Amaros
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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ORIGINAL: Amaros
Considering that Buddhism centers around self denial[...]
Err... calling that a gross simplification would be charitable. If anything, it would seem more appropriate to say that Buddhism centers on self discovery, unclouded awareness and direct perception by stripping away the layers of interpretation that cloud our ability to see what is as-is. The rest is mostly window dressing and mass reenactment of paths that have led others to those goals in the past.
Self discovory through denial then - I'm forced to oversimplify in several places here, I'm writing a post for laymen, of which I am one, not a book for graduates, so not everything is going to be as nuanced as some might like.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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language is a process of abstract logic and reasoning
More like language is an interface to that process. In fact, you'll note that there are a lot of aspects of language that are not tied to these, or even contradict them. For instance, spatial anaphora are a gross hack, and even the most basic conjunctions fail to overlap with those used in logic. Language is more a matter of response prediction, serializing state according to a pattern that has been learned to have a high probability of inducing the desired state in the receiver.
Certainly an interface, but there is every indication that as we tend to lump objects and their associated processes and behaviors into discrete symbols, sort of shorthand - linguistic processes are retreival processes of these symbols, themselves aggregate associations of different types of memory - this is why propaganda is so successful - symbols are abstract associations by definition, and since anything external to us is already an abstract object, it is relatively easy to corrupt these associations through simple methods like transference, association or dissociation and hammered in via repitition - a symbol is like the address of a building - again, an oversimplification, but an address is really a route, and routes become ruts- for all practical purposes if you force somebody to go through a bad neigborhood every time they try to get to that address, you will eventually elicit an change in emotional response that is subsequentlly projected onto the object in question.
Language is coersive, that we agree on, and that it contradicts logic is not an issue - most people employ very little logic in their thinking - most decisions and predictions are based on emotion, not logic: i.e., evolved responses to specific stimuli or stressors - we aren't really talking logic here, we're talking symbolic abstractions that are simultaneously expressions of emotional motives, and attempts to coerce the reciever through symbolic/behavioral association, whether the thing is "logical" in any empirical sense or not.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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it's quite likely that they arose more or less in tandem
Do you have material to support this, or is it conjecture on your part?
If the latter is the case, I would note that my conjecture has been that language serves as a scaffolding for the development of abstract reasoning, but otherwise simply reuses existing infrastructure in the brain, particularly the unified presentation format (cf. input data to the entorhineal cortex) and the cortical columns. I currently lack the manpower to test my theories, however, so I can't be certain yet.
Either way, language is more a tool of culture than of reasoning, in a practical sense.
Conjecture - most genetic abnormalities that affect language also affect the hands and forearms, which appear to be directly connected to the speech centers of the brain which suggests they evolved in tandem. It is entirely possible that abstraction catagorization preceeded language, it could hardly be the other way around, but my gut feeling is that primary advantage of abstraction is the ability to communicate abstract concepts. Since we're talking about something that evolved over the course of several million years, I think it's safe to say they overlapped significantly.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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language is the external representation of internal abstract symbolic/cognitive processes, and language itself in turn affects cognition
Roughly so, but this also illustrates a core aspect of both Buddhism and Zen: the search for a state wherein cognition is unaffected by language. And there is a bit of variability in terms of how much language affects cognition: most actually go so far as to subvocalize to some extent, it seems, while some don't, and almost all productive mental states are required to employ abstraction, although only a few things run deep enough to be truly influential (e.g. color classification) if one does the mental legwork to collapse the false infrastructure (e.g. values, culture and objectively asemantic transforms and symbols).
*
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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"the sky is blue"
Who said we agree on that? You will note that some languages actually use the sky as a point of reference for a particular shade of green (roughly speaking, given the lack of a clear difference between the two; some have proposed the word "grue" to cover this compound color), and some languages do not distinguish color at all, beyond light and dark, in which case the day sky is light and the night sky is dark.
Beside the point, or rather reinforcing it, as this is an example of subjective consensus reality formation which is, by definition... subjective.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
You're omitting mathematics from the matter, by the way. If any abstraction is unique to humans, that would be it. Setting aside such things as Euler's (?) Identity, the modality is also suited to expressing fundamentally truthful deductions about life. For instance, if the aspect of reality known as entropy has truth to it, then it holds as an axiom from which we can then deduce some rather grim facts about the necessary illusions that sustain the human world. Facts that go beyond mere nihilism, yet also permit infinitely more options than the illusions do.
I'm not much of a mathmatician.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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Abstract logic and language is a unique attribute of humans
You haven't spent too much time around animals, I take it?
Try following a pack of wolves in East Europe until they accept (or eat, apropos- a rare honor) you.
If you have the DRD4R7 allelle that you referenced, then they can read your general body language if you strip it down and bear in mind some basics. If you lack that allelle, they cannot read your body language, period, although you can learn to emulate theirs. Either way, if you spend enough time with wolves, on their terms, you will find that your assertion is not correct. Compare them to H. Sapiens children, age 3-5, and you will find that they are intellectually equivalent. It is no accident that dogs were bred from the only species that can keep up with humans over long distances.
Afterwards, perhaps you will be ready to more objectively study the behavior of other animals in their own environments. I have noted distinct, polysyllabic vocalizations in cats, although I haven't yet had a chance to study them closely. As their facilities for vocalization are limited, they rely on tonal contour (a workaround that also arose in Asia as a consequence of mutations in the genes coding for microencephaly). I have seen cats use body language and vocalizations to impart important information, such as how to safely cross a road. You will not be able to observe that in a lab, nor will you be able to observe it in an urban (i.e. noisy) environment. This is supported by the basic theories of human language development, which rely on self-organizing systems that have clearly shown that noise determines possible coding density (I am actually seeing one such recoding in action up here, with the transition from ç/ʃ to ʃ-only in urban environments). When coding density becomes too low to support a sufficient number of distinct states, communication does not develop.
Animal culture has been observed in the wild, but is generally not replicable in the lab.
Sorry, you'll have to demonstrate this - as I said, it's never been demonstrated. In Chimp language studies, they are able to use the symbol for "banana", and even anticipate a banana (they look over their shoulders when they anticipate), but they are only thinking about one banana, the banana they see or hope to get - which is something of an abstraction of course, but they do not appear to be capable of forming an abstract catagory of all bananas, or an abstract catagory of "fruit", of which bananas are a member, and so on up the ladder, to consumable objects, etc.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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we have no evidence any of them are capable of forming higher level abstractions, catagories for example
This is a quantitative issue, not a qualitative one. I can form higher level abstractions that less than one in a hundred people can form, but that does not mean I possess a unique faculty in a qualitative sense, only that I possess more of the same faculty than the bulk of the population. While I certainly don't mind if you care to make that a figure of merit that sets one set of beings apart from others, I would not care to do so myself.
The basic faculty is indeed essential to many animals, as well.
It may well be a quantitative value rather than a qualitative value, a factor of neural density in the cerberal cortex, but at some point it quantitatively drops below the point where it is practically relevent. It is well known that your wolves have complex behavioral and social adaptations, but in qualitative terms, I don't think they have much need for higher level abstractions.
It may well be that as the century progresses, and environmental stressors reach extinction level proportions, we may see odd instances of rapid mutation in some places that might include some fairly abstract behavior - unless they learn to talk though, we'll probobly never know.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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if these two become associated linguistically, it forms a model of cause and effect that becomes a matter of consensus reality.
Amazing. We agree on something. Connotations are a basic element of consensus reality, yes. Which is not to say that it is inappropriate to point out the lack of objective substance, just that people will ignore the lack of substance as they always have. What I'm saying is that there are some mental states that are objectively different from normal states in a qualitative sense, and some that are different from that person's normal state. There is no grounds to assert that these objective criterion (whether one deems them pathologies or not) are applicable to all individuals with an interest in or desire for these extreme activities, whether acted upon or not.
Whether it is a deviation from consensus in the West, however, is hardly worth debating: it is.
I don't know wheter to agree or disagree, I don't know what a "normal" state is, in an objective sense, it's a subjective term - typical perhaps, but mental states are essentially adaptations, and how "normal" the state of mind is is pretty much a factor of the stressors or stimuli it is an adaptation to - it might be easier if you furnished and example.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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Sometime about 75kya, a mutation occured in the human genome, the DRD7R4 allele mutated into soemthing like 7 different versions - this occured at roughly the same time as teh Toba supereruption and the theoretical MtDNA "bottlneck".
You are no doubt referring to DRD4R7, not DRD7R4, as there is no D7-receptor.
The 7R allelle does not occur to any significant extent in the general population, apart from America, where the indigenous population ranges from 25% to 75% expression of this gene, particularly Cheyenne indians, Maya, and the South American continent. The bulk of those areas express greater than 40% prevalence, with Xavante showing a high frequency of the even rarer 8R allelle.
The 4R allelle is dominant in North America, Europe, Scandinavia, Africa and Asia.
The 3R allelle occurs in the area of expansion of the Thessalo-Danubian branch of the proposed Anatolian urheimat, with some lesser expression in Asia, predominantly the coastal regions. It is also found to some small extent among Yemenite Jews, but this expression can probably be accounted for by the presence of the Varangian Guard in the region. The coastal regions of Asia can be accounted for if the theory of Viking expeditions in the area is correct.
The 2R allelle follows the distribution proposed by that set of theories very closely.
In any case, this gene is involved in precortical and orbitofrontal function, as well as being implicated in the extent of novelty seeking vs complacency. Its function has not been clearly mapped, but there is some evidence to suggest it is involved in abstract and rational thinking, as opposed to ritualism and strict adherence to cultural norms.
Currently, it is implicated in conditions that are deemed pathological, such as rejecting cultural norms.
That, more than most things, is a very interesting fact in this debate.
DRD4-R7, right, I'm not a geneticist either. In any case, what I do know is that nobody knows squat about how genes work in the wholistic sense yet, the science is still in it's infancy, and it's a whole lotta shit going on - my own hunches involve stationary phase mutation with respect to noncoding DNA, under certain stress conditions.
You might like this blog which at least reduces both our case in question and the orthodox view of it to the same level:
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Original: progstone · The Programmer's Stone
As to the cultural relativism of saying that the boredom addicted
disease state is equally as good as being healthy - what rubbish! If
boredom addiction is real, and is a disease state, then it is not
equally valid, any more than being an adrenaline addict unable to
spend time doing anything but progressively more physically dangerous
activities with no purpose but unable to see this because of the
associated cognitive distortion is equally as good as being healthy.
Or that an alcohol addict is just as good as being healthy.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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Shortly after, these mutations spread rapidly among the population through both selection and drift, and large and significant changes in human culture began to appear
No, the mutation did not spread extensively. In fact, as I stated above, it is confined to specific geographical regions, as are all the allelles, apart from the normal 4R variant. Consult the geographic distribution of the DRD4 exon 3 section 48 base pair repeat if you don't care to take my word for it. Yale University had a publicly available database that contained this information, last I heard.
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This allele has been associated with behavioral disorders, ADHD in particular, and thrill seeking in general, and the theory is that this represents an increase in the population of people who are "easily bored", and thus prone to breaking out of abstract cultural restrictions and engage in innovative behaviors, and it is innovation that is the definitive driver of what we term "modern" behavior, which of course has resulted in modern techno-information culture.
This is quite speculative, as the etiology of ADHD is not at all clear, beyond the fact that there are at least a handful of different conditions that are conveniently lumped together under that diagnostic category. If you consult recent work done by professor J. Haavik, you will find that the picture is not nearly as clear as previously thought. I can ask him about a summary or citations the next time I correspond with him, if you like.
Since you mention just about every major continent on the planet, I'm not sure just how "widespread" doesn't apply, athe point being that something occurred, and shit happened - I might be accused of being Eurocentric, I can cop to that. North America, Europe, Scandinavia, Africa and Asia are pretty much the regions where technological development occurred most rapidly and in the greatest variety - Africa led in the development of metallurgy, contrary to popular belief - it was a definite step away from grubbing tubers.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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Again, this tends to often run counter to what is often defined by a dominant culture as acceptable behavior.
NFS...
Some of the people I know with these abnormalities are among the brightest abstract thinkers this world has to offer, and their experiences have quite universally involved a rejection of social norms. Quite a few have become embittered with the accepted delusions of mainstream culture and the friction this causes when trying to actually work for the common good of all.
As I mentioned, perhaps strongly enough, it is fairly well impossible to inniovate at all without rejecting cultural norms, to do anything outside a cultural norm is to violate it, and innovation by definition is change - once youve take that step, the entire thing becomes questionable, or vice versa.
Probobly why most of our cultural icons, the DWM's (dead White men), died in miserable poverty and disgrace.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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i.e., it's how an ideal like Christianity: "love thy neighbor" can become "kill everybody who isn't a Christian".
In all fairness, love thy neighbour was always a bit of a simplification, but you probably don't want to get into that on this thread. Psychiatry is a side-line for me; religion is not. We would just derail the thread.
The Golden rule is explicitly the "greatest commandment" - and is almost a perfect way to paraphrase reciporical altruism.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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We have tried, in our current institutions, the constitution, capitalism and the Anglo Saxon legal system to create a stable system of cultural values without allowing it to sclerotify into status quo feudalism
In some ways, it has been a success, but the system has stable operating points and it is advantageous to game the system. Hence, it has really been a pretty massive failure on a macroscale, since it provides an illusion of working that gives a false sense that little needs to be done, and that small, incremental changes are the only way to go. While those changes tick along at a predictably slow rate, with occasional outswings that can be modelled with classical mechanics (tragic, really), people are suffering and dying to preserve that illusion, or being deprived of their basic dignity and liberty.
Good post, by the way.
Health,
al-Aswad.
Yes, the gaming thing is troubling, particularly with the addition of the phenomona of a truely global mass media. It only works if you adhere strictly to the rules of competitive self interest, and keep things in flux - Soon as you start trying to change the rules, rational self interest, ala rand (everyones self interest is rational - to them) etc., it stratifies, sclerotofies and gradually turns into feudalism and stasis.
Some people have more to lose than others, and a significant majority of people will simply value social stability and predictability over consensus formation through debate in good faith with respect to the empirical evidence, which often entails confusing contraditions, ethical dillemas, potential personal sacrifice, etc. i.e., rationalization of short term advantage vs. long term planning.
i.e., it's easier to say the poor are stupid, and blame everything on them.
tsk*, what would Jesus think.
< Message edited by Amaros -- 7/5/2008 9:14:16 PM >
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RE: When does BDSM become unhealthy or destructive - 
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