Each human with a physically undamaged brain has a large inherent capacity for this rational kind of behaviour, very large as compared to the best functioning of presently observable adult humans.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
The Myth of Brain Function
Darwin and Intelligence
This ability to create new, exact responses may be defined as human intelligence. It operates by comparing and contrasting new information with that already on file from past experiences and constructing a response based on similarities to past situations but modified to allow for the differences.
I would say that the response can also be identical if that is what is required. That is also intelligence learning when a different response is not needed. Or it could be described as abstracting a common pattern, and being able to discern what is irrelevant "noise" (termed "making equivalence relations" in mathematics).
Another note is that responding to environmental pressures but with modification through descent (i.e. being flexible enough to change and survive in different ecological niches) is the primary factor in evolution - "a response based on similarities to past situations but modified to allow for the differences" is a good definition of how organisms evolve. Living creatures are not clay, passive moulded by changing environments, but interact and respond to those changing environments. Those that didn't manage to do so, are extinct.
Temperament
Darwin and Rational Human Behaviour
The essence of rational human behaviour consists of responding to each instant of living with a new response, created afresh at that moment to precisely fit and handle the situation of that moment as that situation is defined by the information received through the senses of the person (other living creatures typically respond with preset, inherited response patterns--"instincts," or with conditioned, equally-rigid modifications or replacements of the inherited response patterns, acquired through experiences of stress).
This is, of course a nonsense, as anyone who reads
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Rational Human Behaviour
Rational human behaviour is qualitatively different from the behaviour of other forms of life. (It is not just more complicated).
This all depends on how you define "rational human behaviour"; I'm not convinced that the definition given (see below) is qualitatively different from other forms of life. Regarding the term, human behaviour is extremely diverse, and everyone seems to have their own definition. For example, in economic theory, economics is seen as a study of what constitutes rational human behaviour in the endeavour to fulfil needs and wants; it makes the assumption that human beings will aim to fulfil their self-interests. Rational behaviour can be either a term used to explain how people behave (i.e. to make a model that makes sense of their behaviour (since it makes sense to them), so that other people who do not behave that way can understand them) or behaviour that is based on reasoning (which suggests a Spock like Vulcan, devoid of emotions). When the two are confused, we are tempted to say somebody is acting "irrationally", which usually means that we cannot understand the reasoning behind it, but also tends to suggest that there is no reasoning behind it; there is an element of judgement.
Remarks on complexity
Harvey Jackins
http://www.rc.org/publications/present_time/pt101/pt101_35_hj.html
Wonderful mysticism! It amuses me that in allegedly non-theistic movements, some kind of theism creeps in (or is it a "tendency to creep in") by the back door. Evolution, of course, is presented in the next paragraph as a ladder leading upwards to man (another potent idea of "progress"). I should congratulate him on his "field of living things", which seems to anticipate Sheldrake's "morphological fields" by some decades.
A link with this "tendency toward complexity" of the universe (makes it almost sentient) to evolution, and all the while, the old, old enlightenment idea of "progress" in the background. In fact, the Universe's "complexity" is actually an increase in disorder.