OK. I'm going to take a giant leap to crazy-land here. One distinctive characteristic of humans is our use of language. So, thanks to language, we are...
I'm pretty much with you on your future of justice comments. I think I would add restitution to the list of goals. Perhaps, logically, the concept of ...
Right. Magic or neurochemistry. Makes no difference. However, even if we decide that we have no free will, it seems to me that we still have to live o...
Here's where I have a problem: The brain is a container full of chemicals. When the brain goes from state A to state B those chemicals just act accord...
We seem to be talking past each other. Dawkins' exact point is that the unrelenting statistical imperative for genes to produce organisms that are lik...
Darwin provided some people with a scientific theoretical basis for theories of racial superiority/inferiority (survival of the fittest organism). By ...
So the whole problem with TSG is the title. I think you are giving Dawkins and Darwin too much credit. We had eugenism, racism, slavery, nazism, etc. ...
I can not think of a solution. But I am hopeful. Is consciousness the key? It certainly seems to be at the forefront when we consider philosophy. But ...
Well that opens a whole can-o-worms. For those of us who view humans as devices to propagate genes, our purpose is to propagate genes. Can we transcen...
In Dawkins' defense, what I got from TSG was the idea that shifting focus from organisms (survival of the fittest) to genes provides a different way t...
It seems to me that Dawkins was shifting the focus from the gene propagating devices (e.g. humans or any other living things) to the genes themselves....
Good example. So your suggestion is that on a really good day our interlocutors and our system 2 will show us a new way to look at a concept that will...
As I sit here in my armchair, I find that I am just not understanding this passage. I think I can accept the idea of packaging: stripping away extrane...
"Bayesian brain" talk sounds interesting. Any handy references? OK. Let's look at evolution. Let's say that we get an evolutionary advantage from crea...
OK. I will start off with the confession that my exposure to Hoffman's idea is a 20 minute TED talk. But from that talk, I think he has gone a bridge ...
But isn't that the way we often do science? First we jump to a conclusion (an intuitive leap). Then we start doing the analysis to see if the data wil...
This seems awful close to a "blank slate" theory of mind which I think has been fatally wounded in the last few decades. If this is the empiricism tha...
If empiricism is the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience, then I think it still has legs. It seems to me that millennia of (dar...
I have difficulty imagining where "somewhere better" would be. We have ant colonies as an example of selflessness carried to its logical extreme. I do...
That certainly seems like one of the primary questions that philosophers have been trying to answer since the beginning of philosophy. And I think man...
But don't you think we all have both characteristics? Sometimes we respond to social pressures by "doing good and talking about it". Other times we ju...
Generally true. But we have a great capacity for self-deception. If I were an elected official I might convince myself that I should grant special fav...
I've encountered this idea in a number of sources. The most recent is E. O. Wilson, "The Social Conquest of Earth", Chapter 24. Wilson has studied ant...
One evolutionary theory is that individual humans thrive when they are members of a group that is thriving. A human on its own is very vulnerable. So ...
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