God and the human mind

Difficult Questions. Thoughtful Answers. | RZIM
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Mars Hill Network – Hope in the Journey
this morning,speaking on the philosopher Kant in the context of a debate on abortion between Gore and Quayle given in the past in Atlanta.Ravi wanted to "warn" believers that Kant had isolated faith from rationality and correctly portrayed the some philosophical history as to the use put by Kantian's of Kant sympathizers who dissed religion on the base of reason. Ravi's "talk" however could confuse a mind, trying to think God's thoughts "after" HIM because Ravi did not distinguish rationality IN understanding from rationality in a judgement. Kant made that distinction. Ravi wanted to logically help out D. Quale however and interms of oration the point Ravi made gets through to his audience. The "warning" however does not work for my own experience with "faith" and "grace". There is NO politics ABOUT or involved in that, for that was Gore's mistake, not RVs.There IS an error in Ravi's thinking if this presentation was supposed to speak for any oration he might give. That is not fair to Ravi but taken as was, it is.There does seem to be a mistake in evolutionistic discussion however that makes the same error on lack of distinguishing rational judgement, rational understanding and reason. Even as a teenager I noticed the difference. I was trying to measure the snout-vent-lengths of salamanders and I used a straight edge ruler to get a measurement. I thought to myself, "what does the slimy thing care that a put a hard straight thing next to it's curvy body, it probably doesnt care if I had used a French Curve with marks on it instead". My rational judgement wanted to measure the the thing with a curve but my rational understanding prevented me from doing so.When any two biological specialists get together it is clear that some of them make judgments on one kind of critter parts and another specialist on something entirely different (mosquito beaks' longest spike vs leek internode lengths for instance) but they can have the same rational understanding that evolution exists. Evos often try to convert their rational understanding into a rational judgement but it is much easier to perform a personal rational judgment than to communicate a more or less consensus rational understanding.My own approach to voiding the possible construct that Ravi might have miscommunicated this morning (I was not mislead) attempts to expand the possiblities for evolutionary change understanding (not that evoluion MUST so operate (I do not "defend" evolutionary theory)) so that one can clearly distinguish when rationality is applied in the understanding or the judgment.Here are four categories of thought that I include under this thought.A
Niche Construction, Premeditation, and the Use of Economic Analogies
B
Concomitant alterations in Macroeconomics if biomass productivity out competes agriculture
C
Relations to Natural Selection via natural products, distingishing baramins and irreducible complexity on Purpose.D
How the ecological momement impacts Biotechnology or can human population increases evolutionarily divert from the Keynsian “circular flow”.Rather than deal with this four-fold division Ravi related it all to an incident in modern politics. Perhaps I noticed this because it was created sometime ago. Not even Schummer made the proper thought when questioning Roberts recently.As a tease about what I am thinking in this regards where the judgement but not the understanding is involved, one might see from this:

quote:

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Concomitant alterations in Macroeconomics if biomass productivity out competes agriculture

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B.

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"The history of concepts of God should yield a pretty interesting human ecological history. And it suggests something more: if it is indeed the case, as I firmly believe it is, that this mounting loss of species and the accompanying topsoil loss and lack of adequate supplies of fresh water constitute some of the direst threats facing humanity right now, practioners of the world’s religions, many of whom are already aware of the environmental threats to their own lands, can potentially stand as the greatest source of good for the planet. Here, then, is a true millennial issue: a set of environmental problems besetting humanity at the year 2000, but a problem in which science and religion, instead of being enemies, stand a good chance of working together within the larger body politic to effect some truly positive measures. And though I plan to explore this positive side of the interaction between science and religion in book length form elsewhere, I cannot resist ending this present anticreationist tract with a preliminary exploration of these themes, which I do in the final chapter."

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Eldredge. The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism

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"The kernel of this idea may be found in Von Thunen’s explanation of differences in farming methods in Europe in his classic economic analysis of the interrelationships of agricultural method and location (1826-1966). The economic elements of the analysis, along with a wealth of supporting data for the peasant economy of Russia, are given quite explicitly by Chayanov(1925-66). The hypothesis was used requently by Gourou(1966) in his geographic analysis of primitive agriculture in Europe from 500 to 1850, and probably by other writers of whom I am not aware. It was Boserup’s contribution, however, to have developed the idea at length. She applied it to the long course of pre-industrial and is most responsible for the idea getting some attention. Clark also has developed this idea broadly, and promulgated it (1967;1969)."

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Simon p159 The Economics of Population Growth

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The Earth’s carrying capacity and the environment’s carrying capacity are not necessarily the same things.

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Waddington,
“THE NECESSITY TO CONSIDER MORE THAN ONE ENVIRONMENT The strict Neo-Darwinist paradigm is unsatisfactory in another respect, namely, that it involves only one uniform environment, through which natural selection is exerted in a form which requires specification by one single coefficient for each type of biological entity. Again, as with the omission of the phenotype, there are several different objections to this - though perhaps they should be regarded as different aspects of a basic general objection.
To put the matter abstractly first: There are only two sources of evolutionary change; alterations in the environment, or alterations in genes. A paradigm in terms of a single uniform environment implies either attainment of an equilibrium, or evolutionary changes brought about by the appearance of new genes. But the latter is a very weak prop to rely on, since it is normally held that all possible mutations are constantly occurring at definite frequencies. One could perhaps escape this dilemma by appealing to rare mutational events involving large-scale restructuring of the genotype (additions, deletions, inversions,etc.) or rare incorporation of large masses of genetic information by processes such as iintrogressive hybridization, incorporation of episomes,etc., but this would be an uncomfortable basis for a general theory of evolution.
On a more pragmatic level, one may ask whether the concept of a single uniform environment is ever even conceivably applicapable to the real world, which appears inescapably heterogenous. And if it is not, it should be remembered that evolution provides mechanisms by which any initial inhomogenity will become either exaggerated in kind or increased in the number of sub-regimes. For instance, if we start with a total universe containing two environmental remigmes(niches) A and B, each dominated by a biological species A’ or B’, then it will always be possible for some evolutionary descendeant of one or the oter of these species to delimit as its one niche some appropriate function of the previously existing entities, F(A,B,A’,B’); indeed, there is an infinite set of such functions to be used this way. This is the general explanation for one of the features of evolution which seems to prove most puzzling to physical scientists, who ask why such an enormious variety of different types should have been produced, although the existence of primitive organisms such as bacteria, at the present day, proves that they are functionally quite “fit” enough to survive. The point is that their mere presence opens the possibility that something will evolve to exploit them, e.g., as a consumer of them. The utilization, as an environmental niche, of a function of pre-existing speices and niches F(A,B,A’,B’) will not always demand a biological organization more complex than that of A’ and B’; a mere parasite on A’ may be much less complex or highly evolved than its host. But in general terms one may expect that, among the whole array of functions F which are potentially utlizable, some will actually be used which do require the elaboration of more complex reaction and control systems than any involved in the entities of which the function is composed. We should thus expect to find, not that the evolution of living systems exhibits any universal program of “progressive change” (in the sense of increase in complexity or the like), but that there would be a tendency for the highest degree of complexity reached to increase gradually as the process continues. If the primitive biological world was populated only with bacteria, say, it is, for the reasons just given, difficult to imagine it remaining with no more complex organisms appearing within it, even if the combinatorial possibilities of the genes in the bacteria were sufficient to keep a process of evolutionary change on the move at the bacterial level from those times to the present.”

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p40-41 in Poulation Biology and Evolution ed. By Richard Lewontin.

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A MesoEvolutionary refinement of the population-push/Invention-pull demographic from applied microevolution to increases in local biomass productivities have come about by (1) exogenous changes in the technical coefficient Af and (2) shifts in practice among already known via two ways population growth unlike Malthus(

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“Since Malthus, the established theory of demographic-economic history has been what will be called the “invention-pull” hypothesis in this chapter. It suggests that from time to time inventions appear, independently of population growth, which increase productive capacity and provide subsistence to more people. Population then increases to use this new capacity until all the productive potential has been exhausted. According the Malthusian hypothesis, then, the history of population growth is only the reflection of the history of autonomous invention.”p159

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The economics of population growthJUlian Simon Princeton Unive Press 1977

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may affect production.

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“The argument can also be phrased another way: Any invention increases the choices available to the farmer. But inventions can be of two sorts” (1) Compared to the technology in use at present, the invention may produce the same output with the same amount of land and with less labor (a better calendar is an example); or (2) Though the invention will not produce more output with the same labor and land than the presently used alternative technology, at higher rates of output that would be necessary at a higher population density the invention will produce more output than the alternative method with given amounts of labor and land (an example is multiple cropping when shifiting agriculture is being practiced and were output is still plentiful). An invention must do one or the other, or it is not useful (capital requirements aside)."Simon opcit

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The difference between creation and evolution purely continue this mutual exclusivity but in terms of the human population it need not be practically so for any given century. Currently the difficulty is not in the comparison of inventivenesses as there is little but rather not yet the issue of population growth leading to new adoptions of inventions but rather conflicts in pedagogy on how teaching is more effective apriori AFTER scientific knowledge is gained. Some like Herbart insist that Kant was mistaken and that this is never possible, that the increasing number of students has nothing to do with the creation of “new” knowledge since it clearly is not sufficient since the knowledge is passed most often horizontally(by copy) and not vertically as in our genes and from master to pupil

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quote:

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“Apperception may be roughly defined at first as the process of acquiring new ideas by the aid of old ideas already in mind. It makes the acquisition of new knowledge easier and quicker. Not that there is any easy road to learning, but there is a natural process which greatly accelerates the progress of acquisition, just as it is better to follow a highway over a rough country than to betake one’s self to the stumps and brush.”p176

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p184”In apperception we never pass from the known to things which are entirely new. Absolutely new knowledge is gained by perception or intuition. When an older person meets with something totally new, he either does not notice it or it staggers him. Apperception does not take place . .Since the old ideas have so much to do with proper reception of the new, let us examine more closely the interaction of the two. If a new idea drops into the mind, like a stone upon the surface of the water it produces a commotion. It acts as a stimulus or wakener to the old ideas sleeping beneath the surface. It draws them up above the surface level; that is, into consciousness. But what ideas are thus disturbed? There are thousands of these latent ideas, embryonic thoughts, beneath the surface. Those which possess sufficient kinship to this newcomer to hear his call, respond. For in the mind “birds of a feather flock together.” Ideas and thought which resemble the new one answer, the others sleep on undisturbed. Or, to state it differently, certain thought-groups or complexes, which contain elements kindred to the new notion, are agitated and rasied into conscious thought.”

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P216”Herbart was an empirical psychologist, and believed that the mind grows with what it feeds upon; that is, that it develops its powers slowly by experience. We are dependent not only upon our habits, upon the established trends of mental action produced by exercise and discipline, but also upon our acquired ideas, upon the thought materials stored up and organized by the mind. These thought-materials seem to posses a kind of vitality, an energy, an attractive or repulsive power. When ideas once gain real significance in the mind, they become active agents. They are not blocks with which the mind builds. They are a part of the mind itself. The conscious ego itself is a product of experience. In thus referring all mental action and growth to experience, in the narrow limits he draws for the original power of the mind, Herbart stands opposed to the older and to many more recent psychologists. He has been called the father of empirical psychology.

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Kant , with many other psychologists, gives greater prominence to the original powers of the mind, to the innate ideas, by means of which it receives and works over the crude materials furnished by the senses. The difference between Kant and Herbart in interpreting the process of apperception is an index of a radical difference in their pedagogical standpoints. With Kant, apperception is the assimilation of the raw materials of knowledge through the fundamental categories of thought (quality, quantity, relation, modality, etc.) Kant’s categories of thought are original properties of the mind; they receive the crude materials of sense-perception and vie them form and meaning. With Herbart, the ideas gained through experience are the apperceiving power in interpreting new things. Practically the difference between Kant and Herbart is important. For Kant gives controlling influence to innate ideas in the process of acquisition. Our capacity for learning depends not so much upon the results of experience and thought stored in the mind, as upon original powers, unaided and unsupported by experience. With Herbart, on the contrary, great stress is laid up the acquired fund of empirical knowledge as a means of increasing one’s stores, or more rapidly receiving and assimilating new ideas.”

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p216-7 1893 The Elements of General Method Based On The Principles of Herbart by CAMcMurray 1901 Bloomington ILL.

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Simonopcit”Since Malthus, the established theory of demographic-economic history has been what will be called the “invention-pull” hypothesis . It suggests that form . The first aim of this chapter is to explicate the invention-pull and population push hypotheses and the economic mechanisms that presumably underlie them, to aid in the examination of claims to explain economic-demographic history. The most important finding is that the apparentconflict between hypotheses is illusory. The conflict results from failure to distinguish between the types of inventions to which each of the two hypotheses does and does not apply."

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MY BSM typification in ecosytem engineering below:
TYPE 1= use existing technology of right of water to flow with water mill increasing biological population growth on the same land.
TYPE2 =Migrations abducted from type1 processes already happening created ecological torque such that if applied microevolution knowledge is used can shunt locomotions and causal dispersals (given a suitable theory of evolution) into unused lands BY balancing water balances created during population growing by type1 and type2 but on removal of an equivalne part of the earth to directions the natural type1 caused torque suspects (some conservation technigue of forced population motion might not be counterindicated if the theory of evolution is not suffient and statistical approaches are in operation prematurely) keeping the weight of type 1 changes in balance with moving water.

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There will be varying “costs” associated with moving the “wrong” earth and migrations that move not into unused lands but into ones with active type1 ecosystem engineering going on. This will have to be handeled by training agriculturalists to BECOME more biomass productivity conservation managers as the mutations and latent recessivites are exposed on current farm lands as well as dedicated engineering regions.

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It is hoped that by using the same power of the industrial revolution that some of the errors in that aspect of human history can propel pre-industrial agriculture beyond the wrongs of my own generation by teaching in retrospect.

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Malthus had said, p239 Chapter XII Mr. Godwin’s conjecture concerning the indefinite prolongation of human life
but I, BSM, Say
|_____________individualone____________|
|--birth margin--|-------LIFE-----|--death margin--| }species A
xxxx|_____________individual two__________________|more later...This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 10-16-2005 12:50 PMThis message has been edited by Brad McFall, 10-16-2005 12:52 PM