On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, Greg Burch proposed the following theory:
> Our ancestors followed a path of radically
> successful evolution in the area of social organization; so much so that we
> could be quite correct to say that the human brain is an organ specialized to
> the task of organizing social behavior among humans.
Very nice !!
Incidentally, this same theory also explains why people insist so vehemently
(religiously) that 'qualia' are something real and that there simply HAS to be
something of a 'soul' inside the human brain.
-- these also are kinds of seeing human social relationships and human
intentionality in things without there being any proof that such
intentionality inheres inside them.
Our primate brain 'instinctively' recognizes such intentionality in lifeless
mechanical structures and processes -- it treats all things we see as other
*people* who have an intentionality of their own and with whom we have a
social relationship (pecking order) the details of which are important for us
to localize quickly. (As if it were another monkey in our social group.)
(Example: ''Hey, this response of getting a good feeling when hearing this
type of music must be some automatic process of its own -- therefore, inside
our brain there must be some kind of mysterious "personalized" agent with
its own 'soul' and with its own intentionality which generates these responses
-- I cannot imagine that these effects could be possible without some kind
of intentional, personified agent behind it.'')
Best regards, Menno (rubingh@delftnet.nl)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:02:29 MDT