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Evolution and Rationality: simple thoughts for future investigation

Much attention has been paid of late to the place of the conscious mind within evolutionary history. Few serious scientists or philosophers question the emergence of consciousness as a property of the human brain from less complex properties of animal minds. A biological theory of the mind-brain has definite implications as to the limits of human cognition, and exploration of these limits are often more enlightening than revelation of the mechanisms themselves. One of the properties of the human mind which stands out in this evolutionary development is that of rationality itself. Simplistic explorations of evolved rationality view it from the perspective of natural selection. Without doubt, there is a selective role to be played in the weighing of reasons, rational prediction, and the resulting evolutionary effects of improvements in reasoned action. Such a capability would certainly confer an advantage, as those possessing this ability would be able to simulate options for action and ...
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Paradoxes of Identity: Nothin but Curtains and Mirrors

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Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece, Mother Night , has quickly ascended to the top of my list of recommended literature. He has created a fascinating study of human identity set in the ultra-violent world of Nazi Germany. The complex character of an ostensible American spy, Howard Campbell, spins out his existence as simple and as reactive to his environment as can be envisioned; it seems that at every turn, Campbell needs a nudge in some direction to aid his decision to act. And yet, even in his simplicity, the intricacy of human creation in art and society, as in personal identity is revealed as it must be: an act, which we are forever at pains to decipher in others, and which even in ourselves often have difficulty explaining. The characters weave in and out of their espionage existence, never quite knowing who they are, or whence come their actions. This is skillfully done in language that recalls the image of a mirror reflecting itself on to infinity. Such absurd notions of humanity...
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What Are They Smoking?

'One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ” ' " The Iran Plans ," Seymour M. Hersh's article in the April 17 New Yorker, is a frightening account of the increasingly unstable conditions surrounding Iran's development of nuclear capabilities and this administration's blind approach to address it. Though most estimates put Iran 5-10 years from developing a nuclear weapon, Ahmadinejad, in an act of obvious defiance, announced last week that Iranian scientists have completed the nuclear fuel cycle, allowing for the creation of nuclear energy (see Iran Declares Key Nuclear Advance ). The possibility of the development of n...
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Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

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Recently, I've been reading a great deal of the work of Daniel C. Dennet. He is a cognitive scientists at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and an adamnantly avowed atheist. His most recent book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon , is a must read for anyone interested in religious culture and the development of the immensely complex social network in which our species finds itself today. In that book and many of his more recent publications, Dennett makes a strong argument for the close reexaminaton of the status accorded religion in our society. While he makes no apologies for his anti-religious stance, he does make attempts to appeal even to a more religious readership. This requires a delicacy necessary to his intended effect. By criticising religious organization from a scientific and darwinian perspective, Dennet makes a strong case that religious belief is significantly an outdated cultural development that has managed to perpetuate itse...
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Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting

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I've been reading Dan Dennett's Elbow Room, The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting for the last week or so, and I have very mixed feelings. While he takes some very interesting approaches has some excellent points to be made regarding various deterministic (and nondeterministic) perspectives on the problem of free will, it seems to me he still hasnt quite situated himself outside of the problem of universal causation. It would seem that Dennett, within his theory of evolution and free-floating rationales, views Free Will, at least in some minimal sense as having a real ontological existence. As mother nature has formed creatures able to respond to the environment in ways which take into account, through predictive behavior, at least some possibility of alternate futures, Dennett views these deliberative behaviors as unique in the causal nexus. These representations of alternate futures which may never come into being (here Dennett has an excellent description of the future ...
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