Hi, russ,
Thanks for that careful reading. There is no greater kindness than to take the time to read colleague’s work.
I will think carefully about what you say.
Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 3:08 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] God
Nick your article reminds of Elizabeth Culotta. She says in her Science article that anthropomorphism is a natural property of humans that contributed to the rise of religions. She quotes Oxford University psychologist Justin Barrett who argues that "Humans have a tendency to see signs of agents—minds like our own—at work in the world" and Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom who says "We have a tremendous capacity to imbue even inanimate things with beliefs, desires, emotions, and consciousness,... and this is at the core of many religious beliefs".
Elizabeth Culotta, On the Origin of Religion, Science (2009) Vol. 326, Issue 5954, 784-787
-J.
-------- Original message --------
From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>
Date: 6/28/20 10:12 (GMT+01:00)
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] God
Hi Nick - finally took a look at your paper. I didn't read it to the nth detail, but from what I understand, your scepticism about "ejective anthropmorphism" (nice term by the way) stands on two legs:
1) What exactly is priveleged about introspection?
2) That the process of ejective anthropomorphism starts from an
identity between the target behaviour and the observers behaviour,
which is structy false. The example being given of a dog scratching at
a door to get in.
In response, I would say there is plenty of privelege in
introspection. For example, proprioception is entirely priveleged -
that information is simply now available to external observers.
In terms of the identity of target and observer behaviour, it doesn't
need to be identical, but it does need to be analogical. The most
important application of this skill is prediction of what other human
beings do. People aren't the same, but they are similar - and human
society functions because we can predict to some extent what other
people are likely to do. I believe this is why self-awareness evoved
in the first place. Something similar may have evolved in dogs, which
are social pack animals. We have also evolved the ability to "put
ourselves in somebody else's skin", taking into account the obvious
external differences. So we can imagine being a dog, and wanting to
get through a door, what would we do. We know we cannot stand up, and
turn the door knob, because we don't have hands, so what would we do,
given we only have paws. Scratching behaviour does seem a likely
behaviour then. That, then is analogical.
So, I'm not exactly convinced :).
Cheers
On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 04:32:05PM -0600, [hidden email] wrote:
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