Text 4281, 253 rader
Skriven 2006-07-18 23:09:00 av Robert E Starr JR (4753.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:tqkob2p4eu6r3nd329ucn7uthob8q3qh4d@4ax.com...

> That's not really true, because taste is our evolved mechanism for
> finding foods of high nutritional value. And note that I said "we do
> make the [mechanics of metabolism] a central concern, even though
> we're seldom aware of it." That something is a central concern doesn't
> mean that we always get it right in every detail. But you will do a
> lot better on a diet of Big Macs and shakes than you will on a diet of
> sawdust and dirt, so the mechanism is still doing most of what it
> does.
>
> What has happened, unfortunately, is that we've developed foods so
> concentrated that they're outside our design parameters (speaking
> figuratively, of course). They trigger desire as they should, but
> they're so rich that we ingest too many calories before they trigger
> the sense of satiation that would prevent us from eating more.

This is so far from the original analogy as to render further comment 
useless.


>>>>> I share that prejudice to some extent, but at the same time, I see
>>>>> religion as having a practical role in human survival. In that sense,
>>>>> in the sense that it encodes culturally important behavioral memes,
>>>>> religion seems "real" to me, and worthwhile.
>>>>>
>>>>> I tend to think that religion, art, dreams, daydreams, and hypnosis
>>>>> are intertwined. Religion might be looked upon as art that claims to
>>>>> be completely true when in fact it's only partially true (as opposed,
>>>>> say, to our historical fiction, which generally claims only to be
>>>>> partially true, though people tend to accept it as truer than it is).
>>>>> So from a personal, subjective perspective, I can compare it to the
>>>>> "willing suspension of disbelief" that most people experience to some
>>>>> degree when watching a movie or even listening to music. And to some
>>>>> extent, I think, even those of us who don't ascribe a literal
>>>>> existence to the deity find our intellectual beliefs and emotional
>>>>> responses changing as a result of our exposure to art or to religion,
>>>>> just as we would had we been given suggestions under hypnosis. So for
>>>>> all our vaunted rationalization, we are to some extent affected by the
>>>>> same socially useful meme-sharing phenomenon.
>>>>
>>>>....Then we're agreed?
>>>
>>> Depends. What were talking about? :-)
>>>
>>> Seriously, yes, to a large extent.
>>
>>The difference is interpretation.   I see "bug".  You see "feature"
>
> The way I see it, rationality and objectivity, while valuable and of
> ever-increasing importance, aren't the only determinants of human
> behavior. There's another kind of truth that's represented
> symbolically and fictitiously. And that kind of truth is of great
> importance to all of us, even those of us who don't believe in a
> deity. Among other things, it's the central truth of art.

As long as you don't look down on people who formulate their lives 
differently, we're good.


>>>>>>>>>>From a scientific perspective, the problem would in large measure
>>>>>>>>>>boil
>>>>>>>>> down to the role of cooperation in evolution.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Only on a large scale.  Just to clarify, your position is that 
>>>>>>>>science
>>>>>>>>is
>>>>>>>>only capable of answering moral questions on an evolutionary level?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm not sure what you mean by moral questions. As you point out 
>>>>>>> below,
>>>>>>> science doesn't attempt to assign moral values. It can tell us where
>>>>>>> our moral values come from, examine the process whereby we form 
>>>>>>> them.
>>>>>>> It can even recognize that some acts are moral and some amoral 
>>>>>>> within
>>>>>>> a given context and aid in the refinement of moral strictures and
>>>>>>> judgment, by for example refining the primitive incest taboos into
>>>>>>> modern ones based on a knowledge of genetics. But by the same token,
>>>>>>> science recognizes that moral systems are at least to some extent
>>>>>>> contingent, personal, and arbitrary. It can suggest changes only
>>>>>>> within the context of externally-supplied parameters.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>....Which means science is great at mapping out known moral terrain 
>>>>>>but
>>>>>>incapable of exploring or reshaping that terrain.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think I'd go so far -- see the changes to the incest taboo
>>>>> above, or look at other moral alterations that have come about due to
>>>>> science. I'd say science fills much the same role here as less
>>>>> rigorous observation and thought.
>>>>
>>>>You're telling me about the action, now showing it to me.  Science 
>>>>cannot
>>>>consider anything besides the facts of a case because is is based in
>>>>empiricism.
>>>>
>>>>If you want to formulate morality as a statisically averaged mean, 
>>>>science
>>>>can do that.  If you want to define morality as codified and verified
>>>>successful survival strategies amassed over time, science can help you
>>>>with
>>>>the organization and evaluation work.
>>>>
>>>>If you want to do more than sifting through mouuntians of information, 
>>>>you
>>>>need some heart.  Science doesn't have any, nor was it ever meant to. 
>>>>It
>>>>is
>>>>a tool.
>>>>
>>>>It's like music.  You can program a computer for social trends and
>>>>calculate
>>>>what will sell a million records, then hire a group with those 
>>>>qualities.
>>>>That's not the same as finding a good band.  You are equating the two.
>>>
>>> I submit that science can, in principle if not in practice, find the
>>> good band. It's been some fifty years, for example, since Meyer
>>> noticed the relationship between good music and information theory.
>>> And if you're talking about the "heart," well, science can understand
>>> that too, and could in principle use it to developing the criteria
>>> that allow it identify a good band.
>>
>>No.  it can give you a good probability *estimate*.  There's a difference
>>and it's not small.
>>
>>Science is at best 20-20 hindsight.  It can tell you to some degree of
>>resolution what worked yesterday or when the last measurments were taken.
>>Insofar as those measurements are valid today it can make a 
>>corresponsingly
>>good approximation.
>
> I'm not sure why you refer to hindsight. Science is about predicting
> the future on the basis of the past. So I think is thought in general.

Science is about making sense of the world and predicting the future based 
on the past is a part of that.  Newtonian physics is the crown jewel of that 
kind of scinece because it assumes we can all be reduced to systems that 
function deterministically.  All we have to is plug in the right values to 
the the variables and turn the crank.  A wonderful clockwork universe spins 
and dances for our amusement.

Relativity warped the clockwork universe and Quantum Physics destroyed it. 
The familiar predictability of Newtonian physics was a pratial illusion 
brough on by the scale by which we perceived the universe.  One a difference 
scale, very different rules apply.  Newtonian Physics reamins as a 
large-scale approximation of what's actually happening.

Now to the question of hindsight.

One of the faith-tenets on which science (especially hard science) rests in 
the idea that the universe is not arbitrary.  If functions according to the 
same rules yesterday, today, tomorrow.  That's why there are gunnery tables 
for artillarymen.  Plugging in the energy invested in a shell its angle of 
flight and the Earth's gravity, you can calculate about where it will land 
because measurments of the earth's gravity and the mass of the shell made 
yesterday are still valid today, yeielding valid results.  You're still 
using hindsight and making assuptions, albeit very safe ones.


>>> BTW, I'm not so sure that the band and the computer are so different,
>>> except insofar as bands are more sophisticated than today's computers,
>>> which have the cognitive sophistication of insects (no snide remarks
>>> about rap, please). And I don't see any reason why the computer
>>> couldn't be given the same emotional drives as we have.
>>
>>At the moment, that's a statement far more composed of faith than fact.
>
> I very much disagree. It's composed of thought and observation. A
> toaster has emotions. Ask yourself what emotions are, and you'll reach
> the same conclusion I did.

Don't I get a say in this?

Toasters may have emotions but it'd take a technological shaman to find 
them.


>>>>> I do agree that for most there's an intermediate step, one in which
>>>>> the scientific findings are dramatized, placed in an emotional context
>>>>> within the imagination to which you refer above.
>>>>
>>>>That "intemediate step" goes by another name.
>>>>
>>>>Life.
>>>
>>> But the same thing can be done in silicon.
>>
>>It can?  Prove it.
>
> No prediction about empirical phenomena can be proved. I am merely
> following Occam here.

Then you are expressing an article of faith. Occam's Razor is not wed to a 
factual result.  Quantum Physics is proof of that.


>>> Conversely, doesn't science occur in the living?
>>
>>Sure.  But science isn't alive.
>
> No, but I'm not sure why that matters; it's still the converse.

Because science is a tool.  It's not a viewpoint. People have viewpoints.


>>> Not that I want to minimize the difference. Science represents one
>>> part of the psyche -- the part that forms an accurate model of the
>>> world around us. It isn't generally placed within the context of
>>> motivation or emotion, although it can analyze motivation, and it
>>> tends towards theory rather than concrete manifestation, e.g., it
>>> "lends to airy nothings a local habitation and a name," whereas
>>> science is concerned with reducing a multitude of local habitations
>>> into airy nothings.
>>
>>Science does not represent any part of our psyche.  It is a tool used by a
>>part of our psyche to make sense of the world.
>
> Sure, and being such, it represents the part of our psyche that makes
> sense of the world, does it not?

No.  Science represents nothing.  It is a tool.

Science is a tool used by the pure-intellectual part of our psyches to make 
pure-intellectual sense of the world.  Other tools exist, and other parts of 
ourselves are reaching out to make sense of the world.

-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent


"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."


"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones
                                                      
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