Re: Carrier: the religious meme
Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2014 5:31 pm
Aren't we super intelligent compared to ants?
Do we recognize ants as intelligent with purpose?
Do we recognize ants as intelligent with purpose?
Quality books. Great conversations.
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Sure, leaders and orators have always understood how to get the people fired up. Arguing "to the man," i.e., using emotional appeals, goes back before the Romans (that's whatad hominem was originally). Whether one finds that memes help in explaining or labeling this phenomenon is a matter of taste, I guess.Flann 5 wrote: A lot of cultural memes are fairly trivial like fashions or fads. I think when it comes to ideas and ideologies it's more complex. Advertisers use their understanding of human psychology and cultural values to mass produce commodities and sell things with an idea or even a feeling attached. Buying this product identifies you in some supposed culturally positive way for instance.
I think ideas can have powerful content which gives them a viral quality but usually because it corresponds to aspects of human psychology and realities they actually or seem to address.
Hitler was a psychologist of sorts and combined ideas with grim economic realities and pseudo explanations of causes and remedies. He understood the power of communal rallies psychologically.
Dennett thinks religions incorporate some of these communal psychological aspects and I'm sure they do.Whether something is true or not can not be determined on this kind of basis. Hitler might have been telling the truth though we know he wasn't.
The Marxist promise of freedom and emancipation for the exploited masses is a powerful idea with a viral potential though not good news for the "enemies of the people."
I think Dennett identifies certain religious ideas in this sort of way as containing inherently dangerous and harmful ideas for individuals and society.This is true in some cases I'm sure.
I think he loses the plot when he starts talking about God memes and imagining that there must be no corresponding reality.
That's naturalist philosophy.
I've often considered ants altogether mechanical. Their purpose seems mechanical as well - they are driven by nothing more than complex causal mechanisms. Their trailmaking for food gathering follows an algorithm(yup), based on pheromone strength from other ants in the area.Ants definitely behave in a purposeful way.
This is exactly why many ideas have a viral quality. The viral characteristics of ideas are due to the powerful content, to the way the content elicits emotions, strikes our nerves, resonates, etc. What is odd to note here is that truthfulness isn't necessarily a sticky characteristic. In many cases, the powerful content is truthful, in many cases it isn't. Truthfulness is a secondary quality. Primary to what makes an idea viral is how powerfully it elicits emotion. Religions are able to elicit powerful emotion through stories, rituals, songs, sanctity, community. They may not all be truthful, but they all elicit powerful emotion. They all have the viral capacity. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad(pascal's wager).Flann wrote:I think ideas can have powerful content which gives them a viral quality but usually because it corresponds to aspects of human psychology and realities they actually or seem to address.
What do you mean by robotic? That they operate mechanically? Ants certainly do, their behavior can be modeled, and their rules for behavior plugged into a computer and simulated. There are hundreds of other examples I could give that you'd agree with. How robotic is a species of spider to build the same web the same way and do the same thing when the strings vibrate? They operate according to rules no different than a robot, but the information is encoded in neurons rather than silicone.Flann wrote:We can see though degrees of intelligence and purpose in many animals. They are not robotic.
We can go a step further and say that the majority are not true. Or at least, the majority of possible propositions that embody beliefs and belief systems. This is because of mutual exclusivity. It wouldn't be a stretch to say the vast majority of possible propositions coming from religions are false. Consider the catalogue of religions in your head, starting with Finnish paganism, Atenism, Mithraism, etc, and all the way forward to Scientology to Cthulianism to 3HO to the order of Damballah to Builders of the Adytum.We couldn't honestly say that every idea,philosophy or religion is true when they say different and conflicting things.
I don't think that. I would instead prefer a naturalistic religion, such as secular buddhism. At least then, not only would we have the appeal to emotion, but also the appeal to truth.Why would you think that if religion disappeared things would improve dramatically?
I loved the idea a long time ago when I was first exposed to it. I'd have to brush up on it. Basically, it's an emergent phenomenon based on the mathematical nature of our universe.What do you make of Dennett's free floating rationales concept, Interbane?
You have a very mechanical view of things Interbane.Interbane wrote: Naturally, as animals increase in complexity, our ability to model their heuristics and metaheuristics becomes increasingly implausible. That's not to say they aren't still mechanical.
The universe is mechanical, even when it is so complex that it is difficult to see how.You have a very mechanical view of things Interbane.
This isn't true, and I am completely reductionistic. Our personhood is the same in my worldview as it is in yours, but there is nothing supernatural behind the scenes. We are more than the sum of our parts, we are also the pattern that the parts form when put together. The information, if you will.If you were to be completely reductionistic you would have to say there is no such thing as a person.
This is where our understanding differs on a fundamental level. I've said before that certainty is foolish. That knowledge is difficult to justify. That every person on Earth has many false beliefs. We don't "need" to find an explanation for origins. We desperately want one, to the core of our beings. But we don't need one. It is this desperate want that influences us to create answers and accept false beliefs. The true nature of the universe reveals itself on the quantum level to be ridiculous. We live in a ridiculous universe, and saying that something doesn't make sense is not a valid counter-argument.As far as religion goes you still have to find an explanation for origins.To say the universe or a multiverse eternally existed makes little real sense.
Of course. Different pups and kittens have had different nutrition levels, blood flow levels, hydrostatic pressures, etc, that all lead to differences in their development, both physiological and mental, and this is before they even leave the womb. This is true even of identical twins. It's the butterfly effect applied to biology. The smallest difference in fetal nutrition leads to large developmental differences even when the genetic code is identical.Different pups or kittens in a litter have different personalities and temperaments. Animals intelligently adapt to different circumstances and situations.
This is your view Interbane.Interbane wrote:We've had this debate already, where you went through every possible justification for Christianity, and not a single one passes muster. Your entire worldview is built on heuristics(suggestions or hints), which when critically examined are shown to be fallacious.