Everything IS natural. What isn't? The supernatural?
Evolutionary psychology accounts for fairly specific things. That step parents are dangerous for kids, that men will tend to favor promiscuity sexually. You seem to not get what evolutionary psychology is about, what have you read on the matter?
@WorthlessLoser8 This is the standard defense right here, "well you don't really understand adaptive mechanism". Actually the modules hypothesized by EP are neither specific nor encapsulated. The brain is not encapsulated. Encapsulated modules let very little info in or out. This concept would require localization in a strong sense and this is not supported by an research anywhere. The brain does not work like that. Nothing to specific about the behaviors you list either.
So this argument is a semantic one? Human language is imperfect and all attempts to use it scientifically should state terms and conditions to eliminate confusion, surely that's the end of the argument?
I dislike the word hate, because the user of the word is causing a new pattern of conditioning characterized as potential frailness, corruptibility and subjectivity. I dislike hating naturalness, I'd rather disvalue naturalness to be used as a vocabular principle.
One use of the word nature I do like is the phrase "natural rights." And I will admit that I like very much the ideology that flows from it. I find it very congenial to argue that we are possessed of certain rights that are inherent, not conferred by God or subject to the whims of society.
I feel you. Every time I read something that makes a claim about "the nautre of things" I find myself cringing. It has to be the number one assumption red flag.
About your dislike of evolutionary psychology -- if you haven't, you should see Sir Karl Popper's "Science as Falsification." He criticizes psychology as a science for its lack of predictive power (which seems to be your problem with evolutionary psychology) and also for its lack of falsifiability.
@deinarts No he criticizes early psychology, specifically psychoanalysis for not being falsifiable. Maybe your claim is right I have never heard that from Popper. Psychology answers "how" questions and EP attempts "why" questions. That is why he is questioning EP.
I'm not sure you are frustrated with the word "Nature" as much as you are frustrated with the ambiguity of language.
We have to remind ourselves that this term is relative, and as you rightly point out, means different things in different contexts.
Therefore, what we have to understand is our context. Everything has some context, and I think what you fight against is this idea that there is some "absolute context". I think that is the importance of the word "Nature": to understand the context.
I think you're really confused about human nature.
You should read the Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker's 2008 book "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" in which I think he clearly establishes there is a human nature, and more or less what it is.
Humans didn't evolve to type on keyboards obviously. Biologically, we did evolve the ability to communicate. This communication, the way I understand it, evolved because it's used as a fitness indicator for sexual selection and has helped shape who we are as humans. This fitness indicator has led to our "need" to communicate and one method is in written language, made faster and easier through typing on a keyboard. Communication demonstrates to potential parters how healthy our brain is.
@ContraPoints I think you are missing a fundamental point of science. Biological sciences attempt to classify and explain the diversity of life and predict as much as possible. Members of a specific gene pool may have the proper sequence of nucleotides that allows for the development of a certain trait, say addiction. Members of that gene pool can take steps against the expression of that gene, regardless of the gene's state activation. Its an area of greys, not black and white.
~ 6 minutes in I couldn't help but think about these "race realist" clowns running around youtube and how, even if a number of their statistical assertions *were* an accurate depiction of racial trends, your and Hegel's position expresses very succinctly why it still wouldn't make any sense to actually act on these supposed statistical trends in any way.
I can't think of any tendencies of human behavior that won't be contradicted by the actions of individual humans. Outside of breathing, eating, and pooping, we are more or less free to operate exactly as our bodies and feelings dictate, or in complete opposition to those same urges. The diversity of human behavior is such that discussions of human nature always strike me as dismissive of human possibility.
i want to rub vanilla scented sun tan lotion on your chiseled, perfectly sculpted back while we sit on a sun-kissed beach in the south of france and contemplate a menage a trois with the muscular danish backpacker we're sharing a room with
TheNaturalistic fallacy is crap. It's not even really a fallacy but a refusal to identify evaluative terms to an idea under any circumstance. You may as well say there are no right and wrong things if you accept the terms of the naturalistic fallacy; thus doomed to moral nihilism.
@Sloth7d It doesn't refuse to identify evaluative terms to an idea under any circumstance, it just refuses to say the way things occur is they way they should occur for no other reason than that things seem to happen that way "naturally."
@ContraPoints My problem with that is what exactly can be said to be "good" or "bad" without a natural premise to base it on? Without some foothold in a natural reality, whether that reality is God or an intuition, I don't see how you can call an action right or wrong, an end good or bad, without some appeal to it's natural state. In the end all moral systems are some form of consequentialism; they seek a desirable end, yet Moore makes a fallacy of calling what is desirable good. Hence Nihilism.
Think I need concrete examples of what you're talking about ,perhaps a critique on Desmond Morris book " The naked ape" as that seems to encapsulate what you're against ,i think ? Your specific objections on assertions made in that book may help clarify your position ,it happens to be a book that shaped my thinking in my 20's along with a lot of other people, if the foundation of my thinking is wrong ,then I'd like to know ( I think ,lols )
I balance modern cognitive science and Lacanian psychoanalysis by relegating the "innate functions" to the former and the socially-constructed aesthetic notions to the latter; I also like to point out that both of them essentially have the same conclusion: the subject is an illusion.
@niriop In the last century, so many different and independent intellectual disciplines have converged on the conclusion that the subject (rational ego, whatever) is an illusion. I think for that reason alone the idea deserves to be taken very seriously.
I really do not agree with your point about tenancies. Tenancies is everything, its probability its marks a degree of predictability, and science is basically about predictability, so if from tenancies you gain some predictive power surely they are not nothing. Even if predictions are not very accurate its still better than nothing. Meteorology for example is can be not really accurate sometimes however its very serious business. Same with peoples tendencies.
I didn't find that much of what you said objectionable, but as others have pointed out, I don't really see where you're going with this. So we stop talking about human nature. Now what?
The use of discussing evolved human nature lies in understanding the motivations for certain behaviors. Take panic for instance. Perhaps it was once useful to our survival to be overcome by a singular need to run, or attack, or yell in fear. In our modern lives this clarity sucking emotion is a liability. Understanding just how out of context that feeling is can give us emotional ammunition to ignore it. In other instances our reactions might be fully in context and therefore trustworthy.
@t3tsuyaguy1 I definitely believe that there is a biological program that underlies our experience. I just think that program always manifests itself as a culturally expressed formation.
@georgemc25 Again, nearly everything is both. I think we can consider roughly organic and inorganic influences, but the danger is presenting the opposition as a pure binary, rather then something that always occurs in combination.
I find tendencies are based not only on projected future actions but also a cumulation of past actions. Even when talking about tendencies that are genetically influenced, we are still basing these tendencies on a survey of past actions.
Perhaps "nature" does just refer to the innate limits set by one's genes and is fairly individualized, while also accounting for the universals thus making it a limited-range spectrum (not everything), with certain actions more frequently occurring (tendencies).
Exactly, if people's use of "nature" is all encompassing it renders it meaningless. It's precisely an argument I've used against theists who's "God" is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.
Furthermore, this use of "God" clearly contradicts itself logically if you're also one who believes free will exists. Making God "everything" is a clear example of theists overplaying their hand so to speak. Now it appears "nature" is heading down the same path.
Maybe the point of talking about human nature isn't normative, or explanatory. Perhaps it's just descriptive. Saying "man is a social animal" needn't tell us we OUGHT to be social, nor explain WHY we are social. Why can't it just be a fact?
@SisyphusRedeemed Well, a fact like that is so vague and obvious it's hardly worth stating. Sure, man is a social animal. But the way in which he or she is a social animal is going to depend hugely on the sort of context in which the socializing is occurring.
As for the idea that the term 'mystifies' us, well, this is ironically the most rambling and confused argument in your video. You point out a notable problem; people tend to assume their cultural norms are biological, universal, or natural. Fair enough. But how is this the fault of the word 'natural' exactly? No, just making air quotes whenever the book uses the word 'natural' doesn't link it's ideas to yours.
@Wolfau5 I'm passionate about it because I think that claims about human nature are often the foundation of social and political ideologies. By undermining these claims I hope I am leaving room for a more thorough and hopeful critique of "the way things are."
All of your arguments against the term 'nature' fall flat. First, it has a clear meaning in the nature v nurture debate; it means a set of biological predispositions. Who, in the context of this debate, is so confused as to mistake it for normative? As for it being 'conflated' with universal, that isn't a conflation; human nature IS universal among humans. As for the argument that predispositions are not things, and thus human nature is nothing... That is so stupid it doesn't bear rebuttal.
I find it ironic that, in a video that starts off criticizing equivocation, you ultimately equivocate being not a physical thing with being nothing.
As for normative baggage, I don't see it. I'm not deep in the nature/nurture debate, but I don't think most people confuse 'human nature' with 'what is morally perfect'.
@Hooya2 What I mean by "it is nothing" is that it is nothing on its own. It is nothing outside some particular context. Only when it manifests itself in some particular situation does it become something, but in doing so it opens up room for difference. It is nothing in the sense in which "redness" is nothing. There are red things. Human activity carries our evolutionary past within it. But appart from a given circumstance it is nothing.
@ContraPoints But Tendencies are not nothing. If someone's genetic line is predesposed to, say eye-canser a doctor maybe able to advise them of certen ways to minimise the chanses of that developing. Obviusly it's not a ganantee but it can have a profound impact on your life.
While I agree that it's not the be-all-end-all I still think it counts for something.
@ContraPoints Would you say morality means nothing on it's own as well since it is context dependent as well?
Like morality, I am not confused by people's constant abuse of the term nature nor do i think the term should be eliminated just because people mystify it.
@ContraPoints "...it is nothing on its own. It is nothing outside some particular context. Only when it manifests itself in some particular situation does it become something, but in doing so it opens up room for difference."
Yeah, what you just defined is an ABSTRACTION, not nothing.
Nature sucks because everything is nature including nurture. Human's are a part of nature and we have no good reason to draw a line seperating us from it. Sure we have a bunch of strange and still unexplained possibilities but they all come out of nature. We are all systems of cells following dna.
Nature sucks whether you are using it mystically or even as if it's getting rid of mysticism because it can't explains or put light on anything that the word cosmos or world can't already do.
@ugoodHomeBoy He is very difficult to understand. I couldn't do it on my own, I needed the help of a professor and various companions and external sources. But there are golden ideas in the midst of the "grotesque craggy melody," as Marx called his philosophy.
"Nature" is, in many ways, the hypothetical of what the world would be like if there was no "nurture". Much of what human beings turn out to be are the numerous events and much more that help shape who we are. If human beings lived purely on human nature, being, the biological impulses that drive our behavior, we would be practically mindless and without self-control. Nature is the way our bodies react to the world, but nurture, being the greater influence for many, is how our minds react.
@TheAlexANGST But so much of what it means to be human is to be a nurtured, cultured, language-using being. It doesn't make much sense to try to image a general form of human nature outside of any particular context.
@ContraPoints hmm what about a human in an isolation tank?
when there's no stimuli, hallucinations happen. That is a human mind rationalizing itself outside of the context that its used to, outside what people usually call "nature" where there's constant stimuli to react to
if constant stimuli throughout human evolution shaped patterns we now call "human nature", then "human nature" is actually just a product of an organism and it's context on this planet.
@ContraPoints Something I have wondered for a long time is whether or not nurture has the capability to overcome many behaviors that are completely natural to human beings (which are natural to animals in general), such as sex drive. These natural behaviors are ones, driven by impulse, that often times cause us to go against all logic, but assuming it is possible to truly overcome it, what are the best ways to mentally prepare oneself for a challenge like that. A challenge for many
@ContraPoints It seems like you are implicitly calling everything nurture. If we don't call it nature then what term shall we use? I don't believe we have a blank slate when we are born and even if we did there are things we always react to similarly to a squirrel reacting to a tree. What's the point in distinguishing things that would never be practically eliminated from any possible human society?
Using such broad evolutionary tendencies to describe human nature is bound to contradict itself. Any attempt via evolutionary psychology to explain why humans aren't trusting of some people would almost certainly run against your example of evolved social tendencies. If the evolutionary tendencies would be refined and narrowed in order to account for these discrepancies, a myriad examples contrary to said tendencies would show up in realistic human interaction.
I don't understand why a tendency is not a thing. It sounds like tendencies is still what you're discussing in "the other direction" where nature means everything. And in a way i don't have a problem with all human behaviour being natural. It does become a useless term, at least when discussing human behaviour, but maybe it's better to realize that than use some inconsistent definition of the word.
It falls under the subject of human psychology if you want to be specific, but generally speaking, it's probably something your grandmother imparted to you as a child. My preference is to look at the world through WASP eyes, and be thankful I'm not Catholic.
I'm also sure there are people today who are not as physically amused by sex than others due to mutation and biological diversity.They will not be a majority of the gene pool due to the lower fitness value of the trait. The fact that they exist does not mean that there is no natural tendency when it comes to sex,its just that the odds say that any human born will more than likely find sex enjoyable and this can be demonstrated by the numbers. Asexual people are a small minority of human pop.
To respond to your inquiry about evolutionary psychology explaining why you type Youtube comments, your acquisition of a language and learning how to use technology is due to nurture. Your capacity to have the ability to learn all of these in first place is due to nature, from an evolutionary psychology perspective. Is that what you were asking?
Most humans find sex fun but are unaware why they find it fun. I suppose there were humans in the past who were not amused by sexual activity but I don't think those people are our ancestors. Its pleasure to the body is a biological and natural fact and that underlies what we choose to do with sexuality,but I don't see how any cultural conditioning can make it not physically pleasurable.Think of all the babies who are"accidents" b/c mom & dad were having fun and not intending to reproduce.
You complain about a tendency not meaning anything in an actualized human being. But I think such claims are meant to provide probabilities on how humans are likely to actualize. If we can point at a gene that, when present or absence has certain behavioral consequences then it seems fair to note that those with or without that gene have a predisposition that others do not have. Now, everyone may not actualize that behavior, but the causal link would still exist.
Human nature cannot explicity explain behaviors but it can explain the motives behind lots of behaviors.I doubt the peacock is aware of why he displays his tail around peahens,but his ancestors did it and it made them reproductively successful.I think most people would say that youtube activities are fun or stimulating but are unaware of why they are compelled to do so.Influencing others and trait display have reproductive benefits besides fun &entertainment.
@jarredf30 not in a human way...but in a Peacock way they know.Have you ever seen two or more tom-cats serenading a female? now..they do not conceptualize it or sentimentalize it the way human heterosexuals might do....but neither do they functionalize it(like a machine)...but..&..it always takes a while...but the timing is not consistent.Humans just have a wilder verbal-sense & wider verbal-articulation.And so the talking "about-it" & thinking-about-it" starts to set limits & reasons
@tlaniganschmidt I wasn't saying that peacocks don't have some rudimentary form of awareness or conscioussness at least.I was just saying that the physiological processes do work like a machine and these are inherited.I doubt the peahen 'knows' that the tail signals good genes,she just sees beauty and reacts accordingly. They don't know in the scientific sense and that is not needed.The mechanics are the backbone of these behaviors.However I agree with your point though.
Genetic determinism is not what any serious evo. psychologist is advocating because humans have a comlpex brain that gives them a bit of freedom when choosing behaviors. More freedom than a rock falling at 9.8 m/s^2 under the influence of gravity,which can be demonstrated by physicists and "hard" scientists.You therefore have to speak of tendencies and statistics as a reality.The concept of nature is not meaningless just because everyone doesn't behave the same under similar circumstances.
Typing youtube comments or making videos aren't what humans evolved "to do".Evolution has no goal and we don't evolve "to do" anything.However it could be said that typing youtube comments and videos are a way to influence others in a social circle and display things like intelligence,creativity,leadership abilities etc.. which have high reproductive value for our species, especially males.Reproduction is almost more important than survival in evo. terms and is why so many die in that pursuit.
The way I think of the words "nature" and "natural" are all-inclusive. What isn't a part of nature? Thus making these words redundant. People do have a tendency to equate natural with good or better, but with little justification.
The last thirty seconds or so echo my thinking. The word natural, under the definition I usually have in mind, covers everything, so the word is useless.
What I find to be an annoying thing about 'natural' is the assumption that natural = good. I say only annoying because when you're engaged with someone who actually wants a real conversation it's only ever a minor hurdle if it comes up at all, but with regular people (least offensive way to say it :p) it can be an insurmountable obstacle.
Appeals to nature are almost always parochial just-so stories in defense of cultural prejudices. They serve to bracket off certain human traits or practices as unchanging, while labeling others as cultural or unnatural and thus changeable. Evolutionary psychologists, consciously or not, are merely being mouthpieces for the current Western socio-econ. status quo (liberal social darwinism), just as their historical forerunners were defending the prejudices and privileges of other eras.
@GodlessXVIII Typically those that utter the term 'just-so stories' as a criticism of evolutionary psychology do so for political reasons and do not understand the science. It's evident that your understanding of evolutionary psychology is third-hand. I'll suggest starting with the evolutionary psychology primer written by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, available at their website. You can also try reading some of the primary material.
@DrinkThatHenny I'd cop to your point about political reasons, on the condition that you admit to your own. But I know that power-apologist junk scientists consider political biases as ghostly forms only glimpsed through their own eyes, never by others. In the future, statistical ratiocination of historical inequalities will be looked as kindly upon as divine right theologies, race and physiognomy discourses, IQ bell-curve fetishism, "clash of civilizations" opportunism, etc.
For me, it's not the word that I hate, it's all the different ways people use it and their refusal to agree on a definition. People use it to mean God, they use it to mean "spirits" etc. When Katrina happened, and when that pathetic earthquake happened last year and was felt in NY, both times there were people saying that "nature" was attacking major cities for "going against nature" but of course what they really meant was "going against the God of the Bible." idiots.
about the posters...the value of Art is less secure than the signifiers of word-clusters.This is why i feel that the ART-part of life is more complexly liberating & yet confounding.Very often the stuff that we decorate our spaces with & the pictures & music that captivate our eyes & being through give somrthing ineffable yet major in this search for meaning.Have you ever read Arthur Danto,John Ruskin or GeorgeKubler?They're all different,but your sense of Synthesis is yours alone.This is good.
'Natural' sells a lot of shite... that's probably my biggest problem with it.
Other than that, I don't see a problem with having 'universalising' words (like 'Nature') that signify 'The Everything'. They can be a reminder of the limitations of words & concepts. & that can be useful in combating dogmatic thinking.
@ContraPoints If the word "nature" is used to mean "the All", then it certainly can have its valid use. And using this definition, all things would indeed be natural - which is not to say that anything goes - since it is also natural to value some things over others.
most people would not have the gutts to bring Hegel & Barthes into a fruitful eclectic commingling...because one is mostly about signifier systems(Barthes)..while the other(Hegel)is mostly about transcending signifier systems.And that brings us back to the posters of paintings on your walls.And your avoidance of getting into the flux of Art in Life.I say all this with deep respect for you as a thinker.Because your skills of synthesis are unpredictable,as is some of what you read & remark-on..
You're right. Using one word for all that is, is obviously shallow and somewhat unsophisticated. But then again, language is just a tool, and if an attempt to communicate via language, with another, fails due to semantics, we might as well discontinue trying to understand the latter and instead reflect on the way that occurrence makes us feel. Other than that - good video as always :D
I find the concept of finding a "human nature" absolutely beyond the bounds of the sciences. This is an ontological question rather than an ontic one. If by human nature you mean "what it means to be a human"
You're pretty amazing in yer word constructs.this is why i mention the arbitrary nature of SIGNIFIERS.arbitrary yet very important in the WEIGHT they can carry & the distance they can cover.You rarely speak of the inner-person which is wear your love of words mixes & mingles with the gleanings you gather from Roland Barthes & Hegel.To bring such different perspectives together asPHENOMENOLOGY(PHYSICALITY)of Spirit(the breath & breadth of living)with Barth's social-constructs has enormous scope.
@ContraPoints Also, the commenter jarred is also gesturing in the right directions so far as even novel behavior like YouTube videos are concerned. Some of our evolved drives doubtlessly interact even with novel environmental conditions to generate similar, albeit variously different, behavioral output than what those drives are designed to have elicited in ancestral conditions.
@ContraPoints Mapping out those foundational adaptations, however, will 'carve nature at the joints'. In other words, mapping out the mechanisms of our mind answers the ontological question about what the fabric of the mind is like, the 'natural kinds' -- just like we take, say, the elements of the periodic table, or perhaps even gravity, to be real natural kinds in nature.
@ContraPoints By consulting with an anatomy textbook, one can learn how, say, an evolutionarily-novel activity like playing tennis is possible; that is, one can discover which of our evolved components are (in this case, conjointly) co-opted in the service of this novel activity. Likewise with novel forms of cognitive and behavioral activity: Typing a comment on YouTube ultimately stems from adaptations that evolved for other purposes, which can be pressed into the service of these novel tasks.
@ContraPoints About the point you made about evolutionary psychology in relation to typing comments on YouTube: Evolutionary psychologists do not posit that such an evolutionarily-novel activity stems from a specific adaptation or collection of adaptations forged specifically by selection to type YouTube comments. Evolutionary psychology aims to map out the evolved cognitive architecture of the mind; doing so will provide the 'Grey's Anatomy' of the human mind.
@ContraPoints For one thing, some robust patterns of human nature that transcend place, culture, and time really are perennially robust because the underlying 'forces' -- the 'basin of attraction(s) -- are powerfully strong, so much so that, for all intents and purposes, the grain of human nature would preclude their alteration.
@ContraPoints Again these are all empirical matters. It is only by mapping out the design features of various adaptations and their algorithmic structures that we can come to see how strong or weak the underlying 'forces' of our species-typical design are.
@ContraPoints There's at least one other key point to make about these algorithms and systems: As we are progressively discovering, many if not most have been 'programmed' by evolution to be flexibly contingent in specific ways, such that even surface level variance between people or groups obfuscate those deeper structures from which the surface level phenomena is generated.
@ContraPoints The nature of those programs are postulated to be function-specific (or, to put it a little more accurately, the functional-specificity of the algorithmic programs should be construed as lying on a continuum of increasing specificity, depending on the nature of the functional end that has been selected by evolution).
@ContraPoints Which brings me back to evolutionary psychology, which I take to be the right method of doing this. Remember that evolutionary psychologists assert, roughly, that human nature is comprised of our reliably-developing, species-typical computational programs.
@ContraPoints I hasten to add that even trying to construe nature under a one-size-fits-all rubric is probably not the best strategy. As with most else in science it's better to examine matters on a case-by-case basis.
So far as human behavior goes, this means that the 'landscape' of human nature -- if I may use the metaphor -- ought to be mapped out in a careful, nuanced, empirically-delineated way.
@ContraPoints Your partially Hegel-inspired points are interesting, but I suspect that maybe the pendulum is swinging to far to the other 'non-nature' extreme. Statistical explanations need not be impugned, so long as it's implicit or explicit that they don't imply some ineluctable end point. When it comes to the human mind, one must ultimately appeal to mechanism.
could you speak about the pictures on your wall(?).What do you like about them? or ..what do you get from them..This expands the conversation into intuituve & affective "realities".& if ya wanna get into the complexity of contemporary interactions,then a subject you may also find interesting(& this subject,most people never confront).That is the function of SIGNIFIERS,which are for lack of a better word,a huge part of the of human interaction.The puzzle pieces aka signifiers are always in flux.
@tlaniganschmidt Signifiers are what the book I mentioned in this video is all about. I probably could do a video about the posters, each one does say something....
@ContraPoints Honestly,you have a very rare gift for eclectic sythesis.Many people parrot Barthes but never feel motivated to actually put his observations into any form of cultural-social-actual-interaction with Hegel...To be unique is both a blessing & a curse.A blessing in the deep-joy of synthesis & interaction.A curse when mediocrity seeks after easy answers...& this even happens among those who read Barthes as much as Thomas Aquinas.But this you know...because you really are searching.
@ContraPoints next time you go to class,look around & notice the signifiers(as dress codes) & how American students mystify the signifiers that they do not question.Such things as fear of "the una-brow" or just that it makes any difference whether someone has seperarted their eyebrows or not.& such expressions as "good-teeth" (a moral-dimension?)..that actually are just as much about American USA middle-class prejudices.As Barthes French Class signifiers.SignifiersSeen beginToBegin
Everything IS natural. What isn't? The supernatural?
Evolutionary psychology accounts for fairly specific things. That step parents are dangerous for kids, that men will tend to favor promiscuity sexually. You seem to not get what evolutionary psychology is about, what have you read on the matter?
WorthlessLoser8 6 days ago
@WorthlessLoser8 This is the standard defense right here, "well you don't really understand adaptive mechanism". Actually the modules hypothesized by EP are neither specific nor encapsulated. The brain is not encapsulated. Encapsulated modules let very little info in or out. This concept would require localization in a strong sense and this is not supported by an research anywhere. The brain does not work like that. Nothing to specific about the behaviors you list either.
burnthesystem11 4 days ago
@burnthesystem11
HMM!!! :) Much more to learn.
WorthlessLoser8 4 days ago
So this argument is a semantic one? Human language is imperfect and all attempts to use it scientifically should state terms and conditions to eliminate confusion, surely that's the end of the argument?
OrgasmandTea 1 week ago
I dislike the word hate, because the user of the word is causing a new pattern of conditioning characterized as potential frailness, corruptibility and subjectivity. I dislike hating naturalness, I'd rather disvalue naturalness to be used as a vocabular principle.
TheWayshowerTube 2 weeks ago
One use of the word nature I do like is the phrase "natural rights." And I will admit that I like very much the ideology that flows from it. I find it very congenial to argue that we are possessed of certain rights that are inherent, not conferred by God or subject to the whims of society.
EyeLean5280 2 weeks ago
I feel you. Every time I read something that makes a claim about "the nautre of things" I find myself cringing. It has to be the number one assumption red flag.
SgtDICTION 2 weeks ago
About your dislike of evolutionary psychology -- if you haven't, you should see Sir Karl Popper's "Science as Falsification." He criticizes psychology as a science for its lack of predictive power (which seems to be your problem with evolutionary psychology) and also for its lack of falsifiability.
deinarts 3 weeks ago
@deinarts No he criticizes early psychology, specifically psychoanalysis for not being falsifiable. Maybe your claim is right I have never heard that from Popper. Psychology answers "how" questions and EP attempts "why" questions. That is why he is questioning EP.
burnthesystem11 4 days ago
I'm not sure you are frustrated with the word "Nature" as much as you are frustrated with the ambiguity of language.
We have to remind ourselves that this term is relative, and as you rightly point out, means different things in different contexts.
Therefore, what we have to understand is our context. Everything has some context, and I think what you fight against is this idea that there is some "absolute context". I think that is the importance of the word "Nature": to understand the context.
insidetrip101 3 weeks ago
I think you're really confused about human nature.
You should read the Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker's 2008 book "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" in which I think he clearly establishes there is a human nature, and more or less what it is.
HannuMarijarvi 1 month ago
I completly agree with you!
brunodemoura 1 month ago
Humans didn't evolve to type on keyboards obviously. Biologically, we did evolve the ability to communicate. This communication, the way I understand it, evolved because it's used as a fitness indicator for sexual selection and has helped shape who we are as humans. This fitness indicator has led to our "need" to communicate and one method is in written language, made faster and easier through typing on a keyboard. Communication demonstrates to potential parters how healthy our brain is.
Ripley747 1 month ago
@ContraPoints I think you are missing a fundamental point of science. Biological sciences attempt to classify and explain the diversity of life and predict as much as possible. Members of a specific gene pool may have the proper sequence of nucleotides that allows for the development of a certain trait, say addiction. Members of that gene pool can take steps against the expression of that gene, regardless of the gene's state activation. Its an area of greys, not black and white.
turtle4llama 1 month ago
~ 6 minutes in I couldn't help but think about these "race realist" clowns running around youtube and how, even if a number of their statistical assertions *were* an accurate depiction of racial trends, your and Hegel's position expresses very succinctly why it still wouldn't make any sense to actually act on these supposed statistical trends in any way.
bowlsallbroken 1 month ago
I can't think of any tendencies of human behavior that won't be contradicted by the actions of individual humans. Outside of breathing, eating, and pooping, we are more or less free to operate exactly as our bodies and feelings dictate, or in complete opposition to those same urges. The diversity of human behavior is such that discussions of human nature always strike me as dismissive of human possibility.
Friendough 1 month ago
i want to rub vanilla scented sun tan lotion on your chiseled, perfectly sculpted back while we sit on a sun-kissed beach in the south of france and contemplate a menage a trois with the muscular danish backpacker we're sharing a room with
kelly2353 1 month ago
TheNaturalistic fallacy is crap. It's not even really a fallacy but a refusal to identify evaluative terms to an idea under any circumstance. You may as well say there are no right and wrong things if you accept the terms of the naturalistic fallacy; thus doomed to moral nihilism.
Sloth7d 1 month ago
@Sloth7d It doesn't refuse to identify evaluative terms to an idea under any circumstance, it just refuses to say the way things occur is they way they should occur for no other reason than that things seem to happen that way "naturally."
ContraPoints 1 month ago
@ContraPoints My problem with that is what exactly can be said to be "good" or "bad" without a natural premise to base it on? Without some foothold in a natural reality, whether that reality is God or an intuition, I don't see how you can call an action right or wrong, an end good or bad, without some appeal to it's natural state. In the end all moral systems are some form of consequentialism; they seek a desirable end, yet Moore makes a fallacy of calling what is desirable good. Hence Nihilism.
Sloth7d 1 month ago
I agree some what. Nature is a useful term as long as you dont commit a naturalistic fallacy.
Farf420 1 month ago
Think I need concrete examples of what you're talking about ,perhaps a critique on Desmond Morris book " The naked ape" as that seems to encapsulate what you're against ,i think ? Your specific objections on assertions made in that book may help clarify your position ,it happens to be a book that shaped my thinking in my 20's along with a lot of other people, if the foundation of my thinking is wrong ,then I'd like to know ( I think ,lols )
sausage4mash 1 month ago
@sausage4mash I haven't read it so I'm afraid I can't say.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
I balance modern cognitive science and Lacanian psychoanalysis by relegating the "innate functions" to the former and the socially-constructed aesthetic notions to the latter; I also like to point out that both of them essentially have the same conclusion: the subject is an illusion.
Tell me, am I insane?
niriop 1 month ago
@niriop In the last century, so many different and independent intellectual disciplines have converged on the conclusion that the subject (rational ego, whatever) is an illusion. I think for that reason alone the idea deserves to be taken very seriously.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
@ContraPoints So are they all doing something "right", or are a few just lucky?
niriop 1 month ago
This video isn't working for me and I'm really upset because I've been really looking forward to this.
insidetrip101 1 month ago
I really do not agree with your point about tenancies. Tenancies is everything, its probability its marks a degree of predictability, and science is basically about predictability, so if from tenancies you gain some predictive power surely they are not nothing. Even if predictions are not very accurate its still better than nothing. Meteorology for example is can be not really accurate sometimes however its very serious business. Same with peoples tendencies.
morphles 1 month ago
I have this feeling about all words... is there such a thing as linguistic nihilism?
BornInAsphodelMeadow 1 month ago
When you said the word 'activity' it tickled inside.. Very nicely argued :0)
Faergen 1 month ago
I didn't find that much of what you said objectionable, but as others have pointed out, I don't really see where you're going with this. So we stop talking about human nature. Now what?
CitizenOccidens 1 month ago
@CitizenOccidens Now we have to consider other influences on human action.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
The use of discussing evolved human nature lies in understanding the motivations for certain behaviors. Take panic for instance. Perhaps it was once useful to our survival to be overcome by a singular need to run, or attack, or yell in fear. In our modern lives this clarity sucking emotion is a liability. Understanding just how out of context that feeling is can give us emotional ammunition to ignore it. In other instances our reactions might be fully in context and therefore trustworthy.
t3tsuyaguy1 1 month ago
@t3tsuyaguy1 I definitely believe that there is a biological program that underlies our experience. I just think that program always manifests itself as a culturally expressed formation.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
I read Mythologies in an English class too, and it changed my life. I applied it to EVERY class I subsequently took
4jonah 1 month ago
@4jonah Such a great book.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
Perhaps it would be better to talk about the 'inorganic' versus the 'organic'?
georgemc25 1 month ago
@georgemc25 Again, nearly everything is both. I think we can consider roughly organic and inorganic influences, but the danger is presenting the opposition as a pure binary, rather then something that always occurs in combination.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
I find tendencies are based not only on projected future actions but also a cumulation of past actions. Even when talking about tendencies that are genetically influenced, we are still basing these tendencies on a survey of past actions.
Perhaps "nature" does just refer to the innate limits set by one's genes and is fairly individualized, while also accounting for the universals thus making it a limited-range spectrum (not everything), with certain actions more frequently occurring (tendencies).
samanark 1 month ago
Exactly, if people's use of "nature" is all encompassing it renders it meaningless. It's precisely an argument I've used against theists who's "God" is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.
Furthermore, this use of "God" clearly contradicts itself logically if you're also one who believes free will exists. Making God "everything" is a clear example of theists overplaying their hand so to speak. Now it appears "nature" is heading down the same path.
Excellent video again Nick, keep them coming.
PainAddict666 1 month ago
My brain exploded... Twice!
PyreOfFate 1 month ago
Maybe the point of talking about human nature isn't normative, or explanatory. Perhaps it's just descriptive. Saying "man is a social animal" needn't tell us we OUGHT to be social, nor explain WHY we are social. Why can't it just be a fact?
SisyphusRedeemed 1 month ago
@SisyphusRedeemed Well, a fact like that is so vague and obvious it's hardly worth stating. Sure, man is a social animal. But the way in which he or she is a social animal is going to depend hugely on the sort of context in which the socializing is occurring.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
I love your long videos. the thought of your long videos entering me bring me great joy
BetterLivinThruJesus 1 month ago
@BetterLivinThruJesus I'm glad!
ContraPoints 1 month ago
As for the idea that the term 'mystifies' us, well, this is ironically the most rambling and confused argument in your video. You point out a notable problem; people tend to assume their cultural norms are biological, universal, or natural. Fair enough. But how is this the fault of the word 'natural' exactly? No, just making air quotes whenever the book uses the word 'natural' doesn't link it's ideas to yours.
This video frustrated the hell out of me.
Hooya2 1 month ago
@Hooya2 Well, the project of the book is to demystify by denaturalizing. So I think I'm arguing along similar lines.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
Do you have any idea what the symbol on the cover of that book is?
Sarahon06 1 month ago
@Sarahon06 I have no idea. I assumed it was made up.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
The term "nature" is used in the expression "nature vs nurture" largely for the alliteration.
Scientists used the term "innate traits" or "innate behaviour". So probably a better distinction would be "innate vs acquired trait(s)".
I really can't see why you are so passionate about this. If you are so concerned by the words laymen use, my advice would be don't become a scientist.
Though I do agree that the view that "nature = deterministic = shouldn't/can't change it" is bad.
Wolfau5 1 month ago
@Wolfau5 I'm passionate about it because I think that claims about human nature are often the foundation of social and political ideologies. By undermining these claims I hope I am leaving room for a more thorough and hopeful critique of "the way things are."
ContraPoints 1 month ago
@ContraPoints Fair enough.
Wolfau5 1 month ago
All of your arguments against the term 'nature' fall flat. First, it has a clear meaning in the nature v nurture debate; it means a set of biological predispositions. Who, in the context of this debate, is so confused as to mistake it for normative? As for it being 'conflated' with universal, that isn't a conflation; human nature IS universal among humans. As for the argument that predispositions are not things, and thus human nature is nothing... That is so stupid it doesn't bear rebuttal.
Hooya2 1 month ago
7:08 - 7:31
Human nature is a set of tendencies.
Tendencies are not things, they are likelihoods.
Therefore, human nature is nothing.
I find it ironic that, in a video that starts off criticizing equivocation, you ultimately equivocate being not a physical thing with being nothing.
As for normative baggage, I don't see it. I'm not deep in the nature/nurture debate, but I don't think most people confuse 'human nature' with 'what is morally perfect'.
Hooya2 1 month ago 2
@Hooya2 What I mean by "it is nothing" is that it is nothing on its own. It is nothing outside some particular context. Only when it manifests itself in some particular situation does it become something, but in doing so it opens up room for difference. It is nothing in the sense in which "redness" is nothing. There are red things. Human activity carries our evolutionary past within it. But appart from a given circumstance it is nothing.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
@ContraPoints But Tendencies are not nothing. If someone's genetic line is predesposed to, say eye-canser a doctor maybe able to advise them of certen ways to minimise the chanses of that developing. Obviusly it's not a ganantee but it can have a profound impact on your life.
While I agree that it's not the be-all-end-all I still think it counts for something.
Disthron 1 month ago
@ContraPoints Would you say morality means nothing on it's own as well since it is context dependent as well?
Like morality, I am not confused by people's constant abuse of the term nature nor do i think the term should be eliminated just because people mystify it.
RuinSonic 1 month ago
@ContraPoints "...it is nothing on its own. It is nothing outside some particular context. Only when it manifests itself in some particular situation does it become something, but in doing so it opens up room for difference."
Yeah, what you just defined is an ABSTRACTION, not nothing.
Hooya2 1 month ago
Very nice point about the use of nature.
"the common sense of a particular time and place"
never thought about nature in that way, but I can surely see how it's been used like that.
MirageScience 1 month ago
Nature sucks because everything is nature including nurture. Human's are a part of nature and we have no good reason to draw a line seperating us from it. Sure we have a bunch of strange and still unexplained possibilities but they all come out of nature. We are all systems of cells following dna.
Nature sucks whether you are using it mystically or even as if it's getting rid of mysticism because it can't explains or put light on anything that the word cosmos or world can't already do.
MirageScience 1 month ago
Hegel man? Really? REALLY?
That guy was smoking so much rock the only one who understand what he was talking about was him.
ugoodHomeBoy 1 month ago
@ugoodHomeBoy He is very difficult to understand. I couldn't do it on my own, I needed the help of a professor and various companions and external sources. But there are golden ideas in the midst of the "grotesque craggy melody," as Marx called his philosophy.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
"Nature" is, in many ways, the hypothetical of what the world would be like if there was no "nurture". Much of what human beings turn out to be are the numerous events and much more that help shape who we are. If human beings lived purely on human nature, being, the biological impulses that drive our behavior, we would be practically mindless and without self-control. Nature is the way our bodies react to the world, but nurture, being the greater influence for many, is how our minds react.
TheAlexANGST 1 month ago
@TheAlexANGST But so much of what it means to be human is to be a nurtured, cultured, language-using being. It doesn't make much sense to try to image a general form of human nature outside of any particular context.
ContraPoints 1 month ago
@ContraPoints hmm what about a human in an isolation tank?
when there's no stimuli, hallucinations happen. That is a human mind rationalizing itself outside of the context that its used to, outside what people usually call "nature" where there's constant stimuli to react to
if constant stimuli throughout human evolution shaped patterns we now call "human nature", then "human nature" is actually just a product of an organism and it's context on this planet.
this sound reasonable?
props4genu 1 month ago
@ContraPoints Something I have wondered for a long time is whether or not nurture has the capability to overcome many behaviors that are completely natural to human beings (which are natural to animals in general), such as sex drive. These natural behaviors are ones, driven by impulse, that often times cause us to go against all logic, but assuming it is possible to truly overcome it, what are the best ways to mentally prepare oneself for a challenge like that. A challenge for many
TheAlexANGST 1 month ago
@ContraPoints It seems like you are implicitly calling everything nurture. If we don't call it nature then what term shall we use? I don't believe we have a blank slate when we are born and even if we did there are things we always react to similarly to a squirrel reacting to a tree. What's the point in distinguishing things that would never be practically eliminated from any possible human society?
RuinSonic 1 month ago
Using such broad evolutionary tendencies to describe human nature is bound to contradict itself. Any attempt via evolutionary psychology to explain why humans aren't trusting of some people would almost certainly run against your example of evolved social tendencies. If the evolutionary tendencies would be refined and narrowed in order to account for these discrepancies, a myriad examples contrary to said tendencies would show up in realistic human interaction.
Trenta002 1 month ago
I don't understand why a tendency is not a thing. It sounds like tendencies is still what you're discussing in "the other direction" where nature means everything. And in a way i don't have a problem with all human behaviour being natural. It does become a useless term, at least when discussing human behaviour, but maybe it's better to realize that than use some inconsistent definition of the word.
volbla 1 month ago
Genitals and violence, ETA?
tipoomaster 1 month ago
It falls under the subject of human psychology if you want to be specific, but generally speaking, it's probably something your grandmother imparted to you as a child. My preference is to look at the world through WASP eyes, and be thankful I'm not Catholic.
JBC814 1 month ago
I'm also sure there are people today who are not as physically amused by sex than others due to mutation and biological diversity.They will not be a majority of the gene pool due to the lower fitness value of the trait. The fact that they exist does not mean that there is no natural tendency when it comes to sex,its just that the odds say that any human born will more than likely find sex enjoyable and this can be demonstrated by the numbers. Asexual people are a small minority of human pop.
jarredf30 1 month ago
To respond to your inquiry about evolutionary psychology explaining why you type Youtube comments, your acquisition of a language and learning how to use technology is due to nurture. Your capacity to have the ability to learn all of these in first place is due to nature, from an evolutionary psychology perspective. Is that what you were asking?
CompleteRationality 1 month ago
Most humans find sex fun but are unaware why they find it fun. I suppose there were humans in the past who were not amused by sexual activity but I don't think those people are our ancestors. Its pleasure to the body is a biological and natural fact and that underlies what we choose to do with sexuality,but I don't see how any cultural conditioning can make it not physically pleasurable.Think of all the babies who are"accidents" b/c mom & dad were having fun and not intending to reproduce.
jarredf30 1 month ago
You complain about a tendency not meaning anything in an actualized human being. But I think such claims are meant to provide probabilities on how humans are likely to actualize. If we can point at a gene that, when present or absence has certain behavioral consequences then it seems fair to note that those with or without that gene have a predisposition that others do not have. Now, everyone may not actualize that behavior, but the causal link would still exist.
esaul17 1 month ago
Human nature cannot explicity explain behaviors but it can explain the motives behind lots of behaviors.I doubt the peacock is aware of why he displays his tail around peahens,but his ancestors did it and it made them reproductively successful.I think most people would say that youtube activities are fun or stimulating but are unaware of why they are compelled to do so.Influencing others and trait display have reproductive benefits besides fun &entertainment.
jarredf30 1 month ago
@jarredf30 not in a human way...but in a Peacock way they know.Have you ever seen two or more tom-cats serenading a female? now..they do not conceptualize it or sentimentalize it the way human heterosexuals might do....but neither do they functionalize it(like a machine)...but..&..it always takes a while...but the timing is not consistent.Humans just have a wilder verbal-sense & wider verbal-articulation.And so the talking "about-it" & thinking-about-it" starts to set limits & reasons
tlaniganschmidt 1 month ago
@tlaniganschmidt I wasn't saying that peacocks don't have some rudimentary form of awareness or conscioussness at least.I was just saying that the physiological processes do work like a machine and these are inherited.I doubt the peahen 'knows' that the tail signals good genes,she just sees beauty and reacts accordingly. They don't know in the scientific sense and that is not needed.The mechanics are the backbone of these behaviors.However I agree with your point though.
jarredf30 3 weeks ago
Excellent video.
georgemc25 1 month ago
Genetic determinism is not what any serious evo. psychologist is advocating because humans have a comlpex brain that gives them a bit of freedom when choosing behaviors. More freedom than a rock falling at 9.8 m/s^2 under the influence of gravity,which can be demonstrated by physicists and "hard" scientists.You therefore have to speak of tendencies and statistics as a reality.The concept of nature is not meaningless just because everyone doesn't behave the same under similar circumstances.
jarredf30 1 month ago
Typing youtube comments or making videos aren't what humans evolved "to do".Evolution has no goal and we don't evolve "to do" anything.However it could be said that typing youtube comments and videos are a way to influence others in a social circle and display things like intelligence,creativity,leadership abilities etc.. which have high reproductive value for our species, especially males.Reproduction is almost more important than survival in evo. terms and is why so many die in that pursuit.
jarredf30 1 month ago
This video reminded me of when me and my girlfriend discussed the meaning of the world "natural", as a part of a discussion on anal sex.
iamnorwegian 1 month ago
What am I supposed to get out of watching this video?
Sivels 1 month ago
I hate how no one ever brings up volition in this stuff.
lovingsingleton 1 month ago
The way I think of the words "nature" and "natural" are all-inclusive. What isn't a part of nature? Thus making these words redundant. People do have a tendency to equate natural with good or better, but with little justification.
Stephen5000 1 month ago
The last thirty seconds or so echo my thinking. The word natural, under the definition I usually have in mind, covers everything, so the word is useless.
What I find to be an annoying thing about 'natural' is the assumption that natural = good. I say only annoying because when you're engaged with someone who actually wants a real conversation it's only ever a minor hurdle if it comes up at all, but with regular people (least offensive way to say it :p) it can be an insurmountable obstacle.
hooloovoo1st 1 month ago
Appeals to nature are almost always parochial just-so stories in defense of cultural prejudices. They serve to bracket off certain human traits or practices as unchanging, while labeling others as cultural or unnatural and thus changeable. Evolutionary psychologists, consciously or not, are merely being mouthpieces for the current Western socio-econ. status quo (liberal social darwinism), just as their historical forerunners were defending the prejudices and privileges of other eras.
GodlessXVIII 1 month ago
@GodlessXVIII Typically those that utter the term 'just-so stories' as a criticism of evolutionary psychology do so for political reasons and do not understand the science. It's evident that your understanding of evolutionary psychology is third-hand. I'll suggest starting with the evolutionary psychology primer written by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, available at their website. You can also try reading some of the primary material.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@DrinkThatHenny I'd cop to your point about political reasons, on the condition that you admit to your own. But I know that power-apologist junk scientists consider political biases as ghostly forms only glimpsed through their own eyes, never by others. In the future, statistical ratiocination of historical inequalities will be looked as kindly upon as divine right theologies, race and physiognomy discourses, IQ bell-curve fetishism, "clash of civilizations" opportunism, etc.
GodlessXVIII 1 month ago
For me, it's not the word that I hate, it's all the different ways people use it and their refusal to agree on a definition. People use it to mean God, they use it to mean "spirits" etc. When Katrina happened, and when that pathetic earthquake happened last year and was felt in NY, both times there were people saying that "nature" was attacking major cities for "going against nature" but of course what they really meant was "going against the God of the Bible." idiots.
shrikechan 1 month ago
about the posters...the value of Art is less secure than the signifiers of word-clusters.This is why i feel that the ART-part of life is more complexly liberating & yet confounding.Very often the stuff that we decorate our spaces with & the pictures & music that captivate our eyes & being through give somrthing ineffable yet major in this search for meaning.Have you ever read Arthur Danto,John Ruskin or GeorgeKubler?They're all different,but your sense of Synthesis is yours alone.This is good.
tlaniganschmidt 1 month ago
'Natural' sells a lot of shite... that's probably my biggest problem with it.
Other than that, I don't see a problem with having 'universalising' words (like 'Nature') that signify 'The Everything'. They can be a reminder of the limitations of words & concepts. & that can be useful in combating dogmatic thinking.
TWITfromURANUS 1 month ago
uranium is natural too.. that doesn't make it good for us
brianestoll 1 month ago
The word nature is my replacement for the word God.
MathijsMoonen 1 month ago
@MathijsMoonen That's exactly why I don't like it.
ContraPoints 1 month ago 25
@ContraPoints I don't like it either but it still fits it's purpose.
MathijsMoonen 1 month ago
@ContraPoints If the word "nature" is used to mean "the All", then it certainly can have its valid use. And using this definition, all things would indeed be natural - which is not to say that anything goes - since it is also natural to value some things over others.
KevinSolway 1 month ago
most people would not have the gutts to bring Hegel & Barthes into a fruitful eclectic commingling...because one is mostly about signifier systems(Barthes)..while the other(Hegel)is mostly about transcending signifier systems.And that brings us back to the posters of paintings on your walls.And your avoidance of getting into the flux of Art in Life.I say all this with deep respect for you as a thinker.Because your skills of synthesis are unpredictable,as is some of what you read & remark-on..
tlaniganschmidt 1 month ago
You're right. Using one word for all that is, is obviously shallow and somewhat unsophisticated. But then again, language is just a tool, and if an attempt to communicate via language, with another, fails due to semantics, we might as well discontinue trying to understand the latter and instead reflect on the way that occurrence makes us feel. Other than that - good video as always :D
SeanBrightsid3 1 month ago
I find the concept of finding a "human nature" absolutely beyond the bounds of the sciences. This is an ontological question rather than an ontic one. If by human nature you mean "what it means to be a human"
comradesteve1990 1 month ago
You're pretty amazing in yer word constructs.this is why i mention the arbitrary nature of SIGNIFIERS.arbitrary yet very important in the WEIGHT they can carry & the distance they can cover.You rarely speak of the inner-person which is wear your love of words mixes & mingles with the gleanings you gather from Roland Barthes & Hegel.To bring such different perspectives together asPHENOMENOLOGY(PHYSICALITY)of Spirit(the breath & breadth of living)with Barth's social-constructs has enormous scope.
tlaniganschmidt 1 month ago
it would be extremely interesting to hear you say this during the 12th century when everyone spoke a Latin derivative,
ThisBoyTV 1 month ago
I think you needed to bring this discussion down to earth by bringing in a few more examples of what you mean. Too many abstract nouns. ;)
simplic1000 1 month ago
@simplic1000 Yeah I mentioned Hegel and after that my ability to provide concrete examples became severely compromised.
ContraPoints 1 month ago 3
@ContraPoints Also, the commenter jarred is also gesturing in the right directions so far as even novel behavior like YouTube videos are concerned. Some of our evolved drives doubtlessly interact even with novel environmental conditions to generate similar, albeit variously different, behavioral output than what those drives are designed to have elicited in ancestral conditions.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints Mapping out those foundational adaptations, however, will 'carve nature at the joints'. In other words, mapping out the mechanisms of our mind answers the ontological question about what the fabric of the mind is like, the 'natural kinds' -- just like we take, say, the elements of the periodic table, or perhaps even gravity, to be real natural kinds in nature.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints By consulting with an anatomy textbook, one can learn how, say, an evolutionarily-novel activity like playing tennis is possible; that is, one can discover which of our evolved components are (in this case, conjointly) co-opted in the service of this novel activity. Likewise with novel forms of cognitive and behavioral activity: Typing a comment on YouTube ultimately stems from adaptations that evolved for other purposes, which can be pressed into the service of these novel tasks.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints About the point you made about evolutionary psychology in relation to typing comments on YouTube: Evolutionary psychologists do not posit that such an evolutionarily-novel activity stems from a specific adaptation or collection of adaptations forged specifically by selection to type YouTube comments. Evolutionary psychology aims to map out the evolved cognitive architecture of the mind; doing so will provide the 'Grey's Anatomy' of the human mind.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints For one thing, some robust patterns of human nature that transcend place, culture, and time really are perennially robust because the underlying 'forces' -- the 'basin of attraction(s) -- are powerfully strong, so much so that, for all intents and purposes, the grain of human nature would preclude their alteration.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints Again these are all empirical matters. It is only by mapping out the design features of various adaptations and their algorithmic structures that we can come to see how strong or weak the underlying 'forces' of our species-typical design are.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints There's at least one other key point to make about these algorithms and systems: As we are progressively discovering, many if not most have been 'programmed' by evolution to be flexibly contingent in specific ways, such that even surface level variance between people or groups obfuscate those deeper structures from which the surface level phenomena is generated.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints The nature of those programs are postulated to be function-specific (or, to put it a little more accurately, the functional-specificity of the algorithmic programs should be construed as lying on a continuum of increasing specificity, depending on the nature of the functional end that has been selected by evolution).
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints Which brings me back to evolutionary psychology, which I take to be the right method of doing this. Remember that evolutionary psychologists assert, roughly, that human nature is comprised of our reliably-developing, species-typical computational programs.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints I hasten to add that even trying to construe nature under a one-size-fits-all rubric is probably not the best strategy. As with most else in science it's better to examine matters on a case-by-case basis.
So far as human behavior goes, this means that the 'landscape' of human nature -- if I may use the metaphor -- ought to be mapped out in a careful, nuanced, empirically-delineated way.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
@ContraPoints Your partially Hegel-inspired points are interesting, but I suspect that maybe the pendulum is swinging to far to the other 'non-nature' extreme. Statistical explanations need not be impugned, so long as it's implicit or explicit that they don't imply some ineluctable end point. When it comes to the human mind, one must ultimately appeal to mechanism.
DrinkThatHenny 1 month ago
I think behavioral genetics is a better field of study than evolutionary psychology for understanding why individuals behave the way they do.
TheAntiEgalitarian 1 month ago
could you speak about the pictures on your wall(?).What do you like about them? or ..what do you get from them..This expands the conversation into intuituve & affective "realities".& if ya wanna get into the complexity of contemporary interactions,then a subject you may also find interesting(& this subject,most people never confront).That is the function of SIGNIFIERS,which are for lack of a better word,a huge part of the of human interaction.The puzzle pieces aka signifiers are always in flux.
tlaniganschmidt 1 month ago
@tlaniganschmidt Signifiers are what the book I mentioned in this video is all about. I probably could do a video about the posters, each one does say something....
ContraPoints 1 month ago 4
@ContraPoints Honestly,you have a very rare gift for eclectic sythesis.Many people parrot Barthes but never feel motivated to actually put his observations into any form of cultural-social-actual-interaction with Hegel...To be unique is both a blessing & a curse.A blessing in the deep-joy of synthesis & interaction.A curse when mediocrity seeks after easy answers...& this even happens among those who read Barthes as much as Thomas Aquinas.But this you know...because you really are searching.
tlaniganschmidt 1 month ago
@ContraPoints next time you go to class,look around & notice the signifiers(as dress codes) & how American students mystify the signifiers that they do not question.Such things as fear of "the una-brow" or just that it makes any difference whether someone has seperarted their eyebrows or not.& such expressions as "good-teeth" (a moral-dimension?)..that actually are just as much about American USA middle-class prejudices.As Barthes French Class signifiers.SignifiersSeen beginToBegin
tlaniganschmidt 1 month ago
@ContraPoints yes, please...
YenYen321 1 month ago