(Continued from above.)
The key idea that you need to make sense out of all of this is that all species, including intelligent species, occupy what evolutionists refer to as "niches." Each niche exhibits a specific set of obstacles to be overcome and threats that must be avoided, by the members of any species which occupies it. In that niche, reproductive success depends on a specific set of skills, and the greater the amount of time required to acquire them, the greater the risk to the individual. Many species acquire the skills they need genetically, by means of the sorts of "hard-wired," virtually reflexive, essentially unconditional behavior patterns that are usually called "instincts." However, for the larger-brained, more intelligent species that must adapt their responses to more complex situations, that which is "hard-wired" into the brain is not so much patterns of behavior as tools of thought. What happens is that understandings of those aspects of reality that are crucial to success at problem solving in that particular niche are built into the brains of infants under genetic control as part of embryonic, fetal, or infant development.
It must be emphasized that the required capabilities vary from niche to niche and that human beings face more difficult problem-solving tasks than do lower animals. For example, no chimpanzee depends for his survival on his ability to keep an automobile from plunging off of a mountain road, or to fly an airplane, or to perform complex tasks in a steel mill without being burned to a crisp or crushed to death by moving metal. Moreover, such considerations continue to apply as we move up the phylogenetic scale beyond man. For example, consider the members of species whose lives are spent in starships, working with devices that wield more power than all the machinery operated by man on Earth combined. Since their lives would depend on their being able to create, use, and maintain those devices safely, there can be no doubt that natural selection will cause more tools of thought, core understandings, core knowledge, procedural logic, or whatever you choose to call it, to be implanted in their brains than are implanted in the brains of human infants.
To comprehend the full spectrum of genetically encoded knowledge, in short, you need to follow the evolutionary logic wherever it leads, even if in doing so you are forced to accept the reality that human beings are not really very smart, and are not really very important, in the overall universal scheme of things.
**********************************************
You said:
"... we certainly can't pass any added instinct to our children ..."
My response:
First, as indicated above, I'm not really focused on "instinct" per se, but on cognitive tools, understandings, core knowledge, etc.
Second, I never said that the new cognitive tools which we develop in our lives--by studying mathematics, for example--can be passed on to our children by genetic means. If the son of a mathematician wants to become a mathematician, he is going to have to work hard to master the field, just like his father. How hard depends in part on the mathematically related understandings passed on to him genetically from his parents, and part depends on his environment.
Third and much more to the point, when an individual appears somewhere else in the universe after your death whose core understandings incorporate both your core understandings and your acquired understandings, he is extremely unlikely to be one of your lineal descendants, or the lineal descendant of any human. He will come into existence (a) because a set of understandings very similar to the set that existed in your brain when you died will be crucial to success in the niche occupied by his species, and (b) because, due to genetic variation, a set identical to yours eventually turned up.
**********************************************
You said:
"... unless you can Vulcan mind meld. I also seriously doubt that anyone would consider an individual with the same instincts as their father to actually be the reincarnated father."
My response:
What "anyone would consider" is not the point. We know that there exists a recipe for each of us--an assemblage of material ingredients which will bring us into the world. That recipe, if followed, will produce a being such that, when he opens his eyes, we will see. We know that because we are each in the world right now, and we were not here before. What we do not know with exactitude, however, is the nature of that recipe.
It seems reasonable, however, to reach the following conclusions:
(1) If the core understandings of a newly incarnated infant are equal to the core plus acquired understandings that an earlier person had when he died, then the consciousness of that dead person will be restarted in that infant's brain. Hence our understandings are part of the essence of who we are.
(2) Since we come into the world without memories, I don't see how having memories could be part of the essence of a person. The mind is the thing that is conscious, so it must already be present when sensory inputs begin streaming into the storage area which we call "memory." Result: the presence of specific memories cannot be part of the essence of who we are.
**********************************************
You said:
"What do you think of the theory that this is just a computer simulation running on a supercomputer of the future and we're all just conscious subroutines that get used in one simulation after another? It requires very few assumptions and I can't find a flaw with it."
My response:
You can't find a flaw because your question is predicated on the assumption that there is no flaw. In essence, you are saying that if we are brains floating in a vat with electrodes attached, connected to a computer that simulates physical reality flawlessly, then we could never know that the simulated physical reality was unreal.
You might as well waste your time worrying that there is a leprechaun living in your refrigerator who vanishes whenever you look inside.
**********************************************
Reply With Quote
Quote by: arX
Bookmarks