sullster

Perchance,
Great to be talking with you and I enjoy your comments.

Memes and Memetics. A controversial field has arisen which posits that the human brain is wired to be a place for meme replication in the same way that the cell is a place for gene replication. The meme is a unit of culture of various types, such as religious ideas for our discussion. The meme desires to replicate itself in a similar manner to a gene, and thus like the gene,it is suseptible to mutation and natural selection.

Religions are looked at as memes, by the field of Memetics, which have survived to replicate in as many human brains as possible.

I personally have problems accepting all the the conclusions of Memetic theory. Its correlation with genes is open to criticisms and the field make humans out to be only shells for the perpetuation of ideas.

Back to reason.
You expressed the optimistic idea that reason could smash irreason to dust. That is certainly within the Enlightenment's tradition. It is true that reason has evolved into human brains and thus there must have been a naturally selected bit of wiring for such a way of thinking.

My point, is that irrationality is overwhelmingly present in the human brain and is many times revealed by violence. Reason and those who practise it have always suffered from the violence of the irrational. In addition, creators of rational cosmic systems have used the irrational to promote their ideas.

I wish that we would return to the insights of the ancient Greeks who extolled reason and accepted the existence of the irrational. They did not feel that irreason could be destroyed, only accepted and dealt with. They were not as optimistic as the Enlightenment thinkers, but more realistic.

Perchance

Thanks. I think your comments are interesting as well. I always enjoy hearing different viewpoints. (Well, almost always. But since you're being reasonable, you escape the objectionable category ).

I have to admit that this is one of the things that makes me suspicious. Analogies can be drawn between many things in nature- but I don't know if the analogy between a natural process and a human thought process is always this perfect.

How is it determined which memes are more "fit?" Do memes attack each other? Are certain memes predatory on others?

I have much the same problems, as well as the suspicion of its neatness I mentioned above.

Yes. That's why I get puzzled when other people say that humans "aren't rational creatures." I can understand saying that of insects or other animals, who don't seem to have the capacity to reason, but I don't see the point of applying the description to humans when they do possess rationality. Usually, the unspoken rider on this phrase seems to be "not rational all the time." But I've heard a lot of people use it who seem to mean that humans are never rational, which just isn't true.

I've also met very few people who use it and don't consider themselves among the "rational few..."

That's what I don't understand. How do we determine the weight of irrationality as opposed to rationality? It might seem that humans perform more irrational actions, but does that say anything about the presence of one or the other in the brain?

Quite often people who commit violence think they have rational reasons for it, though- such as defending their homes, their families, their beliefs, or their political interests from what they perceive as destructive forces. This doesn't mean that it's always rational from the outside, but it certainly seems that way from the inside. Whose perspective gets valued?

I've read a lot of comments by theists who insist that reason and logic lead to faith. They see themselves as rational, me as irrational.

By "irrational" in this context, do you mean idealism? I must admit I'm not sure what you're talking about here, unless the kind of detachment that makes the philosophy too rarefied to survive in the real world, or ignores conditions that make its survival impossible.

Hmmm. So far I had had the impression that you considered irrationality so much more powerful than reason that it would inevitably destroy it. How do you think that one can accept irrationality? Tolerating and accepting religion might be one step towards that, I suppose.

In that case, our imaginary atheist colony might actually have to allow some form of religion to survive, if they didn't want to become overwhelmed by it.

-Perchance.

[ October 13, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>

Radcliffe Emerson

Forgive my ignorance, but why would the Libertarians do anything at all to the colony? Why would they even care?

Rusting Car Bumper

Of course.

Religion is about more than god belief and goofy explanations for things. Religions provide ritual and community.

Further, atheists aren't immune to believing goofy things.

Alyou ned is some sort of meataphysical belief and framework of a higher other with ritual and youve got a religion in the making. You could have a communist group trying to perfect the whole gdamn thing and that would amount ot a religion. It would be unavoidable.

DC

Rusting Car Bumper

This is not quite true. Humans do reason by nature.

We do it constantly and without education. Everytime we believe the world has patterns and repitition based on past experience, we are using our built in ability to reason.

The sun rises in the east. Without education or even written language humans knew this because every day of their life it happened that way. That is an expression of reason. Its simply an example of how inductive reasoning is built into us naturally.

We constantly look tomake sense of the world and in fact the creation of religion to provide structure is evidence that we have causality and implication built into us.

DC

The Resistance

DC,

Actually, beyond satisfying basic survival needs, humans don't have an inherent reasoning system within them. They easily absorb misinformation as well as information and will take it as truth. They have the ability to sort between information adn misinformation, but it takes a conscious effort that is often intentionally suppressed.

P.S. You used to be DChicken a long while back, didn't you.

The Resistance aka Lucifer aka Hamlet aka Demagorgon

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: The Resistance ]</p>

Rusting Car Bumper

I don't know what it means to have a "reasoning system."

Otherwise, I respectfully disagree. If humans didn;t have an inherent ability to reason than the study of reason and logic as such would have never been created.

The example I gave of expecting the sun to rise in the east *is* deductive reasoning. So is most of our making sense of the world behaviors. You'd be hard pressed to tell me that these are expressions of something other than reason.

You seem to be treating this like an either-or proposition. That is, because the human easily absorbs "misinformation" (whatever that means and what it has to do with reason I have no idea) does not mean that the human does not make sense of things via deductive and inductive means at other times. In fact, making sense of things from premises of false propositions is still an expression of reason.

DC (aka DChicken)

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: DigitalChicken ]</p>

The Resistance

I meant human can reason, but it has to be learned. The misinformation comes from human upbringing and humans don't have a natural filter to sort out the good information and the bad. It has to develop over time and often it doesn't develop much at all.

I think you're missing the difference between human nature and human potential, which are two completely different things.

Rusting Car Bumper

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Again, I think you are treating this like an either-or propostion. Because "The misinformation comes from human upbringing and humans don't have a natural filter to sort out the good information and the bad" does notimply that humans don't reason or have the ability to. And reasoning as such is not defined as "sorting out 'good' information from the 'bad'".


Im not missing it. Its simply irrelevant.

DC

sullster

Fascinating points being brought up here.

There certainly must be sequential thinking patterns wired into the human brain and we have been able to deal with the world's practical issues. Yet, reason, as the philosophes of the Enlightenment thought was innate, just isn't there, and won't take over.

Humans have a wack-o side. We invented agriculture by learning from nature and the cycles of the seasons, but, we gave the causation of natural phenomenon to gods and spirits who had to be placated and appealed to. We always turn to the irrational for ultimate explanations and appeals.

There is not one single shred of evidence that there are gods, a god, or metaphysical powers, yet the vast mass of humanity on our planet believes there is. I submit that you could put every person on earth through a four year science college and still they would believe in irrational beings. They would be able fix their cars and run their computers, but they would still be wack-o.