The unknown is scary, possibly the scariest thing, so skeletons calm the poor prey animal so it doesn't constantly freak out at every twig breakage (out on the savannah). — frank
guess my beef is something like: I think evolutionary theory is better approached as a bone (a good sturdy one, to be sure, maybe the femur) but is too often used as the entire skeleton. — csalisbury
I think we can imagine (and we don't really have to, its out there) an evolutionary Descartes asking: How do we know that a blind evolutionary process isn't creating our experience, tricking us into thinking its real? — csalisbury
Unfortunately astrology has a bad reputation, but if you delve into for the symbolism instead fortune telling, it's pretty fascinating.
So if you're sitting across from your boss, is it a mentor and student? Is it a father and son? Is it that you're the fool on the hill and he or she is the city folk?
And relationships can be star crossed. He's supposed to be a mentor, but he lacks confidence.
One way to advance off the savannah to a world with Starbucks, anyway. Speaking of which, is the boss Captain Ahab? :grimace: — frank
That’s pretty well what Donald Hoffman says. — Wayfarer
On the general point of the OP, I agree that evolutionary theory has become the de facto ‘theory of everything’ as far as humanity is concerned. Where once we had the myth of the fall, we now have the scientifically-sanctioned theory of evolution by natural selection. The problem with it is that it is reductive, in that the only criterion for what constitutes a successful outcome is that of surviving and procreating. It doesn’t say anything about what is good, aesthetically or morally, but only what works, from the purported aim of surviving. Arguments can be made that it favours altruism and that kindness is more effective than cruelty, but they seem highly artificial to me. — Wayfarer
We don't really experience the Savannah, we experience an affordance-interface that allows us to most efficiently escape the lion.
Ok. And so we evolve from apes to proto-humans to humans, and live a while as hunter-gatherers. Then eventually, we create agricultural societies, and begin to evolve socially at a pace that greatly outstrips biological evolution. Eventually we create the scientific method, and eventually the theory of evolution.
But why, in principle, can't the plug-and-play evolutionary explanation fit here too? — csalisbury
The problem with it is that it is reductive, in that the only criterion for what constitutes a successful outcome is that of surviving and procreating. It doesn’t say anything about what is good, aesthetically or morally, but only what works, from the purported aim of surviving. Arguments can be made that it favours altruism and that kindness is more effective than cruelty, but they seem highly artificial to me. — Wayfarer
Once there is society and culture, then there is a network of intentionallity and agendas that create quite different, more volatile, selection pressures than the natural environment alone does.
I don't think there are any clear correlations between the existence of beliefs, or practices, and their survival efficacy (even if they could be thought to bestow an increased chance of survival). — Janus
My response to this is probably shallow but I agree with you about the overuse and misplaced use of evolution/Darwinism. I also include neuroscience in this as every second person now seems to crib pop nonsense about behavior based on some random magazine understanding of neuroscience. The savannah and neuroplasticity have a lot to answer for. — Tom Storm
That may be what Plantinga is saying too though, I'm not sure, but I just want to say I think you can have both evolutionary theory and independent criteria of truth and falsity. — csalisbury
But why, in principle, can't the plug-and-play evolutionary explanation fit here too? — csalisbury
people invoke them without any robust explanation of the details - it's just a 'well the evolutionary explanation is certainly the most acceptable way to couch my point, so let me cobble together a few things quickly that sound plausible enough : dinner with your boss is like a lion.' — csalisbury
'and the reason this problematic thing exists is because, on the savannah, it was adaptive to do x when a lion appeared, even if we no longer encounter lions' — csalisbury
You have to understand the scientific method and process as, in some way, autonomous from the biology of the brain. We can understand when things satisfy scientific criteria for reasons other than adaptive fitness. But if you do that for the scientific method, there's also no reason, in principle, why it can't hold of other things we do. — csalisbury
The brain, in turn, seeks its own singularity, a technological one that is, and once achieved, evolution can be discarded like a pair of old "jeans." — TheMadFool
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