Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA19310 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 3 Jun 2000 16:19:43 +0100 Message-ID: <3938DB4D.66A78FEC@mediaone.net> Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 11:17:49 +0100 From: Chuck <cpalson@mediaone.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Really, really??? References: <20000603143641.AAA7425@camailp.harvard.edu@[204.96.32.109]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
"Wade T.Smith" wrote:
> Chuck made this comment not too long ago --
>
> >But then again, what does "really,
> >really" mean. Does an adequate theory qualify?
>
> 'Really, really' means 'really, really' - a full list of all of their
> reasons and motivations and urges and stimuli.
>
> My personal 'adequate' theory of why I've done certain things at certain
> times unfortunately includes the empirical knowledge that I didn't have
> the first clue about some of the big, underlying, and prompting reasons
> for my behavior at the time....
Could it be that you, like the rest of us, walk around in a coma?
I'm just (half) joking, of course, but Searle, in his effort to explain away
the computational theory of mind, says something to the effect that our
thoughts can't be encoded in 1s and 0s - that that would be assuming we are
in a coma. That was the nature of my comment/joke to Robin a few days ago.
One way that I try to get a handle on my "really, really's" is to examine
the motivations of other individuals and groups. When I find a motivation
that I think I would never have, I immediately get suspicious of my self
perception. Sure enough, I look inwards for a while and find it and get to
know myself better. It may be just a shadow of what it is in another person
or it may be so obvious that I couldn't see it. Once I see it in myself, it
adds to my understanding of others' behaviors. And by the way, it helps my
interviewing style because I rarely fall into the trap of moralizing --
which can be a very subtle behavior.
I have to exclude from this the really psychopathic behavior. For example,
torture and sexual stimulation. People who specialize in torture know that
it is sexually exciting. I have to take their word for it because I can't
see myself as a torturer. Child molestation is about as difficult to see; I
think you have to have been molested yourself to get a handle on it. But I
think we all can find elements of the more ordinary deviant behavior like
robbery and murder in ourselves.
The moral of the above story is: keep morality out of research on human
behavior. If you think you have found something in your research that will
help "correct" morality, be extremely suspicious.
I myself have a 6 hour presentation on morality that focuses not on the
actual content, but the process of creating moral structures. It can be very
helpful in a modern world that modifies its morality every half generation
to know how to change your own without being disoriented.
That being said, I live in this world with morality, a lot of which would be
impossible to change because it was crystalized in neural structures by my
early twenties. I can't help thinking there has to be some changes made in
social practices in some areas, especially in our investment in child
rearing. But then again, those biases are informed by some basic
sociobiological principles - I h-o-p-e.
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