Intuitive Mental Organization and Reality
14 Jun 2010, 11:45 pm
Our minds are not blank slates. If something lacks equipment to learn, then it will never learn, but if it has equipment to process information like that, then it cannot be a blank slate as it has to already know what to look for to learn it.
The problem is that mental organization does not have to match reality, it only has to be conducive to survival in it. So, the question that emerges, is how much this mental organization matches reality, and how much things are just ad hoc solutions to get by in reality.
For instance, in our mental categories, there is something known as "free will". It is basic to our perception. It is cross-culturally existent. It is so important to how we see reality, that some people think that imagining a world without free will would be so utterly empty of content that there is no point. However, free will likely doesn't exist. It might even be an incoherent intuition, and thus could never exist. However, we organize so much of ourselves, our morals, and our realities around this concept.
To go further, we understand the world in terms of "essences". They are deeply rooted in how we think, and even how we perceive the world. http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/06/ ... easure.php However, it is unlike that a single essence exists. Despite that, most of our thought-forms, and most of our language is BUILT around the idea of existing essences.
Finally, we find teleology. Everything is organized by purposes. In fact, people who reject this, often don't even escape this, except for apparently those with Autism. http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/ ... 2010-05-29 And, well, the fact that even the rejecters don't really escape, just brings up a powerful question:
If our mind has all of these false organization patterns, and they are really actually false, can we actually, really escape them, or is it an uphill battle to continually reframe the world in the counterintuitive ways that it really works? Do we end up always finding ourselves in a clash of intuitions? Can reality even really make as much sense to us any more once we find that our cognitive organization patterns are so screwy? Even further, if our basic intuitions lead us to false conclusions, how much can we blame theists for coming to their obviously wrong "sky-man" conclusions? (I have to be strident here, y'know) After all, by these ad hoc solutions the mind finds, the sky-man makes a lot of sense, but honestly upon further examination, we have to recognize that this sky-man probably doesn't exist.
16 Jun 2010, 5:21 pm
We can condemn theists (under a behavioral conditioning paradigm, of course!) in the same way we condemn people who think germlins broke their DVD players - some skyhooks are now utterly useless.
16 Jun 2010, 5:40 pm
Y'know, there are probably a lot of people out there who do think like that to some degree.
Even further, within this intuitive framework, the lack of skyhooks is really more perplexing than their existence. If special beings with the power to alter the nature of reality are basic to human thought, then questioning them to the point of disbelief is really the stranger thing. After all, central to most people's intuitive self-conception, we have the skyhook of free will, rather than anything reducible to simpler material realities. I mean, this spiritualism is a less good position than materialism in its explanatory ability and other things, BUT disbelieving it is either the result of hard studies, or an enchantment with an idea or cultural grouping in society, as without a certain background in ideas, this notion is difficult to escape, even for intelligent people.
16 Jun 2010, 5:53 pm
Y'know, there are probably a lot of people out there who do think like that to some degree.
Even further, within this intuitive framework, the lack of skyhooks is really more perplexing than their existence. If special beings with the power to alter the nature of reality are basic to human thought, then questioning them to the point of disbelief is really the stranger thing. After all, central to most people's intuitive self-conception, we have the skyhook of free will, rather than anything reducible to simpler material realities. I mean, this spiritualism is a less good position than materialism in its explanatory ability and other things, BUT disbelieving it is either the result of hard studies, or an enchantment with an idea or cultural grouping in society, as without a certain background in ideas, this notion is difficult to escape, even for intelligent people.
I suppose atheists have an atypical neurology (which is kinda' tautological, since by definition they hold atypical beliefs, and beliefs are correlated with neural states).
In Pascal Boyer's article "Why Is Religion Natural?" (which was included in the appendix of Taner Edis's awesomely glorious book Science and Nonbelief), Boyer notes that monotheistic religions are successful because the combine intuitive concepts (nonphysical minds) with counterintuitive concepts (disembodied minds). So some religions are just too intuitive to believe (i.e. animism). According to Boyer, a right combination of counterintuitive and intuitive concepts make religion so powerful a force.
Perhaps a rejection of the more outlandishly counterintuitive elements of religion spurs popular atheism?
16 Jun 2010, 6:03 pm
Previc: In contrast to the fair amount of research into the neuropsychology of religious experience and behavior, especially in recent years, there has been very little investigation into the neural and other correlates of atheism. Humans do not have a predisposition to religion per se, but only a dopaminergic drive towards distant space and time and in predicting and associating stimuli and events therein. Religious and scientific belief systems both provide frameworks for exploring and understanding the world around us; however, activation of the medial-dopaminergic pathways is associated with a more creative or mystical interaction with extrapersonal space, whereas activation of the lateral-dopaminergic system results in a more strategic or analytic interaction (e.g., executive intelligence). I would propose that most atheists have a greater lateral-dopaminergic activation and that even when experiencing altered states, strange coincidences, out-of-body experiences, etc., they are more likely to interpret them from a nonreligious perspective. An analogy is how religious perspectives influence the experience of dopaminergically mediated obsessions – although widespread across the world, obsessions are more typically religious in nature in highly religious societies (such as those in the Middle East) whereas they tend to be more of a sexual or other nonreligious variety in more secular Western societies.
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultsep09.asp
I don't think I have enough understanding of neuroanatomy to fully understand all the implications, but here's one neuropsychological explanation.
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