American beliefs in Evolution

[DBT]

The brain and senses evolved according to physical conditions in the world, not belief.

The brain is an organ just like any other, and is only one component of the broader nervous system. Beliefs, reasoning, assumptions, reactions, memory and so forth are components of that system, and to a very large extent they all work in concert. Unless you are trying to invoke magical concepts like a supernatural "higher self", beliefs are no more and no less "physical" than any physiological response, both responding to and directing other neurological activities and hormonal releases. You are not describing the functioning of that system accurately.

I am merely pointing out that the physical world, including the brain its workings are not reliant on belief to exist and function.

Moreover;

''Why not say that knowledge is true belief?

The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be implausible because a belief that is true just because of luck does not qualify as knowledge. Beliefs that are lacking justification are false more often than not. However, on occasion, such beliefs happen to be true.


The analysis of knowledge may be approached by asking the following question: What turns a true belief into knowledge? An uncontroversial answer to this question would be: the sort of thing that effectively prevents a belief from being true as a result of epistemic luck. Controversy begins as soon as this formula is turned into a substantive proposal.

According to evidentialism, which endorses the JTB+ conception of knowledge, the combination of two things accomplishes this goal: evidentialist justification plus degettierization (a condition that prevents a true and justified belief from being "gettiered"). However, according to an alternative approach that has in the last three decades become increasingly popular, what stands in the way of epistemic luck, what turns a true belief into knowledge is the reliability of the cognitive process that produced the belief. Consider how we acquire knowledge of our physical environment: we do so through sense experience. Sense experiential processes are, at least under normal conditions, highly reliable.

There is nothing accidental about the truth of the beliefs these processes produce. Thus beliefs produced by sense experience, if true, should qualify as instances of knowledge. An analogous point could be made for other reliable cognitive processes, such as introspection, memory, and rational intuition. We might, therefore, say that what turns true belief into knowledge is the reliability of our cognitive processes.''

 

[Politesse]

I am merely pointing out that the physical world, including the brain its workings are not reliant on belief to exist and function.

The physical world does not require belief to exist. But, you require a nervous system in order to perceive the physical world, and belief formation is integral to the function of that system. To our benefit or detriment, the philosophers may yet decide.

Perhaps I am being a bit dense here, but I don't quite see how the rest of your post, seemingly a discussion of epistemology, is relevant to the discussion, except that if you know anything about the "reliability of cognitive process" it seems like quite a pessimistic scaffolding on which to build a theory of human knowledge. There is nothing whatseover reliable or consistent about cognitive process, so if that is the measure of knowledge, we largely lack same.

 

[DBT]

I am merely pointing out that the physical world, including the brain its workings are not reliant on belief to exist and function.

The physical world does not require belief to exist. But, you require a nervous system in order to perceive the physical world, and belief formation is integral to the function of that system. To our benefit or detriment, the philosophers may yet decide.

Perhaps I am being a bit dense here, but I don't quite see how the rest of your post, seemingly a discussion of epistemology, is relevant to the discussion, except that if you know anything about the "reliability of cognitive process" it seems like quite a pessimistic scaffolding on which to build a theory of human knowledge. There is nothing whatseover reliable or consistent about cognitive process, so if that is the measure of knowledge, we largely lack same.

It's a simple point. The physical world does not depend on belief. That believing or disbelieving in evolution has no bearing on its reality. That 'American beliefs on evolution' have no bearing on the reality or process of evolution.

The epistemology in the article relates to the relationship between the brain/senses and the physical processes of the external world, including evolution.

 

[Politesse]

That believing or disbelieving in evolution has no bearing on its reality.

If that had been your point I would have agreed with it.

 

[rousseau]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain.

That's not a very accurate statement, actually. Prior beliefs heavily influence perception, right down to the neurochemical reactions that make up your neural architecture - attention, perception and memory are all cognitive processes in their own right, prone to influence from the ordering mechanisms of your nervous system. And even if perception itself were somehow flawless, it would do you little good, as the signals from your nerves mean nothing until your brain has processed them all, and cognition is a process even more clearly compromised. We are our only observers of our universe, but alas, we are not reliable observers of our universe. This part of the reason the sciences, by seeking out coherence within multiple observer's perceptions rather than blindly trusting one source of authority, are so incomparably valuable to all of us.

The brain and senses evolved according to physical conditions in the world, not belief. Unconscious physical processes have no beliefs. Beliefs emerge much later in the process.

The word 'belief' itself is really a folk-term that describes an underlying feature of epistemology. What you're calling 'belief' is just validated knowledge under a set of assumptions and sensory input, rightly or wrongly. One could argue that all knowledge falls under this category, regardless of it's veracity.

Which speaks to Politesse's point that our perception of the world is ultimately constrained by what we know, or maybe more accurately, what we think we know.

 

[Elixir]

our perception of the world is ultimately constrained by what we know, or maybe more accurately, what we think we know.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
-Mark Twain

 

[DBT]

That believing or disbelieving in evolution has no bearing on its reality.

If that had been your point I would have agreed with it.

Had been been the point? It is the point. As the thread title happens to be ''American beliefs in evolution,'' my point - to state the obvious - is that physical processes don't function on the basis of belief. That what Americans, Mexicans or anyone else believes about evolution has no bearing on the physical process, the fact of evolution, that life evolves. And the article I quoted is not only epistemology, but a reference to verification and knowledge.

​

 

[steve_bank]

Well, that's one my big problems with the poll wording, if you know anything about evolutionary theory you know that "always from simple to advanced" is a very outdated and inaccurate paradigm for thinking about it.

Hmmm...what do you men by advanced?

Is a human more 'advanced' than a dolphin or an Eagle? We need airplanes to fly and air tanks to stay underwater.

That is your subjective philosophical picture.

Is there a proven theorem that says it always goes from simple to coplex, without debtaing what that distinction means?

 

[Politesse]

That is your subjective philosophical picture.

What part of this survey isn't about a person's subjective philosophical picture? No, I do not believe that evolution is concerned with "advancement", certainly not exclusively so. That is my perspective, yes. Which what the survey was about, asking people's opinions on things.

Is there a proven theorem that says it always goes from simple to coplex, without debtaing what that distinction means?

Such an argument fails the most superficial of tests. Complexity is not simply defined, and is not very helpful in understanding the concept of evolutionary fitness.

 

[rousseau]

Such an argument fails the most superficial of tests. Complexity is not simply defined, and is not very helpful in understanding the concept of evolutionary fitness.

David Christian argued in Maps of Time that complex life is also the most fragile, which is kind of the exact inverse of the usual (erroneous) line of thinking. Humans are interesting, and we can do a lot of interesting things, but we'll likely be extinct long before many other forms of life, which have also already been here for eons longer.

 

[steve_bank]

The point is there is biology, chemistry, and phyics that model how mutation and adaptation occurs. And the there is how people describe their perception of evolution, or any scincie for that matter.

Invariably our description of TOE is human-centric.

You may be th best adapted fish in te world in your pond, but if it dries up you are histroy.

As to humans being 'advanced', the history of hi=,an civilzation is reachng its logical conclusion today. Over population, pollution, war and nuclear weapons, unstable systems.

As it has been said post nuclear holocaust cockrochs would survive, they aparently have a high resistance to radiation. We appear to be de-selecting ourselves for survival.

That humans can make nuclear bombs and chimps can not is the result of a long chain of circumstances going back to the first self replicating structures.

If you take evolution to be unguided with no goals and just a physical process as I do then there can n be no superior or advanced organisms.

I watched a show on a discovery in Mexico.

Someone was looking at drought coditions in Mexico and stumbled on something. A stream had dried u into unconnected pools. A fish population was split between two pools. The fish in one pond had lost a genetic immunity to a parasite and was dying off. The fish in the other pond were healthy. Therr is no forward or backward.

Point being there is no 'forward, only environmental conditions, mutation, and selection.

 

[Politesse]

If you take evolution to be unguided with no goals and just a physical process as I do then there can n be no superior or advanced organisms.

Hence my issue with the poll. A forced choice between half-understood science and two dubious permutations of theology is a poor choice to make one way or the next.

 

[bilby]

As to humans being 'advanced', the history of hi=,an civilzation is reachng its logical conclusion today. Over population, pollution, war and nuclear weapons, unstable systems.

Oh for fuck's sake spare me the litany of doom. Old men have predicted the collapse of civilisation since there's been a civilisation to collapse. The mechanism changes with fashion, but it's all just a reflection of the realisation that everything's coming to an end for you.

Existential risks are out there, but they always were. Things are, on the whole, better now than they have ever been before, and there's no particular reason to expect that the problems we do face cannot be resolved.

Population has been solved (though as it only happened between seventy and forty years ago, most people haven't noticed yet, particularly not the oldies who grew up before the solution was invented and implemented).

Pollution has largely been solved, and we have the technology to finish the job - the only question is how bad things will need to get before politicians are forced to act, instead of merely pretending to act.

War and conflict is dramatically less common than it was, and is still declining, albeit slowly and with lots of local reversals.

Nuclear weapons were an existential threat in the late twentieth century, but are nothing like as big a threat today. It's not 1983 anymore, and even a full scale nuclear war between the US and Russia would likely not wipe out more than half of humanity. And such a war is far less likely today - in the 1980s it could easily have happened by mistake, but now someone would at least have to actually decide to do it.

Systems have always been unstable. Change is inevitable.

The world is about to end - but only for you and I. Our children and grandchildren will live in a completely different, and likely rather better, world; And they will do stuff we consider revolting and vile, that we have fought against for our entire lives, and we won't be able to do jack-shit to stop them, or even to voice our distaste (other than in mouldy books they don't bother to read).

The men who fought two world wars* did so to defend ways of life that they cherished and wanted to protect. Yet almost none of them would have fought for the way of life we currently enjoy, and they would have found the things we take for granted either incomprehensible, or disgusting, or both.

That's how it's always been. Old men recall the dreams and fears of their youth, and refuse to accept that both have ceased to exist, without the world coming to an end.

Mortality demands that our world will end. But to believe that the world will also end is unforgivably self-centred nonsense.







*On all sides - the Nazis and Japanese Imperialists were just as much fighting for what they believed to be the best possible future, as the Communists and their Western allies were, and they all agreed that that 'best possible future' looked a LOT more like their immediate past, than anything we would recognise as the present day

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

How complex is an atomic nucleus? Pretty damn complex. Complexity is something that has to be defined for purposes of discussion. By itself it means less than squat.

 

[steve_bank]

Atoms are pretty simple. You got your electrons, neutrons, and protons.....

For me complex relates to the number of variables and the interactions between variables. Plus the amount of relevant details. The point I can't work it out in my head for me is complex. It is a moving point based on experience.

Or when ancient Zog used up his fingers and toes counting a herd of mastodons he'd just say 'a lot' to the tribe.

Brain plasticity says mental stimulation creates new brain cells and connections regardless of how ld you are. I don't think you are born able to reason. I expect for us atheists our abilty to reason through religion and reject t it goes far back into our experience and what we read and do back to early years. I doubt that is profound revelation in psychology.

The toys and things my fater got me I think had an effect, he probably go them for me becasue they were for boys, in the day. Building things. Solving problems.

Point being the religious may not be wired to understand or question. There is a line in the movie Inherit The Wind about the Scopes trial that goes 'The only book the jurors have probably read is the bible.'

 

[DBT]

The world won't end, but we may be in for a very bumpy ride during the latter part of this century.....

 

[DBT]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain.

That's not a very accurate statement, actually. Prior beliefs heavily influence perception, right down to the neurochemical reactions that make up your neural architecture - attention, perception and memory are all cognitive processes in their own right, prone to influence from the ordering mechanisms of your nervous system. And even if perception itself were somehow flawless, it would do you little good, as the signals from your nerves mean nothing until your brain has processed them all, and cognition is a process even more clearly compromised. We are our only observers of our universe, but alas, we are not reliable observers of our universe. This part of the reason the sciences, by seeking out coherence within multiple observer's perceptions rather than blindly trusting one source of authority, are so incomparably valuable to all of us.

The brain and senses evolved according to physical conditions in the world, not belief. Unconscious physical processes have no beliefs. Beliefs emerge much later in the process.

The word 'belief' itself is really a folk-term that describes an underlying feature of epistemology. What you're calling 'belief' is just validated knowledge under a set of assumptions and sensory input, rightly or wrongly. One could argue that all knowledge falls under this category, regardless of it's veracity.

Which speaks to Politesse's point that our perception of the world is ultimately constrained by what we know, or maybe more accurately, what we think we know.

Belief comes in different shades and flavours, faith based, imagination, illusion, evidence based, justified true belief.....

 

[rousseau]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain.

That's not a very accurate statement, actually. Prior beliefs heavily influence perception, right down to the neurochemical reactions that make up your neural architecture - attention, perception and memory are all cognitive processes in their own right, prone to influence from the ordering mechanisms of your nervous system. And even if perception itself were somehow flawless, it would do you little good, as the signals from your nerves mean nothing until your brain has processed them all, and cognition is a process even more clearly compromised. We are our only observers of our universe, but alas, we are not reliable observers of our universe. This part of the reason the sciences, by seeking out coherence within multiple observer's perceptions rather than blindly trusting one source of authority, are so incomparably valuable to all of us.

The brain and senses evolved according to physical conditions in the world, not belief. Unconscious physical processes have no beliefs. Beliefs emerge much later in the process.

The word 'belief' itself is really a folk-term that describes an underlying feature of epistemology. What you're calling 'belief' is just validated knowledge under a set of assumptions and sensory input, rightly or wrongly. One could argue that all knowledge falls under this category, regardless of it's veracity.

Which speaks to Politesse's point that our perception of the world is ultimately constrained by what we know, or maybe more accurately, what we think we know.

Belief comes in different shades and flavours, faith based, imagination, illusion, evidence based, justified true belief.....

There's been a lot of writing done on the nature of knowledge, what it is, where it comes from. I'm not an expert by any means but I believe everything you've listed would fall under the umbrella of knowledge.

I'm not sure how to communicate this well because we seem to be coming from a different place here. I'm not trying to argue that an erroneous belief is a fact. I'm arguing that knowledge is something derived and known to be true by the perceiver, regardless of whether it's actually true.

From there you can then start making distinctions about that knowledge, e.g. how it was derived, how accurate it is. All knowledge is by definition a belief based on some form of input.

This is important to realize because you start understanding why certain cultures behave the way they do. People in a community can only know as much as the community 'knows'.

If you want to pull in Hume's theory of substances things get even more interesting. Which implies that we can only ever approach a complete understanding of anything, not know it objectively.

 

[DBT]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain.

That's not a very accurate statement, actually. Prior beliefs heavily influence perception, right down to the neurochemical reactions that make up your neural architecture - attention, perception and memory are all cognitive processes in their own right, prone to influence from the ordering mechanisms of your nervous system. And even if perception itself were somehow flawless, it would do you little good, as the signals from your nerves mean nothing until your brain has processed them all, and cognition is a process even more clearly compromised. We are our only observers of our universe, but alas, we are not reliable observers of our universe. This part of the reason the sciences, by seeking out coherence within multiple observer's perceptions rather than blindly trusting one source of authority, are so incomparably valuable to all of us.

The brain and senses evolved according to physical conditions in the world, not belief. Unconscious physical processes have no beliefs. Beliefs emerge much later in the process.

The word 'belief' itself is really a folk-term that describes an underlying feature of epistemology. What you're calling 'belief' is just validated knowledge under a set of assumptions and sensory input, rightly or wrongly. One could argue that all knowledge falls under this category, regardless of it's veracity.

Which speaks to Politesse's point that our perception of the world is ultimately constrained by what we know, or maybe more accurately, what we think we know.

Belief comes in different shades and flavours, faith based, imagination, illusion, evidence based, justified true belief.....

There's been a lot of writing done on the nature of knowledge, what it is, where it comes from. I'm not an expert by any means but I believe everything you've listed would fall under the umbrella of knowledge.

I'm not sure how to communicate this well because we seem to be coming from a different place here. I'm not trying to argue that an erroneous belief is a fact. I'm arguing that knowledge is something derived and known to be true by the perceiver, regardless of whether it's actually true.

From there you can then start making distinctions about that knowledge, e.g. how it was derived, how accurate it is. All knowledge is by definition a belief based on some form of input.

This is important to realize because you start understanding why certain cultures behave the way they do. People in a community can only know as much as the community 'knows'.

If you want to pull in Hume's theory of substances things get even more interesting. Which implies that we can only ever approach a complete understanding of anything, not know it objectively.

There seems to be lot of semantics in play...however, If someone 'knows' that something is true, yet what they 'know' is true is in fact false (people once knew the earth was the centre of the universe), did they have knowledge in the first place, or was it no more than assumption and belief?

 

[rousseau]

The senses have no beliefs, they transmit information to the brain.

That's not a very accurate statement, actually. Prior beliefs heavily influence perception, right down to the neurochemical reactions that make up your neural architecture - attention, perception and memory are all cognitive processes in their own right, prone to influence from the ordering mechanisms of your nervous system. And even if perception itself were somehow flawless, it would do you little good, as the signals from your nerves mean nothing until your brain has processed them all, and cognition is a process even more clearly compromised. We are our only observers of our universe, but alas, we are not reliable observers of our universe. This part of the reason the sciences, by seeking out coherence within multiple observer's perceptions rather than blindly trusting one source of authority, are so incomparably valuable to all of us.

The brain and senses evolved according to physical conditions in the world, not belief. Unconscious physical processes have no beliefs. Beliefs emerge much later in the process.

The word 'belief' itself is really a folk-term that describes an underlying feature of epistemology. What you're calling 'belief' is just validated knowledge under a set of assumptions and sensory input, rightly or wrongly. One could argue that all knowledge falls under this category, regardless of it's veracity.

Which speaks to Politesse's point that our perception of the world is ultimately constrained by what we know, or maybe more accurately, what we think we know.

Belief comes in different shades and flavours, faith based, imagination, illusion, evidence based, justified true belief.....

There's been a lot of writing done on the nature of knowledge, what it is, where it comes from. I'm not an expert by any means but I believe everything you've listed would fall under the umbrella of knowledge.

I'm not sure how to communicate this well because we seem to be coming from a different place here. I'm not trying to argue that an erroneous belief is a fact. I'm arguing that knowledge is something derived and known to be true by the perceiver, regardless of whether it's actually true.

From there you can then start making distinctions about that knowledge, e.g. how it was derived, how accurate it is. All knowledge is by definition a belief based on some form of input.

This is important to realize because you start understanding why certain cultures behave the way they do. People in a community can only know as much as the community 'knows'.

If you want to pull in Hume's theory of substances things get even more interesting. Which implies that we can only ever approach a complete understanding of anything, not know it objectively.

There seems to be lot of semantics in play...however, If someone 'knows' that something is true, yet what they 'know' is true is in fact false (people once knew the earth was the centre of the universe), did they have knowledge in the first place, or was it no more than assumption and belief?

I think what you're calling semantics are really just clear definitions. Try reading it again.

Everything we think we know is an assumed belief until we have more complete information. This happened to me very recently in my Sociology thread.

Eventually, on some things, information starts approaching incontrovertible fact, and you know that you know.