Hi Interbane, I feel almost like I am becoming a Richard Dawkins expert, what with now reading The Extended Phenotype as well. Although I don’t know if it has been studied, I’m wondering about the evolution of dopamine as an example of group selection, as a response to the adaptivity of group level goals. Which ever tribal group had the best genes for operating as a group (ie strategic goals as neural adaptation) would have prospered, so there is a form of group selection inherent in rationality.
Interbane wrote:My problem with the distinction between what is real and what is merely for our understanding is that I haven't yet encountered a criterion for demarcation between nonphysical things. Focusing on the physical aspect of it all is like limiting yourself to spatial dimensions. Finding a framework that integrates time is essential. There are some things we can point to as real in time, such as causality and motion. However, I'm sure there is much more. For example, arbitrary 'rules' can be said to be real if whatever framework we use includes a good understanding of the human brain in order to link a 'rule' to a process. It may sound silly at first, but I think some criterion of demarcation is necessary. There should be an anchor to the spatio-temporal.
You are blurring the distinction between a thing and a concept. You describe causality and motion as things, but would you call love and justice things? In my opinion, the criterion of demarcation you are looking for is how nonphysical things relate to time. There are three classes of nonphysical concepts, the logical, the physical and the ethical, each of which have their own form of eternity.
Here is a short chapter from my essay that I have been discussing with Camacho
1. A way of bringing these divergent approaches to time within a common framework is to look at the differing meanings of eternity demarcated by the criterion of time. Three different meanings of eternity are illustrated by the three disciplines of logic, physics and ethics studied in Plato’s Academy. Considered together, these disciplines cast light on how the scientific and historical paradigms address the meaning of time.
2. The first meaning of eternity is illustrated by logic. To say the theorems of logic are eternal means they are outside time, in the sense of principles which are neither dependent on matter nor subject to change. Mathematical theorems are eternal in this sense - pure logical relations, such as pi, the constant ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle, are independent of time, matter and knowledge. Traditional theology claims that God’s eternity is similarly independent of time and beyond the changing universe.
3. It is hard to understand how a God who is outside time can appear in history. The answer derives from a second meaning for eternity, that of perpetual endurance within time or lasting forever. The laws of physics exemplify this second meaning of eternity. Scientific laws, such as the laws of gravity and entropy, last forever and do not change, they apply absolutely to the totality of reality, and their truth is independent of human understanding of them. The laws of physics have a different temporal basis from those of pure mathematics in that they only describe the behaviour of matter. For this reason the laws of physics, unlike the theorems of logic, exist only within time and have no meaning separately from time. Through such laws, God as eternal truth within time brings every moment of time together into the immortal unity of the whole.
4. A third meaning of eternity applies to unchanging ethical values such as love, faith and justice, which are thought of as universal and enduring forever. The ontological status of pure ethical ideals differs from that of the laws of physics and logic, in that ethical ideals are meaningful only in relation to human life and spiritual truth, and have no existence independently of human life. The timeless ideals of love and justice only become meaningful in application to human circumstances.
5. The three meanings of eternity established respectively by logic, physics and ethics view eternity as outside time, lasting forever within time, and encapsulating a timeless spiritual truth. These approaches meet the requirement imposed by the principle of the unity of truth that ideas must make sense within the eternal stream of time of the universe, pointing to ontological structures that define the nature of time and the relation between humanity and eternity. The essential demarcation provided by time is between unchanging eternal truths, including the laws of logic, physics and ethics, and the changing temporal realm of historical facts. This model makes time a uniting factor for systematic thought, as the relation of ideas to time is considered an essential criterion for defining their status.
6. A rigorous approach to the meaning of time and eternity enables time to be used as both a unifying criterion to categorise reality and a critical prism to assess ideas and critique false beliefs. The sort of spirit in which I am trying to use time is similar, at least in its goals, to the way the message of God is presented in the prophets of the Bible as “like a refiner’s fire”, discarding the dross and trying to retain the pure truth. For illustration, time can be used as a logical tool to evaluate central ideas of traditional Christianity, such as the traditional idea of personal salvation expressed in the belief in an afterlife in heaven. The idea of continued individual life after death in a mythical heaven touches deeply felt hopes, but heaven, as traditionally conceived, is entirely separate from the stream of time observed by science, so science has the greatest difficulty in seeing the idea of an afterlife in heaven or hell as more than a primitive myth based on the pre-scientific flat earth model. From the scientific perspective, heaven looks more like a comforting story people have invented to cope through hope than a meaningful idea of salvation. Leaving aside questions which are unprovable, the principle of the unity of truth requires that religious ideas such as heaven and hell should be assessable against scientific criteria. In making such assessment, it is important to note that criticism of simple literal interpretation of myth can be a part of looking for deeper underlying meaning.