EO Wilson, CONSILIENCE, 5

Posted on Sunday 10 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Chapter 6: The Mind

Here’s the chapter in Wilson that corresponds to Pinker’s entire book. There are ideas here that reflect some of Nagel‘s topics, as well, and some of the thoughts I had while reading his book.

Key points in this chapter:

  • The mind is the brain; Cartesian dualism has long been abandoned;
  • The brain evolved for survival, not to perceive the world accurately;
  • Emotions are not something extraneous; they evolved to enable humans to focus mental activity;
  • We can understand concepts like meaning, decision making, and creativity as effects of neural networks;
  • Wilson dismisses the supposedly fundamental philosophical problem about whether other people perceive as we do;
  • Confidence in free will is biologically adaptive; thus in a useful sense, we do have free will;
  • Wilson is skeptical about our ability to create artificial minds.

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EO Wilson, CONSILIENCE, 4

Posted on Saturday 9 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Having finished reading that long Steven Pinker book, and blogging about it, I’m now returning to a contemporaneous book, published just a year after Pinker, E.O. Wilson’s CONSILIENCE, from 1998. After sampling it for years I read it through in 2016, and blogged about it over several posts, but only covered the first four chapters before getting distracted and not finishing. So now, I’ve reread the book from Chapter 5 forward and will finish posting about it.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (Knopf, 1998, 332pp including 34pp of notes and index.) (Shown is 1st edition with no print number line, so presumably 1st printing. Purchased 13 Mar 1998.)

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Cosmic and Psychological Lessons

Posted on Friday 8 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Phil Plait on the scale of the cosmos;
  • Beware of pluralistic ignorance;
  • How math education can be better taught with examples about money.
– – –

 

Today’s cosmic lesson.

Scientific American, Phil Plait, 8 Mar 2024: The Scale of Space Will Break Your Brain, subtitled “The scale of the cosmos exceeds the bounds of human comprehension. But that doesn’t mean the universe is beyond our understanding” [free link]

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The Anthropocene, or Not

Posted on Thursday 7 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Experts have declined to acknowledge “Anthropocene” as an official name for our current geological time;
  • And how to some extent the decision was political, if not in the obvious sense;
  • And wondering why Republicans continue to nominate candidates like Mark Robinson in North Carolina.
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NY Times, Raymond Zhong, 5 Mar 2024: Are We in the ‘Anthropocene,’ the Human Age? Nope, Scientists Say., subtitled “A panel of experts voted down a proposal to officially declare the start of a new interval of geologic time, one defined by humanity’s changes to the planet.”

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Two Thought-Provoking Pieces, and Notes about the Fringe

Posted on Wednesday 6 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Adam Frank on science and the need to account for human experience;
  • How “entropy bagels” and other complex structures emerge from simple rules;
  • Headlines about the fringe: that North Carolina GOP nominee; how Trump is degenerating; his empty pseudo-religion; his big con.
  • And “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” the first Crowded House hit.
– – –

 

The Atlantic, Adam Frank, 5 Mar 2024: The Universe Is Nothing Without Us, subtitled “I was called to science to seek a truth that transcended humanity. What I found instead is much more rewarding.”

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Conservative Fantasies: Boogeymen and Groomers

Posted on Tuesday 5 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Robert Reich on the resurgence of anti-science fundamentalism, recalling again that Scopes trial;
  • A 60 Minutes interview with the founders of Moms for Liberty, which apparently did not go well;
  • How Trump and his follows believe in dystopian fantasies;
  • Short items about laughing behind the back of their own voters; Charlie Kirk and Deuteronomy; how mumbling will lower prices; furbies; and how things would be bad if Biden did them, but just fine if Trump did them;
  • A link to Connie Willis latest round-up;
  • And a Facebook argument against atheism.

The famous Scopes Trial in 1925 was mentioned in the first piece I posted about two days ago, here, and now it’s mentioned again, even more prominently, in a piece today by Robert Reich.

AlterNet, Robert Reich, 5 Mar 2024: Opinion | Inside the resurgence of anti-science fundamentalism in America

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Philosophy, Science, and Politics

Posted on Monday 4 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

First of all, I refined and polished my discussion of the Thomas Nagel book, posted here, and identified my key takeaway. (Sometimes you have to mull things for a few days before your thoughts gel.) Currently revisiting E.O. Wilson’s CONSILIENCE, which I’ve read twice but never compiled notes and commentary on, beyond two or three posts here about the first part of the book; I’ll be posting detailed summaries and commentaries about the rest of the book in the next week or two. It’s remarkable how his take on “consilience” aligns with Steven Pinker’s thoughts about the mind. Of course, they should — they’re both describing their takes on reality. Which is independent of the vagaries of ideology and religion.

Otherwise today:

  • Several takes on today’s Supreme Court decision allowing Trump to remain on state ballots;
  • Conservatives bearing false witness, and the morality of Trump supporters;
  • The tides of history, and how democracy is slipping away around the world;
  • Frank Bruni on how Democrats can win: solve local problems;
  • And two examples of Trump’s, and his followers’, dementia.

So many things going on. The least surprising news today was that the Supreme Court, with three conservative justices appointed by Trump, supported Trump over the State of Colorado in allowing him to remain on its ballot, despite his obvious encouragement of an insurrection. Their rationale was the states can’t do this — decide to remove him from the ballot — only Congress can. Leaving aside any discussion of insurrection.

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Two Perspectives on the Current Situation

Posted on Sunday 3 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The Atlantic‘s Peter Wehner on how evangelicals don’t actually follow Jesus’ teachings;
  • With an aside about my own attempts to cross the political divide;
  • Robert Reich on his history with the New Left and how Trump arose out of the Democratic presidents taking organized labor — the focus of the Old Left — for granted.

The Atlantic, Peter Wehner, 3 Mar 2024, Where Did Evangelicals Go Wrong?, subtitled “Jesus told us to love our enemies. And yet so many have embraced hostile politics in the name of Christianity.”

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The Flaw of Math, or Perhaps Just the Limits of Human Cognition

Posted on Saturday 2 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Veritasium on math’s fatal flaw, or perhaps just a limitation on the extent humans can understand reality;
  • Considering why cars are built to be able to break the law;
  • A cartoon about religious folks who believe the Bible was written in English;
  • Two items about “Project 2025” and Christian Nationalism.
– – –

Veritasium on Facebook, 6 May 2022: Math Has A Fatal Flaw..

In any mathematical system, there will always be true statements that cannot be proven. Some perhaps trivial, some perhaps profound.

And, we may never know.

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The History of the Isolationist GOP, and other topics

Posted on Friday 1 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • David Brooks on the history of GOP isolationism;
  • Why Trump loves Putin; Biden is aging but Trump is dementing; accelerating dementia; “languages coming into our country”; a sample rant;
  • How critical thinking might have been applied to the IVF ruling, but wasn’t; how the IVF case raises the issue of theocracy; how one senator is worried that IVF will lead to chimeras;
  • A flash of light at conception?; misuse of the word “replacement”; Fox fearmongering despite actual data showing crime is down.

One major piece today, then another batch of short items from the fringe.

*

The G.O.P. over this past century. Paranoid, isolationist attitudes then, paranoid, isolationist attitudes now.

NY Times, David Brooks, 29 Feb 2024: The G.O.P. Returns to Its Bad Old Self [gift link, free to nonsubscribers]

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