RE: Are Myths Valuable?
July 29, 2019 at 6:34 am
(This post was last modified: July 29, 2019 at 6:41 am by Alan V.)
(July 29, 2019 at 3:20 am)DLJ Wrote: If I was going to give the middle-sized answer I first pick apart what you mean by "reasonable" as it's one of those words that's prone to ambiguity/equivocation (... fairness, rationality, cognitive, moderation, thoughtful, balanced, considered etc.) but for the short version I'll go with something like 'using thinking tools (e.g. logic) and not just instinct alone'.
There are certainly degrees of reasoning abilities, which make the question more difficult to address. "Using thinking tools rather than instincts" works for me, though I refer to thinking tools as the symbolic processing of information.
(July 29, 2019 at 3:20 am)DLJ Wrote: the mind is material process.
Thus "biological determinism" includes the evolution of thinking tools.
This is where I disagree. The mind is a virtual process. That's why I prefer to call it symbolic processing.
I don't think evolution is determined, because it depends on the accumulation of chance, rather than determined, mutations. That allows life to come up with adaptations which are not strictly determined, like information processing. Reasoning is a brilliant shortcut which obviates any need for much more complex cause-and-effect biological mechanisms.