| From: Leith | 16/10/99
17:34:55 |
| Subject: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
244 |
| (If you think this subject is
already 'spent'? Simply click on to another thread). This thread is obvious for many.But it's worth a mention. Since all peoples of the world are basically the same ie 'the good,bad,and the ugly'.Also basically biologically the same ie Internationally the same 'cross sectional bunch' but are spread internationally into our specific cultures. And all cultures started from one place only. Our biological brains. And each individual culture is adapted to its particular environment. And we individually respond to our particular environment(s) differently. Because we are all different. It's interesting how children from parents of a different culture. Can, when raised in another culture adapt to it. Do you think, that the reason for this adaption is that all cultures originated from our biological brains? | |
| From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) | 17/10/99
2:11:14 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
354 |
| It's interesting
how children from parents of a different culture.Can, when raised in
another culture adapt to it. Are you suggesting that differences in culture are biological? I think you're still indulging in injustified conjecture... and again I know of lot of cases where the diametric opposite of your assertion is true. One friend of mine is Australian born of Japanese born parents... went to Japan and completely failed to get into it. Another friend is Australian born of Lebanese parents... same story. Another friend still was born of Pakistani parents... and with the same results again. Now it is entirely understandable that one might understand/know the customs and traditions of one's "ancestral" origin... but to assert that one therefore has a biological affinity is just silly. I do think this is an important and interesting topic, however I don't think it is going to go anywhere unless you can provide some hard data in support of your conjecture. Anecdotes are useful in prompting a line of enquiry, but are not and cannot be used as evidence for arriving at any justifiable conclusions... for that you need hard statistical evidence which cannot be explained by other simpler, more obvious, or more straightforward conclusions. Can I recommend you read "Human Diversity" by Richard Lewontin? It's not easy to get in popular book stores (although I did see a copy in the Ultimo branch of the Co-Op [just down the road from Oporto Chicken] earlier this year [the have a facility on-line to check their current stock]) but you can get it from Amazon.com (through which I bought two copies for interested friends already). Soupie twist, Ed G.  | |
| From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) | 17/10/99
4:35:43 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
361 |
| Yup, they've still got a copy at
the 80 Bay St. branch of the Co-op bookshop near Sydney University (it's
actually more Glebe than Ultimo [my mistake])... or if you don't live in
Sydney you could get any Co-op in the country to order it from this
branch. It's not cheap ($36.50) but it's a cracking good
read! | |
| From: steve(primus) | 17/10/99
4:43:39 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
362 |
| Excellent suggestion Dr Ed.
There are similarities in all cultures at the very basic level - they all require communication between individuals, they all come to terms with the local environment, they all have some sort of spiritual side, they all provide a set of rules for the community - etc. The variation and diversity within these basic similarities, however, is enormous. It would be possible to claim a form of culture for any animal species that lives communally. Do ants and bees have a culture for instance? - they have communication, they adapt to the local environment, they have rules and order within the community. I am not, however, going to claim a spiritual side for bees, nor am I going to suggest that the bees consciously work out the rules of the community. Order does not presume design - for instance, if you look at a colony of ground nesting birds such as Common Terns or Royal Penguins, the distance between the nests is the same right aross the colony. You can draw straight lines linking the nests. How do penguins manage such precision? Simple, the precision is not intentional, it is the result of a colony of similar sized birds building their nests just out of pecking range of the nest next door. Any form of communal living requires rules otherwise you have anarchy and the community breaks down. Cultures are also adaptable to changing circumstances - which is there is so much variation. The people of Hawaii and the Maori of New Zealand have the same ancestors, they diverged about 1500 years ago. There are still similarities in the languages enough for them to be somewhat mutually understandable, although there is dialectal variation within Hawaiian just as there is in Maori. The cultures, or rules of society, of the two island chains are very different. Within Australia, the culture of the Dharawal people of the NSW Illawarra region is as different from the Arrernte people of central Australia as the Scots are from the Saudi Arabians. Different language, religion, environment and rules. All societies work, however, no matter what their cultural differences are. I would suggest, however, that like the Common Terns, the basic rules of any society were not worked out by people sitting down at a Constitutional Convention, but rather, by building their nests just out of pecking range of the neighbour. | |
| From: Leith | 17/10/99
13:41:47 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
373 |
| Hi Dr Ed. I was suggesting that the children of parents from a different culture, can if raised in another culture adapt to it.(Meaning born and raised).I know people who are raised in another culture can find it next to impossible to adapt to another. As if their mindset has already set. I haven't got time to really analyse both you and Steve's answers. Because I'm on the road in a foreign country. And I'll probably will get slammed by Steve on this. Firstly with the title I was only suggesting people and their cultures. If all other living things are biologically based I can only assume, I have to ponder that one a bit more. I know Steve was using anologies. But I still don't see (with people anyway) why my title should be likewise. I would have assumed everything in OUR world we built around us. Including cultures. Is our biological brains responding to our environment(s).And where else do cultures originate from if they don't originate from our biological brains? | |
| From: steve(primus) | 17/10/99
15:09:19 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
393 |
| Leith, I am still not sure what
you are referring to when you talk of our "biological brains". You seem to
be saying that some human behaviour is instinctive. This is true as it is
with many animals. If this is what you mean, please say
so. | |
| From: Leith | 17/10/99
16:01:05 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
457 |
| I was using this term very
loosely. Assuming your whole brain is a biological package that represents
biology. Because I would have thought anything that the brain directs
either if it's instinctive or not is all from our brains. That, I assume is
a biological package, for want of a better terminology. I even assume that
rationality that comes from the brain is biological. A way of controlling
maybe our wayward nature for survival. Maybe like a 'Governor'. And I would
have assumed that rationality is very entwined with our emotions and
general nature. But that's only assuming. All I seem to notice is that in OUR world we've made around us came originally from one place only our brains. That I thought are biological. If you can't term the brain biological. Then you can't. I would like a better terminology myself. I would have thought that all peoples of the world are the same 'cross-sectioned bunch'. That are put into the many and various cultures at birth around the world. Or put another way. If you got a 'slice' of the newborn baby population of Australia. And then raised them in another foreign culture. I sure that they would blend into that foreign culture as a 'cross-sectioned mob'. | |
| From: Leith | 17/10/99
16:20:59 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
474 |
| THIS IS A CONTINUATION FROM
ABOVE. I know rationality developed for its obvious applications for survival. But we also use it within our various communities internationally to govern some ugly natures of the human kind. With Police Forces, for example. | |
| From: Leith | 17/10/99
19:23:32 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
554 |
| Leith, I don't really understand what the point is that you've been trying to make in this and your previous thread on the same topic. Could you sum it up in a sentence or two? Humans are a product of evolution, as is every other species on Earth. Every human shares a subset of basic features with every other human, since we all developed from a common ancestor. At a basic level, human brains have a lot in common. Some of what our brain does is instinctive. We all share basic instincts. Every human's heart beats without conscious thought, under the careful control of the brain (well, at least partially). We all feel hungry when we need food - again, an instinctive brain function. Other actions of our brains are not instinctive, but are based on conscious thought. Our biological makeup permits us to think in certain ways, but it does not completely predetermine our decisions. It is interesting to contemplate whether our common biological heritage prevents us from thinking certain types of thoughts. Perhaps there are thoughts which, due to some quirk of brain evolution, no human would ever consider - not because they are right or wrong but simply because they can't be thought with a human brain. Such thoughts may exist, but if they do they have certainly not been terribly important for the survival of the species up to the present time. We necessarily use our brains to create our human environment - physically and culturally. Our brains are the only thing we have which allows us to do these things. It is therefore a somewhat empty statement to say "our culture is created by our brains". Of course it is - we know of nothing else which could conceivably create a culture. The question of whether a different culture not created by brains might be better is (so far) unanswerable, since we don't know of any such cultures to compare to, and we can't create them ourselves. You say rationality comes from the brain. But the brain is not the only thing in the world. We are constrained by other forces of nature than our biological brain configuration, and these forces also constrain our brain configuration. It may therefore be more correct to say that rationality is imposed on us by the orderliness of the laws of nature. If we are to survive in a universe which appears to operate according to well-ordered laws, then the best way to do so is to evolve rational brains to discern and make use of the patterns in nature. Human babies are born with a capacity for learning. Since culture is learned and a baby is born with no inbuilt cultural values, it is unsurprising that babies can be brought up equally effectively in any (non-abusive) culture. It is similarly no mystery that people brought up in a particular culture "slot into" the culture regardless of their parentage. It is much easier to accept a culture when you have no personal experience of any culture than it is to uncritically examine a foreign culture when you are already biased by a different upbringing. Cultural anthropology is littered with examples where (mostly western) social scientists have drawn wrong conclusions about other cultures based on their own cultural prejudices. JR | |
| From: Leith | 17/10/99
21:13:42 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
563 |
| Hi Jr. I only used this thread primarily to point out to people that cultures do originally come from our brains. Because I got the impression that many people forget. Remember what I wrote in the opening of the thread:" This thread is obvious for some but it's worth mentioning." I remember hearing somewhere that the rational brain is built on the emotional brain foundation. So it is inextricably entwined I would have assumed. And assume that rationality, emotions, nature or instincts have one thing in common. That they are all survival based. Wherever cultures(that obviously have a high degree of rationality in them) originated from. I got the impression that many people forget where they originated from. A place I assumed is biological. | |
| From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) | 18/10/99
3:18:04 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
661 |
| Leith, Okay, I think I've misunderstood exactly what you are saying, but I think I've got it now. So I'll just try to summarise what it is I think you are saying and then I'll respond. Firstly, the basis is that the human animal is inextricably linked with its environment, and that anything it does must be in some way a response to surviving in that environment. No argument here - excluding direct interference by some transcendental (an interfering God who interjects with the natural state of play on a daily basis) or extra-terrestrial (aliens) influence, this is must be a decisive factor in our evolution to this point in time, and must have a direct material effect on our biological existence. It seems from here, then, that you would argue that the human mind has therefore adapted to our environment in a way that we cannot consciously change or control. Furthermore, that within any human population, strict behavioural archetypes have evolved to fill specific adaptive roles (the universal and typical "cross-sections" through any society that you refer to) in a collective human interaction within our environment. Again, I would acknowledge in some sense a fair degree of truth to this. However, in previous threads you seem to extend this argument to an assertion that our nature has biologically adapted to be optimised to a "primal" existence ("hunter gatherer" existence?) in response to the physical and social environment of many X thousands of years ago, and that most of the innate behavioural urges of human beings is a response to this "natural" environment of our recent evolutionary history. Furthermore, you tend to suggest that native cultures of the less developed nations of the world closely reflect this natural behavioural response to this natural human environment that we have adpted for, and indeed the unchanged natural state of human organisation of perhaps 100 thousand years ago. It is these final assertions that I would disagree with. I do not believe that the human animal has biologically adapted to be optimised for any specific biological or social environment or lifestyle of our prehistory. I do believe we have adapted biologically, but to a point that now allows us to adapt culturally. I believe that the power of the human mind is that it now transcends the strict biological determinism of its substrate. When new environmental or social contigencies present themselves to us we are no longer bound by a predetermined "biological nature" in our response, but a much more flexible, rapid, effective, and changeable/adaptive cultural nature. This is precisely the thing that made "The Enlightment" (an intellectual movement which, among other things, recognised the fundamental equality of all human beings, and in no small part contributed to the abolition of slavery, the final destruction of the feudal system, and universal suffrage) possible. This is precisely the thing that makes modern democracy possible. This is precisely the thing that makes human scientific endeavour possible. So while the nature of our biology is the substrate that makes our existence possible, it also this that allows us to transcend any biologically determined "nature", and to be vastly more adaptive to our circumstance than any strict biologial nature could. Our predefined nature is not to be constrained by any predefined nature. (indeed the great challenge of artificial intelligence is to define an artificial nature that is not constrained by its own definition) Soupie twist, Ed G. | |
| From: Leith | 18/10/99
15:13:24 |
| Subject: re: Everyting must be biologically based. |
post id:
748 |
| But to make any artificial
intelligence. You need our brains that are biological in the first
place. I knew our brains got there through millions of years of evolution. And not in the last 700000 years or so. And whatever the problems we face. Either terrestrial of all natural forms including biological. And now extra-terrestrial. We can only rely on one thing. That is biological. We 'ain't' got nothing else. | |