From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 




[email protected] wrote:
> 
> In article <[email protected]>,
>   [email protected] wrote:
> 
> I haven't yet seen why 'maximizing self-worth' cannot be seen as a
> mechanism to drive us towards status (thus maximizing reproductive
> potential in mating) as in other social animals. ie, 'self-worthless'
> feels lousy so that (and 'because' once comparison is available) 'self-
> worth' feels good since 'self-worth' will attract mates. Is status-
> attainment disputed?
> 

Although I already responded to this, I should also add that status, or 
at least pecking order, can all be maintained using the ancient emotion 
of fear, rather than relying on a far more lethal means which actually
ends up incapacitating those who become sufficiently overwhelmed with
a sense of worthlessness.
> 
> > Synopsis: In much the manner reasoning allows for the subordination
> >    of lower emotional concerns and values (pain, fear, anger, sex, etc.)
> >    to more global concerns (concern for the self as a whole), so too,
> >    these more global concerns and values can themselves become
> >    reevaluated and subordinated to other more global, more objective
> >    considerations. And if this is so, and assuming that emotional
> >    disorder emanates from a deficiency in self-worth resulting from
> >    precisely this sort of experiencially based reevaluation, then it can
> >    reasonably be construed as a natural malfunction resulting from
> >    one's rational faculties functioning a tad too well.
> 
> I keep getting the feeling that you're saying "Reality's depressing" in a
> roundabout way :)
> 

Yes.  I'm saying that mother nature, being the blind arational bitch that she
is, instills in all her sentient creatures, a sense of their own importance which
is RATIONALLY INORDINATE, and that as a species reaches a certain stage in its
rational/cultural/mememetic evolution, its members increasingly come to question
this inordinancy (feelings of worthlessness), and incraseingly come to require
REASONS for maintaining it.  IOW, they increasingly show signs of becoming less
determined by natural selection, of no longer surviving robotically and mindlessly,
but only if there is a rational why which satisfies them (needs for love acceptance,
meaining, purpose, moral integrity, attention, etc.).

> > Normalcy and Disorder: Assuming this is correct, then some
> >    explanation for the relative "normalcy" of most individuals would
> >    seem necessary.
> 
> Hmmm, how do you support the idea that most individuals are 'normal' in a
> 'not-disordered' sense? To me, most individuals are less- and more-
> disordered. 

You're preaching to the choir.

> Some psychologists and psychiatrists have argued that
> virtually everyone would be diagnoseable under the DSM if you interviewed
> them extensively and many sociologists consider that a majority of those
> diagnoses can be considered politically or soci0-culturally based and
> have little to do with 'disorder'.
> 

Maybe.  But we want to understand why they are naturalistically disordered,
which isn't quite so easy to dismiss -- why their valuative profile is 
"red-shifted" away from the "ruthless selfishness" we find throughout the
rest of nature, and which is predicted by our current understanding of
how natural selection works.  That's not quite so easy to dismiss as a 
cultural bias, on our parts.

> > This is accomplished simply by postulating
> >    different levels or degrees of consciousness.  From this perspective,
> >    emotional disorder would then be construed as a valuative affliction
> >    resulting from an increase in semantic content in the engram indexed
> 
> 'engram indexed by the linguistic expression' - would 'belief expressed
> in' be acceptable? I'm finding some of your wording difficult, what's
> your main vocabulary drawn from?
> 

Yep.  I'm trying to introduce a new way of thinking and talking about emotional
disorder, in terms of how values behave within the syntax of engrams, ideas,
representations, etc.

> >    by the linguistic expression, "I am insignificant", which all persons of
> >    common sense "know" to be true, but which the "emotionally
> >    disturbed" have come to "realize", through abstract thought,
> >    devaluing experience, etc.
> 
> Essentially it's 'too true' or 'so true it's unhealthy' for some, yes?
> 

Yes.  All persons with common sense "know" its true, but for most of us, when
we walk across the street and are about to be run over by a truck, we behave 
as if it isn't true.  That's because, if you are "normal", you simultaneously
have to truths of opposite polarity at different levels of consciousness.  In
the oval office, which is the result of all the input of your immediate experience
and on which your survival depends, you probably a close to thinking in terms of
being the center of the valuative universe, the most significant entity, etc.
Its keeping your theoreitcal, and more rational view, out of the oval office 
which requires that we expend such huge quantites of effort and energy on 
self-evaluating though and activity.  Its O.K. to "know" you are insignificant,
but when you start to "realize" it, nature invokes a severe repremand in the
form of some of the most awful feelings it is possible for an organism to
experience (worthlessness), thereby incouraging one to take remedial action.
Or at least that's what you would deduce from my explanation.

> > Implications: So-called "free will" and the incessant activity presumed
> >    to emanate from it is simply the insatiable appetite we all have for
> >    self-significating experience which, in turn, is simply nature's way of
> >    attempting to counter the objectifying influences of our rational
> >    faculties.
> 
> I don't se that it could be summarised so simply. "Self-signification" is
> common throughout nature, and as far as I know is usually more complex
> and subtle in social species; 

Hard to say, of course.  I suspect a peacocks behavior has less to do with
pride and more to do with a certain form and behavior found to be most 
attention getting.  The blue footed boobees mating dance doesn't look all
that self-significating, if you don't mind my saying so.  (Maybe to a boobee
it is, but who can say).  I think it is only in species phylogenically 
proximal to man that you will see much evidence of needs for love, acceptance,
attention, etc., and then to a much lesser degree, and based on much less
subtle cues from the environment ("Good dog", etc.).


> I don't argue with the suggestion that it
> is _used_ to balance the emotionally debilitating effects of a very
> rational mind but to say that one is simply the cause of another seems
> too simplistic when the possibility that they develop congruently hasn't
> been dismissed as far as I know. Why can't they be a symbiosis, a dynamic
> equilibrium?
> 

Not sure I understand.

> This also implies that the engine in the first "free-thinking"
> >    artifact is probably going to be a diesel.
> 
> How do you derive this?
> 

Because WE have a diesel.  We are constantly on the prowl for fresh self-significating
data to replace the stale stuff which is no longer doing the trick, and which has
actually left a residue making us even more jaded, even harder to convince.  Of 
course, at the same time, as we age, our status in the community often goes up,
making the general epistemic background a little more hospitible for maintaining
self-worth.  But even so, many of us just can't sit still without having those 
unpleasant little feelings starting to creep up on us.


> >    "Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an
> >    injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from
> >    without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which
> >    eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently
> >    increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will
> >    very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed.
> >    Is there a corresponding phenomenon for minds?" (A. M. Turing).
> >
> > Additional Implications: Since the explanation I have proposed
> >    amounts to the contention that the most rational species
> >    (presumably) is beginning to exhibit signs of transcending the
> >    formalism of nature's fixed objective (accomplished in man via
> >    intentional self-concern, i.e., the prudence program)
> 
> Surely this is only one factor - 'the prudence program' did not lead us
> to have an opposable thumb, did it?
> 

?

> > it can reasonably
> >    be construed as providing evidence and argumentation in support of
> >    Lucas (1961) and Penrose (1989, 1994). Not only does this imply
> >    that the aforementioned artifact probably won't be a computer,
> >    but it would also explain why a question such as "Can Human
> >    Irrationality Be Experimentally Demonstrated?" (Cohen, 1981)
> >    has led to controversy,
> 
> It has? I would have thought that the answer was that such experiments
> are done daily by bookmakers with a resounding answer. Ah, but that
> depends on your definition of 'irrationality', doesn't it?
> 

Yep.  Referring to a symposium in which thirty or more of the world's leading
experts on rationality came across like inhabitants of the tower of 'Babble' 
(pun intended).

> in that it presupposes the possibility
> >    of a discrete (formalizable) answer to a question which can only
> >    be addressed in comparative (non-formalizable) terms (e.g. X is
> >    more rational than Y, the norm, etc.).
> 
> Which is why a lot of physical scientists think psychology and sociology
> is bunk...
> 

Maybe.  Mostly they think its a lot of bunk because it is.  Name a single 
scientific anomaly which has been addressed by psychology and sociology, and
I might rethink this.  BTW, Leahey's 'A History of Psychology' is an excellent
read on this.  Short, clear, and definitely to the point.

> > Along these same lines,
> >    the theory can also be construed as an endorsement or
> >    metajustification for comparative approaches in epistemology
> >    (explanationism, plausiblism, etc.)
> >
> >    "The short answer [to Lucas/Godel and more recently, Penrose]
> >     is that, although it is established that there are limitations to the
> >    powers of any particular machine, it has only been stated, without
> >    any sort of proof, that no such limitations apply to human intellect "
> >    (A. M. Turing).
> >
> >    "So even if mathematicians are superb cognizers of mathematical
> >    truth, and even if there is no algorithm, practical or otherwise,
> >    for cognizing mathematical truth, it does not follow that the power
> >    of mathematicians to cognize mathematical truth is not entirely
> >    explicable in terms of their brain's executing an algorithm.  Not
> >    an algorhithm for intuiting mathematical truth --  we can suppose that
> >    Penrose [via Godel] has proved that there could be no such thing.
> >    What would the algorithm be for, then?  Most plausibly it would be an
> >    algorithm -- one of very many -- for trying to stay alive ... " (D. C.
> >    Dennett).
> 
> Bit of a dodgy use of the word 'algorithm' IMO, but anyway...
> 
> > Oops!  Sorry!  Wrong again, old bean.
> >
> >    "My ruling passion is the love of literary fame" (David Hume).
> 
> Not if he somehow associated literary fame with staying alive...
> 

True.  But why assume that, particularly given the number of human beings who
have sacrificed their health and lives on the alters of this or that ideal 
etc.

> >    "I have often felt as though I had inherited all the defiance and all the
> >    passions with which our ancestors defended their Temple and could
> >    gladly sacrifice my life for one great moment in history" (Sigmund
> >    Freud).
> 
> Pretty much as above - yes, I did notice he said 'sacrifice my life' but
> I seriously doubt it had literal cognitive content.
> 

Maybe because its incompatible with your "theory" of human nature.  But with 
suicide the second leading cause of death among the members of our species who
have not yet reached their reproductive prime (teenagers), that quite a lot to
assume, I think.

> >    "He, too [Ludwig Wittgenstein], suffered from depressions and for long
> >    periods considered killing himself because he considered his life
> >    worthless, but the stubbornness inherited from his father may have
> >    helped him to survive" (Hans Sluga).
> >
> >    "The inquest [Alan Turing's] established that it was suicide.  The
> >    evidence was perfunctory, not for any irregular reason, but because
> >    it was so transparently clear a case" (Andrew Hodges)
> 
> Erm, lots of highly _ir_rational _un_mathematical people have been
> depressed and/or committed suicide too, y'know... I don't think that
> suicide is particularly good evidence that someone has no drive to stay
> alive, only that their drive not to outweighed it at one point.
> 

What would an organism have to do before it finally got around to getting your
attention?  Or are you suggesting we should simply adopt natural selection as
an unfalisifiable dogma.  Hey.  Can I be the Pope.  I'll promise to make you
a Cardinal.    :)

-- 

                  Phil Roberts, Jr.

       The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism:
Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock
     http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/