Evolutionary humanism I think views humanity as a kind of apex of naturalism. This certainly fits my perspective. — Pantagruel

“We have learned differently. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive the human being from “the spirit” or “the deity”; we have placed him back among the animals. We consider him the strongest animal because he is the most cunning: his spirituality is a consequence of this. On the other hand, we oppose the vanity that would raise its head again here too—as if the human being had been the great hidden purpose of the evolution of animals. The human being is by no means the crown of creation: every living being stands beside him on the same level of perfection. And even this is saying too much: relatively speaking, the human being is the most bungled of all the animals, the sickliest, and not one has strayed more dangerously from its instincts. But for all that, he is of course the most interesting.”(Nietzsche,GM 111:25)

In what way is the view that opposes technology deemed destructive or otherwise detrimental to society dangerous ? — RussellA

Sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. Technology creates new options and possibilities. One can use those new options (including weapons) for constructive or destructive ends, but the technology itself is by its nature an application of new ideas , and as such provides us with capabilities , neutral in themselves, not previously available. If one were to label any technology as inherently ‘destructive’ one would be ignoring its neutral basis and treating its potential detrimental use as the only possible use. One could argue that such a one-sided attitude is dangerous to new ideas.

It’s very confusing stuff. Derrida has said:

"The iterability of an element divides its own identity a priori, even without taking into account that this identity can only determine or delimit itself through differential relations to other elements and hence that it bears the mark of this difference. It is because this iterability is differential, within each individual "element" as well as between "elements", because it splits each element while constituting it, because it marks it with an articulatory break, that the remainder, although indispensable, is never that of a full or fulfilling presence; it is a differential structure escaping the logic of presence..(LI53)."

What Derrida is saying here is that no meaning returns to itself identically, even for an instant. One cannot repeat, copy or reproduce a particular meaning or context, even by the simple act or recollection from memory or from some other form of recorded archive, without changing the sense of that context. To attempt to do so is to retrieve this `same' meaning slightly differently, to `split' it, to alter it, to re-invent it. One continues to be the same one moment to the next by not being self-identical.

and how those entities manifest within the the context - for Kant the context of manifestation is the cognitive (ideal) structure of our minds (roughly), for eg Foucault it's relative to social institutions, for Derrida it's relative to discourses — fdrake

For Derrida it’s relative to time . The same self is already an other with respect to itself moment to moment.

people still experience stuff in common ways, and the underlying reality itself doesn't need to change much between interpretive paradigms. Two different methods of thinking bout physics can still agree on gravity, even if there is no context above and beyond the development of science to judge those claims (and thus no "context independent justification". — fdrake

Paradigm shifts in physics aren’t a good example of worldview differences because natural science makes use of a conventionalized, abstractive empirical vocabulary that is designed to mask individual differences in outlook and interpretation. The political, religious , philosophical and ethical realms are more sensitive to differences in worldview , which is why they often shown profound gaps in interpretation of fundamental features of the world.

Do we really know any truths?
— Agent Smith

It's true that you can read and write sentences in English — Banno

“The word ‘truth’ is simply a compliment paid to sentences seen to be paying their way.”( Richard Rorty)

I suggest if there is anything to tie together the myriad possible senses of that word ‘true’ it would be the achievement of a relative ‘recognizability’ or ‘assimilability’ among experiences. Propositional truth is an attempt to apply the broader notion of truth to a narrowly defined domain of linguistic contexts.

We know all sorts of truths: the urge to shout ‘true!’ can well up in us whenever a relative consistency emerges within a field of possibilities. The nature of this consistency will determine the sense of its being true.

I am relating a really unnerving dream which I had a week ago about the end of the world. In the dream everything went dark. Then, a huge cavern opened up and the cavern was filled with dead bodies — Jack Cummins

In addition to world events , I think we tend to under-appreciate the effects that seasonal change has on our moods and dreams.
While Forum members Down Under are busy talking about sunny topics like plants and gardens, we in the northern hemisphere are observing the sun get dimmer, the days get darker, and the gardens decaying, while Dia de Los Muertos approaches.

Therefore, is what is needed for better philosophy actually a fasting and detoxification of thought? — Xtrix

You may find this from William James to be relevant.

“Direct acquaintance and conceptual knowledge are thus complemen­tary of each other; each remedies the other’s defects. If what we care most about be the synoptic treatment of phenomena, the vision of the far and the gathering of the scattered like, we must follow the concep­tual method. But if, as metaphysicians, we are more curious about the inner nature of reality or about what really makes it go, we must turn our backs on our winged concepts altogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing moments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points of which they occasionally rest and perch. ([1909]

James tells us that the “clamor of our own practical interests” makes us “blind and dead” to all but our narrow suc­cess and makes it impossible, as he puts it, “to have any perception of life’s meaning on a large objective scale” ([1899] 1983, 141). “Only your mystic, your dreamer, or your insolvent tramp or loafer, can afford so sympathetic an occupation, an occupation which will change the usual standards of human value in the twinkling of an eye, giving to foolishness a place ahead of power, and laying low in a minute the distinctions which it takes a hard working conventional man a lifetime to build up” ([1899] 1983, 141). In the twinkling of an eye we become aware of the “intense interest that life can assume when brought down to the non-thinking level, the level of pure sensorial perception” (James [1899])

James mentions a certain Hudson, who writes
of daily spending the noon hour in a quiet grove, listening, as he says,
“to the silence” and feeling “strangely grateful” (James [1899] 1983, 148). Hudson writes: “My state was one of suspense and watchfulness; yet I had no expectation of meeting an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension as I feel now while sitting in a room in London. The state seemed familiar rather than strange, and accompanied by a strong feeling of elation; and
I did not know that something had come between me and my intellect until I returned to my former self,—to thinking, and the old insipid exis­tence” (in James [1899])

. I think we need more people who recognise that others might be profoundly and disturbingly different from themselves rather than trying to convince everyone that they are the norm. — Cuthbert

How about the idea that the norm is an averaging, and thus flattening of individual differences?Perhaps as a culture we’re just beginning to explore these differences rather than ignoring them or being oblivious to them.

We have the right to think and evaluate the evidence and form our own opinions despite never having and never being able to experience being non-binary. People are capable of having a non-binary view of gender without experiencing it for themselves. — Judaka

Ah, but you’re not strictly ‘binary’. That is, I subscribe to the view that we all occupy unique positions on a gender spectrum. What we call the gender binary is an abstraction or idealization resulting from an averaging that flattens all the individual differences. What it shows is that there are large groups that fit into categories like male and female gendered (or effeminate gay or butch lesbian) even though such categories are not an exact fit for any actual person.

More importantly, I view individual gender as a mixture of inborn and cultural features. The inborn features to me are the most fascinating, because they consist of a neural organization that I call a perceptual-affective style
This style globally , but often subtly, affects behavior including bodily comportment , speech pronunciation , sexual attraction, posture, emotions and many other aspects of our engagement with the world.
What being born with a sharply different gender than one’s same-sex peers can teach one (but it isn’t guaranteed to do so) is that all of us ( not just the ‘non-binary) are behaviorally shaped in this global fashion, all of us have a perceptual-affective gender style unique to us but usually close enough to those of our same-sex peers that it is invisible to us. When it is no longer invisible to us , due to a sharp enough difference in our gendered behavior with respect to our same-sex peers, we are given an opportunity to notice the way that gender sweepingly affects human behavior in general. Of course, one does t need to be different in this way in order to come up with such insights, but it certainly helps.

Also, I don't think you're reiterating any point Molieire made — Judaka

I think my point about the uniqueness of individual gender agrees with Moliere’s ( perhaps for slightly different reasons) about the advisability of letting each individual publicly define their own gender. And it agrees with his assertion( again for slightly different reasons, and specifically with regard to gender) that the person who has had to deal with challenges to having their gender behavior accepted might come to know a little more about the nature of gender than someone who never was accused of behaving in a gender-nonconforming way.

↪Joshs
What does anything you just said have to do with my conversation with Molieire or anything I said? It just sounds like you're sulking about people disagreeing with you. — Judaka

Do you agree with my post? I took you to be denying Moliere’s point that “ people who have had to deal with being accepted might know a little more than someone whose always been accepted for exactly who they are and who never has to worry about proving who they are to others.”

If identity can be said to be real and impose limitations on the individual, my view would be that reason is the means to transcend it.

It's something we can control, or even dispose of altogether, if we want to, and if we develop the tools to understand it. — Tzeentch

Can we ‘want’ to want? Can we choose to will what we desire? This is not to suggest that what ‘drives’ reason is a fixed, pre-wired, unchanging mechanism. Rather, there is an interplay between reason and desire that shapes each in relation to the other. In sum , reason is not the slave of our passions , but neither are our drives the slave of reason.

↪Susu The 'indicators' of gender (clothes, accoutrements, tastes ) are available to all regardless of biological sex and often seem to me to be performance based. I generally avoid people who (to my taste) put too much time into their appearances, whether they present as male or female, mainly because in my experience it seems to be a harbinger of narcissistic tenancies (but not always). I guess this is a personal prejudice of mine — Tom Storm

Yes, but performance in the sense of a purely socially constructed set of choices, or performance in the way that schizophrenia or Downs syndrone or adhd or Asperger’s is expressed as a set of behaviors with both inborn and cultural components? Would you agree that the assumption of inborn features of such psychiatric categories is useful, and if so , that perhaps also the acknowledgement of inborn features of both binary and non-binary gender, features that form categorizable patterns, is useful?

Might it be the case that people who have had to deal with being accepted might know a little more than someone whose always been accepted for exactly who they are and who never has to worry about proving who they are to others?
— Moliere

Lol, everyone has experienced people not seeing them the way they see themselves. Everyone is relevant to the question of gender identity even if their gender identity has never been an issue to them. Because everyone is involved in recognising and acknowledging and treating people differently based on their gender identity. The rules for how gender identity should be determined, how we need to treat people based on their gender identity, what people are allowed to do based on their gender identity and all these and other related questions impact everyone — Judaka

Molieire hit the nail on the head. There are participants in this forum who reflect a widespread cluelessness in the wider culture that we can be born with a gender identity that we didnt choose , but makes us feel like an outcast with respect to our peers. As a gay man , I experienced that sense of being different from most of my male peers growing up, and being treated by some as though I were different (‘gay’ acting). It wasnt until I met others in the gay community that I learned there were distinct gender categories beyond the male-female binary , as diverse as these may be within themselves, and in many cases one’s gender is inborn, and only the particulars of its expression are socially constructed. Those who never had reason to consider themselves different from their peers in terms of gender behavior in ways they could not control often deny that there is such a thing as inborn gender identity outside of the male-female binary, because they never experienced what it is like.

I don't think this subject has much to do with truth as such. It's about a distrust of mainstream truth, not the notion of truth per say. Trump voters, for instance, are very certain about truth.

I don't think truth has ever been especially popular with people. People tend to follow the dominant narratives and prejudices of their culture or subculture. Certainly those who follow religions (for instance) have rarely been concerned with examining the truth of their beliefs. These are unquestioned and inherited models of reality. Nor have racists or misogynists been much concerned with the truth of their worldview and values either. — Tom Storm

Your second paragraph seems to contradict your first. You start by appearing to argue that people believe that they are very much committed to the truth ( like Trump supporters) , and in service of their notion of truth they proceed to embrace some positions and reject others.
Then in your second paragraph you claim that people are not interested in truth. Are you trying to make a distinction between their perception of their commitment to truth and what they actually do?
That’s the funny thing about truth. There’s not much left of it once we clear away bias and perspective, except a circular argument that truth is what is factually correct. Is the assertion that those who hold onto racist and misogynist views are simply ‘factually incorrect’ itself a circular argument?

It’s from Human Experience
Philosophy, Neurosis,
and the Elements of Everyday Life

Thing is, our various perspectives and biases are not contained in our perceptions, which only informs us there is something to which an assignment of a truth value is possible. — Mww

Our perceptions are in themselves perspectival biases.

“…whatever perception we have of the world is shaped by our efforts to organize and integrate all of the dimensions of our experience into a coherent whole. How we go about this will be dictated by the level
of our education, by our expectations, and by our desires, and so the vi­sion we have will always be as much a reflection of ourselves and our prejudices as it is a discovery of “how things really are”.( John Russon)

Suffice it to say, I am sympathetic to gender being performative and society enforcing/teaching individuals how to play the part (even if that part changes over time). — Ennui Elucidator

And perhaps that social part is already shaped by inborn gender disposition rather than being dictated solely by culture.

“Instead of the young being socialized by society, as many people believe, they may flesh out their gender roles largely by themselves through observation and emulation of models of the gender they identify with.

In our fellow primates, we have scattered evidence that the young selectively attend to same-sex models. For example, a recent orangutan study in the Sumatran forest by Beatrice Ehmann and colleagues showed that pre-pubertal daughters eat the same foods as their mother, whereas same-aged sons have a more diverse diet. Having paid attention to a wider range of models, including adult males, young males consume foods that their mother never touches.

Similarly, Elizabeth Lonsdorf observed how juvenile chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, in Tanzania, learn from their mother how to extract termites by dipping twigs into the insects’ nests. Daughters faithfully copy the exact fishing technique of their mother, whereas sons do not. Despite both spending equal time with their mom, daughters seem to watch her more intently during termite feeding.

These examples don’t yet amount to gender roles. It is much easier to measure tool-use and food habits in the forest than social attitudes and norms. But primate culture studies are evolving and will no doubt include social measures in the future. At the very least, current evidence suggests that young apes choose which adult models to emulate based on their own gender identity. Young males look for male models, young females for female models.

I would therefore not exclude gender socialization in our fellow primates, nor for that matter in other animals.”
(Frans De Waal, The Gendered Ape, Essay 3: Do Only Humans Have Genders?)

↪Seeker Perhaps it's not excessive thinking (do you mean rumination?) that is the problem. It is inadequate thinking — Tom Storm

:up:

One supposes that this counting as is the result of neural processes yet need not be located in any particular process. There need be nothing in common, perhaps, in the neural patterns that enable one to make a cup of tea and the neural process that enables one to order quality Russian Caravan from an online supplier. Yet both are to do with tea. — Banno

Priming experiments show that there is a great deal
of overlap among neural patterns that are involved in semantically related items. If shown a word to ‘prime’ one’s memory for semantically related meanings, the reaction time to recognize the primed for meanings is much quicker than without the priming. If no such overlap exist between the pattens that are involved in the meanings associated with making a cup
of tea and the ordering of Russian Caravan, then this suggests that we are dealing with only distantly related categories of meaning. If we are actively thinking of both examples as to do with tea, then there will
likely be certain words that act as primings from the one situation to the other, and certain words that will not.

In contrast, the latter thinks that Davidsonian "physical properties" and "the micro-structural level" are just theoretical suppositions that are meaningful only within a description or vocabulary.
— Joshs
would be to claim that neural science is imaginary... — Banno

not that neural science is imaginary, but that if it is claiming to offer an account that includes the organization of semantic meaning, then it will reveal in its patterning such effects as the ability to prime for overlapping senses of meaning. It doesn’t have to , of course. Older neural models couldn’t account for priming results because they were the wrong sorts of descriptions. Similarly , a molecular or sun-atomic description of neural nets would fail to make sense of priming , since they are the wrong vocabulary for the task. The most adequate sort of neural description of
linguistic behavior should ENRICH the vocabulary of propositional structures, not make it disappear. This is precisely what the Husserlian bracketing of the naively experienced everyday world via the phenomenological reduction achieves.

I checked the transcript. Altruism and empathy were not mentioned. Compassion was mentioned twice by an outside commentator, not Wynn. The video focused on children's behavior, not concepts. True, Wynn and others did indicate they thought the behaviors were innate. That doesn't seem like such a jump to me. — T Clark

I was focusing mainly on her paper , The Moral Baby’, which mentions empathy and compassion extensively i. the context of cognition.

“There are several moral emotions, including guilt, shame, gratitude, and anger, but most developmental research has focused on caring about other people—sometimes described as compassion.”

“The early emergence of the evaluation of social actions—present already by 3 months of age—suggests that this capacity cannot result entirely from experi­ence in particular cultural environments or exposure to specific linguistic practices, and it suggests that there are innate bases that ground some components of our moral cognition.”

https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/f/1145/files/2017/10/Wynn-Bloom-Moral-Handbook-Chapter-2013-14pwpor.pdf

Why would you jump to the conclusion that the behavior we see is related to events in the womb? These are very young children. They don't have language yet. Do you really think they were taught the behaviors they act out? — T Clark

Many perceptual skills are directly related to stimulation in the womb. Fetuses in the womb can respond positively to singing and rocking by the mother, already forming a basis of attachment to her. Prior to the development of language , the infant is still a conceptualizing , sense-making , pattern recognizing being. These pre-linguistic capacities are more than enough for the infant to learn to empathize. with others.

When this subject comes up, I often discuss the work of Karan Wynn on the cognitive abilities of very young children. Here's a link to Wynn's publications page: — T Clark

Let me try and articulate what I think are problems with Wynn’s thesis:

I think she begins with unexamined assumptions concerning concepts such as compassion , altruism and empathy. The question is , what is it about the way we think about certain aspects of human behavior that lead us to conclude from the fact that they are displayed in very young infants that they are ‘innate’?

Do we leap to such conclusions concerning perceptual achievements of infants, or do we first look to see in what ways exposure to environmental stimulation in the womb and out of it may lead to the infant’s construction of perceptual skills?
I dont think so, and I think the reason has to do with our woefully poor understanding of the relation between affective phenomena and perceptual-cognitive skills. We tend to think of emotions in terms of raw , dumb, reflex-like, pre-reflective and pre-rational bodily sensations and reinforcements. But new ways of thinking about affect show it to be inseparable from cognitive assessments, not just in the sense that all assessments and intentions presuppose affective tonality and motivation , but in that affects themselves are already intentionally meaningful forms of sense-making. From this vantage, the only aspect of morality humans inherit is the capacity , and need, to construe meaningful pattens in events. This alone explains why we care about and want to empathize with others who we recognize as like ourselves in some
valuable fashion. The real feat of Wynn’s subjects isnt some ‘innate moral’ capacity , it is their
conceptual recognition of others as like themselves. This is learned, not innate.

Good. So we agree to moving away from a computational, representational approach to neural networking.

Then in what way does
description-dependence (go) all the way down.
— Joshs — Banno

I am linking description (space of reasons, account, value system) , to scheme , scheme to pattern and pattern to reciprocal network of relations. Tying all of these together within an enactivist approach are a connected set of concepts characteristic of autonomous living systems: organizational and operation closure and sensory-motor structural coupling between organism and environment.

“ Organizational closure refers to the self-referential (circular and recursive) network of relations that defines the system as a unity, and operational closure to the reentrant and recurrent dynamics of such a system.

…autonomous systems do not operate on the basis of internal representations in the sub-jectivist/objectivist sense. Instead of internally representing an external world in some Cartesian sense, they enact an environment inseparable from their own structure and actions . In phenomenological language, they constitute (disclose) a world that bears the stamp of their own structure.”(Thompson , Mind in Life)

It is not as though any particular description or account is split off from the environment it interacts
with and organizes. This is a two-way street. A network of relations defining a space of reasons or the pattern of a neural net is in a relation of reciprocal
causality with the world of material processes.

Neural networks are not von neumann machines. They do not manipulate symbols, they modify weightings.

We agree on that, at least? — Banno

Ok, I’ll go with that , even though there are other ways of describing their functioning. Getting away from a computational approach to neural modelling is a good start. Next step would be dumping representationalism.

One may describe what a neural net does in propositional terms, post hoc. But there are no propositions present in neural nets. Neural networks do not function by making use of propositions — Banno

No, they function by instituting normative patterns. This they have in common with our propositional terms, because their organizational basis is the condition of possibility of propositional grammar. You would have to eliminate the ‘net’ aspect of neural nets, removing the ascription of patterned organization to one’s neural model, in order to sever the normative equivalence between neurological and propositional.

Neural networks do not use propositions. Hence, some explanation will be needed if they are "description-dependent". — Banno

Neural networks instantiate patterns of normatively oriented practical engagement with a world. One can also think of these patterns in terms of forms of description, accounts, schemes , values. Propositions are one peculiar, culturally contingent linguistic product of such normative patterns.

"the kettle" doesn't refer to my model of a kettle, it refers to (in the informational model) the hidden state itself.
— Isaac

One can see why Joshs mistakes this for the thing-in-itself, or some such. — Banno

If one interprets this in Davidsonian terms, then the ‘thing in itself’ equates to real physical properties. I agree with Rorty and Putnam that description-dependence goes all the way down.

“The difference between a Davidsonian non reductive physicalist and a Rortyan naturalistic pragmatist is that the former does not deny that there really are physical properties at the micro-structural level, because the efficiency of a physical vocabulary is a sufficient reason to extend its claims to ontology. In contrast, the latter thinks that Davidsonian "physical properties" and "the micro-structural level" are just theoretical suppositions that are meaningful only within a description or vocabulary. They think that it is sufficient for a denial of the existence of physical properties at the level of ontology, precisely because they are still description-dependent.”(ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM ELIMINATED:
RORTY AND DAVIDSON ON THE MIND-WORLD RELATION, Istvan Danka)

I recall a month or so back a conversation in which it was said (possibly Joshs, again) that the mind creates reality, and we asked the obvious question, if mind creates reality, what does it create it from? Here you are answering that question, showing how the kettle is created by a neural net that interacts with stuff outside it. — Banno

And I would add that if the net is the description, then the outside stuff the neural net interacts with cannot be assumed to harbor any features, properties, substance in themselves that are description-independent.

↪Joshs Agent Smith's definition of language skepticism makes it sound like it's a stronger beef with language.

"....language is (too) flawed to perform the tasks we assign to it and that includes everything spoken, written, signed." Though he's a landmark thinker, I think this is an overstatement. These days more than ever language is being misused, but I don't think in the sense he meant. — GLEN willows

Many scholars argue that for Wittgenstein the very structure of language makes radical doubt impossible.

“Thus we arrive to the end of Wittgenstein's critique of
skepticism. The core of his argumentation lies in asking the following: What kind of doubts does the skeptic raise? To which extent is it valid to insert those doubts in the language game in which we live? His answer to these interrogants emphasizes that some aspects of our thoughts cannot be doubted, since they are what allow us to construct our thoughts themselves, included the very formulation of any doubt. Thus the analysis of the skeptical doubt, its premises and consequences, allows him to prove that any doubt presuposses the existence of a field of certainty and hence, that skepticism cannot be the last word.”
(WITTGENSTEIN AND THE LIMITS OF SKEPTICISM
Stella Villarmea)

The weight of millions of years of evolution is behind competitiveness in both sexes. — Tate

Keep in mind that the ‘weight of evolution’ refers to the fact that patterns of mating behaviors barely changed for millions of years among species of primates. This ‘weight’ of unchanging patterns was due not only to fixed genetic coding but also to unchanging primate ‘cultural’ behavior in general over millions of years. Perhaps we could say that, given the profound changeability of human cultural behavior over the course of mere centuries , we have thrown off the weight of those millions of years of unchanging behavior. In other words , competition need not be thought of genetically inbred in humans. We now see anti-competition messages being spread in the schools and other areas of culture , for instance. We may eventually arrive at a time when competition is overwhelmingly rejected as a desirable and useful value. Will this be an overthrow of our biological heritage, or an overthrow of the myth that this was ever our heritage?

. I think so far the consensus is that it had to do with suppressing male-male competition for the sake of social stability along with a few other stray factors. — Tate

Do you think human males are ‘innately’ more competitive than females? What about gay monogamy?

Since the world is all that is the case, it is also a collective story. That does not meant hat just anything goes. You will still burn your hand if you touch the boiling kettle.

The result is that some statements are true, some false — Banno

So then Davidsonian non-reductive physicalism rather than Putnam’s conceptual relativism? And the moral implications are perhaps that , like the boiling kettle, there is a fact of the matter in social affairs preventing ethical debates from getting lost in interminable relativity?

Monogamous animals are usually sexually monomorphic. We're dimorphic, so our monogamy is unusual. This is explained in the OP. — Tate

You know what else is unusual about our relationship dynamics in comparison with other animals? The fact that one could write a treatise on the myriad ways we have chosen to connect up together, from culture to culture, from individual to individual , from era to era. This discussion so far has de-emphasized the historically changing ways humans have thought about relationship. Is a term like monogamy really coherently understood without taking into account how significantly our social views of women, or of love , have changed in the past few thousand years?

What , for instance, is the link between modern thinking about monogamy and the appearance of the concept of romantic love? How have changing views of the role and capabilities of women altered the dynamics of marriages in terms of the sharing of responsibilities for child rearing, housekeeping and income generation? How do we make sense of the unraveling of the nuclear family in favor of all kinds of alternative family arrangements ( single parenting, the rise of non-married partnerships , and the single most significant trend today: the growing numbers of people living alone)?

The monogamous-nonmonogamous binary that you are importing from biological science wasn’t designed to address the infinitely malleable ways in which humans are capable of transforming the basis of their relationships with others.
Bringing all this back to the question of the OP, does human pairing behavior transcend the biological ‘mechanisms’ that make paring behavior in other species so predictable? I would put it this way: in creatures with our brain size, capacity and adaptability, the mechanism of cultural transmission produces a rate of behavioral transformation much more accelerated than that which the mechanism of genetic evolution can achieve.

I think the best way to understand pairing behavior in humans is not by comparing us to individual animal species, but comparing the shifting patterns of our paring behavior over the course of cultural history with the trajectory of diversifying pairing behaviors in general over the course of biological evolution.

o, you're saying we choose monogamy, contrary to biological drives, because it enriches our anticipatory sense making? :chin: — Tate

You have to get past the idea of drive as some kind of simple mechanism, with cognitions in a one-way relation of subservience to them. Have you read John Dewey’s The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology?

So are you agreeing that biology suggests we shouldn't be monogamous, but we've somehow overridden that? The OP question was simply whether that actually happens. How would we know whether our purposes are in charge or slaves to instinct? — Tate

In other animals, too, cognition isn’t simply the slave of drives. If monogamy isn’t a thing among other primates , it’s not strictly because of top down influence of biological drive on behavior , but because of the way the intentional aims of the animals interact with and co-shape motivated behavior. Other animals modify their aims and purposes within a much more restricted range of possibilities than humans, not because of stronger ‘instincts’ but because of a more limited cognitive capacity.

The evidence is strong enough to warrant the question: what are Homo Sapiens doing working against biology — Tate

If one did a statistical analysis of the cultural roles
assigned to human beings on the basis of biological sex, and only had the centuries prior to the 20th century to work with, one might be convinced the evidence was strong enough to claim that human males have a large range of innate capabilities not shared by women. This is the danger of not appreciating the complex and reciprocal way that culture and cognition interact with biological motives in humans.


There is just as much evidence that in humans, ‘biology’, in the form of motivations, drives and instincts , are just as much the servants of changing cognitively-shaped purposes as they are their master. If there is a fundamental human ‘drive’, it isn't static survival but pragmatically oriented anticipatory sense making.
Monogamy is desirable for modern cultures because it is an optimal way to achieve the most intimate and stable relational bond with another person, and this in turn maximizes the richness of our sense making engagements.

Homo Sapiens wouldn't be expected to be monogamous because of marked sexual dimorphism (males are bigger). Generally, dimorphic species exhibit strong male-male competition and individual males usually mate with a lot of females. This pattern is common among primates with only a handful of exceptions.

So how did monogamy become an ideal for our species? What does this imply about the human psyche in terms of our power to override biology? — Tate

I think the lesson here is to avoid drawing causal conclusions about human behavior from statistical analyses of animal behavior.

. What would the perfect language look like? I don't think W. shares anything on that — GLEN willows

Wittgenstein has nothing against language in general The perfect language is whatever language we are actually using at the moment. His beef is with ways we have been inclined to talk about how language works. This isnt the fault of language , but of our desire to reify it, to box it up and objectify it in that way we treat concepts such as grammar, meaning, sense and reference. Language is never faulty, but our use of it can be confused.

:up:

Words (expressions) are definitely actions aimed at making an environment match more closely our expectation of it (the enaction side of active inference). But they only succeed in doing that (when they do succeed) because of the hook they have to other people's models, and this hook is only possible because we quite good at modelling (ie our models are quite accurate predictors of hidden states). If this latter weren't the case, then we'd find it very difficult to share terms, we'd have no common ground over which to share them (unless by complete coincidence!). Which, if I've understood you correctly, is almost exactly what you're saying with...

Agreement would be equally about material practices that are intrinsic to word use. Our words are not just accountable to the linguistic conventions of the group , but are directly accountable to the feedback from the modifications of material circumstances our words enact.
— Joshs

...is that right? — Isaac

:up:

Here I feel like I'm being a cheerleader for science but I’m not. I just feel the urge to point out some of the negativity - and bias - of some of the attitudes here. — GLEN willows

Let’s talk about bias. There’s a different way to think about how we should understand such notions as social and cultural bias and their relationship to scientific truth than what you have mentioned so far. You begin with an assumption about what science does: it tries to represent how things are in a world at least partially independent of our concepts and traditions. You then draw up a dichotomy between those philosophers of science who believe it is possible to shake off our cultural biases and see things perfectly objectively , and those who ‘pessimistically’ believe that we can never cross the veil of appearances separating our assumptions
and theories from material things in themselves.

But there is an entirely different way of thinking about what science does , and what truth is, that rejects from the getgo that scientific truth is the attempt to mirror or represent a world out there via our schemes.
They don’t think of knowledge as representation or mirroring, but the building of systems of interaction with the world. We can build these systems in many different ways, and the world will respond very precisely, but differently. to each of these ways.

- I believe the social-construction tinged idea that theories create the reality is disproven by the thousands of theories that have been wrong - and science has admitted were wrong. You know the list - phlogiston, alchemy etc — GLEN willows

When we abandon one science theory for another , it is not because the theory is found not to correspond with what is ‘out there’, but because we prefer a new way of organizing our interaction with our world, a way that allows us to do more things , albeit differently than before. New theories no more ‘falsify’ old ones than new artistic movements falsify older movements.

From this vantage cultural ‘bias’ is not a distortion of objectivity. There is not a more or less ‘correct’ way to build a scientific system, any more than thier is a more or less correct way to produce art. Some scientific systems we construct solve puzzles better than others, not by getting closer to representing what is ‘out there’, but by allowing us to interest with our world in ways that are more useful for our purposes. The world is a continually changing development , and for this reason there is no one way that things ‘really are’. Our theories contribute to accelerating this process of transformation by allowing us to interact with our world and with each other in ever more complex and intricate ways. The central role of science isn’t ‘getting it right’ in the sense of capturing the way thing really are, but finding new and better ways of interacting usefully with a
world that is constantly changing as a result of our innovative ways of dealing with it.

it's (for me) an example of the way that hidden states constrain our models of them. We can have a range if modelled expectations for the entailments of 'boiling a kettle', but none of them can have cold water come out. None of them can result in ice. The hidden states we're trying to reduce surprise in are real and so have constraints. What I'm arguing here (though mostly paraphrasing Ramsey) is that because hidden states are not themselves models, nor bounded in any way, no 'natural kinds', there's no right model. There's only wrong ones. Truth (as correspondence) seems to need a right model. — Isaac

A particular bacterium’s niche involves its normative interactions with sugar molecules, its sensitivity to sugar gradients . Would I be correct in stating that what can surprise this creature, as a hidden state, belongs to this normative functioning? Are hidden states thus bounded in this sense by the the aims of the organism in its niche?
And if this is the case, can we not consider language use as also normative practices of interaction with an environment that is itself ‘bounded’ by the purposes of the language user, even when they are surprised?

the truth of "I boiled the kettle" amounts to little more than whether you've used the words correctly in your language. "I boiled the kettle" is true because the thing you did is one of the things the expression could rightly be used to describe. — Isaac

Do the words merely hook onto and describe an action, or are the words themselves actions , normatively guided forms of doing that aim to change an environment in anticipated ways that can be disappointed or invalidated as well as affirmed by the feedback from the environment they alter?

at (1) we agree to treat a part of the environment as a kettle, at (3) we do the same for 'boiling', but the theory that the kettle at (1) is exhibiting the pattern at (3) is still, like any theory, subject to underdetermination. Something as simple as 'the kettle is boiling' admits of very little wiggle room for such, but still an important point with regards to 'truth' because it means that even the process-derived truth at (6) remains somewhat agreed on. We don't escape the need for us to socially agree in order for something the have a truth value by this means, it's just that we're constrained in what we could ever possibly socially agree to and still function. — Isaac

In keeping with the idea of words as normatively guided actions on the world, intersubjective agreement on truth wouldnt merely be a conceptual normatively divided off from the natural objects that act as causes of our conceptual schemes. Agreement would be equally about material practices that are intrinsic to word use. Our words are not just accountable to the linguistic conventions of the group , but are directly accountable to the feedback from the modifications of material circumstances our words enact.

For better or worse, I'm in the dark as to the nature of the poison Rouse seems to refer to. Something to do with semantics or truth or maybe something else eniterly? Whatever it is, my response is that Rouse did have a notion of meaning, truth, and other linguistic elements as he penned his thoughts on the flaws in language, but isn't that a paradox? You're using language in particular mode (combination of semantics, truth, syntax) to make the claim that such usage is not good enough. Doesn't that make the criticism pointless. Rouse and his ilk are drinking from the very well they say is poisoned. :chin: — Agent Smith

He’s not saying that such usage isnt good enough. He is asking how language, syntax and truth statements hook up with the world. His answer is that structures of language shouldnt be seen as supervening on causal perceptual relations with natural objects, as though causation and the normative functions of language and rationality are distinguishable domains. Rather than maintaining a sharp distinction between contentful language and the world, Rouse wants us to recognize that:

"The understanding of conceptually articulated practices as subpatterns within the human lineage belongs to the Davidsonian-Sellarsian tradition that emphasizes the "objectivity" of conceptual understanding. Yet the "objects" to which our performances must be held accountable are not something outside discursive practice itself. Discursive practice cannot be understood as an intralinguistic structure or activity that then somehow "reaches out" to incorporate or accord to objects. The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself. "The practice itself," however, already incorporates the material circumstances in and through which it is enacted. Practices are forms of discursive and practical niche construction in which organism and environment are formed and reformed together through an ongoing, mutually intra-active reconfiguration.”

1. Realism: Science shows you reality as it is. Mass actually does warp space-time.

2. Anti-realism: Science doesn't do what realism says it does — Agent Smith

There is another option:

“Both scientific realists and antirealists presume semantic realism--that is, that there is an already determinate fact of the matter about what our theories, conceptual schemes, or forms of life "say" about the world. Interpretation must come to an end somewhere, they insist, if not in a world of independently real objects, then in a language, conceptual scheme, social context, or culture.

Cultural studies of science , instead, reject the dualism of scheme and content, or context and content, altogether. There is no determinate scheme or context that can fix the content of utterances, and hence no way to get outside of language. How a theory or practice interprets the world is itself inescapably open to further interpretation, with no authority beyond what gets said by whom, when. This position has at least two important consequences in comparison to social constructivism. First, cultural studies can readily speak of statements as true, for "truth" is a semantic concept that never takes us beyond language: to say that "p is true" says no more (but also no less) than saying "p." Second, this position dissolves the boundaries between cultural studies of science and the scientific practices they study. Cultural studies offer interpretations of scientific practices, including the texts and utterances that such practices frequently articulate--but scientific practices are themselves already engaged in such interpretations, in citing, reiterating, criticizing, or extending past practice."(Joseph Rouse)