Posted: Nov 24, 2014 2:56 pm
Willie71 wrote:
I really like this post. I think we can agree to disagree on this one.. Your posts are well thought out, and in my short time here you are someone I have come to respect.
That's very kind of you to say Willie, but I will undoubtedly disappoint you at some point in the future!
Willie71 wrote: I am open to being wrong on this, and do change my mind when the evidence suggests I need to.
Very much agree and I try, wherever possible, to make this my maxim on every topic, but I think it's even more important to keep in mind when addressing the questions which have such historical legacy/baggage and are obviously of great significance to us as a species and individuals.
I can freely admit that I would prefer it if we were to have free will (the standard definition thereof) as it would make us all genuinely unique agents in a largely deterministic universe. But if my preferences are not corroborated by evidence, I am happy to relegate them to speculative fantasy and still thereby get some pleasure from conceiving of them.
Willie71 wrote: I agree with being cautious regarding our cognitive processes. We are much more filtered than most people are aware of, and we can easily be mislead. Language is too simple to account for the continuums in our brains, and makes communicating these ideas difficult.
I've really enjoyed seeing this recently being reflected in considerations by anthropologists concerned with the distinction of humanity as a species: how language and symbolic thinking combine to create a powerful tool for effecting change onto the world. I think these cognitive biases may actually represent something genuinely distinct about us, and even something that has been selectively beneficial in our evolution. But they do not appear so useful a legacy when removed from the context of social survival in a Pleistocene environment. The ever more information rich and abstracted world we're now tasked to account for requires more than our genetic and cultural legacy can be expected to provide, but also propels us into a frame of reference that can genuinely hope to unlock these traditional mysteries.