From: "Peter Cudmore" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 12:52 AM
Subject: Re: poets and shamans & happy cats
> Douglas, I'm glad of the report because I'm an admirer of Dunbar. I'd
> think
> of him as a primatologist rather than an evolutionary psychologist (those
> griots of the genome), but in this general area disciplinary boundaries
> are
> pretty vague.
>
> I think, though, that Theory of Mind is an artefact of the classical
> Artificial Intelligence account of consciousness, and feel that Dennett's
> Intentional Stance is a better account -- this relates to Bergson's
> account
> of negation in Creative Evolution, where negation costs more than that
> which
> is negated.
>
> It is my personal theory that language was probably invented by mothers in
> close collaboration with their children. I'm inclined to doubt, though,
> that
> language-by-itself is quite as significant as it seems to be, since no
> previously-undiscovered tribe of humans, however remote, has been
> discovered
> to be innocent of language; at the same time, individuals denied the
> social
> context in which language is normally learnt during childhood are known to
> be at a serious disadvantage if their first encounter with language is
> post-puberty (as, for instance, in the fabled case of Kaspar Hauser but
> also
> in better-substantiated 20th century examples).
>
> Contrary to the argument of social decline in modern lifestyle, however,
> I'd
> point out that the retinues of prominent politicians, such as Tony Blair
> and
> Gordon Brown, number in the hundred-ands. It's something people overlook
> when they talk about leadership contests: it isn't about the
> media-projected
> progagonists so much as the tribes that they lead. For the rest of us, it
> is
> not so much about _whether_ our circles are numbered in the hundred-ands,
> but rather _how_ they are numbered, i.e., whether primarily kin-related,
> as
> in primitive society, or the kind of context-dependent orientations that
> is
> a concomitant of urban society.
>
> I don't think that Dunbar has the ammunition to substantiate this claim
> about religion being hardwired, the whole notion of hard wiring being--I
> feel--problematic. This too is a legacy of the computational/algorithmic
> account of consciousness that Dennett and Andy Clark have better accounts
> of. Clark's Associative Engine is a good account, I think, of that classic
> philosophers' problem--intuition--that in turn goes a long way to a soft
> or
> semi-soft account of religion.
>
> What I really like about Dunbar & the social brain hypothesis, though, is
> that it valorizes what we've always assumed to be uniquely human as
> distinct
> from this crezzy notion that machines might one day take over...
>
> P
>
I regret I am not clever enough to find Dennett readable. So you are far
beyond me in these arguments. Bergson gets quite a mention in Ruse, not too
favourably really.
Regarding Dawkins of course he is right but the hardwired human brain wont
accept it and a compromise is required to satisfy the populace.
Regarding Putnam's loss of social capital in the US he doesnt pick out the
decline in church attendance by the under60s as a factor but emphasises the
effects of TV along with the modern lifestyle.
And I didnt mention cosmolgy and how the two branes colliding theory from
string theory may wrap that up.
My friends are dying around me like flies and my ambition for the past fifty
years has been to understand everything. Regarding religion I one wrote..
Poetry is the religion for me
and Kathleen Raine enthused over that, but times have moved on.
Cheers.
|