Evolution Says: Truth is Success

[coberst]

Evolution Says: Truth is Success

 

It appears to me that Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection informs us that success is truth. Extinction follows specie’s failure to adapt to its environment. Adapting successfully to the environment leads to a long life.

 

I graduated with an engineering degree in 1959. The first ten years of my career was directed at being a designer of electronic systems. One thing the design experience impressed upon me is that truth was all.

 

In other words when an engineer thinks that truth is X and X turns out to be non-truth the results invariable, sooner or later, jumps up and bites the engineer in the fanny. The minute that the engineer discovers the error in conceiving the truth that engineer begins the redesign. For the engineer truth is all.

 

Later in my career I moved into the selling end of the business. I sold stuff to other engineers and I discovered that the selling business has a different metric for success.

 

When dealing strictly with the world of objects wherein truth equals success I discovered that there are no shortcuts to success. When the sales person discovers that the sale is not being made the sales person looks for another selling approach. In the selling business the sale is all and success equals truth.

 

When dealing with objects truth is success and when dealing with people success is truth.

 

But I also discovered that success as truth is often only when the time parameter is short; in the long term truth is really success. I quickly learned that in the short run one can ignore truth but in the long run truth will out.

 

One great weakness of a democratic form of government is that in the short haul it works well but in the long haul it can and often does lead to disaster. The reason for this is that the culture trains people for the short view while ignoring the long view.

 

I conclude that it is worth while to think of reality, i.e. truth in this situation, as being like an onion. The linguistic metaphor might be ‘reality is onion’.

 

One can peel away layers of reality much like that of an onion. All of us live most of our life with our thoughts focused upon the skin of reality. “Seeing is believing”. From our animal nature visual perception is reality; most of us seldom go beyond that view of reality.

 

Most of us live most of our life much as primitive humans lived their lives. To primitive humans each thing that they face tells them what they, the thing, means and what is to be done with that thing. The apple says “eat me”, the babbling brook says “drink me”, The lightening and thunder says “fear me”.

 

Education is an attempt to peel away the layers of reality so that we may focus on deeper and more complicated reality. However our culture is primarily focused on making us all better producers and consumers. Production and consumption is king in a culture of consumers.

 

Darwin teaches us that sooner or later truth jumps up and bites a species in the fanny. That species that cannot adapt to a changing environment will become extinct. We had better start peeling that onion as fast as possible. The peeling process is, in my judgment, self-actualizing self-learning.

 

Do you think that ‘reality is onion’ is a useful linguistic metaphor?

[maikeru]

Evolution Says: Truth is Success

 

It appears to me that Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection informs us that success is truth. Extinction follows specie’s failure to adapt to its environment. Adapting successfully to the environment leads to a long life.

 

I suspect you might be reading a little too much into evolution. In a nutshell, evolution is a process by which an organism or species can change and adapt to ultimately survive and reproduce, not truth, unless truth increases survival and reproduction. It can also be defined as a change in the frequency and composition of alleles or genes in a population over generations. (Or I like the Dawkins' definition: survival + reproduction = more selfish genes!) Just stick to survival and reproduction, and evolution makes a lot more sense. Trust me.

 

To me, truth is somewhere out there, right here, and in between our senses and perception of reality. And truth, conveniently enough, seems to have a variable and evolving definition for most people, for particular times, situations, and needs.

[Buffy]

I'd go farther than maikeru: I'd say evolution is often the source of falsehood, inefficiency, sloth, and many other horrible things.

 

What's successful today is not successful tomorrow and vice versa. There is no "better" except in the context of "conditions now."

 

Its not so much an onion as it is a "hundred year-old egg" or maybe a soufflé.

 

Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder, :smilingsun:

Buffy

[coberst]

Maikeru

 

I have studied philosophy and I have studied SGCS and I have accepted “truth” as defined by SGCS, which claims that “We understand a statement as being true in a given situation when our understanding of the statement fits our understanding of the situation closely enough for our purposes.” I would modify this statement to replace the word understand with the word comprehend, but won’t go into that here and now.

 

This statement says essentially that truth is dependent upon understanding. I must determine the truth of a statement based upon how I understand the statement and how I understand the situation.

 

I would say that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is ‘that organisms are subjected to random mutations in their DNA and that as a result individuals within the species are modified; species survive if these modifications give to the species a sufficient means for survival within their environment’.

 

What then is the relationship of truth to reality? I would say that reality is a category of truth. Reality is truth but there are other things that may be true but have nothing to do with reality. In this discussion reality is what I understand to be true regarding Darwin’s theory.

 

I think that the vast majority of people agree with you and with the objectivist claim for reality as “truth is somewhere out there”

 

The Objectivist Claim: “The world comes structured in a way that is objective—independent of any minds. The world as objectively structured includes objects, properties of those objects, relations holding among those objects, and categories of those objects, properties and relation.”

 

The objectivist claim takes for granted that “Conventional expressions in a language designate aspects of an objective, mind-free reality. Therefore, a statement must objectively be either true or false, depending on whether the objective world accords with the statement.”

 

SGCS claims that the Objectivist Claim is fallacious because it does not recognize “that truth and falsity are relative to conceptual frameworks…Thus it fails to recognize that a statement can be meaningful only relative to its defining framework, and it can be true or false only relative to the way we understand reality given that framework.”

 

Cognitive science has introduced a new way of viewing the world and our self by declaring a new paradigm which I call the embodied mind. The primary focus is upon the fact that there is no mind/body duality but that there is indeed an integrated mind and body. The mind and body are as integrated as is the heart and the body.

 

The human thought process is dominated by the characteristic of our integrated body. The sensorimotor neural network is an integral part of our mind. The neural network that makes movement and perception possible is the same network that processes our thinking.

 

The unconscious categories that guide our human response to the world are constructed in the same way as are the categories that make it possible of other animals to survive in the world. We form categories both consciously and unconsciously.

 

Why do we feel that both our consciously created and unconsciously created categories fit the world?

 

Our consciously formed concepts fit the world, more or less, because we consciously examine the world with our senses and our reason and classify that world into these concepts we call categories.

 

Our unconsciously formed categories are a different matter. Our unconsciously formed categories fit our world because these basic-level categories “have evolved to form at least one important class of categories that optimally fit our bodily experiences of entities and certain extremely important differences in the natural environment”.

 

Our perceptual system has little difficulty distinguishing between dogs and cows or rats and squirrels. Investigation of this matter makes clear that we distinguish most readily those folk versions of biological genera, i.e. those “that have evolved significantly distinct shapes so as to take advantage of different features of their environment.”

 

If we move down to subordinate levels of the biological hierarchy we find the distinguishing ability deteriorates quickly. It is more difficult to distinguish one species of elephant from another than from distinguishing an elephant from a buffalo. It is easy to distinguish a boat from a car but more difficult distinguishing one type of car from another.

 

“Consider the categories chair and car which are in the middle of the category hierarchies furniture—chair—rocking chair and vehicle—car—sports car. In the mid-1970s, Brent Berlin, Eleanor Rosch, Carolyn Mervis, and their coworkers discovered that such mid-level categories are cogently “basic”—i.e. they have a kind of cognitive priority, as contrasted with “superordinate” categories like furniture and vehicle and with “subordinate” categories like rocking chair and sports car” (Berlin et al 1974 “Principles of Tzeltal Plant Classification”; Mervis and Rosch 1981 Categorization of Natural Objects, “Annual Review of Psychology” 32: 89-115))

 

The differences between basic-level and non basic-level categories is based upon bodily characteristics. The basic-level categories are dependent upon gestalt perception, sensorimotor programs, and mental images. “Because of this, classical metaphysical realism cannot be true, since the properties of categories are mediated by the body rather than determined directly by a mind-independent reality”

 

In humans basic level categories are developed primarily based upon our bodily configuration and its interrelationship with the environment. For other animals almost all, if not all, categories are basic-level categories.

[Eclogite]

I would say that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is ‘that organisms are subjected to random mutations in their DNA and that as a result individuals within the species are modified; species survive if these modifications give to the species a sufficient means for survival within their environment’. .

I grant you that this is the Philosophy section, not Biology, but I think some measure of accuracy is appropriate: Darwin had absolutely nothing to say about mutation or DNA.

 

As to your general point I find myself completely confused by your logic. You say Darwin showed us that success is truth, but Darwin also showed that death, failure to reproduce and extinction are also truth. These are all equally true. So your statement is incomplete and in its complete form is meaningless statement that things simply are. What am I missing?

[coberst]

I grant you that this is the Philosophy section, not Biology, but I think some measure of accuracy is appropriate: Darwin had absolutely nothing to say about mutation or DNA.

 

As to your general point I find myself completely confused by your logic. You say Darwin showed us that success is truth, but Darwin also showed that death, failure to reproduce and extinction are also truth. These are all equally true. So your statement is incomplete and in its complete form is meaningless statement that things simply are. What am I missing?

 

 

Darwin's theory defines success as survival, which will happen when the DNA mutations do not disrupt the characteristic of the species so extensively as to cause the species to die off.

[Thunderbird]

Do you think that ‘reality is onion’ is a useful linguistic metaphor

 

Yes I do, I try to look at life not only though the lens of Darwinian models, a development which is a linear step by step from the past, but attempt to reconstruct my view to a non-linear layered model that exists in real time and expresses itself as a creative force in a single life time.

 

In society the core of the onion is the collective unconscious expressed in myth, art and literature.

 

In the individual mind of man the creative core is the unconscious. welling up and expresses itself in our dreams.

 

In the realm of biology this creative core is the DNA strand. expressed as our physical bodies.

 

In the physical world of the particle the creative core exist at the level of the quantum world of pure probabilities.

 

This real time view of spheres within spheres one embedded within another.

The quantum world of probabilities- O

DNA expressed as our physical bodies,- O

unconscious mind of a man- O

The collective unconscious of man- O

This present structure stands as an historical record of that development. When a man can successfully align all these centers from the world within himself to the world at large a synchronicity of spheres can sometimes manifest a welling up of inexplicable creative energies.

This is the attainment of the "Grail challis", The cup of life, that is expressed as a metaphor in Arthurian myth, but is merely a symbol of personal attainment of self actualization.

An ability to act as conduit of creativity.

Self then becomes greater than the sum total parts of these centers, just as a song is greater than the sum of the notes in a musical score.

 

 

The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

 

The earth turned to bring us closer,

it spun on itself and within us,

and finally joined us together in this dream

as written in the Symposium.

Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;

time passed in minutes and millennia.

An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh

arrived in Nebraska.

A rooster was singing some distance from the world,

in one of the thousand pre–lives of our fathers.

The earth was spinning with its music

carrying us on board;

it didn't stop turning a single moment

as if so much love, so much that's miraculous

was only an adagio written long ago

in the Symposium’s score.

 

-Eugenio Montejo

[Eclogite]

Darwin's theory defines success as survival,

No it doesn't. If you believe it does please cite where Darwin so defines it. When speaking of success Darwin was speaking of reproductive success and this was the capability of one organism to produce more offspring than its rivals.

which will happen when the DNA mutations do not disrupt the characteristic of the species so extensively as to cause the species to die off.

1. Is your general thesis about Darwin's theory of evolution, in which case all talk of DNA and mutations is irrelevant, or is it about the Modern Synthesis, in which case it might be helpful if you referred to it as that.

In casual conversation I agree that it would be nitpicking to expect a distinction between the two to be made, however you are making a quite complex argument based upon detail of the theory: it would help to understand your argument if we knew which theory.

2. These are not the only circumstances in which survival will occur.

[coberst]

 

In the individual mind of man the creative core is the unconscious. welling up and expresses itself in our dreams.

 

An ability to act as conduit of creativity.

Self then becomes greater than the sum total parts of these centers, just as a song is greater than the sum of the notes in a musical score.

 

 

 

I am inclined to think of the imagination as being the core of creativity rather than the unconscious. However, the unconscious represents better than 95% of all thinking, this is what I am informed of by Second Generation Cognitive Science, and thus must be part of anything that we do.

[Thunderbird]

I am inclined to think of the imagination as being the core of creativity rather than the unconscious. However, the unconscious represents better than 95% of all thinking, this is what I am informed of by Second Generation Cognitive Science, and thus must be part of anything that we do.

Doing without thinking is how I define the unconscious this allows for the process of creative imagining. As an artist this how I explain it. Then the Subconscious would be the source?

[coberst]

Doing without thinking is how I define the unconscious this allows for the process of creative imagining. As an artist this how I explain it. Then the Subconscious would be the source?

 

I have been studying about the conscious and the unconscious aspect of creatures for many months. In matters of human consciousness this effort has consisted of the study of psychology and cognitive science. In all of my studies of these two domains of knowledge I have never seen the word "subconscious" being used.

[Thunderbird]

I have been studying about the conscious and the unconscious aspect of creatures for many months. In matters of human consciousness this effort has consisted of the study of psychology and cognitive science. In all of my studies of these two domains of knowledge I have never seen the word "subconscious" being used.

The subconscious mind represents the fullest potential of the psyche to create. We tap this intuitive realm automatically by abandoning our self referencing conscious mind.

 

Unconscious impulses and actions represents the hypnotized part of the psyche .

 

The subconscious mind assembles information in a nonlinear way, resulting in inspiration , accompanied by a feeling.

 

This is not a creation of the linear reason of the thinking mind. From a hindsight point of view of reason,… It is separate source from conscious awareness, these actions where not processed though a prior line of repetitive habit of the unconscious, since the unconscious is not a creative source, but merely a follower of a plan of reason or an impulse coming from the subconscious. The outcome of the action can be then assessed by the conscious reason as something beyond its capacity. Reason then ask, as reason does, where did this creative ability come from ? ………… The subconscious