Myth as Meth

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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Magritte
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Re: Myth as Meth

Post by Magritte » Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:59 pm

met wrote:IMO, the problematic word for him there is 'heuristic', which almost inevitably would infer some preceding purpose or intention (even if that 'intention' preexists and dominates the individual organism)? (Catherine Malabou also pursues this tact in a slightly different context in her book on Kant, when she proclaims 'purpose' to be 'the other necessity.' Anyway, how do 'heuristics' arise from randomness? WDYT? Does that infer something more? Perhaps minimally some concept like Jim's or Galem Strawsen's 'proto-panpyschism'?
That's kind of a weird tangent to his main point, which is simply that our subsystems are depressingly easy to game, and that we're going to be and already are creating our own out-of-context problems where our intuitions (those of us "baseline" humans at least) are unreliable and even weaponized against us. If you want to thunk it down to a basic discussion of consciousness and philosophy of mind... well... :roll: is there a "this shit again?!" emoji? :mrgreen:

Annnyways, heuristics is extremely reducible. We've created heuristic systems. No consciousness required, unless you think malware scanners and self driving cars are conscious. Heuristics is just lazy / sloppy pattern matching. It's pretty easy to see how the ratcheting process of evolution could have generated and refined that. That's the easy problem of consciousness.
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met
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Re: Myth as Meth

Post by met » Mon Sep 19, 2016 11:07 pm

f you want to thunk it down to a basic discussion of consciousness and philosophy of mind... well... :roll: is there a "this shit again?!" emoji? :mrgreen:
Nope....at least not consciousness or intention on an individual level. (This is a finer and more difficult point to elucidate...)... does it really make sense to say "heuristics without purpose?"

We've created heuristic systems
Yeah, intentionally....
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
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Re: Myth as Meth

Post by Magritte » Tue Sep 20, 2016 7:02 am

Argument from design, met?
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Re: Myth as Meth

Post by met » Tue Sep 20, 2016 11:39 am

No, that would require some inferences that might not be justified.

There's two Interesting questions to me. (1) what is/are the "intention(s)" behind the evolved "heuristics" of our thought processes. Can we make assumptions about those if evolution is still an incomplete process? (2) where does it come from? Is it innate and static? Does Is transform along with the thinking processes themselves?
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
Dr Ward Blanton

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Re: Myth as Meth

Post by met » Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:07 am

Mag, putting it another way, with one of my typically ironic splashes ....

Isn't there also a positive side to the pliability of our intuitions and our penchant to match patterns? That being our adaptability, creativity, spontaneity, etc as a species?

So, to what extent could the "intention" behind the heuristics of evolutionary thought processes be self-grounding? That is to say, could thought processes conceivably transcend their evolutionary beginnings and be grounded instead in the way we think about them?
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
Dr Ward Blanton

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Re: Myth as Meth

Post by Magritte » Wed Sep 21, 2016 6:16 pm

Two thoughts on that. One, all the empirical evidence is against the kind of blank slatishness that would imply. Second, it sounds to me like the decontextualization and unmooring you're describing is exactly what Bakker means by the semantic apocalypse.

(edit: to be clear, Bakker's semantic apocalypse comes about through technological intervention, not through some innate mental ability to wish away the fundaments of humanity)
One of the hallmarks of freedom is that when you recognize someone is being intellectually dishonest or arguing with you in bad faith, you have the option to walk away without being punished, imprisoned or tortured.

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