Hi Telmo Menezes purpose /Noun The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.
Verb Have as one's intention or objective: "God has allowed suffering, even purposed it". That seems reasonably straightforward, or at least it's not completely arbitrary. In Leibniz this is the basis of the principle of sufficient reason. Things must be the way they are for some reason. That quest is the activity of science. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/17/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-16, 06:16:47 Subject: Re: Re: Re: life is teleological Hi Roger, Man has no purpose (wise or foolish, it doesn't matter) in life ? He has evolved, hasn't he ? So man is at least one example of purpose driving or enhancing evolution. Purpose is a human construct. DNA encodes the developmental process (or algorithm) for our brain. This developmental process then takes place in an environment inhabited by other humans and a lot of other stuff. The directives encoded in DNA allow the brain to adapt to this environment. So the brain is encoded with a preference to avoid pain and seek pleasure. The way that experiences are classified as painful or pleasurable is fine-tuned by aeons of evolution. The homo sapiens occupies a very specialised evolutionary niche, in which it relies in the superior pattern-matching and future state-predicting capabilities of its gigantic brain. So in a way, the homo sapiens niche is that of being capable of adapting faster and better to new situations. This requires a level of neural sophistication that is unmatched by any other species we've seen so far. This sophistication includes complex constructs like purpose. You're right in that, in a way, we have now transcended evolution. We developed medical technology that allows us to keep members of our species alive when otherwise they would have died (I would have been dead at 1 month old, killed by a closed stomach valve). We developed artificial insemination, allowing for reproduction where it would have been impossible. Our super-complex society keeps altering the mate selection process. Changes in sexual morality across time and space continuously affect the evolutionary process. We are now in the process of becoming full-blown designers, by way of genetic engineering and nano-tech. All this came as a by-product of the evolutionary drift towards our niche: gigantic brains and their complexities. Avoid pain and seek pleasure - now with super-super-super computers. Why do we avoid pain and seek pleasure? Why do we have gigantic brains? Because this configuration passed the evolutionary filter. It turns out that it's stable enough to persist for some time. Now back to evolution itself: it does not have any preference for niches. That's an anthropomorphizing mistake. We persist doing our thing, e-coli persist doing theirs. So finally my main point: evolution does not have a purpose, but it is capable of generating systems sufficiently complex to feel a sense of purpose. Have a great Sunday, Telmo. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/15/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-13, 11:30:40 Subject: Re: Re: life is teleological Hi Roger, To be purposeful you need a self or center of consciousness to desire that goal or purpose. The key word is desire. Stones don't desire. Ok, but what I'm saying is that purposefulness is not present in evolutionary processes. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/13/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-12, 14:21:04 Subject: Re: life is teleological Hi Roger, Anything goal-oriented is teleological, which is what the word means. And the goal of life is to survive. So evolution is teleological. Sorry but I don't agree that life or evolution have a goal. That would be a bit like saying that the goal of gravity is to attract chunks of matter to each other. You could instead see life as a process and evolution as a filter: some stuff continues to exist, other stuff doesn't. We can develop narratives on why that is: successful replication, good adaption to a biological niche and so on. But these narratives are all in our minds, we ourselves looking at it from inside of the process, if you will. From the outside, we are just experiencing the stuff that persists or, in other words, that went through the evolutionary filter at this point in time. In other words, life is intelligent. Suppose I postulate that the goal of stars is to emit light. Are they intelligent? If not why? What's the difference? [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/12/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-11, 16:03:57 Subject: Re: Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional,brain study shows On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 3:46:23 PM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: Yes, I sent a search link for you to know the opinions about it. in EP this your example does not offer a clear hypothesis. But there are others that are evident. It depends on the context. for example , woman have more accurate facial recognition habilities, but men perceive faster than women faces of angry men that are loking at him. I think that you can guess why. It's the guessing why which I find unscientific. It helps us feel that we are very clever, but really it is a slippery slope into just-so story land. There are some species where the females are more aggressive ( http://www.culture-of-peace.info/biology/chapter4-6.html ) - does that mean that the females in those species will definitely show the reverse of the pattern that you mention? Just the fact that some species have more aggressive females than males should call into question any functionalist theories based on gender, and if gender in general doesn't say anything very reliable about psychology, then why should we place much value on any of these kinds of assumptions. Evolution is not teleological, it is the opposite. Who we are is a function of the specific experiences of specific individuals who were lucky in specific circumstances. That's it. There's no explanatory power in sweeping generalizations which credit evolution with particular psychological strategies. Sometimes behaviors are broadly adaptive species-wide, and sometimes they are incidental, and it is nearly impossible to tell them apart, especially thousands of years after the fact. Craig The alignment detection is common in the animal kingdom: somethng that point at you may be a treat. it 2012/12/11 Craig Weinberg On Monday, December 10, 2012 5:09:25 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: Craig: The evolutionary Psychology hypothesis are falsifiable Your link is just a Google search which shows that there is no consensus on whether they are falsifiable. Why do you think that they are falsifiable? I have made my case, given examples, explained why evolutionary psych is so seductive and compulsive as a cognitive bias, but why am I wrong? Try it this way. Let's say we are measuring the difference in how long it takes to recognize a friend versus recognizing a stranger and we find that there is a clear difference. Which would outcome would evolutionary psych favor? I could argue that it is clearly more important to identify a stranger, as they may present a threat to our lives or an opportunity for trade, security, information, etc. I could equally argue that it is clearly more important to identify a friend so that we reinforce the bonds of our social group and foster deep interdependence. I could argue that there should be no major difference between the times because they are both important. I could argue that the times should vary according to context. I could argue that they should not vary according to context as these functions must be processed beneath the threshold of conscious processing. Evolutionary Psychology assumptions can generate plausible interpretations for any outcome after the fact and offers no particular opinions before the fact, and that opens the door for at least ambiguous falsifiability in many cases. Craig 2012/11/30 Craig Weinberg On Friday, November 30, 2012 3:37:35 AM UTC-5, Alberto G.Corona wrote: This speed in the evaluation is a consequence of evolutionary pressures: A teleological agent that is executing a violent plan against us is much more dangerous than a casual accident. Only if there are teleological agents in the first place. There are some people around here who deny that free will is possible. They insist (though I am not sure how, since insisting is already a voluntary act) that our impression that we are agents who can plan and execute plans is another evolutionary consequence. The problem with retrospective evolutionary psychology is that it is unfalsifiable. Any behavior can be plugged into evolution and generate a just-so story from here to there. If the study showed just the opposite - that human beings can't tell the difference between acts of nature and intentional acts, or that it is very slow, why that would make sense too as a consequence of evolutionary pressure as well. You would want to be *sure* that some agent is intentionally harming you lest you falsely turn on a member of your own social group and find yourself cast out. This would validate representational theories of consciousness too - of course it would take longer to reason out esoteric computations of intention than it would take to recognize something so immediately important as being able to discern emotions in others face. That way you could see if someone was angry before they actually started hitting you and have a survival advantage. Evolutionary psychology is its own built in confirmation bias. Not that it has no basis in fact, of course it does, but I can see that it is psychology which is evolving, not evolution which is psychologizing. because the first will continue harming us, so a fast reaction against further damage is necessary, while in the case of an accident no stress response is necessary. (stress responses compromise long term health) Yes, but it's simplistic. There are a lot of things in the environment which are unintentional but continue to harm us which we would be better off developing a detector for. There is no limit to what evolution can be credited with doing - anything goes. If we had a way of immediately detecting which mosquitoes carried malaria, that would make perfect sense. If we could intuitively tell fungus were edible in the forest, that would make sense too. That distinction may explain the consideration of natural disasters as teleological: For example earthquakes or storms: The stress response necessary to react against these phenomena make them much more similar to teleological plans of unknown agents than mere accidents. The study shows the opposite though. It shows that we specifically and immediately discern the intentional from the unintentional. The top priority is making that distinction. Hence, it is no surprise that the natural disasters are considered as teleological and moral . For example, as deliberated acts of the goods against the corruption of the people, or currently, the response of "the planet" against the aggression of the immorally rich countries that deplete the resources. It's not a bad hypothesis, but I see the more plausible explanation being that by default consciousness is tuned to read meta-personal (super-signifying) meanings as well as personal and sub-personal (logical) meanings. Except for the last few centuries among Western cultures, human consciousness has been universally tuned to the world as animistic and teleological. The normal state of human being is to interpret all events that one experiences as a reflection on one's own efforts, thoughts, etc. This is why religion is such an easy sell to this day. By default, we are superstitious, not necessarily out of evolution, but out of the nature of consciousness itself. Superstition is one of the ways that the psyche detects larger, more diffuse ranges of itself. Intuition taps into longer views of the present - larger 'nows', but at the cost of logic and personal significance. More on the failure of HADD here: http://s33light.org/post/1499804865 "I submit that this Hyperactive Agency Detection Device is a weak hypothesis for explaining the subjective bias of subjectivity. To me, it makes more sense that religion originates not as mistaken agency detection, but rather as an exaggerated or magnified reflection of its source, a subjective agent. Human culture is nothing if not totemic. Masks, puppets, figurative drawings, voices and gestures, sculpture, drama, dance, song, etc reflect the nature of subjectivity itself - it? expression of character and creating stories with them. " Thanks, Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/kWPAfLJdm1EJ. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/FYDu8tOgYScJ. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/TQH5ODB8QiEJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. 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