h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Logic requires premises on which to get to work.

Some of these premises are "givens" about human nature.

Noggin

Which ones are givens, Noggin?

az

Della

And the signifinence being

2.1511

3.221

3.324

5.63

6.373

6.521

Oh I'm sad now

Refer to your copy of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

or if the Jokes going too far I'll help out

Go on then my cranium is in stealth mode or hideing from real work

2.1511 that is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it

3.221 Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives. I can only speak about them: I cannot put them into words. Propositions can only say how things are, not what they are.

3.324 In this way the most fundamental confusions are easily produced (The whole of philosophy is full of them)

5.63 I am my world (The Microcosm)

6.373 The world is independant of my will

6.521 The solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.
(is this not the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?)

Just a little Joke on putting yourself in anothers shoes. Not half so amusing when it's explained, but it would have been unfair not to.

Some of these premises are "givens" about human nature.

Can these givens be anything more than:

We desire to breath

We desire to Drink

We desire to eat

Or should we inculde

We desire to procreate

We desire to develop relationships

We desire to be safe

Or can we go further

We Desire to have digital Watches.

Aha your talking about the "study" about my monika ,allthough i must confess i have never read a philosophy book but in retrospect most of my beliefs or observations,are based on what i have deduced or percieved to be more philasophical rather than religeous .

Came from large family so wore hand me downs

Also very rarely wear shoes now.

Have a look at Donald E. Brown's list of human universals.

"It consists primarily of 'surface' universals of behaviour and overt language... it does not list deeper universals of mental structure..."

I'd reproduce it but it has over 500 items; humans have the most numerous instincts of any animal; from facial expressions, emotions, forms of classification, cooperation, dominance heirarchies, counting (yes, mathematics relies on an instinct too...)


Without instincts we could not assign any meanings to anything.


Noggin

Without instincts we could not assign ::
So whilst it is not instinctive for a hydrogen atom to combine with oxegen ,or be repeled by another.
Whilst all of our lives are dominate by such interactions,mental structure being nothing more than interaction to chemical stimuli, since have of these cells come from DNA that has come from our parents
So since these "stem cells" that have grown our brains eyes ears ect
have been exposed to it all before these most numerous instincts are just preprogramed responses to visual/oral/organic input.

And not pregonition/reminision ect but more finely tuned brains (microprocessors)

Hi, Noggin. I dislike 'instinct' almost as much as 'supernatural'! I would prefer 'innate capacities' and 'affordances'. The former is self-explanatory; the latter is a term coined by Gibson. What it amounts to is that we might acquire the ability to walk but there's zero chance that we will acquire the ability to fly. The human body affords the possibility of walking but, in short, we don't have wings!

Talk about 'universals' if you like, but 'instincts' is far too often a 'magic word' invoked to explain why animals do what they do. Used merely as a label in that way, it explains nothing.

toxx

I'll try to look at it: but in the mean time: how many of these givens, or instincts arise not out of coding in DNA but out of situational variables.

e.g. you can argue language development is an instinct, and since realativey 'primitive' (That might not be the right word) animals comunicate it is logical to assume that it is a primitive instinct.

Human languages have very similar structures within them: Nouns, adjectives, verbs etc. From one point of view these might be instinctive developments, since they occur across many languages. Or: using object relations theory the might be situational essentials which arise as a result of a child's instinct to attach to their mother (Back to bowlby)arising as a result of the child's development of a sense of the mother as seperate from the child. The child develops a sense of the mother as an 'object' or in liguistic terms a noun, then learns that this object does things, (verbs) and can be different things at different times, Adjectives, i.e. warm, comfortable ect, as the child develops the situations become more complex and the language follows suit.

Personaly I am of the opinion that the number of instincts humans have is quite small, other things develop within a child's relationships with its caregivers, meaning I believe arrise out of these relationships.

Some evidence to support this: Children deprived of a good relationship with a responsive care giver fail to thrive in all sorts of ways, without stimulus they do not develop facial expressions, those they do have may be categorised as pain, fear and pleasure, and in fact correspond closely with the qualities of a babys cry.

Children who have become feral, develop in ways akin to the environment they are in, hence children adopted by wolves adopt the habits and behaviour (And facial expressions of wolves). Up to a piont this is reversable with the proper stimuli, but there also comes a point where it is not. Feral children who have been 'rehabilitated' into normal society have major problems with things we take for granted, e.g they have little or no sense of the future, have difficulty aquiring language cannot recreate or understand the expressions of others. Kaspar Hauser is one documented example.

It is human's lack of instincts which I believe makes them so adaptable not an over abundence.

This is not to say that humans have fewer instincts than all other animals, but I think we have less than a dog for instance, who seem able to hunt despite never having been taught to do so by another dog.

I believe it is the instinct to attach to a sensitive care giver which allows us this adaptability allowing us to learn the ways to behave rather than be programmed, the capacity to replace an insensitive care giver with a more sensitive one only seems to underline this.

Seem a bit of a rant now I have read it but then it's only an opinion after all and I will try and look up the book you mention.

You're right, toxx. Mea culpa.

Innate capacities *could* be stretched to cover what I mean, but doesn't really cover certain types of goal seeking. But the crucial points are that the person is not a tabula rasa, and that rationality involves more than logic.

Noggin

SD

Among the universals listed is "critical learning periods."

My use of the word instincts was, as toxx said, somewhat loose.



As an analogy: If you have one program on your desktop, how versatile is your computer? And if you have a hundred programs on your desktop how versatile is your computer?

Noggin

Noggin.



I'm going to have to take issue with you, although part of it might well turn out to be semantic. My main point here is that the innate stuff or premises are not rational. We consider how to apply these premises in ways that might be rational, but often aren't.

I don't believe that it is possible to define rationality, although logic is an easier matter. I've done a lot of work on the philosophy and psychology of this kind of thing, but I'm happy to take criticism and to be found wrong. I'm just suggesting that it won't be easy!

toxx

Noggin.



I'm sorry if I appear to be carping. Indeed, I'm not sure whether I'm disagreeing with you or criticising your analogy. If my one program is a language such as some dialect of Basic, then my computer is infinitely versatile. It it has a hundred dedicated applications, then it is pretty limited. I think the former is closer to the human end of the spectrum. Any form of the analogy quickly fails of course; because inevitably a human operator is presupposed. This contaminates the analogy with that with which it is being compared.

toxx

Just had a crash, and then the SSO page wouldn't open.

The first point I think is at least partly semantic, but taking your point to its logical conclusion would imply that while humans can be logical/illogical they can't be rational/irrational. Whatever the difficulties of definition this doesn't seem to be quite right. I'm quite happy for rationality to be species specific though.

If your one programme is a language, you've still got to sequence the instructions. If you're in a hurry the dedicated application may be quicker - especially if it's been through millions of years of development and testing The human case must include the possibility of rewriting the programs by some form of feedback, and for them to talk among themselves.

Noggin