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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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 Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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One speculative philosophy may be as valid as any other from a material perspective, but if the absolute truth is a sentient being who has revealed (and spoken in Bhagavad-gita...) the supreme philosophy for the benefit of all mankind, then it is incumbent upon all intelligent people to accept it.
There are various religious, philosophical, and yoga systems which are meant to attract various types of people in different situations. Human life is meant for understanding our relationship with the absolute truth. Animals are not capable of philosophy or religion.
The perfectional stage of religion, philosophy, action (karma), yoga, and science culminates in devotion to the supreme absolute person. If one makes any progress at all in terms of spiritual understanding, then one will get at least a human birth next life to continue making progress from the point at which one left off.
If one is completely atheistic and inimical to God and faithful followers (of whatever tradition...) then one may have to re-enter the evolutionary cycle of repeated birth and death in the various lower species of life before getting another chance in a human body. The stakes are high - and whatever we've done for perfection (or degradation...) will be tested at death. (And it'll be impossible to pass by cheating...) |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Rteacher wrote: |
| One speculative philosophy may be as valid as any other from a material perspective, but if the absolute truth is a sentient being who has revealed (and spoken in Bhagavad-gita...) the supreme philosophy for the benefit of all mankind, then it is incumbent upon all intelligent people to accept it... |
...and here is where we part company, probably radically, too. You and any other religious enthusiast. |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 6:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Rteacher wrote: |
. The stakes are high - and whatever we've done for perfection (or degradation...) will be tested at death. (And it'll be impossible to pass by cheating...) |
What? No bribes, gifts or sexual favours?
Well so long as I'm not born lactose intolerant I'll be happy. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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| mnhnhyouh wrote: |
| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
| Interesting explanation...but, scientifically speaking, how do you prove it's true? |
In science you cant prove anything true. I agree with your points, and am being nitpicking, but I would phrase it more like...
... but these theories don't make any predictions and are difficult to test.
I hnow, pedantic....
h |
No, don't I think that's pedantic, you phrased it better than I did. You're right, the hypotheses are intriguing, but difficult to test, and sometimes the proponents don't seem to be that interested in testing them or 'proving' them. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 3:47 am Post subject: |
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| and in some cases "yes" they are scientifically demonstrable, a hypothesis can be based on good evolutionary theory and still turn out to be dead wrong. |
When I first began reading stuff on evolutionary biology (or whatever label it's going by these days) the author whose name I can't come up with right now made an interesting statement. He said something like, "It's the job of theorists to push an idea as far as possible to see what situations it can explain. It's the job of technicians to test those ideas in the lab to see if they are right."
Wasn't it Edison who said something about when you try something and it doesn't work, you haven't failed? You have just learned what doesn't work. Knowing that can be as important as what does work.
A week or so ago there was a short thread on free will. Someday a large part of the answer to free will will contain a lot of information from evolutionary biology. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:43 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Manner and I were not discussing Darwin's evolutionary biology but rather "evolutionary psychology," an entirely different field -- the application of Darwinism to human behavior. |
Gopher, given that evolutionary pschology is just another name for human ethology, I don't see how you can describe it as "an entirely different field" to evolutionary biology. And the description 'the application of Darwinism to human behaviour' doesn't sit well either. It seems to me like you're willing to accept that human bodies have evolved, but not that human minds have. How do you justify drawing that line? Presumably you don't make that distinction for any other animals. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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I am not going to get into a debate with you over literature that I do not believe you have even read.
Applying evolutionary theory to social human behavior has been problematic since "Social Darwinism." I am not pulling this assertion out of thin air. So please do not personalize it as something that I am arguing or lines that I am drawing, either. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 12:16 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| I wasn't trying to personalise it... |
Very well. Just so we are clear that I am not drawing any lines but rather reporting lines that have been drawn already.
Social Darwinism, sociobiology, and now "evolutionary psychology" play with Darwin's theory, applying it to human behavior, thus inevitably politicizing the science. You may recall, the Nazis terribly abused this at one time in our history. Highly questionable, the whole thing.
It is not the same debate at all between the "religion vs. science" false-dichotomy fanatics carry out on the other thread.
It is also different from the slow evolutionary processes vs. "punctuated equilibrium" debate that Manner and I talked about above.
It is far more complex and complicated than the "debates" on this board tend to reflect. All of the are theoretical worldview/paradigms. We have no way of directly accessing objective reality or recognizing God's plan. If we could indeed see everything, then we would be God, and only a few posters here seem to claim this... |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 12:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| I wasn't trying to personalise it... |
Very well. Just so we are clear that I am not drawing any lines but rather reporting lines that have been drawn already.
Social Darwinism, sociobiology, and now "evolutionary psychology" play with Darwin's theory, applying it to human behavior, thus inevitably politicizing the science. You may recall, the Nazis terribly abused this at one time in our history. Highly questionable, the whole thing.
It is not the same debate at all between the "religion vs. science" fanatics carry out on the other thread.
It is also different from the slow evolutionary processes vs. "punctuated equilibrium" debate that Manner and I talked about above.
It is far more complex and complicated than the "debates" on this board tend to reflect. |
Sorry, I decided to do a delete edit, but you were too quick.
But anyway, just so we're clear though, you did draw a line when you patronisingly told Yata Boy that evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology are 'entirely different fields'. However, I doubt that you would make the claim that evolutionary biology and ethology are completely different fields. I was asking you how you make the distinction.
Now I see that you've brought up argumentum ad nazium, so I consider my question answered.
I am concerned, however, that you don't fully appreciate the distinction between social darwinism and evolutionary psychology. Whereas the former understands natural selection as being a fundamental process of social life, the latter seeks to understand behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 1:13 pm Post subject: |
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Gang ah jee: is this the guy you say I was patronizing...? LOL. (And, however it may look to you, and whether I have patronized others before or not, I had no such intention when addressing Ya-ta, above.)
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
...Go to your room, Little Gopher, and don't come out until...
"Depressing" is not an argument. |
And I fully appreciate the differences between Social Darwinism, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology still represents an entirely different field than evolutionary biology. One does not see evolutionary biologists on cable news shows in shouting matches with feminists over whether women unconsciously invite rape as "a reproductive strategy..."
I think you are failing to appreciate that, since the nineteenth century, intellectuals and writers have all used "the hard sciences'" vocabulary ("social science," e.g.) to enhance their credibility in a world mesmerized by science's promise to illuminate objective reality "as it is" once and for all. Thus, for our purposes, the "biology" in "sociobiology" and the "evolutionary" in "evolutionary psychology." And thus you and probably not a few others confuse the two fields.
Evolutionary biology deals with the science of life as it evolved on this planet -- from as far back as the fossil record goes to the present. Paleontology, for example. It asks questions like this: can evolutionary biology explain human beings' appearance?
Evolutionary psychology relies on the evolutionary biology paradigm and some of its findings to explain or reduce humans' social behaviors ("aggression," "sex" and "divorce," for example, or "is it not interesting that when female bonobo chimps ovulate, their vagina flushes red for all male bonobos to see, and when female humans ovulate they go to night-clubs with bright red lip stick?" [And I am not inventing that question, Gang ah jee, Wright discusses it at length in his Moral Animal.]).
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Dec 19, 2006 7:05 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Social isolation is so painful to us that it is used as a punishment: Go to your room, Little Gopher, and don't come out until you are ready to apologize to your sister! Solitary confinement in prisons and political exile also come to mind. |
Your mom never sent you to your room? |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Gang ah jee: is this they guy you say I was patronizing...? LOL.
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
...Go to your room, Little Gopher, and don't come out until...
"Depressing" is not an argument. |
And I fully appreciate the differences between Social Darwinism, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology still represents an entirely different field than evolutionary biology. One does not see evolutionary biologists on cable news shows in shouting matches with feminists over whether women unconsciously invite rape as "a reproductive strategy..." |
I find your logic for dismissing an entire field here a little strange And who was this evolutionary psychologist anyway?
| Gopher wrote: |
| I think you are failing to appreciate that, since the nineteenth century, intellectuals and writers have all used "the hard sciences'" vocabulary ("social science," e.g.) to enhance their credibility in a world mesmerized by science's promise to illuminate objective reality "as it is" once and for all. Thus, for our purposes, the "biology" in "sociobiology" and the "evolutionary" in "evolutionary psychology." And thus you and probably not a few others confuse the two fields. |
Well, your argument is well taken when it comes to people like Desmond Morris, spencerists and Nazis, and not so valid when applied to the actual research that goes on in the field. I'm not sure which of the dozen of so books you've read on this topic, but it's often mischaracterised by laypeople in the media and popular science press. I recommend http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/ as a better starting point.
| Gopher wrote: |
| Evolutionary biology deals with the science of life as it evolved on this planet -- from as far back as the fossil record goes to the present. Paleontology, for example. It asks questions like this: can evolutionary biology explain human beings' appearance? |
Evolutionary biology also asks questions like this: can evolution explain the behaviour of organisms? Applied to humans, this is evolutionary psychology. You seem to want to draw a line between humans and everything else. Would it be fair to characterise your position as that of a cartesian dualist who retreats into a bolthole of Kuhnian epistemology whenever the the wrong answers to the questions start coming up?
| Gopher wrote: |
| Evolutionary psychology relies on the evolutionary biology paradigm and some of its findings to explain or reduce humans' social behaviors ("aggression," "sex" and "divorce," for example, or "is it not interesting that when female bonobo chimps ovulate, their vagina flushes red for all male bonobos to see, and when female humans ovulate they go to night-clubs with bright red lip stick?" [And I am not inventing that question, Gang ah jee, Wright discusses it at length in his Moral Animal.]). |
Gopher, Robert Wright is not an evolutionary psychologist. He's a journalist. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| I find your logic for dismissing an entire field here a little strange... |
Sorry, there has been a misunderstanding. I have clearly intruded on your pet issue and now you are claiming that when I express my impressions on a particular field in an exchange with another poster, and that when I am forced to clarify exactly what this field is and is not to you and yet another poster, that this somehow represents an attempted logically-constructed attack bent on "dismissing an entire field."
And now you are lecturing me on an author's background concerning a book I have read and cited here.
Yes, Gang ah jee, Robert Wright is a journalist, and a very impressive one at that. Thanks for the reminder.
| Wikipedia wrote: |
Robert Wright is an American journalist and prize-winning author of best-selling books about science, evolutionary psychology, history and sociobiology, including Nonzero and The Moral Animal. He is a visiting scholar at The University of Pennsylvania.
Wright has been a contributing editor at The New Republic, Time and Slate. He has also written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. His column "The Information Age," written for The Sciences magazine, won the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism. He contributes frequently to The New York Times.
On November 1, 2005, Wright and blogger Mickey Kaus launched Bloggingheads.tv, a current events dia-vlog. Of Wright's unemotive style one blogger wrote "If Wright were supposed to be a robot, we'd say it was an unsubtle portrayal." Wright's blandness works better in repartee with Kaus, in which he deploys a lot of dry humor. Wright previously ventured into video-on-Internet with his MeaningofLife.tv website. |
Now, which way is the door? I do not wish to get caught up in another two-hundred-page "debate."
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Dec 19, 2006 4:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 4:20 pm Post subject: |
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| You know Gopher now that you mention it, some of the stuff I've read related to evolutionary psychology...leans a lot more in the direction of Social Darwinism and sociobiology than I realized before now. I haven't read many books on the subject but there is an interesting website www.edge.org that carries a lot of articles related to the subject. They mainly confine themselves to presenting studied responses to people opposed to teaching evolution in high schools. But now that you mention it, evolutionary psychology is not quite as academically distant from Social Darwinism and sociobiology as its adherents would like one to believe. Something to think about. ** pondering ** |
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