How sharper than an atheist wit...

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Nope, why do you think that so many people are concerned that 7 ate 9? Without 9, the entire mathematical ecology shifts greatly!

Yea, the universe is a safer place since we evolved physics

"It is strange that according to the Genesis account Man was cursed for desiring the knowledge of Good and Evil. So much for God being the one who teaches us. He cursed us for wanting to know."

Ruveyn - I just refreshed my memory, lest I misrepresent.

Without going beyond the unvarnished surface of the account:

Where stands it written "cursed for wanting to know"?

Without putting any spins on: surely punished / banishede for being persuaded by the first speaker with forked tongue to violate the ONLY prohibition put on them.

Now, you may think that unreasonable and extreme as a reaction. Your privilege - I do not think there is a divine prohibition against criticizing the Politburo's policy.

But - are you up on the concept of the geas? If not, you might find it interesting to look up. Obviously fairly deeply engrained into the humanm psyche. A geas in the Genesis account may, of course, support deflating the scriptures as folklore, but no big deal - the parallels between these writings and folklore are too numerous to ignore. In any case, some in the game see those parallels as evince for the age and relevance of scripture. Any argument can cut both ways.

A concept is the product of a thinking mind. No mind, no concept. If you think of the universe as a salami, you can slice it in an infinite number of ways. One way makes circles. Many other ways make a variety of ellipses. That is not to say that the circles or ellipses are not real. But they are only abstracts of reality. There is nothing absolute in any slice technique. Plato made the same major error, assuming that the way his mind sliced the universe is the true reality. It is not. Nor is the mathematical method of slicing the only way to see what the universe presents. It is only a human method of slicing. When we contact a true alien intellect we will probably be totally confounded by the way it confronts the universe. Fred Hoyle, the cosmologist-physicist, wrote a novel "The Black Cloud" about a super intellect that was alien and it had the ability to transfer its outlook towards the universe to a human mind and when a very bright person volunteered to accept the transfer and see the universe from a radically different viewpoint he went insane. That's probably a good view of the situation.

Look at what Sand said --- "every living thing is or does have evolutionary roots". Did you notice the world "living" there?

ruveyn

I am not sure you read the entire discussion.

I mentioned that we evolved an understanding of mathematics we did not evolve mathematics. I believe that we evolved an understanding of objective morality but that we did not evolve morality. If morality exists purely as a construct developed through evolution then we have no reason to think that this moral view is Right

@Sand

Your discussion of how we view the universe is a perfect evolutionary argument against naturalism and therefor against objective morality as an evolutionary process. The issue is that if one wants to maintain a view that morality is objectively true and can be justified in this sense, then the evolutionary process is simply not enough. For if the evolutionary process is responsible for developing our view of morality, why then should it be the correct one?

I am finding the trend of this and other threads extremely interesting. It is not that long ago that the expected response to a discussion or morals and ethics would be to point out that all that stuff is situational and relative, that there is "your truth" and "my truth" and "my morality" and "your morality".

When I saw one of these tending in the direction of Right and Wrong that was what I expected to see, and indeed there have beemn one or two espousing that view. But it is almost shocking to see so strong an advocacy of natural law, of Right and Wrong obvious to any intelligent human. Whatever happened? It really changes the debate.

If there are Chomskyian innate ideas of Right, why and how? If a byproduct of evolution, can we see anthropoid apes with a sense of Right closer to ours than the Right of lemurs or elk? But if not a byproduct of evolution - what then?

My wife has from time to time suggested our culture is on the brink of a major paradigm shift. Could this be one of the early tremors?

Yeah, it is sort of funny. I've read all sort of people attack Chomsky. What makes it really funny is that a lot of these people were not linguists. Y'know, just try reading an article by an economist and hear it mentioned "Chomsky has been holding back progress in linguistics", and it is just like "WTF?"

One of my big gripes against Chomsky [and believe me I have paid my dues and earned the right to gripe] is that he spends an inordinate amount of time grabbing headlines unrelated to Linguistics. I also hold that his time on task is unrelated to Linguistics, but again de gustibus.

His "Innate Ideas" shtick is one of the early things I found and find problematic, but it is in the literature and on the table. For anyone who does not know, it comes down to claiming some subroutines are hardwired into the human processor chip.

Well, right. Chomsky's view of language is often perceived as incompatible with evolutionary theory. This leads people who seek a more evolutionary view of language to push against Chomsky, and often in favor of something like radical pragmatics, which does not think as highly of the innate ideas at all, rather seeing a lot of language as just learned.

"Well, right. Chomsky's view of language is often perceived as incompatible with evolutionary theory. "


Weird. Mind you, I have never seen a reason for following other people's reviews of Chomsky - but I would have figured Innate Ideas a boon for the evolutionist. Like the claims [ludicrous because of far too many groundless assumptions] that neanderthalensis did not have language, or could not speak human language [I have seen a couple formulations].

But mind you, while Chomsky I would be good for evolution, Son of Chomsky [Government and Bondage} might not be as good, and I have no access to Chomsky - The Carnage Continues, now at the multiplex near you. Chomsky being what he is, access to the computer could easily mutate him in strange directions.

I do wish I could talk to my brother - I do not doubt he knows exactly what mainline evolutionary theory thinks of Chomsky, but he will not speak civilly.

Who the hell are you to dictate to Chomsky what and when he wants to speak about whenever he chooses? Nobody says you have to agree with him but he has a perfect right to speak as he chooses.

You see rather unacquainted with the very common declaration in ordinary speech that when something is unfair it is stated to be unjust without relating it to any formalized social system of rules.

Well, I think the reason why there is this tension is for the following reasons:
1) There aren't really any intermediate steps for the innate ideas. Chomsky kind of supposes that the real use of language is to organize thought, and that there is no real value in the organization until these innate ideas are completely formed as correct. This just doesn't make sense though.
2) There isn't really an ability for variation. Chomsky's innate ideas are rigid, inflexible, and entirely independent of culture and other things, while the more evolutionary conceptions of the matter are likely to recognize the importance of environmental factors and robustness.
3) A lot of people who are very pro-evolution are also very pro-connectionism, which is an evolutionary theory for the mind. Basically, it holds that the mind adapts based upon the selection of thought processes. The issue is that connectionism is too flexible for innate ideas. It fits better with an idea like radical pragmatics or linguistic determinism, or even some combination of both.

I mean, I am being a bit loose here with "pro-evolution" and I have not taken the time to refer back to what I am more explicitly thinking of.(I have a few books in mind, but I am kind of waiting on dinner to get ready, and thus am hungrier than I am willing to go at length about this)

Right....

You have to also recognize that it is a common declaration in ordinary speech that people who violate the well-being of other beings be punished for their acts. However, at the same time, this is not really a matter of fairness. Fairness usually being a matter of the equal treatment of individuals.

That is a useful perspective. Chomsky is - to be fair - not the most rigid I have met, but he operates more in the abstract mechanical than in the human. I don't think he sees language as human or even real.

From what I have heard from my evolution spies, the nongradualism would not bother everybody. Bothers the creation scientists, of course, every time you get an organ or function that is no good until it is complete.

I may look into the connectionism thing.

Innate ideas never made sense.

I am HEAVILY resisting temptation here - nobody needs my full rundown on Chomsky