When selections pressures produced a brain, — Harry Hindu

There is always magic in science's explanation for mind. This the magic:

Some supernatural force called Selection (which is apparently obsessed with surviving) creates the brain and then Out Pops the Mind from the brain.

Every single concept that science pulls out of its hat (including an infinite number of superimposed quantum universes in order to save determinism) is conceived fo one and only one purpose: to dehumanize humans (and in the process humanizing supernatural forces) and make them into machines. Why? Because science wants carte blanche in playing with humans, as if they are some dumb toys indistinguishable from a Sony PlayStation, and "fixing them" .

There is always magic in science's explanation for mind. This the magic:

Some supernatural force called Selection... (which is apparently obsessed with surviving) — Rich

Yes, for some inexplicable supernatural, magical reason, individuals that survive long enough to reproduce seem to have more offspring. :D

And, for some inexplicable supernatural, magical reason, individuals that have more offspring are better-represented in the population.

Go figure!

Michael Ossipoff

...and their heritable attributes and traits are better represented in the population.

Michael Ossipoff

And, for some inexplicable supernatural, magical reason, individuals that have more offspring are better-represented in the population. — Michael Ossipoff

Yes, for some inexplicable supernatural, magical reason, individuals that survive long enough to reproduce seem to have more offspring. :D — Michael Ossipoff

Huh? You believe this? There is not a scintilla of evidence from any source to support any of this. It's a story. It's a story that people who are alive love to hear, i.e. that they are the Selected Ones. It's an age old story that any victorious nation loves to hear and repeat.

...and their heritable attributes and traits are better represented in the population. — Michael Ossipoff

And thus the Selected Superior Race survives.

It's a grade school story that sticks because it is what people want to hear. No different from God's Chosen Ones. And this passes off for science for atheists who do not have God but do have Natural Selection.

The mind is what the brain does — Harry Hindu

This is very controversial you are ignoring large explanatory gaps.

I don't see how selction pressures cause anything? Causes and dispositions we know of are properties of biochemstry and available dispositions

We know that we have vivid private experiences but these are not seen in the brain and there is no real explanation as how they emerge from the brain if they do. Also we know we have representations and semantic states and these are not explained at all by neuronal activity.

Your claims explain nothing mechanical or otherwise and you haven't actually given any explicit causal theory from the brain to conscious/mental states. There are a huge range of issues in consciousness studies that you seem happy to bypass altogether.

Determinism is a denial of volition. It denies that human consciousness can decide but that it is an epiphenomenon. Volitional movements are not explained yet, in biology but because science is only studying the observable biochemical cellular processes so on there is no room to insert selfs, subjectivity and volition.

Computers can now do immensly sophisticated things but we have no reasons to suspect they have minds.

It would take to long to go into all the issues in consciousness here with you. But I have studied things like the visual system and the transduction of signals from the retina. These do not explain the eventual experience of colour. I can also discuss retinotopic maps with you if you want. Retinotopic maps are posited to preserve aspects of signals from the optic nerve but these signals and maps do not capture the essence of photons/wavelengths. Also they require homunculi to eventually have visual experience.

Evolutionary psychology modular theory of mind is very biased, where it likes to put basic traits in service of reproduction hence their puzzlement over homosexuality. Modular theories of mind predate it.

There are interesting findings in people with brain damage that challenge alot of theories.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-who-lives-without-90-of-his-brain-is-challenging-our-understanding-of-consciousness

In an earlier post, you'd said:

I thought I said this earlier. Determinism is a popular position in academia where the mind is seen as almost irrelevant and consciousness epiphenomenal.

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Philosophy of mind is garbage. …fiction.
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What is “the mind”? It’s a figure-of-speech used to describe an aspect of a person distinct from his/her physically-measurable properties such as height, weight, physical strength, running-speed, etc.
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Some philosophers want to reify it.
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You’re the animal. Period. Full stop.
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Some philosophers seem to believe in a metaphysical substance that they all “mind”. Yes, Physicalists insist that they don’t believe in it, but then they sputteringly fall all over eachother trying to explain away what they say they don’t believe in, by such mystical mumbo-jumbo as “epiphenomena”, “emergent-properties”, and “supervenience”.
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It's worth saying again:

You’re the animal. Period.
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No special metaphysical substance, or epiphenomena, emergent-properties, or supervenience needed.
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No need to make it difficult or complicated…unless you like to, of course.
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Those philosophers get themselves all snarled-up quite unnecessarily.
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But let’s be fair: They have a good reason to do so:
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A little imperative called “Publish-Or-Perish”.
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Yes, you know what I’m referring to.
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Without making it complicated, without pretending to be all fnurled-up, academic philosophers wouldn’t have as much to publish about (so as to not perish).

You said:

We know that we have vivid private experiences but these are not seen in the brain and there is no real explanation as how they emerge from the brain if they do. — Andrew4Handel

What utter nonsense.

The animal (that's you) has to be designed to do things.

The animal (as shaped by natural-selection) has places to go, and things to do.

In furtherance of its natural-selected reproductive imperative (which necessarily includes survival, and successful rearing of offspring), it of course has to respond to its surroundings.

You're a purposefully-responsive device.

So are other animals.

So are mousetraps, refrigerator-light-switches, and thermostats.

An animal's response to its surroundings is, of course based on those surroundings, so a detection of those surroundings, which we call "perception" is an integral part of that response.

In addition to detection (perception) of course the animal has built-in preferences, likes, dislikes, wants and fears, etc. And, of course, in addition to those built-in attributes, there are adaptably-acquired ones that are based both built-in attributes, past experience, and perception.

Detection, designed-preference, including evaluative-feelings,,and built-in (instinctive) or acquired knowledge of technique to that implement that preference, together, are response.

That's just what all animal are, including all of us animals at this forum.

Now, Andrew4Handel, what would you expect it to be like to be an animal with those perceptions, preferences, feelings, etc.

Don't you have all of those? Don't you have preferences and evaluative feelings, and choose what to do based on your preferences (inborn and acquired by adaption to environment based on your built-in attributes?

What's surprising about that? What needs explaining by silly fictitious mystical mumbo-jumbo?

You're the animal.

You're a purposefully-responsive device.

Period.

Michael Ossipoff



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We know that we have vivid private experiences but these are not seen in the brain and there is no real explanation as how they emerge from the brain if they do. — Andrew4Handel

What utter nonsense. — Michael Ossipoff

No, Andrew4Handel is entirely correct in that. Science has no account of how experience arises from what it knows about neurology and the like. Of course, it knows a ton of stuff about neurology, far more than was known 20 or 50 or 100 years ago, but the 'hard problem of consciousness' is recognised by many scientists and philosophers as exactly that - a problem of the kind to which there isn't even an imagined solution. Because unlike any amount of scientific knowledge of neurology, experience is first person.

The animal (that's you) has to be designed to do things. — Michael Ossipoff

Don't sell yourself short. A million monkeys, with a millon typewriters, couldn't produce the above. (Although you do wonder sometimes, on forums....:-}

The mind is what the brain does — Harry Hindu


This is very controversial you are ignoring large explanatory gaps. — Andrew4Handel

It's only controversial to those that aren't educated in modern theories of neurology. When you don't even make an attempt to learn about these things, then discussing it with others who have makes you look like you don't know what you are talking about. I don't see how someone with a degree in psychology thinks that this is controversial.

I don't see how selction pressures cause anything? Causes and dispositions we know of are properties of biochemstry and available dispositions — Andrew4Handel

As I have said, mutations cause new traits which could provide positive, negative, or neutral consequences to surviving and procreating. Selection pressures are processes that filter out the negative mutations and are what causes positive traits to become the new norm. I have never said that natural selection causes the mutations. You simply aren't reading my posts and I find myself repeating myself. It's getting old.

We know that we have vivid private experiences but these are not seen in the brain and there is no real explanation as how they emerge from the brain if they do. Also we know we have representations and semantic states and these are not explained at all by neuronal activity. — Andrew4Handel

As I said, you are injecting your dualism into the discussion, which creates this false dichotomy this impossible problem of explaining how the brain gives rise to consciousness.

The implication of indirect realism is that what we experience isn't the way the world actually is. So when you look at a brain, or an MRI of the brain, you are experiencing a representation, or model, of what is really there. That squishy, grey mass in the head that you see is a model of what is actually going on. What is going on are mental processes and the brain that you experience is just a model of that.

Evolutionary psychology modular theory of mind is very biased, where it likes to put basic traits in service of reproduction hence their puzzlement over homosexuality. Modular theories of mind predate it. — Andrew4Handel

I've already answered the homosexual problem - twice. You need to pay attention and take into account what I have said because we are both repeating ourselves, and it's getting old.

It's only controversial to those that aren't educated in modern theories of neurology. — Harry Hindu

No doubt such education greatly benefits the medical industry, which now consumes 20% of the GNP.

We are machines and the medical machine will fix our machine, for a price. What a racket.

As I have said, mutations cause new traits which could provide positive, negative, or neutral consequences to surviving and procreating. Selection pressures are processes that filter out the negative mutations — Harry Hindu

Filtering out a negative mutation is not the same as causing a property to exist like the posited emergent property of consciousness. Consciousness has to come to exist before it can be selected or deselected. It is banal to point out why a trait might persist, anything that survives either aids survival or does not prevent survival. But it is a different matter to allege or speculate the survival "purpose" of something. I don't agree that consciousness is epiphenomenal but that is popular position across academia and the denial of volition.

I was unaware that anyone believed they had explained consciousness in a serious way with the backing of the larger neuroscience and science community. And theories of consciousness that have been proffered fail either because they don't really account for all the phenomena or they are vague and not causally or testable..

You may be listening to the claim of one or two scientist who get publicity but do not reflect the community at large.

Correlation is not causation and the brain basis of consciousness is founded on correlations but these usually non explanatory. Brain damage cases like the one I linked to undermine correlation claims.

I have not heard an explanation for example of why biochemical activity at neuronal synapses would lead to a private subjective severe pain sensation. Or why any physical activity should lead to an observer, subjectivity and sensation. Hopefully you can see the difference between someone examining my body and brain when I report pain and myself having the actual experience.

Robert Sapolsky was cited earlier in the thread.

"Most recently, Sapolsky has been reflecting on the origins of human behavior, starting deep in the brain moments before we act and working his way millions of years back to the evolutionary pressures on our prehistoric ancestors’ decisions, with stops along the way to consider how hormones, brain development and social structures shape our behavior. He also has been thinking about free will and comes to the conclusion, based on the biological and psychological evidence, that we do not have it."

It is nice to know he has resolved the free will debate.

http://news.stanford.edu/2017/05/08/biologist-robert-sapolsky-takes-human-behavior-free-will/

Andrew4Handel said:
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We know that we have vivid private experiences but these are not seen in the brain and there is no real explanation as how they emerge from the brain if they do. — Andrew4Handel

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I replied:
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What utter nonsense. — Michael Ossipoff

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Wafarer says:
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quote]
No, Andrew4Handel is entirely correct in that. Science has no account of how experience arises from what it knows about neurology and the like.
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No problem. If all Andrew4Handel meant was to bemoan the fact that science hasn’t mapped out the entire workings of the brain, then I owe him an apology.
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Let it never be said that I never admit when I’ve been wrong.
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But Andrew4Handel sure seemed be echoing the confused-Physicalist’s Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness, which asserts a belief in Consciousness or Mind as something apart from the body…and then desperately tries to explain away what those same Physicalists have unnecessarily and un-validly decided to assert belief in… explain it away by means of such mystical mumbo-jumbo as Epiphenomena, Supervenience (There’s nothing to do the “supervening”), and Emergent Properties.
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…bring it into existence with magical mystical mumbo-jumbo, and then try to explain it with more magical mystical mumbo-jumbo.
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Of course, it knows a ton of stuff about neurology, far more than was known 20 or 50 or 100 years ago, but the 'hard problem of consciousness' is recognised by many scientists and philosophers as exactly that - a problem of the kind to which there isn't even an imagined solution.

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…because the “problem” is ridiculous and fictional.
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…because the “problem” is the making of hard-working academic philosophers with a need to featherbed their livelihood, and publish rather than perish.
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Because unlike any amount of scientific knowledge of neurology, experience is first person.

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What did you expect? Is it really surprising that an animal has perceptions, sensations, preferences, likes, dislikes, fears, etc? How else do you expect it to respond to its surroundings in an adaptive manner that natural-selection calls for.
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And, as an animal, should you be surprised that you have those perceptions, sensations, preferences, likes, dislikes, fears, etc?
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What are those if not “first-person” with respect to that animal? What else would you expect?
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Is it somehow surprising that the experience and point-of-view of an animal observed by a scientist is different from that of the scientist who is observing or studying the animal?
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…even if you’re that animal?
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That’s what I mean when I say that Physicalists have gotten themselves all snarled-up with their Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness, which is only of their own confused imagining.
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You’ve been reading the Physicalists, and believing them.
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“The animal (that's you) has to be designed to do things.”— Michael Ossipoff
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A million monkeys, with a millon typewriters, couldn't produce the above.

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The could, and they do.
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…just as evolved monkeys went to the Moon in 1969.
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But, lest you be insulted when I call us “evolved monkeys”, I hasten to add that we probably aren’t all primate.
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There’s strongly convincing evidence that, in addition to the Primates, there’s another order of Mammalia in our family tree:
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The order Artiodactyla.
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The Even-Toed Hooved Mammals.
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Pigs, in particular.
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So, I didn’t mean to insult you. We aren’t merely from the apes. We’re part pig, too.
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From what I’ve heard and read about chimpanzees, and about pigs, I suggest that we inherited our worst attributes from the Primate side of the family.
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Michael Ossipoff

I have not heard an explanation for example of why biochemical activity at neuronal synapses would lead to a private subjective severe pain sensation. Or why any physical activity should lead to an observer, subjectivity and sensation. Hopefully you can see the difference between someone examining my body and brain when I report pain and myself having the actual experience. — Andrew4Handel

That's the animal's (your) view, perception, of its natural-selection-caused incentivization to get its fingers out of the fire, to avoid damage.

What makes Andrew4Handel think that someone else examining him should feel his pain. If the examiner stubs his toe, then he'll feel his own pain.

Michael Ossipoff

Today I was watching Superhuman and the neurologist was called in to explain the extraordinary memory of one contestant. This was the analysis:

1) First he had to store it.

2) Then he had to recall it.

3) It's really complicated.

Not bad after billions upon billions of dollars of research dollars. I guess the big news for me was that it is complicated.

If all Andrew4Handel meant was to bemoan the fact that science hasn’t mapped out the entire workings of the brain, then I owe him an apology. — Michael Ossipoff

That's what I took it to mean.

[Sapolsky] also has been thinking about free will and comes to the conclusion, based on the biological and psychological evidence, that we do not have it." — Andrew4Handel

Typically, if scientistic types are faced with something they can't explain in scientific terms, then they will either (1) try and reduce it to something that can or (2) deny that it's real.

Besides, if Sapolsky's supposition were correct, he would have no choice but to believe that, and those who doubt him would have no choice but to doubt, so there would certainly be no point in debating, as nobody's view could ever be changed by rational argument.

Yes, Andrew4Handel didn't support Sapolsky's statement.

Well, there doesn't seem to be disagreement after all.

Michael Ossipoff

Andrew4Handel said things that led me to believe that he supported the Physicalists' Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness. He seemed to be saying, with Physicalists, that it's puzzling that there could be first-person experience.

But maybe he was just saying, as you suggested, that science doesn't know the mechanisms--a true statement, of course.

I have not heard an explanation for example of why biochemical activity at neuronal synapses would lead to a private subjective severe pain sensation. — Andrew4Handel

My answer was that those sensations are natural-selection's way of incentivizing you to get your hand out of the fire.

Michael Ossipoff

My answer was that those sensations are natural-selection's way of incentivizing you to get your hand out of the fire. — Michael Ossipoff

That I not an explanation causal or otherwise.

It would be great if natural selection had given me wings so I could fly to the shops.

You make it sound like evolution just conjures things up if they would be useful.

Now if determinists are right (they aren't) we couldn't act on out pain and also there are lots of pains we can't act on including toothache and headaches, severe pain at the final stages of cancer and so on.

Just because consciousness has its uses does not mean it can avoid having a biochemical or technical/theoretical causal explanation. If neuronal activity causes pain then how?

You have an unjustified overconfidence.

Besides, if Sapolsky's supposition were correct, he would have no choice but to believe that, and those who doubt him would have no choice but to doubt, so there would certainly be no point in debating, as nobody's view could ever be changed by rational argument. — Wayfarer

Free will arguments are philosophical anyway and not scientific.

I think science could only validly deny freewill when all behaviour and mental states have been described with no explanatory gap.

My example is if a man says "I am divorcing my wife because I believe she has been unfaithful numerous times". Motivations can be based on the semantic content of beliefs states and I do not see how these can be reduced physical or deterministically or coherently dismissed.

People forget how much information is transmitted through symbols and language and not by direct access to Physical states. Even in my case, marriage and divorce are social linguistic constructs. You couldn't make sense of reality just referring to neurons, hormones,brain scans and scientific symbols. If someones says "The Chinese economy is booming" you can correlate that with a set of neurons but not extract that statements from them. So it easy I suppose, to forget that we are imposing symbols and theories on the world.

People forget how much information is transmitted through symbols and language and not by direct access to Physical states. — Andrew4Handel

100% agree. Even neuroscientists have to interpret the meaning of the data - the meaning is not 'in' the data, so to speak.

I’d said:
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My answer was that those sensations are natural-selection's way of incentivizing you to get your hand out of the fire. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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That I not an explanation causal or otherwise.

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It would be great if natural selection had given me wings so I could fly to the shops.

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You make it sound like evolution just conjures things up if they would be useful.

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Now if determinists are right (they aren't) we couldn't act on out pain and also there are lots of pains we can't act on including toothache and headaches, severe pain at the final stages of cancer and so on.

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Just because consciousness has its uses does not mean it can avoid having a biochemical or technical/theoretical causal explanation. If neuronal activity causes pain then how?

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You have an unjustified overconfidence.

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You’re quite right, that, if I want to attribute something to natural-selection, then I have to answer your objection to natural selection. I have to answer your objection regarding the arrival of new attributes. I intend to address that question.
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There are two different issues in this discussion:
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1. How could natural selection explain new attributes or new anatomical features?
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2. Physicalists claim that first-person experience is baffling, unexplicable, and seemingly impossible, given that the body is a physical object observed by a scientist.
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(The Physicalists’ “Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness”)
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Yes, #1 must be addressed if I attribute something to natural-selection. But #1 is less interesting, because it’s just a matter of evolutionary-mechanics.
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So I’m addressing #2 first. …and asking that natural-selection be provisionally accepted for the time-being, when I use it to explain the animal’s inclinations when answering #2.
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So, leaving aside #1,what do you say about my arguments that I’ve been posting regarding issue #2?

Now, let me quote something you said in your most recent post about issue

ust because consciousness has its uses does not mean it can avoid having a biochemical or technical/theoretical causal explanation. If neuronal activity causes pain then how? — Andrew4Handel

If you're referring to the detailed mechanism, that's something to ask neurologists. Maybe they know the details, and maybe they don't.

But it isn't inexplicable at all.

The animal is designed, by natural selectoin (please give it the benefit of the doubt for the time-being) to protect itself, to avoid damage. If your hand contacts fire, the pain tells you that damage is occurring, or is immanent. And it makes you want to get your hand out of the fire.

The exact detailed mechanism? Who knows? i don't. Maybe there are scientists who do.

But, even without knowing the exact detailed mechanism the explanation in the paragraph before last is sufficient to make the pain not be inexplicable.

The animal, for its purposeful response to its environments needs to have all sorts of feelings, sensations, preferences, likes, dislikes, fears, etc.

How could that not be "first-person".

It's inevitable if the animal is to act in response to its surroundings for some purpose, like survival and reporducton.

So, you have those feelings, sensations, preferences, likes, dislikes, fears, etc.

That's hardly surprising.

isn't it what you'd expect?

Michael Ossipoff

This video is worth a look. It documents the effects of scientific racism and the use of Social Darwinism to justify inaction during Indian Famines during British rule.

Lord Lytton cited Malthus and people were threatened with prosecution if they aided the sufferers.

But that photo, and the abuses of the various abusers, says nothing whatsoever about issue #2 that I answered about in my previous post.

Is evasion of answers to one's claims statements sometimes used to justify abuses?

Michael Ossipoff

The animal is designed, by natural selection (please give it the benefit of the doubt for the time-being) to protect itself, to avoid damage. If your hand contacts fire, the pain tells you that damage is occurring, or is immanent. And it makes you want to get your hand out of the fire. — Michael Ossipoff

What you're not addressing is whether this has anything to say about the problems of philosophy.

One can agree that the theory of evolution by natural selection is a sound theory, and yet dispute that it has anything much to say about the problems of philosophy.

Most often, however, what happens is the lazy assumption, which you have made above, that as we are 'just animals', then what there is to know about such questions must be knowable, in principle, in terms of biology.

However, I dispute that h. sapiens is 'just an animal' at all. Certainly, from the perspective of biology, humans are a 'species of primate'. But to then try and understand uniquely human abilities such as language, reasoning, art and imagination, in evolutionary terms, is what is called 'biological reductionism'.

Richard Dawkins' book, 'The Selfish Gene', is a prime example of such reductionism. It might have its merits as a biological theory - although it has its detractors - but, whatever it is, if it is regarded as being the definitive account of why humans are the way they are, then it is certainly reductionist.

I don't think you're the least unusual in having such ideas, after all, everyone knows that we are just animals, and only what evolution has created. It is the folk wisdom of the day. It just so happens that I believe it is profoundly mistaken.

But that photo, and the abuses of the various abusers, — Michael Ossipoff

It is a video not a photo. It is worth a look. Science is not just about facts but it can impose and support pernicious brutal theories about human status. That video highlights how theory was imposed on the world to justify abuses and hierarchies and inaction and genocide.

It is a video not a photo. It is worth a look. Science is not just about facts but it can impose and support pernicious brutal theories about human status. That video highlights how theory was imposed on the world to justify abuses and hierarchies and inaction and genocide. — Andrew4Handel

I think it is reasonable to look at the historical genesis of "theories". Natural selection it's a direct result of nations and populations seeking "scientific" justification for their social superiority and the imposition of imperialism during the 1800s. This is strictly a European view of life and the war machine it was building to control large swatches of the world.

I would like to repeat there is as much evidence of Natural Selection as there is it God's Chosen. It is simply a reformulation of an old story. How do we know they are selected? Well they survived didn't they?

There are a multitude number of reasons people live the lives they do, and Natural Selection addresses none of them. It is a story created for a purpose. Money and power molds science.

Blah Blah Blah. Again you are repeating yourself ad nauseam without addressing the point I made in my previous posts. I would just repeat the 3rd and 4th paragraphs in my last post in a response to this one. So, if you want to continue this discussion, then you need to go back and read those paragraphs as a response to your last post to me.

If your hand contacts fire, the pain tells you that damage is occurring, or is imminent. And it makes you want to get your hand out of the fire.

The exact detailed mechanism? Who knows? i don't. Maybe there are scientists who do. — Michael Ossipoff

I think there is a clear difference between mechanism and sensation. It is possible to build unconscious sensors that avoid fire. You only need to make unconscious sensors that create automatic behaviour leading to a machine avoiding heat.

We know enough about neurons and about physics to see that it does not present a framework for explaining experience and as I have said determinists in the sciences don't believe we control our actions consciously making consciousness epiphenomenal and not a survival benefit.

There are famous physicists who have supported the position of idealism which incorporates mind into reality as fundamental. Including Sir James Jeans, Sir Arthur eddington and Martin Rees. In this sense consciousness is not seen as merely an emergent property of the brain. A similar position is held by panpsychism.

It has been recognised from time immemorial that there is a problem in describing physical objects and mental states using the same terminology. It was not a problem posited merely by Televangelicals or something. I was quite materialist and atheistic before I study philosophy of mind and psychology. I find most religious people I speak don't even understand the problem so it is not clear that dualism of the mind body problem emerges from religion.

I've already answered the homosexual problem - twice. — Harry Hindu

Sorry. Can you link me to these posts or quote them as I can't seem to find them.

I am using homosexuality as a case where people are trying to subsume homosexuality or other characteristics within an evolutionary framework and as a survival benefit as opposed to what you cite John Tooby claiming the evo psych modular position offers a lot of flexibility.

Trying to reduce homosexuality to its reproductive benefits is not offering a flexible model more flexible than the blank slate approach.

Also you linked to a Sapolsky video but he doesn't agree with Tooby obviously because he is a strong determinist. And as I point out determinism undermines any role for consciousness which is a position accepted in the related literature (epiphenomenalism)

So it seems to depend on which theorist you sympathise with or believe or what evidence you choose that informs the perceived ramifications of something we know.

But we know from history that natural selection ideas almost immediately had a negative impact propping up racist hierarchies and class hierarchies etc and was later invoked to defend genocide and the murder of the disabled. So it is not like the religious right just invented potential harmful effects of the theory . And so there is good rational reason to be careful about what positions you arise to in this situation and not try to cram everything in a paradigm for ideological reasons.