constructivism and the "subtle" reductionism of some systems scientists suddenly come to mind). All of this strikes me as a whole lot of academic and professional hubris.

Now, don't get me wrong --- I think studying things like linguistics, biology, or the systems sciences can greatly _aid_ and _complement_ our understanding of the human psyche. But those are indirect means --- they mostly tell us correlative data about the subject and not causative data. The actual contents of an individual's mind or intentions or whatnot are discovered through introspective phenomenology (among other things), not through prodding at his/her neurons with a microscope. The psyche is, and has been, directly studied by fields like psychology. That is their forte, their turf, their backyard.

*What happens when we cross that line?*

Then we cross it. Its happened before, and it will happen again undoubtedly. 

The fact remains, however, that we humans will _never_ know everything in the universe --- namely because the universe is constantly changing and evolving. New data and information emerges too quickly for us to categorize and classify, making any real "Theory of Everything" ultimately futile. But, hey, we can always give it our best shot.

*2. If evolution is correct, then everything that makes us who we are evolved. Assuming this is correct, then how can anything we do be separate from our biology?*

Because "evolution" and "biology" are not synonyms. 

Evolutionary principles have their origins in certain "Neoplatonic" philosophies, most clearly elucidated by the German Idealists (Hegel, Schophenhaur, Schelling, etc). These priniciples were not applied to the natural sciences until quite a few decades later. And, even today, many sciences and fields employ evolutonary and developmental principles --- including psychology, sociology, anthropology, and especially philosophy.

*Perhaps a tad bit wishy washy, but you are still drawing lines.*

That's an interesting accusation, coming from someone that claims that all subjective phenomena aren't "really real".

*What can we know and what can't we know? What is special and what isn't? When we cross a line that you have drawn, what happens then?*

I haven't drawn any lines on what we can or cannot "know", and I'm not entirely certain what you mean by "special" either. I think you may be projecting some common contentions against materalism onto my arguments, contentions which I never made.

The only contention of import here that I have made is that there are different means of acquiring knowledge, and not all of these means can study the same phenomena (I can't "know" a molecule's chemical makeup using introspection, nor can I "know" a subject's motivations using empirical-analysis). What I'm essentially making is a call for a more multi-disciplinary, holistic, cross-cultural, and integral approach to knowledge --- not an exclusivistic, monopolar, reductionistic model. I don't think that's that unreasonable. 

*I think that a great many drug companies would disagree with you.*

Drug companies can't think. Individuals can.

*The whole concept of "biology is psychology" is what they make their money off of. Unless we're talking about the placebo effect...but that could just be the mind having more of a control over the body then we thought.*

Gee... talk about being wishy-washy. 

No, the drug companies do _not_ make money off of the presumption that "biology is psychology". They _do_ make money off of the presumption that biology _influences_ psychology --- that there is _some_ kind of relationship between your exterior and interior states and well-being. But collapsing that correlative relationship (which has been "proven") into a causative relationship (which has not) is nothing short of bad science.

As for the famed placebo effect, that seems to help my case a lot more than it does yours.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
And, also, not differentiating between philosophical reductionism and reductionistic methodology is definately not being multi-disciplinary. Its being projectionistic, putting your philosophical beliefs onto a science that does not have them. 
-------------------------------------------------
You haven't shown me how there is a difference. I don't think that philosophic reductionism exists...*

I suggest you research the subject, then. This philosophy had been known in a long time in the West as "materialism". The modern hijacking of science to support materialism is now generally referred to as "scientism", a position you seem to be supporting.

Its really not that difficult a concept to understand. Not all "hard scientists" are materialists, period. They don't make assumptions, in the laboratory or elsewhere, that only material phenomena are "really real". They don't make assumptions that material, externally-observable qualities are the only "real" components a particular object (or subject) is made up of. Many natural scientists (including physicists), for example, believe in souls. And God, for that matter.

In short, they don't make the reductionistic assumption that just because their science or field cannot percieve a particular phenomena or quality, that that phenomena or quality does not exist.

There is an obvious difference between the scientific method and "scientific materialism" (i.e., "scientism") --- hell, psychologists use the scientific method all the time and they most certainly don't think the mind is just a hallucinatory side-effect of neurotransmitters. The same goes for anthropologists and worldviews, as well as sociologists and social systems. Collapsing concepts does not change any of this.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
And, as for not differentiating causation and correlation?? Pssh... that's the worst of them all. An elementary mistake in science, one of the first things you learn not to do in psychology. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You talk about the burden of proof with this point and that is fine. If the burden is on me, I think that I can safely say that the cause of psychology is biology. From a developmental point of view, there was a new study done where children were measured through their formative years and their developments could be seen as both the growth in the complexity of connection and the density of brain tissue.*

Well, first off, I could question your claim here and request a citation of some sort. However, your account basically coincides with what I know of neurophysiology, so we can for argument's sake just agree that what you stated above is probably true.

In any event, kyosa, all you've "proven" in the above account is your continued inability to differentiate causation and correlation. There is absolutely nothing above that "proves" that the changes in brain tissue actually _caused_ those developmental changes in the psyche. All it "proves" is that changes in brain tissue accompanied these changes in developmental cognition. 

In other words, correlation.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Because its inherently contradictory. Biology is not a subjective field, its an objective field. There are, of course, fields where the two interlap (such as anthropology or psychology), but biology is not one of them. 
--------------------------------------------
Please forgive me, but I have not been able to follow this part of your argument.*

Its quite simple: biology does not study subjective qualia. It studies external quantities that can be observed from the "outside". They are completely different ways of acquiring data here, due to the completely different natures of the data in question.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Chemicals are not subjective phenomena. Nor are neurons nor synapses nor neurotransmitters nor brainwaves. We experience all these objectively, "from the outside". Subjective phenomena are qualia --- they are emotions, ideas, thoughts, feelings, memories, experience, awareness, and consciousness. I cannot objectively "see" any of those "from the outside".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I disagree. You can see an emotion flashing across your brain. You can locate the section in the brain that shows where you are attracted to a member of the opposite sex. Sexual thoughts, feelings, mathematics, we can see all of that happening and all we have to do is measure the minute flow of electromagnetic radiation through through your gray matter. To say that these concepts are completely "subjective" is incorrect. We can see the parts that make them.*

I'm sorry, kyosa, but I suggest you look up the meaning of "emotion" in the dictionary. It will not say "a blip of color that registers on the electromagnetic field".

Yes, there are objective correlates that ground subjective qualia. No one is contending against this. But your claim that these correlates are somehow what "makes" the qualia is one devoid of any grounding or evidence whatsoever.

Your rather dubious claim above would be like me saying that the theory of evolution is "a feeling of incredible intellect and analysis, and nothing more". I would, in essence, be using a rather dubious and extremist version of psychology to reduce all objective phenomena to the subjective qualia we feel whenever we experience them. That is exactly what you are doing with biology --- you are attempting to deny the validity of subjective qualia _in their own terms_ to make your favored approach to knowledge the One Great Truth of the universe.

In either event, it is very, very bad science.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
You also still have to explain how a subjective view that denies the validity of all subjective views could actually be "true". According to physicalism, the idea of physicalism itself is nothing but biological processes having fun and thus has no substantive reality itself. Thus, according to its very own premises, physicalism cannot possibly be a true idea because it is an idea.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Look, when it comes right down to it, this is gibberish. You are arguing in circles and avoiding reality.*

Nope, sorry. I can understand your desire to _want_ that to be true, because then you don't have to contend with the rather obscene contradictions of your own position. But, let's look at it logically...

Your materialism claims that no subjective phenomena is "really real", that they are essentially hallucinatory side-effects of neuronal activity in the material brain. The contradictory part is that this philosophy, this claim, this point of view, this position _itself_ is a subjective phenomena. Thus, by its very own criterion, it is not "really real" and has absolutely no substantive validity.

Thus, according to the philosophy of materialism, the philosophy of materialism cannot be true.

What all this really boils down to is the "myth of the given". You are making the rather naive assumption that the objective world is just sitting out there, _given to us_ in a pure sense, without filtration from the subject itself. The actual truth, however, is that we _only_ percieve this objective world, including neurons, _through_ our subjective contours. 

The myth that Western scientists and philosophers clung to for centuries is that the observer, the subject, can somehow observe objective reality in some pure, unfiltered sense --- which ended up with philosophies like materialism, which naively claim that therefore subjective phenomena don't matter, or don't exist. Increasingly in the late 19th century and on into the 20th century, with individuals such as Nieztsche, Wittgenstein, Heiddeger, and so on, we learn that the subjective (and intersubjective) spheres profoundly influence our perceptions of the world. This included everything from linguistics to cultural worldview to the subject's very own individual intentionality.

Sorry, man, but your "object only" view of the world died out about 100 years ago. Nobody buys into that stuff anymore, especially not with the Theory of Relavitiy looming in the background. 

The simple truth is that _both_ objective _and_ subjective phenomena are equally valid and important. 

*Where the circle breaks is with the assumption that all ideas are created equal.*

Sorry, again, but no. That position is a plainly hypocritical and contradictory stance (because, once again, it is a type of reductionism and all reductionisms are inherently self-contradictory). Namely, because although it _says_ that "all ideas are created equal", this is based on the assumption that that idea itself is, in fact, _superior_ to all ideas that say otherwise. 

Put succinctly: "all ideas are created equal, except for the idea that all ideas are created equal".

Ummmm. Gotchah.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
You also have to explain how objective phenomena can actually exist without subjective phenomena. That's like saying all ups are true, but all downs are false. All hots are correct, all colds flawed. Its a completely incomprehensible position. Subjectivity and objectivity define one another, you cannot have the one without the other. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This is one of the areas that I'm going to have to punt. I'm not sure what bearing this has on the conversation.*

Quite a lot of bearing, actually.

You cannot have "external observation" or "objectivity" unless there is a subject, an interior reality, to contrast and compare it to. Darkness means nothing without any light to give it substance and definition.

These kind of arguments seem to be the ones you have the most problems with, kyosa. Namely, because they directly point to the contradictions of your position in a straightforward way --- as opposed to ironing out little details (like what dopamine does to our minds).

The very plain and direct truth is that you cannot actually adequately formulate _how_ materalism could feasibly be true in the first place --- you cannot explain how objects can exist without subjects. And this is why you are often forced to resort to tactics like "that's gibberish" or "that's not relevant" without even giving an explanation as to why. 

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Then again, you have to further explain why you are basing your philosophy on such plainly inaccurate models of reality. Your arguments just scream "the myth of the given", "truth as correspondence", and "the representational model". Reality is not a perception, its an interpretation. And you can't do any interpreting without a subject.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Basic epistomology. I don't see how I'm violoating any of this.*

Because you are claiming the subjective isn't real or valid. That's a pretty damn big violation, and absolutely screams myth of the given.

*Do you think that you can sense a neurotrasmitter firing in your brain as you type your reply? With the right instruments, we can watch the electromagentism flow over your brain as you type your reply. We can also measure and record how your brain functions when you remember something, have a feeling, or even contemplate infinite. We can even take a look at the difference between people who are disabled in some way in these areas and then compare it to how our brain works. Guess what, the two pictures are different.*

Yes, which I agree with completely. But all you've talked about is the material brain. I was talking about the subjective mind. A little less on the collapsing concepts, pelase.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
I suggest you actually look into what the influential philosophers and scientists supporting physicalism have to say on the matter --- they will gladly admit that we don't have a damn clue how "mind" can possibly issue forth from a physical organism. 
-------------------------------------------------------------
They are not going to say anything on the subject because they don't have the data.*

Its quite funny how someone can even vaguely claim his position is "scientific" when he admits we "don't have the data". Unless you think you know something that neuroscientists do not??

*Take a look at some of the stuff that neurosurgeons are doing as well as psychiatrist. Also, you might want to dissect a brain and learn the parts...It is enlightening to say the least.*

Been there, done that.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
And, throughout it all, I still don't see any justification for how all these biophysical processes are anything other than correlates. Correlation is not causation. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I seriously don't think that it is for any lack of data. Corellation upon correllation upon correllation upon correllation eventually becomes causation and that is what we are dealing with here.*

Nope, sorry again. Correlation upon correlation upon correlation does not eventually become causation. I suggest you open up a basic pyschology book (a subject you seem to have very little knowledge of) and read up on the actual differentation between the two.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Besides, I notice you still can't explain how genuine novelty occurs in the universe, which is a rather damning hole in your philosophy. 
-----------------------------------------------
Yes, it is, but I made a darn good attempt at an assumption above. Still, I admit that we may never have a clue to the source of randomness.*

Which is a fundamental inadequacy in your philosophy.

*Quote:
Originally Posted by heretic888
Depends on which "parts" you are referring to. I have yet to see any hard scientist show me a microscopic slide of a memory or emotion, so you are on a slippery slide here to say the least. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like I said, you have to look at brain scans of people thinking. You have to dissect the brain and learn its parts. You have to study how humans affect the brain through drug interactions. You have to know about brain chemistry. There is plenty of hard science on this stuff if you look for it. Don't take my word for it though. Go and ask someone in the biology department.*

Okay, then I'll ask someone in my college's cultural studies department to tell me about how gravity works!! *laughs hysterically*

You see the problem here?? You're attempting to make your field the Center of the Universe, the One Great Truth, the Theory of Everything, the Only Way to Know. Pure academic hubris.

Nothing you mentioned above references the "mind". It was all squishy brain data which, as important as it is, is not going to tell me a person's motivations for murder or their level of moral development or anything else of qualitative importance.

Sorry, man, but no dice.

Laterz.


----------



## Makalakumu (Jun 29, 2004)

*The fact remains, however, that we humans will never know everything  in the universe --- namely because the universe is constantly changing and evolving. * 

What is your evidence for the claim in italics?

*Because "evolution" and "biology" are not synonyms. * 

True.  But everything biological evolves.

*No, the drug companies do not make money off of the presumption that "biology is psychology". They do make money off of the presumption that biology influences psychology --- that there is some kind of relationship between your exterior and interior states and well-being. But collapsing that correlative relationship (which has been "proven") into a causative relationship (which has not) is nothing short of bad science*

I would say that asserting that you can _prove _ anything is bad science.  A scientist can prove nothing.  They can only provide support.  And in many cases, the support for their ideas ends up being correllations.  A good example of this is paleontology.  How do we really know anything about dinosaurs?  Many of our theories are based almost entirely upon correllation.  This also holds true with psychology...

*As for the famed placebo effect, that seems to help my case a lot more than it does yours.*

I'm playing with both sides of this argument in my mind as we speak.  I don't have my mind made up on this particular issue.

*Its really not that difficult a concept to understand. Not all "hard scientists" are materialists, period. They don't make assumptions, in the laboratory or elsewhere, that only material phenomena are "really real". They don't make assumptions that material, externally-observable qualities are the only "real" components a particular object (or subject) is made up of. Many natural scientists (including physicists), for example, believe in souls. And God, for that matter.*

Where is your evidence that the subjective exists?  If I am suppose to believe that objects are more then their externally observable qualities, should I be given a reason?  The burden of the proof falls on you for making this assertion.

*There is an obvious difference between the scientific method and "scientific materialism" (i.e., "scientism") --- hell, psychologists use the scientific method all the time and they most certainly don't think the mind is just a hallucinatory side-effect of neurotransmitters. The same goes for anthropologists and worldviews, as well as sociologists and social systems. * 

Which is why I think that many psychologist wallow in pits of spiritualism that filter their observations.  I would say this is one of the big reason there is no overarching theory for the mind that is comparable to biology...that and the sheer complexity of the minds parts...

*Yes, there are objective correlates that ground subjective qualia. No one is contending against this. But your claim that these correlates are somehow what "makes" the qualia is one devoid of any grounding or evidence whatsoever.*

What is evidence?  Can a corellation be evidence?  Is there any worth to a correllation at all?

*In any event, kyosa, all you've "proven" in the above account is your continued inability to differentiate causation and correlation. There is absolutely nothing above that "proves" that the changes in brain tissue actually caused those developmental changes in the psyche. All it "proves" is that changes in brain tissue accompanied these changes in developmental cognition. * 

You can't _prove _ anything.  This correllation/causation is darn fine...especially considering the fact that we can see synapses forming and gray matter developing when developmental changes occur.  

*Its quite simple: biology does not study subjective qualia. It studies external quantities that can be observed from the "outside". They are completely different ways of acquiring data here, due to the completely different natures of the data in question.*

_What _ are you studying when you come in from the _inside_?  I can see how a thought can be a thing of itself, but I view this more as a reflection in a mirror.  The image you see is something that exists, but it nothing that you will ever be able to touch.

*Your materialism claims that no subjective phenomena is "really real", that they are essentially hallucinatory side-effects of neuronal activity in the material brain. The contradictory part is that this philosophy, this claim, this point of view, this position itself is a subjective phenomena. Thus, by its very own criterion, it is not "really real" and has absolutely no substantive validity.*

What is a subjective phenomenon?  Where is your evidence that these things exist?  You claim that my position is a subjective phenomenon...ok...sure...if it exists then you should be able to isolate it in the universe.  If you say that something exists, then you need to support the position that it _does _ exist and you need to show it in a way that _anyone _ can see.  Even people who don't believe you.

*Sorry, man, but your "object only" view of the world died out about 100 years ago. Nobody buys into that stuff anymore, especially not with the Theory of Relavitiy looming in the background. * 

Uhhh, so now you are making a correllation between the Theory of Relativity and the position you posited... :idunno: Wasn't this bad science?

*Nope, sorry. I can understand your desire to want that to be true, because then you don't have to contend with the rather obscene contradictions of your own position. But, let's look at it logically...*

That may be true...here is rather large hole in your argument though..._The simple truth is that both objective and subjective phenomena are equally valid and important._  You have no evidence for this assertion.  It is nothing but a belief that you hold.

*The very plain and direct truth is that you cannot actually adequately formulate how materalism could feasibly be true in the first place --- you cannot explain how objects can exist without subjects. And this is why you are often forced to resort to tactics like "that's gibberish" or "that's not relevant" without even giving an explanation as to why.*

I can and I have.  You have asserted that I am incorrect.  You have claimed that subjective phenomenon are real.  I demand evidence or it nothing but gibberish.

*Nope, sorry again. Correlation upon correlation upon correlation does not eventually become causation. I suggest you open up a basic pyschology book (a subject you seem to have very little knowledge of) and read up on the actual differentation between the two.*

I suggest you take a look at paleontology and read a few theories that based entirely upon correllation.  Much of psychology is organized in the same way.  I have a question for you, from a psychologists point of view, what is causation?

*Yes, it is, but I made a darn good attempt at an assumption above. Still, I admit that we may never have a clue to the source of randomness.

Which is a fundamental inadequacy in your philosophy.*

I agree...but it doesn't mean that my initial proposition is any less correct.

*Nothing you mentioned above references the "mind". It was all squishy brain data which, as important as it is, is not going to tell me a person's motivations for murder or their level of moral development or anything else of qualitative importance.*

Nothing you do qualitatively will tell you the motivations for murder or their level moral development either.  You might get close by correllating different physical observations...and you might not...that is all we can do right now.  Get close.  My point is this, if I were to ask you to give me an observation that is not physical, you couldn't do it.  Even 2+2 is connected with reality.  The concept of two is nothing but a reflection of two objects.  Real like an object in the mirror but nothing that you will ever be able to manipulate unless you make it physical.


----------



## heretic888 (Jun 29, 2004)

*What is your evidence for the claim in italics?*

"We humans will never know everything". 

Namely, because "knowledge" itself is continually expanding and growing at a rate too fast for human beings to categorize and classify. Whether it be new cultural modifications, a new star being born on the other side of the Milky Way, new neuronal connections in our brains, or even an entirely new plateau of consciousness --- the universe is just too dynamic and too quickly changing for us to "know everything".

*True. But everything biological evolves.*

I wouldn't argue that, but the point I was trying to make is that evolutionary principles are by no means exclusive to biological sciences.

*I would say that asserting that you can prove anything is bad science. A scientist can prove nothing.*

That was why, you will notice, that I put the word _proven_ in quotation marks. 

*And in many cases, the support for their ideas ends up being correllations. A good example of this is paleontology. How do we really know anything about dinosaurs? Many of our theories are based almost entirely upon correllation. This also holds true with psychology...*

I don't know enough about paleontology to give you any kind of adequate answer, and your comments about "theories" and "psychology" were too vague to give a response. I will say, however, that --- provided all of what you claimed is true --- that this does not give one a free license to start collapsing correlation and causation. The differentation of the two remains a very important scientific principle.

*I'm playing with both sides of this argument in my mind as we speak. I don't have my mind made up on this particular issue.*

I see.

*Where is your evidence that the subjective exists? If I am suppose to believe that objects are more then their externally observable qualities, should I be given a reason? The burden of the proof falls on you for making this assertion.*

Well, this all boils down to what you take as valid "proof" and "evidence" to begin with. The simple truth is that there is just as much "proof" for the existence of the subjective as there is for the existence of the objective --- in the simple realization that we directly experience both. We have no more basis for denying the existence of the mind than we do for denying the existence of the body.

*Which is why I think that many psychologist wallow in pits of spiritualism that filter their observations.*

An unfounded and arrogant claim with absolutely no basis outside of academic hubris. Its about as mature (or relevant) as saying something like "biologists are just a bunch of pencil-necked geeks that can't see their own psyches coloring their observations of protons".

*I would say this is one of the big reason there is no overarching theory for the mind that is comparable to biology...that and the sheer complexity of the minds parts...*

I was unaware there was an "overarching theory" for biological principles.

*What is evidence? Can a corellation be evidence? Is there any worth to a correllation at all?*

I would argue that "evidence" is any form of raw datum whatsoever, including those outside the observations of empirical-analysis. I also feel correlations are important (and are indeed "evidence"), but that was not what I was criticizing before --- I _was_ criticizing your lack of evidence in assuming objective correlates somehow "make" their subjective counterparts.

*This correllation/causation is darn fine...especially considering the fact that we can see synapses forming and gray matter developing when developmental changes occur.*

In some instances, the delineation between causation and correlation can be fine. This is not one of them.

There is no reason, for example, to presuppose that the developmental changes in the psyche are what caused the neuronal connections. Likewise, there is no reason to presuppose that the neuronal connections caused the developmental changes in the psyche. There is no evidence of a causative relationship whatsoever.

That is when you have correlation --- when a phenomena accompanies another phenomena, but doesn't seem to have any direct or observable cause-and-effect relationship.

*What are you studying when you come in from the inside? I can see how a thought can be a thing of itself, but I view this more as a reflection in a mirror. The image you see is something that exists, but it nothing that you will ever be able to touch.*

You are studying the interior domains of consciousness (i.e., qualia). And, no, you cannot "touch" them. They are studied via dialogue, introspection, and phenomenology. Its an entirely different methodology than what you are used to.

*What is a subjective phenomenon?*

Anything experienced from "within", so to speak --- such as emotions, memories, thoughts, awareness, and so on.

*Where is your evidence that these things exist?*

Human experience.

*You claim that my position is a subjective phenomenon...ok...sure...if it exists then you should be able to isolate it in the universe.*

I think you missed my point --- unless you're now claiming that your point-of-view is an objective "thing" that you can point to.

The central issue is this: materialism claims that subjective phenomena (like thoughts) don't "really exist". Your point of view, the philosophy of materialism, falls into this category. Thus, according to your own criterion, it does not exist and has no valid reality.

That is what you call a performative contradiction.

*Uhhh, so now you are making a correllation between the Theory of Relativity and the position you posited...  Wasn't this bad science?*

Nope. One of the central elements of relativity, as I understand it, is that the act of observation directly alters the nature of the object of observation (i.e., time and space are "relative" to the observer). This blows the notion of any "pure observation" of objective phenomena completely out of the water.

*That may be true...here is rather large hole in your argument though...The simple truth is that both objective and subjective phenomena are equally valid and important. You have no evidence for this assertion. It is nothing but a belief that you hold.*

Correction: you claim I have no evidence. This does not make it so.

*I can and I have. You have asserted that I am incorrect. You have claimed that subjective phenomenon are real. I demand evidence or it nothing but gibberish.*

I'm sorry, kyosa, but I suggest you re-read your arguments. What you called "gibberish" was my revelation of the contradictory nature of materialism --- apparently for no other reason than you didn't want to bother to come up with a logical refutation. The "evidence" for subjective phenomena was not being discussed in that context at all.

And, as a side note, there is just as much "evidence" for subjective phenomena as there is for objective phenomena.

*I suggest you take a look at paleontology and read a few theories that based entirely upon correllation. Much of psychology is organized in the same way. I have a question for you, from a psychologists point of view, what is causation?*

I believe I already explained this above.

*Nothing you do qualitatively will tell you the motivations for murder or their level moral development either. You might get close by correllating different physical observations...and you might not...that is all we can do right now. Get close.*

I'm sorry, but you are very wrong here. In fact, you evince a decided ignorance of psychological methodology.

*My point is this, if I were to ask you to give me an observation that is not physical, you couldn't do it.*

"I am aware." Gotchah.

*Even 2+2 is connected with reality.*

But unreal numbers are not.

*Real like an object in the mirror but nothing that you will ever be able to manipulate unless you make it physical.*

*raises eyebrow* I don't know about you, but I manipulate non-physical phenomena all the time. That's how I keep my Hulk-like rage in check. 

Laterz.


----------

