Re: Making your mind up

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 22 Apr 2024 15:04:07 +0200, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<me@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

On 2024-04-22 10:36:02 +0000, Martin Harran said:
 

On Mon, 22 Apr 2024 11:39:56 +0200, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<me@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

On 2024-04-22 08:52:51 +0000, Martin Harran said:
 

On Fri, 19 Apr 2024 14:08:58 +0200, Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
 

On 17/04/2024 12:14, Martin Harran wrote:
 
snip

 
Another aspect that strikes me is how individual minds can operate
collectively, almost as if a new mind is generated as in mob hysteria
but also in other useful ways; as a management consultant delivering
management development programmes, one of my favourite topics was
showing how collective decisions are generally better than individual
decisions. Although that has long been recognised in management and
business,  I am not aware of any attempt to study it from a science
perspective.
 

 
I read this a few days ago and thought "shhh keep your responses
relevant and focused, don't bring your latest hobbyhorse into every
conversation it's even vaguely reminiscent of" [I ask that you imagine
here Taylor Tomlinson miming the effects of antidepressants:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47WXVTpnOyU&t=228s ]
 
But that laudable instinct wore off apparently. You know what book has
some interesting things to say about collective decision-making? "The
Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ! \o/
 
Actually one could argue it has a lot to say about decision-making in
general, it just gets at the problem from a very different angle than
the "how it works in the brain" that you seem to be talking about.
That's why I hesitated on the relevance front. But if a more high-level
discussion of how decision-making might work in its most general form,
that comes up with a very interesting perspective on the relationship of
individual humans to the collective, seems like it might interest you
it's a pretty short and (IMO) accessible book.

 
I've added the book to my list but for somewhat different reasons than
what you have said above. I have long been intrigued by the ideas of
Teilhard de Chardin

 
Have you read Peter Medawar's review of Theilhard de Chardin's book? I
can't find the complete review on the web, though I'm pretty sure it's
there: I've certainly read it, and I haven't got a subscription to
Mind. Anyway, some of the most characteristic parts are quoted here:
https://reasonandmeaning.com/2015/03/20/p-b-medawar-critique-of-teilhard-de-chardin/
 
 
 
I expect you won't like it at all, but others may.

 
Full critique is available here:
http://bactra.org/Medawar/phenomenon-of-man.html

 
Unfortunately my computer thought that link was dangerous, and wouldn't
let me go there. I'll try again when it's in a better mood.

 
I read it some time ago. What I didn't like about it was that it is a
purely polemic attack on Teilhard, I didn't see any *scientific*
contradiction to his ideas. Can you point any out to me?

 
I'll try to do so when I've managed to read the whole review again.

 
FWIW, this article in Naure captures my own thoughts on it:
 
https://www.nature.com/articles/35038172
 
<quote>
Medawar begged to differ [with Teilhard's ideas]: in 1961 he launched
an attack on The Phenomenon of Man — which by this time had become a
semi-popular classic — in the journal Mind; an article subsequently
anthologized and often quoted. He successfully demolished Teilhard's
arguments in 11 pages of awesome, sustained invective. Or did he?
Curiously, on close reading there is little real critical substance.
He complains of Teilhard's style (“tipsy prose-poetry”), some
technical shortcomings (“no grasp of the real weakness of modern
evolutionary theory”), but the main substantive issue is Teilhard's
misappropriation of scientific arguments to promote a religious
standpoint (“obscure pious rant”) and so duping a gullible public
(“educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical
thought”). We shall never know what Teilhard thought of Medawar, as
Teilhard died in 1954.
</quote>
 

As I said elsethread, I think Gould an effective antidote to Teilhard. The
drunkards walk against a lower boundary of minimal complexity is one angle.
Upwards from this grade just happens. Bacteria remain nestled there and are
the predominate form of life still. They may enjoy primitive forms of
internetworking (proto-thinking layer) and certainly fileshare using
plasmids and (ironically enough) phages, which helps them counter human
ingenuity of antibiotics.

Perhaps forest floor internetworking between trees and mycorrhizae are a
sorta convergence to the grade of thinking layer. I dunno.

If not for a bolide the non-avian dinosaurs may not have been wiped away
opening ecological paths or niches for mammals to take. There are so many
points where evolutionary outcomes could have differed. That we are here
seems meaningful to us, but not to the universe, even if Teilhard and his
pal Julian Huxley thought the universe becoming self-aware through us was a
profound thought. According to Mayr, Huxley thought humans deserved the
grade (or Kingdom) of Psychozoa which seems somewhat conceited.