(April 21, 2018 at 6:26 pm)pocaracas Wrote:ok Poca...all in all, you're right..without a reference point there is no chance ... even all scientific theories do not make sense...(April 21, 2018 at 5:29 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: You don't believe in free will, so I guess it wouldn't make sense for you to hold anyone's bad actions against them.
There are multiple levels to this... I don't think hammy managed to convey it
When you label an action as bad, you are referring to bad relative to something... usually, relative to other people.... sometimes to the self (seat belts!)
At the social level, a group of people has a certain number of needs and wants that should be catered to. One of those wants is that nothing bad happens to them, specially as coming from someone else in the same group. So, society has come up with multiple ways to deal with those few individuals that pop up and ruin the whole fun for the rest of us.... on some places, the person is killed, on some places, they are simply put in a place away from the rest of society (jail)... on some places, they get the offending limb chopped off... etc..etc..etc... humans are an imaginative bunch!
At the basic physics level, where we deal with atoms and electrons and the like, every thing that happens in our minds is deterministic, within the probabilistic nature of the Quantum world. Biological systems display this deterministic character, as they are usually large enough for QM crazyness to play a small, nearly negligible, role.
The brain is a very large biological system, linked to all points of our bodies.
It is known that damage to specific locations in the brain lead to very precise psychological alterations. But the brain is also a living organ, so it can, for certain types of damages, bypass the damage and everything continues functioning as normal.
Aside from memory, one of the basic cognitive functions of the brain is pattern recognition. Language can be thought of as one such pattern, I guess.... just like any other social behavior... even love.
At a higher level, we have our consciousness, our awareness. How the brain produces these is still unknown, so there's wiggle room for metaphysics to play around. But it is clear that this awareness draws upon the patterns stored in the brain, as well as the emotions associated with those patterns. These emotions are, at this level, a symptom of certain hormones being produced in the brain, at a more basic level. Perceived danger leads to one kind of emotion, while perceived offspring production leads to another kind, etc, etc...
Intuitively (which is to say that, apparently, evolution has favored the inclusion of these features built-in the brain), we can tell that something is bad if it leads to harm towards a member of our tribe. Nowadays, to us, "tribe" here may mean "country", it may mean group of friends, our religious group, our political group, it may mean an actual tribe, or the whole human population.
Just going by these varying concepts of "tribe" within individual minds, one can see how that can lead to varying results - what one considers good, the other might not, and so can, without going against his intuition, cause harm upon another individual. Our society, with its countries, has had to encompass all sorts of people in it and thus this country-wide tribe needs as broad as possible a definition of tribe for it to function.
Historically, a hierarchical structure has been found to work well in the governance of the people of these countries and this government has become perceived as good if its functions lead to a minimal harm towards the citizens. Those individuals who display a pattern of behaviors that lead to harm of the country's population need to be kept away from that population.
No matter how those individuals lack the underlying ability to act differently, to act good, they still need to be kept apart from the general population who does possess that ability.
(was this too convoluted?)
but I missed something here ... abstract thinking ...
Abstractness can be represented by a scale, at one end of which there are images corresponding to real objects, registered in the process of perception, and at the other end there are abstract concepts, i.e. those that have no equivalent among real objects. An abstract concept can be, for example, the concept of God.
Besides, people who can think abstractly, in contrast to people who use only particulars, are looking for original solutions and are able to present hypothetical situations, thanks to which they can see the heart of the matter faster. Particular/concret units only see a section of available data or solutions.
People who have difficulty with abstract thinking, that is, those that focus only on facts that correspond to reality, may have difficulty, among other things, to guess the intentions of a person telling a joke or may be less prone to empathy...
So...in one word our brain is guilty of everything!!
"Alone is what I have. Alone protects me."
“I may be on the side of the angels but don’t think for one second that I am one of them.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day."
“I may be on the side of the angels but don’t think for one second that I am one of them.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day."
