Steven Pinker / Evolutionary Psychology

[kyser_soze]

I am but I’m also saying there is a lot more to you being conscious than your biology.

Only within the terms of meaning that humans define for themselves.

It means not fully determined by: it’s the claim that conscious states don’t have direct causal correlates in the brain. There’s an autonomy to our conscious live. It’s an emergent level which as a whole (as, say, a framework) is physically determined but the individual elements within that framework aren’t themselves physically determined.

But they ARE physically determined - each thought, each feeling creates a different electrochemical map of the brain; these things ARE physically determined - the 'greater than the sum of it's parts' which I think is what you;re saying here may well be an illusion which our conscious psychology demands we make as part of our sense of self - hence the need for narrative, meaningful explanations for Why are we here? and What Am I? Gorski makes the very clear point that we are not as other animals because we have ethics, aesthetics and science - well maybe we have more complex iterations of these things in our society, but tool making and use, concious, non-defensive killing, bullying etc are all cultural artefacts that are observed in a variety of other species - indeed, one thing I've often thought from watching nature docs is that humans are different because we exhibit all the characteristics of other forms of life on the planet - from the 'ant-like' or 'worker drone' behaviours of working life, to the viral characteristics of our industry and ideas (you and Gorski probably think that terms like 'viral' marketing are buzz terms with no real grounding - whereas using epidemiological models to track marketing meme propagation does work) - it's like we're every form of animal in one package.

 

[nosos]

I also don't think I've really had a go at culture - I just think that without a grounding in the material processes of consciousness, an physical understanding of what it is, how and why it came about etc, while discussions about culture etc will always be interesting, they will also ultimately be flawed because without understanding the physical basis for it, how can we ever get to some kind of true answer about this 'meaning' business - beyond 'the same as every other biological organism, which is to survive long enough to breed', which while I agree with that view, for me personally it's not the most satisfying worldview to base my life on.

I don't think you can really unite the two into a unity of knowledge. However the absolute methodogical seperation between events and ideas is a product of a very specific intellectual tradition. The whole debate tends to be framed in such a way that one is always investigated at the cost of the other. Whereas in actual fact they're both abstractions from a unified whole.

In the field of consciousness there is always a correlation between a form of social existence and way of reflecting about mind, society and nature itself. In this sphere, one cannot speak of a structure of ideas and of a pattern of events as independent worlds. For each characteristic of the organisation of society there is a counterpart in the way men conceive the social world. Every social practice and institution is mediated through the categories of the mind, so that the manner in which people understand a social arrangement is an inseparable aspect of the arrangement itself. Hence, we never fully understand a phenomenon of consciousness, such as a religious irtual, a work of art, or an act of compliance with law, unless we can view it at the same time as a way in which men comprehend the world and organise their relations to one another.

Investigating the causal structures (patterns of events) that partly determine the social world fails to exhaust everything that can be said of it. Investigating the structures of ideas (forms of social consciousness) that partly determine the social world fails to exhaust everything that can be said of it. Likewise the unavoidable situatedness of any inquiry means that the inquiry itself can never exhaust everything that can be said of its object. Unlike the natural sciences for whom the stability of their objects is a product of their detached stanch of neutral description, the objects of the social science are an unstable product of the social positioning of the inquirer. Given that all inquirers must be so situated, sociology can never aim for a unity of knowledge of the social world but simply for fragmented, elucidatory and, above all else, useful accounts of local interrelationships between forms of social consciousness and patterns of events. This is the closest we are able to get to understanding how the social world works.

 

[Calva dosser]

As ever, I read your post too late Nosos.

Thank you for the explanation of 'underdetermined' it has often had me puzzled.

I would not call Nazis 'evil'- I would call that a value judgement.

Nazis were extremely stupid, lacking in enough scientific knowledge even to justify their own flawed philosophy.

I mean, trying to breed a super-race out of Saxon Farm Boys and Girls?

I could have put them right and I'm a Yid.

I wouldn't call Stalinists 'evil'- miss-guided to the point of insanity, maybe.

Capitalists aren't evil, just once again, miss-guided, and egged on by their apparent success, which I think many people now realise will be a somewhat damp pyrrhic victory.

Especially for those retired economists of the Friedman school who live by the river. (A neighbour of mine with a daughter who cooks )

But then economics is the study of a fiction anyway, like Theology.

And, of course, I believe that particle physicists have better things to do than follow the movement of 'money' which is why although it tries not to be, economics remains a pseudoscience.

This is not true of Neuroscience.

I'm sorry, maybe I am being unscientific, but I can't see how my brain is anything other than that, a brain.

Something that allows me, from time to time to shuffle around in the dirt without being hit by a rampaging herd of wildebeest.

 

[nosos]

I'm sorry, maybe I am being unscientific, but I can't see how my brain is anything other than that, a brain.

Well yes. So what's your mind?

 

[nosos]

But then economics is the study of a fiction anyway

Markets observably impact on people's lives far more than subatomic particles do.

Why is social reality 'ficton' and physical reality 'non-fiction'? As far as I'm concerned, real is real. We can't talk about these things without theories or concepts. Likewise we can't get outside of our theories and concepts to check beyond them, so to speak, to see if they match up to reality as it is itself. We all know what we mean when we talk about truth so we should just set about arguing over what it is. Meta-reflective discussion, whether by philosophers fixated on science or scientists doing bad philosophy, just confuses the issue.

Science shouldn't try and justify itself philosophically. It should just get on with being useful.

The poverty of those justifications - the utter fiction of scientistic models of scientific rationality and truth - are what has created the crisis we see rapidly approaching wth creationists pointing to gaps in the fossil record and shreeking shrilly "look! look! evolution is just a theory!". Of course it's just a theory but there's been a prevelent cultural understanding which explicitly or otherwise took science to somehow provide something more than theories. Something more than know-how. Quite where this desire to ground our practices in something beyond themselves came from is something I couldn't even begin to speculate about.

 

[kyser_soze]

Right, responses in order...

Post # 58

of being responsible for some pretty horrific things when taken to its logical social conclusion.

No disagreement there - going back to another thread and the 'lifeboat' approach to global warming; the survival benefits are completely clear (once all the 3rd world is dead and the most vulnerable from the rest of it more resources for the elite to chew on), but they are also a humanitarian catastrophe. Again, I don't think I've ever suggested that you can apply what's learned in physical sciences (or indeed social sciences) to the immediate governance of human societies - theory never matches practice when it comes to humans.

# 59 - Spot on, and nice touch on the 99% thing too

# 62 - While I don't think that it will ever be possible to analyse completely and therefore make testable predictions with 100% accuracy, i think at some point, when the abilities of either humans, computers or some fusion of the two, becomes great enough to deal with the data acquired, it will be possible to make broadly reliable predictions on what the outcomes of certain social policies would be - especially, and possibly the most important outcomes, the nominally unforeseen ones (altho the failure to anticipate negative or other results from any given action/ideal/principle is as much a function of 'true believer blindness' than a lack of processing power - the classic example being 'If we remove capitalism everything will be better', altho in practical terms something like the French 35 hr week - implemented to protect the w/c from long hours, ends up hurting them because it restricts allowable overtime for them and becomes a vacation benefit to m/c professionals who work in vocations where getting another body in to do the overtime slack simply doesn't work.)

 

[Calva dosser]

Well yes. So what's your mind?

I don't, never did understand what a 'mind' is, I've never seen, or measured one by other means.

The complex social interactions we undertake, our funny little quibbles over angels on pin-heads and whether the Beatles were crap, or multiculturalism is better than integration, in my view stem from the spin-off, the happy, (and frequently not so happy) excess of grey matter we got when not falling out of trees ceased being a necessarry prerequisite for a shag.

I hope, that the increased brain capacity will be used to consistently reduce 'mysteries' to the explainable, or potentially explainable.

I am not fooled by my own brains excessive flights of fancy. Well sometimes.

I find it a little absurd that people invest so much in human 'consciousness'.

It's like a puddle thinking 'how brilliant I fit this hole in the tarmac- must have been made for me'

Until the sun comes up.

 

[kyser_soze]

Markets observably impact on people's lives far more than subatomic particles do.

Hmm...ask someone who's got skin cancer about that. Indeed, try going without sunlight produced vitamin D for 6 months and see what impact that has on you (or go to Finland, suicide capital of the world)...hell, if a star within 20 years of here when supernova and the planet was sterilised by a gamma ray burst try arguing that. Or a coronal mass ejection causing an EM overload of the power and communications systems of the world...3 observable impacts I'd say...

While astrology might be bollocks, it's underlying principle, that objects far away can have an effect on us, isn't wrong, and your dismissal of sub atomic particles as having no impact on people's lives is..well, short sighted I guess.

Well yes. So what's your mind?

The advantageous illusion of self that enables me to do all the things in #59

 

[nosos]

@ calva

My God I have a proper unrepentant old school scientific realist to play with.

(sadly I have to go the gym and exercise my protons and neutrons now)

 

[Calva dosser]

Markets observably impact on people's lives far more than subatomic particles do.

Why is social reality 'ficton' and physical reality 'non-fiction'? As far as I'm concerned, real is real. We can't talk about these things without theories or concepts. Likewise we can't get outside of our theories and concepts to check beyond them, so to speak, to see if they match up to reality as it is itself.

Science shouldn't try and justify itself philosophically. It should just get on with being useful.

I reckon I can last for a week with what I've got in the fridge if the banking system collapses.

How long do you reckon you'd last if sub-atomic particles stopped doing sub-atomic-particly type stuff?

"Real is real"

Please remember, you did not evolve to see what is real, you evolved to see what a medium-sized primate needs to see in order to get food, shags, and avoid death in or around the rift valley of Africa.

It wasn't long ago, and don't expect evolution to bail you out with a bigger hard disk anytime in the next couple of million years.

Social 'reality' is how we interprate what appears to be going on.

Not why it's going on.

If you went back in time, and met Leonardo, would you come back and start a degree course about his artists materials?

Take a school yard. Take a large office. Take a troop of chimpanzees.

Makes our much vaunted 'consciousness' look a bit like escapism to me. Most days.

 

[gorski]

Calva, not "calling" Nazis and Stalinists evil - because "that would be a value type of judgement" - is close to insane... or at the very least totally blinkered and outta this world... It also gives the game away for those opting for "scientism" and "value free or neutral" nonsense, crude materialism and whatnot!

Maybe I would be better off putting you down as just damn ignorant to the bone, dunno... But this is outrageous!!! I lived in such a system and can tell you a lot about it and just how much they were "just human" or whatever you may dream of being a "no value statement and no judgement" or whatever other cloud cookoo land you may have fallen from...

Sure, they were also stupid and their "theory", which didn't include the means of putting it into practice, was seriously flawed from the start - but how can one not see these were some seriously evil people [slaughtering people by all means necessary]?!?!?!?

For Humans it is not possible to have "value free judgements" - they are all underpinned with a series of values! Science or any other "discipline"!

There is a link above to a very good article picking apart such "common sense" prevailing "received wisdom" re. science...

 

[Jonti]

My God I have a proper unrepentant old school scientific realist to play with.

I'm annoyed and dismayed (but not surprised) by the snobby arrogance of this comment.

I expect your campus has a plentiful population of scientific realists* in the science and engineering departments; and that there are quite a few mathematical platonists in the maths and computer sciences etc areas. If you are unable to "play" with them, the reason may be that they won't play with you because, well, they have better things to do with their time. After all, they have real devices to make, and real results to puzzle out.

The serious point being that the engineers, scientists and mathematicians have demonstrated the power of their ideas in describing reality. No offense like, but, despite your sneering, this is an achievement you have yet to match.

* Yeah, even of the "unrepentant old school" variety (but how on earth do you think that adds nuanced meaning to the term scientific realist anyway?!)

 

[Jonti]

...

For Humans it is not possible to have "value free judgements" ...

So you say.

Now will you say what values and ideology you are supporting by making the claim?

 

[Calva dosser]

Calva, not "calling" Nazis and Stalinists evil - because "that would be a value type of judgement" - is close to insane... or at the very least totally blinkered and outta this world... It also gives the game away for those opting for "scientism" and "value free or neutral" nonsense, crude materialism and whatnot!

Maybe I would be better off putting you down as just damn ignorant to the bone, dunno... But this is outrageous!!! I lived in such a system and can tell you a lot about it and just how much they were "just human" or whatever you may dream of being a "no value statement and no judgement" or whatever other cloud cookoo land you may have fallen from...

Sure, they were also stupid and their "theory", which didn't include the means of putting it into practice, was seriously flawed from the start - but how can one not see these were some seriously evil people [slaughtering people by all means necessary]?!?!?!?

For Humans it is not possible to have "value free judgements" - they are all underpinned with a series of values! Science or any other "discipline"!

There is a link above to a very good article picking apart such "common sense" prevailing "received wisdom" re. science...

I did not have you down as "ignorant to the bone".

But if that's the way we are going, may I list you as "deluded to the bone"?

I never use the word 'evil'- I feel it credits fuckwits with too much self-will.

'Evil' just turns out to be sheer banality in my cloud cuckoo land.

And please don't tell me I can't have value free judgements, because I will keep having them until I make mythelf thick- you hear?

 

[gorski]

Deluded to the bone? Fine, knock yourself out.

You have NO IDEA ABOUT IT and you wanna have "value free judgements" that implicitly are also "scientifically correct and therefore superior" no doubt..... Great.

Fook me, as I am sooooo close minded...

Jonti, read that bloody article with an OPEN MIND, I DARE YOU!!!

http://www1.umn.edu/ships/ethics/values.htm - just stop bullshitting yourself, please... even if you try to bullshit the rest of us...

 

[Calva dosser]

"The common characterization of science as value-free or value-neutral can be misleading. Scientists strongly disvalue fraud, error and "pseudoscience", for example. At the same time, scientists typically value reliability, testability, accuracy, precision, generality, simplicity of concepts and heuristic power. Scientists also value novelty, exemplified in the professional credit given for significant new discoveries (prestige among peers, eponymous laws, Nobel Prizes, etc.). The pursuit of science as an activity is itself an implicit endorsement of the value of developing knowledge of the material world. While few would tend to disagree with these aims, they can become important in the context of costs and alternative values. Space science, the human genome initiative, dissection of subatomic matter through large particular accelerators or even better understanding of AIDS, for instance, do not come free. Especially where science is publicly funded, the values of scientific knowledge may well be considered in the context of the values of other social projects"

Ooh, think about the kittens.

And pass my research grant for my study of non-culturally divisive drainage systems in pre Mayan civilisations.

Mr Allchins' 'introduction' puts me in mind of walking through treacle.

Nope. This self-generated hot air has very little information content.

A load of faux academics quoting one another, and you urging people to have an 'open mind', or stop bullshitting, would be laughable, if this rubbish hadn't infiltrated so far.

E2A oh, and the 'Material World'- is there another one where you philosophs float around in a rarified atmosphere of hermeneuetically sealed debate, like a bunch of constipated Timelords?

Or is it just a childhood Madonna fixation?

 

[gorski]

Deluded indeed... Some are just hopeless... Not to mention scared shitless.... they might have to learn something new... and especially of having to change a few things in line with it...

Ahem...

 

[Calva dosser]

You, chum, will never have to learn anything new.

If every philosophy department on Earth exploded tomorrow, bullshit and obfuscation are the most readily transferable skills in Human Society

 

[phildwyer]

You, chum, will never have to learn anything new.

If every philosophy department on Earth exploded tomorrow, bullshit and obfuscation are the most readily transferable skills in Human Society

See, this is the problem in a nutshell, and the reason why I don't bother with these threads any more. Whereas philosophers are usually willing and able to master the tenets and presuppositions of Baconian science, scientists are generally neither willing nor (it seems) able to return the courtesy. It beggars belief that there are people on here who will try to debate this issue, not only without having read Kant or Hegel (that is a serious but excusable handicap), but without even understanding that Kant and Hegel are relevant to the question at hand.

There is simply no defence against ignorance of that nature.

 

[Calva dosser]

What, pray tell o wise one, is 'Baconian' science?.

I know of 4 Bacons, one was a monk who messed about with gunpowder, another a religious nutter, the third a hockey team captain in Billericay, and the last an American actor.

I'm sorry, you invite fatuous comments like a fatuous comment inviting device from the planet Zog.

Why would one read Hegel, or Kant if one was interested in the relevance of nematode flatulence in a closed environment like an interstellar space vessel, for example?

Or indeed, why would one read a treatise on nematode flatulence if one were more interested in this 'philosophy' thing you all seem so keen on?

 

[gorski]

Deluded is too kind a word for this kinda arrogance...

I 'obfuscated' nothing and wrote in quite clear terms. But of course, it doesn't mean it will satisfy every reductionist twat on Earth.

The late Zappa had a good one: Hydrogen, he said, is the basis of all life, claim the scientists, since it's ubiquitous, i.e. most common of elements. Well, if that's the principle to go by, then, surely, it's stupidity that is the basis on all life in the Universe. I would add laziness, too...

Tell me, oh Deluded one, when was anything of real value easy to get to? And how is it possible to immediately equate it with obfuscation, if one has to work on something to "get it"?!?

One more thing from the thread I mentioned earlier: if "human behaviour is mostly shaped by genetics":

Originally Posted by Brainaddict
For me there's no argument that there is instinctive behaviour - only an argument over what is instinctive and what is not. Which is an argument that could (and will) go on forever, but I think you're really exaggerating the 'essential' differences between cultures here. Sure there are a lot of differences, but consider for instance someone paying more attention (in conversation or whatever) to someone they are sexually attracted to than someone they find ugly. I'm willing to bet this happens in every culture that has ever existed or ever will exist. Sure, you might be required to hide it better in some cultures than others, but I'm willing to bet the instinct would be there.

And then my reply, conveniently not commented by anyone:

So, how is this "natural behaviour" "natural" if women [or even men, as potential sexual partners, for that matter] can't choose for themselves for who knows how many thousands of years - and then, we change it drastically? What happened to "natural behaviour" up until then? How can we be so presumptuous to claim that this behaviour we now established is an absolutely "natural" one, i.e. in accordance with [no less than] the "laws of nature" and hence "normative" and then we start building legal, political, societal structures [customs and even "feelings" according to such "values/attitudes/principles"]... Should we not be really careful there?

Our 'observations', as seen above, are marred [frequently utterly uncritically] by our time and space, our experiences, education, our societal structures etc. "Objective" suddenly seems very temporary and heavily time/space dependent. We better answer those Q's before we jump to such far-reaching conclusions, with many potential consequences with regards to how we see ourselves, our very "nature" and then organise our societies in accordance with the "latest scientific 'insights'"...

It's post no. 51 here: http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=208276&page=2

The Q is: what has changed in our genes so drastically, that would obviously be quite "observable" by the scientific community, if we have changed our behaviour so dramatically?!?

A clue: notion of "emancipation" to be followed historically - and then connect with any possible genetic change in Humans. If not possible - redraw your "arguments", please...

 

[gorski]

1 more thing:

As Marx speaks of bourgeois apologists/ideologues: it's funny, he said, as now they have become just like the religious dogmatics they deposed, because all that happened before Capitalism was totally unjust and flawed, artificial and un-natural but the newly established [by them] society is now perfectly 'in tune' with Nature itself, so "no more changes, please"! History used to be but NO MORE!!

The arrogance of it all: we have become Gods and now we can close the pages of History book forever... Cor blimey!!!!

And then the laziness, on the one hand...

But, on the other hand, the third element is fear: in Nazi terms [that one is absolutely clear, as driven to exteme, so I mention it for illustration, NOT to accuse anyone here on being a Nazi but CONSERVATIVE ONLY, even if they don't know it!] it's fear of uprootedness... Hence the Heideggerian need for "absolute source of everything", "firm grounds", ur-sprung, the source/spring of it all - and a serious fear of seeing life as opened, changing, undetermined... As seen in Adorno's critique...

In the other thread there were some "bright ideas" of "we have it - it's the gravity"... Here it's genes... And every so often someone will claim something is "absolute"... So what? How far can you go from gravity in cosmological terms and claim everything is explainable from it? Or from power in Human terms, as found to be the case in Machiavelli, having worked on it in line with his contemporaries in "physical sciences" who "found" gravity?

The really interesting Q's for us, Humans, are irreducible to such "facts"... as they themselves are highly complex "ideas" - or else we would have had them since the beginning of time.... they would come built-in... if it's the genes, then it would have been in them already and we wouldn't have had to struggle to those ideas, dontchaknow...

As things stand, however, we had to work our arses to them and then we saw those are actually not so simple, either...

So, simpleton reductionists [crude materialists or 'absolute idealists', for want of a better word - the "before God bowing" ones - just to mention, before someone accuses me of paving the way for a religious dogma... ] are the most arrogant, ignorant, lazy and frightened, hence weak twats on Earth! AIO [all in one] - ergo, very efficient!

My 2 p worth... in clear language...

 

[gorski]

And no, it's not "relativism" - for all of you scared of anything even ever so slightly "indeterminate", i.e. "absolute"...

 

[gorski]

Jonti will, no doubt soon, very soon [although not quite "ready yet" ], show us the Hegel of Animal Kingdom and their Morality and Ethics, Art and Aesthetics, Axiology, Science, Gnoseology, Ontology, Politics, Medicine, Technology and all the rest of it... in "zwoelf banden, no doubt quite thick and in leather covers... [Crikey!! How easy it is to get yourself into such a trouble when one is sooooo arrogant a reductionist... ]

 

[Calva dosser]

I have no more intention of reading Hegel, than you have of reading about sexual selection.

Which, for example, would explain to you that you simply don't understand all aspects of the terrible plot against right-thinking people that is natural selection.

You may poke your child-like notions of 'morality', where hopefuly, scientists will never have to probe. Although perhaps unwisely, they do love to use their probes.

I'm going shopping.

 

[Calva dosser]

Jonti will, no doubt soon, very soon [although not quite "ready yet" ], show us the Hegel of Animal Kingdom and their Morality and Ethics, Art and Aesthetics, Axiology, Science, Gnoseology, Ontology, Politics, Medicine, Technology and all the rest of it... in "zwoelf banden, no doubt quite thick and in leather covers... [Crikey!! How easy it is to get yourself into such a trouble when one is sooooo arrogant a reductionist... ]

Sorry. This is without meaning.

I divine your prejudices, but not your point.

 

[nosos]

It's not without meaning though. This is what pisses me off about how Gorski and Dwyer are treated on this forum. The ideas they post aren't immediately understood by some people. Thus said people presume the ideas are nonsense rather than taking the time to try and understand where they're coming from.

Fwiw when I argue philosophy of science with science people I often find myself going to wiki and searching round google to look up things they say that I don't understand. I'm not saying "go read Kant", nor am I saying Gorski writes clearly if you're not used to that sort of style but I am saying make the effort before you start attacking people. Particularly if you're going to post on a philosophy forum.

 

[phildwyer]

It's not without meaning though. This is what pisses me off about how Gorski and Dwyer are treated on this forum. The ideas they post aren't immediately understood by some people. Thus said people presume the ideas are nonsense rather than taking the time to try and understand where they're coming from.

I tell you what, if you really want a laugh, utter the dread words "paradigm shift." Oh, they do get snippy.

Its a problem with society as a whole though. Scientists are taught as undergraduates that theirs is the *only* means to truth. That's something that everyone would like to believe, so they readily accept it, and they become angry when this assumption is challenged. And the demands of their profession are such that they never get around to reading any philosophy, so they never know any different.

There are honourable exceptions--SJ Gould was one--and the results when a scientist actually does find out something about philosophy are often spectacularly good. I'm not holding my breath for Jonti though.

 

[nosos]

I tell you what, if you really want a laugh, utter the dread words "paradigm shift."

and Kuhn's three physics degrees ceased to matter when he coined that phrase

 

[nosos]

More over I think the philosophical reconstruction of the scientific method works against the social interests of science. As I said earlier on in the thread, the revelatory tone you’ll see in some critics of science when they observe that evolution is just a theory is largely a product of the metaphysical certainty scientific realism tries to underwrite. If you take actually existing scientific practice on its own merits, as opposed to philosophical reflection on its relationship to Truth, much of the case the critics make vanishes. It’s actually not that hard to walk the line between scientism and obfuscation.