Evolution: Is sexual selection sexist?

(Jan 8, 2017 08:34 PM)Syne Wrote: Dualism has little to do with the left's belief in the primacy of subjective identity over biological sex. It's the beliefs fostered by the misunderstood results of Libet's experiment that lead people to think that their identity is wholly determine and cannot be changed...while their body can. Many experiments have shown that belief in free will makes people more capable of change, especially in overcoming mental disorders. Whether of not it actually is the case, belief that all our choices are truly determined, by factors beyond our control or awareness, is what makes people not only unable to change but also defensive to any suggestion they could.

I wasn’t thinking of specifically about dualism.  I was thinking about Jonathan Hiadt’s moral foundations theory.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8SOQduoLgRw

(Jan 9, 2017 02:33 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:

(Jan 8, 2017 08:34 PM)Syne Wrote: Dualism has little to do with the left's belief in the primacy of subjective identity over biological sex. It's the beliefs fostered by the misunderstood results of Libet's experiment that lead people to think that their identity is wholly determine and cannot be changed...while their body can. Many experiments have shown that belief in free will makes people more capable of change, especially in overcoming mental disorders. Whether of not it actually is the case, belief that all our choices are truly determined, by factors beyond our control or awareness, is what makes people not only unable to change but also defensive to any suggestion they could.

I wasn’t thinking of specifically about dualism.  I was thinking about Jonathan Hiadt’s moral foundations theory.

Going back to the former...

Paul Bloom: This dualist perspective explains certain intuitions that we have about personal identity. We readily accept and make sense of situations, real or fictional, where a person stays the same but their body undergoes radical changes. In 13 going on 30, a teenager wakes up as Jennifer Garner, just as a 12-year-old was once transformed into Tom Hanks in Big. Characters can trade bodies, as in Freaky Friday, or battle for control of a single body, as when Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin fight it out in All of Me. This body-swapping is not Hollywood invention. We make sense of Kafka's Metamorphosis where this guy goes to sleep one night and wakes up as a cockroach, or Homer’s Odyssey, where sailors are transformed into the bodies of swine. In such cases, the soul is unchanged, only the body is different. Natural Born Dualists

IOW, the pejorative / pessimistic view of us being either inherent or culturally conditioned dualists (of one stripe or another) is alive and well in the so-called third-culture genre of scientists playing philosophers. That obsession can accordingly trickle out to the traditional humanities community (as if the latter's own past, present, and future tendencies would need additional encouragement from such a "rival operation").

In regard to Paul Harris's distinction of "secular dualism" in his quoted comment further below: The POVs in philosophy of mind revolving around that (property dualism, double-aspectism, epiphenomenalism, etc) contributed to the engendering of eliminative materialism (EM). The early forerunner thinking prior to the full conception of EM (which Richard Rorty facilitated long before the Churchland versions) revolved around how it was inconsistent for material affairs to be contaminated by association with or outright hybridization with mental affairs. Thus the eventual elimination of mental as outdated "folk psychology" (with later additional grounds revolving around the history of science). [Teed Rockwell quote at very bottom.]

Pascal Boyer: "Paul Bloom's research does not just show that we are dualists, committed to an immaterial mind or soul that has no simple ties to the physical world, but also that we are, in a deep sense, incurable dualists. However scientifically literate we may become, our intuitions are still firmly rooted in commonsense dualism."

Marvin Minsky: Except for just this one remark: Almost everything Bloom says seems sound, except that everyone should be repelled by the ancient (and probably innate) tendency of both infants and adult psychologists to see the world in dumbbell terms.

Paul Harris: This is a neat story but I don't believe it. I think the debate is—and should be—between two different forms of dualism: secular dualism and religious dualism. It should not be between thoroughgoing materialism and religious dualism—as implied by Bloom. Secular dualists claim that: mental states are different from, but dependent on, brain states; mental states cease at death given their dependence on the brain; there is no soul—if, by that, is meant a set of psychic processes that survive death. Religious dualists claim that there are some special mental states—those involving the soul—that are ultimately independent of the brain and survive death. Ongoing research, including some of our own, points to the existence of secular dualists as well as religious dualists.

Jesse Bering: Touché to Bloom [...] But this put me to thinking that, indeed, there really is something intrinsically unsatisfying about the reality of materialism, and so it is up to us researchers who've started getting our hands dirty with the abstract guts of the soul to know what to do once we've killed it altogether. It's nice to know that someone like Bloom's got his hands in the mechanics of this illusion with me, fishing around, and so now the real question becomes, once the empirical evidence for common-sense dualism (or intuitive, folk, or naïve dualism, if you prefer) stacks up beyond the Brights' mere beautiful soliloquies, and the good skeptics have each been run off by the developmental data, what then?

Teed Rockwell: The identity theory of mind was first suggested by E. G. Boring (1933), although it was made popular in philosophy by U.T. Place (1956) further developed by Place in dialogue with D.M. Armstrong (1965), J.C.C. Smart (1959) and others. Identity theorists claimed that mental states are really brain states. However, they did not claim that this was a conceptual truth. Identity statements between minds and brains are contingent identities, which we accept as true only because scientific research tells us they true. However, it was far from clear that it was possible for science to prove that brain states were identical to mental states. Scientific research does discover causal connections between brain states and mental states, but connections are not identities.

As [Jerome] Shaffer put it "For one property to be reducible to another, they must be different; something cannot be reducible to itself" (p. 120 in Borst 1970). [Paul] Feyerabend (1963) also pointed out that if the connection between material facts and mental facts is an identity, it has to be expressed as a biconditional. This biconditional " not only implies , as it is intended to imply, that mental events have physical features; it also seems to imply (if read from the right to the left) that some physical events, viz. central{brain} processes, have non-physical features" (p. 172 in Rosenthal 1971). Furthermore, any claim that the mind-brain identity is a scientific fact has to take into account how science actually operates. When we consider the most recent developments in the history and philosophy of science, eliminative materialism emerges as an alternative to the mind-brain identity. --Eliminativatism, a lengthy entry in the apparently now defunct Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

Holy shit!  If you’re ever sad or lonely, let me know.  I’d prefer to take you wine tasting, rather than having to listen to who’s sleeping with who, or having (you know) those deep intellectual discussions regarding hair and makeup. 

(Jan 8, 2017 08:34 PM)Syne Wrote:

(Jan 8, 2017 03:17 AM)C C Wrote: The lingering effects of dualism might contribute: "Who I am is the mind, not the body -- don't tamper with the former". Even in regard to Ben Libet's famous experiment, the scientists themselves were ironically basing their conclusion that "we don't have free will" on the older tradition that the usually hidden or non-conscious processes of the body / brain doesn't count as "I" -- it's the conscious or phenomenal level of decision-making or intellect which does. As Susan Blackmore once pointed out, many materialist scientists and intellectuals could be "in the closet" dualists, in terms of their occasional thinking.[#2]
...
[#2] Sue Blackmore: In a way the whole furore is bizarre. Most scientists claim to be materialists. That is, they don’t believe that mind is separate from body, and firmly reject Cartesian dualism. This means they should not be in the least surprised by the results [of Libet's decades old experiment]. Of course the brain must start the action off, of course the conscious feeling of having made it happen must be illusory. Yet the results created uproar. I can only think that their materialism is only skin deep, and that even avowed materialists still can’t quite accept the consequences of being a biological machine.

[Ben] Libet, unlike so many others, was wonderfully open about this. He really did believe that mind can affect body, that consciousness is some kind of power of the “non-physical subjective mind” or “conscious mental field“, and even that we might consciously survive death. Indeed, this was what inspired his experiments in the first place.

What I so much enjoyed and admired, on that walk all those years ago, was his willingness to bring his science right into his everyday life, and his life into his science. As we walked along the street he explained how important free will was to him, that without it our lives would be meaningless and there would be no point in being good, because we would have no true freedom to choose between good and evil. He pointed towards a little girl up ahead of us on the pavement. His results, he said, showed that we cannot be held responsible for thinking of murdering, raping or stealing from people because initiating such actions begins in the unconscious brain, but we can and must be held responsible for stopping ourselves from doing those things. In this way his own results made moral sense.

I disagree fundamentally with him. I think, and thought then, that free will is entirely illusory. So our discussion was lively and exciting and full of the most wonderful mixture of science, philosophy and the anguish of everyday life. I would have loved to have interviewed him for Conversations on Consciousness. One of the themes I tried to bring out in those interviews was how consciousness researchers fit their work into their ordinary lives, and he was one of those rare scientists whose life and work were completely intertwined. --Mind Over Matter? ... The Guardian ... Aug 28, 2007... Medical Research ... Opinions

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/...libet.html

Libet's results were not what most people make them out to be, e.g. contradiction to dualism.

"Some interpret this research as showing that consciousness is merely an observer of the output of non-conscious mechanisms. Extending the paradigm developed by Benjamin Libet, John-Dylan Haynes and his collaborators used fMRI research to find patterns of neural activity in people’s brains that correlated with their decision to press either a right or left button up to seven seconds before they were aware of deciding which button to press. Haynes concludes: “How can I call a will ‘mine’ if I don’t even know when it occurred and what it has decided to do?”

However, the existing evidence does not support the conclusion that free will is an illusion. First of all, it does not show that a decision has been made before people are aware of having made it. It simply finds discernible patterns of neural activity that precede decisions. If we assume that conscious decisions have neural correlates, then we should expect to find early signs of those correlates “ramping up” to the moment of consciousness. It would be miraculous if the brain did nothing at all until the moment when people became aware of a decision to move. These experiments all involve quick, repetitive decisions, and people are told not to plan their decisions but just to wait for an urge to come upon them. The early neural activity measured in the experiments likely represents these urges or other preparations for movement that precede conscious awareness.

This is what we should expect with simple decisions. Indeed, we are lucky that conscious thinking plays little or no role in quick or habitual decisions and actions." - http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/201...free-will/

Mentalism often takes advantage of a person's propensity to cast into their subconscious when making random choices, so the mentalist can guess the choice based on intentional priming cues in the subject's environment. So if the person is making a random decision, as in the Libet experiment, we would fully expect them to consult their subconscious and only arrive at a feeling of decision after some brain activity. I've never seen this sort of experiment replicated for non-random choices, so it doesn't even address dualism, free will, or anything people purport.

Yeah, that kind of interpretation of Libet's results was never a slam-dunk. It was all those differing opinions expressed over the years that Blackmore seemed to be addressing and summing up as going against the grain. I know her views about qualia (etc) are similar to Daniel Dennett's, but I really need to refresh my memory about her more specifically (it's been some years) before assuming any further about where her ardency about materialism and being against self-autonomy is actually coming from.

(Jan 9, 2017 02:33 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I wasn’t thinking of specifically about dualism.  I was thinking about Jonathan Hiadt’s moral foundations theory.

How do you think the left/right priorities of his six moral foundations* plays a role?

[*]Care and Fairness being the left's priorities.

Care: cherishing and protecting others; opposite of harm.
Fairness or proportionality: rendering justice according to shared rules; opposite of cheating.
Liberty: the loathing of tyranny; opposite of oppression.
Loyalty or ingroup: standing with your group, family, nation; opposite of betrayal.
Authority or respect: submitting to tradition and legitimate author; opposite of subversion.
Sanctity or purity: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions; opposite of degradation.

---

(Jan 9, 2017 05:51 PM)C C Wrote: Yeah, that kind of interpretation of Libet's results was never a slam-dunk. It was all those differing opinions expressed over the years that Blackmore seemed to be addressing and summing up as going against the grain. I know her views about qualia (etc) are similar to Daniel Dennett's, but I really need to refresh my memory about her more specifically (it's been some years) before assuming any further about where her ardency about materialism and being against self-autonomy is actually coming from.

Wow, Dennett makes even more questionable claims. "No such thing as qualia" sounds like a very weak way to dodge the hard problem of consciousness and philosophical zombies. Reductive materialism seems rather ridiculous.

(Jan 9, 2017 08:01 PM)Syne Wrote: How do you think the left/right priorities of his six moral foundations* plays a role?

I'll try to answer this when I get back.

(Jan 6, 2017 06:29 PM)Syne Wrote:

(Jan 6, 2017 03:55 PM)Ben the Donkey Wrote:

(Jan 6, 2017 04:16 AM)Syne Wrote: Yeah, sacrificing facts for an ideological or idealistic "larger truth" has become pretty standard among the left.

Oh, and Syne - the propensity to sacrifice facts in favour of idealism is not only the province of the left. The last three words were entirely unnecessary.
The application of facts in support of one viewpoint or another has resulted in the meaning of the word "fact" to become eroded - and you're not helping.

Ah, but the right doesn't foster the pretense that they hew especially close to science. We all expect religious people to be forwarding ideological views, but the left pretends they are forwarding science, while twisting it ideologically, as illustrated by the link in the OP. You trying to equate the two seems biased or naive. Sure, if the right claimed to be just as objective and science-based as the left, you might have a point. But since they don't, the left is clearly busy obfuscating their ideological motives, even if primarily from themselves.

Yep. good distinction. I'll give you that one.

* edit - I have to say, it's sometimes difficult hewing to the American definitions of Left and Right. In the USA, viewing from the outside, Religious belief appears to have become synonymous with Conservatism, whereas that has not been the case elsewhere.
The rest of the western world are tripping all over themselves attempting to catch up, though.

(Jan 9, 2017 08:01 PM)Syne Wrote: How do you think the left/right priorities of his six moral foundations* plays a role?

It’s a little uncomfortable explaining what I thought was obvious. Like he said, liberals value change and reject three of the foundations. Instead of in-group loyalty, they celebrate diversity, question authority, and dismiss sexual purity. On the other hand, conservative value authority, tradition, order, stability, and certainty.

I thought a little more about it, though, and maybe Camille Paglia does have a point about sexual fluidity.

Nobody seems to have a problem with surgically or hormonally altering intersexed individuals to fit socially acceptable sex characteristics. Why is that?

And even though liberals may be more comfortable with having a sexual continuum, almost everyone seems to be uncomfortable with sexual fluidity. Why is that?

Does knowing thyself yield a better understanding of others? Like Socrates sort of implied, it seems ridiculous to investigate others when self-knowledge is sealed in comparative terms to others.

How should we investigate? What should we look to, maladaptation or some physiological defect? Both resort to a form of physiological or sociological determinism.

Why? I think it’s because we all want certainty. It’s sort of strange because we don’t want anyone else to label us, but we all seem to search for a label. We seem to want a fixed position, a sexual identity somewhere along the spectrum in an attempt to control what in fact is never within our control. Perhaps, she right. Maybe we’re provisional/circumstantial, instead of either/or.

Know thyself-know thy place?

"Hard is it to be good."—Socrates

(Jan 14, 2017 03:41 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Why? I think it’s because we all want certainty. It’s sort of strange because we don’t want anyone else to label us, but we all seem to search for a label. We seem to want a fixed position [...]

Some [example of Tugendhat below] want to attribute our certitude needs (whether specific as this or in general) to the loitering momentum of past mindsets, of pining for objectivity with the same status as if delivered from On High. But it could as much stem from areas like the job insecurities, reprimands, and penalties of being wrong or poor at forecasting. Which also afflicted sages, advisors, and engineers / architects of old when faced with the potential of the monarch placing their heads on the chopping block for unsatisfying results. In personal contexts, our fears were once allayed by conformity: i.e., as if a possible threat really could be identified in terms of superficial stereotypes like wearing hoodies in warm weather or back in the old days by the stigma of tattoos, etc.

Ernst Tugendhat: "The desire to be on sure ground is the relict of an authoritarian frame of mind. It's a relict of those times when people believed they would receive all that is essential through revelation from the Gods." --The Time For Philosophising Is Over ... interview in "Die Tageszeitung" on July 28, 2007

- - - - - - - -

ORIGINAL CONTEXT: "As for brain research, I think it's rather crazy what's going on today. They can only find out what types of processes are going on in which parts of the brain. But then those professors of brain physiology appear and present theories about the nonexistence of human freedom. And those theories are only based on the fact that they see themselves as scientists and believe in determinism. They are not even aware of the philosophical literature of the last decades, which tries to not see determinism and free will in opposition. I consider that to be completely untenable speculation. Brain research may become interesting for philosophy in a hundred years, but it hasn't been until now. I admittedly am a naturalist; I see human beings as part of a biological development. But what the biological sciences do in relation to human beings hardly makes sense. (If brain research has so little to offer does sure philosophical knowledge exist?) No. And we don't need it. The desire to be on sure ground is the relict of an authoritarian frame of mind. It's a relict of those times when people believed they would receive all that is essential through revelation from the Gods."

(Jan 14, 2017 06:32 PM)C C Wrote: It's a relict of those times when people believed they would receive all that is essential through revelation from the Gods.

Oh, yeah, you’re right, C C. So, in other words, it’s just basically a necessity for decision making, the ole pleasure principle, right?