Are Myths Valuable?

[Alan V]

...
 Mere biological determinism.
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And... er... what's wrong with that?

Nothing, as far as it goes.  One question is, why can't people be reasonable when we have all of our biological needs satisfied?  Do we always idiotically pursue our passions even when they don't have any immediate purpose, out of greed?  Or do we turn to other pursuits dictated by our reason?

Why can't people even be reasonable in our choices of how to satisfy those needs?  There are lots of choices, and many are not reasonable.  The idea that we are driven by passions alone, and that any seemingly reasonable behaviors are just rationalizations of those passions, is far from obvious.  It is a cynical interpretation of other people and ourselves.  We actually observe many people being much more reasonable than others.  We actually observe ourselves working against our passions when it is more reasonable to do so.

How do people make choices when our passions are in conflict?  How do we choose one over another?  How do we even control any of our passions temporarily to give another a priority?  None of that should be possible with mere stimulus-and-response biological determinism, should it?

We lose impulse control when we sleep and dream, so it's a good thing we have dream paralysis.  Our dream behaviors are often emotional and irrational.  The reason is that our dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex is most always deactivated, so we lose access to orienting memories and can't think logically. If biological determinism was true, our dreaming behaviors should never surprise us in retrospect.

I will certainly admit that our consciousness was no doubt evolved to serve our biological needs, but that has lost a fair amount of importance in these days of material abundance.  We more often suppress than follow our impulses, and our judgments are often guided by reason. In fact, reason dictates that we should be very sure to meet our minimum needs in controlled situations, so we can otherwise operate freely.