I'm also thinking of slightly more specialized pursuits like painting. As I understand it, in introductory painting classes some considerable pains must be taken to get students to see the patches of color in their visual field: they tend to think apples are a uniform red all over because the object they know is kinda like that. With enough practice they can learn to overcome color constancy and actually see the effects of light and shadow and reflectivity that present the apple not just in shades of red but with blues and purples and whatnot. Again, even that repackaging is not the raw data, but matches up with the names printed on the tubes of paint! — Srap Tasmaner
So we generally want one of these descriptions to "win" and be the "real" description — Mijin
This is more explicit but still not explicit enough. What is the reasoning behind the inference from atoms not having free will to the brain and the mind not having one? There are many properties which parts of the object do not posess yet the object posesses. Think about a digital image of a dog. The image is composed of bits, 0s and 1s. None of the bits have the property of portraying dog. Is it reasonable to infer that the image itself does not portray a dog? Of course not. So there must be something different in the case of the brain and the atoms. As we already discussed, the burden of proof is on the objector to bring about the explicit contradiction. If there is one, it's well hidden. — icosahedron
3. For some yet unknown reason, Dawkins misrepresented the thesis in his book, turning a work on altruism into a book on the selfishness of genes. — Olivier5
↪Kenosha Kid why the title, do you think? Why this conclusion? ("We are born selfish") You've read the book, right? It didn't strike you as odd? — Olivier5
Yes but not a scientific theoretical basis for same. — Olivier5
1. Research into the possible genetic basis of altruism was represented by Dawkins under a title referring to selfishness, against all logic. Why? Probably because this way it could sell better in the zeitgeist, and incidentally served to justify rightist policies, whereas the idea that evolution rewards altruism would presumably have had the opposite political effect. — Olivier5
2. The reason Midgley was furious about Gene the Shellfish was that it described human beings as slaves to their genes. Such full biological determinism is eminently ideological -- it tells people that they are not free -- and it's an ideology with dark history (eugenism, racism, slavery, nazism, etc.). — Olivier5
I agree with how you explain humanity, but there must be a way. Consciousness is an evolving process of self organization so it seems it will at some point transcend this impasse. Can you think of a solution? — Pop
That is a good point, and I would add, given our genetic code, is it possible to even answer this question in a non self interested way? — Pop
Why do the philosophically minded want to ground their views in science? Because otherwise they're just flailing in the wind. That's not comfortable. — frank
And here is exactly why we need philosophy. (1) The data always comes packaged. System 1 won't give you the raw data, you couldn't use it even it did; it packages it up using whatever concepts it has. This is the major blow struck repeatedly against classic empiricism, the assumption that reason works with the raw data, the Myth of the Given. But that means there is a role for philosophy in understanding how the data is packaged: you may never be able to say "this wrapper is the concept" and "this part left over after I remove the wrapper is the data" -- that's very nearly Quine's first dogma, the futile attempt to distinguish analytic and synthetic; but you may at least be able to recognize the wrapper and know why it's there and how it relates to other elements of the conceptual apparatus, get a sense of the effect of how it was packaged. I also think we can send back what we get and ask for it to be repackaged in a different way. note added (2) Even though in some sense System 2 is the big leagues, where the stuff we find interesting happens, it's also the feeder system, the minor leagues, for System 1, right? Play enough chess and a lot of the stuff you had to agonizingly work out with step-by-step analysis when you started becomes habit, pushed down to System 1 and handled now in a flash. Stuff you know you know how to do, and could have explained back when you learned it, can become an ability you have trouble articulating. So there is a role for philosophy in making sure that what we do in System 2 is done well, since it's going to end up a habit. And that includes the conceptual apparatus itself; if you get in the habit -- I just mean "habit", still System 2 -- of sending back data packaged in a certain way, because it's not appropriate for your reasoning, System 1 will get the message, move that packaging to a less accessible part of the warehouse, and maybe eventually quit using it at all. — Srap Tasmaner
But that lack of transparency doesn't sound much like science either. Remember a couple years ago when Donald Hoffman was pushing that "desktop" metaphor? He was arguing that this subconscious is systematically lying, because evolution would have selected for rapid threat identification and against accurate perception. Whatever the merits of his position, people can tell different stories about what's going on in the black box, and different evolutionary psychology stories about why. Do we need a way to assess these stories? What would that be? — Srap Tasmaner
Now what about the part we're aware of? Is it conceivable there is something like an old school blank slate empiricist agent that we experience consciously as feeding us a complete conceptual framework, already assembled, such that we might as well have been born with it? — Srap Tasmaner
And in the second quote I'm thinking of those types of models. But "System 1 is a machine for jumping to conclusions." That's a funny kind of science, isn't it? — Srap Tasmaner
Let's define an empiricism -- not the empiricism, but one of many: human beings use concepts, but they are born with no conceptual apparatus at all; therefore, a human being must be able to construct a conceptual apparatus out of the only material she has, her individual sense experience; some of this may occur naturally, through "association", say, and some of this construction is done by the use of reason, which may be inborn but only provides the tools to construct a conceptual framework, not the framework itself. — Srap Tasmaner
So do you see an individual, even if she's not aware of it, as essentially doing science all the time? That is, as having a working theory that produces predictions and directs the acquisition of new data via sense experience? — Srap Tasmaner
Are we just constantly dancing at the line, choosing to lean one way or the other, or is there something in acknowledging that duality that could lead us somewhere better? — dan0mac
I think it is important to think about the aggregate; are we selfish or selfless, and how does that inform how we conduct ourselves? — dan0mac
But I suppose then, what is the distinction between, say, someone doing a selfless act to shine their halos and an actually selfless person? — dan0mac
Would you agree that being selfish requires that one is also conscious of their selfish motives? I don’t think most people are thinking about group strength when they are behaving altruistically. — Jarmo