Simon Paynton

Davis wrote:
explaining dozens of concepts over 50 posts

Ah, but surely it’s possible to summarise things to some degree.

Thanks.  It’s interesting that they come to the same conclusions as me.  I think that sexual equality is a by-product of egalitarianism in general.

Even if women don’t hunt very much in hunter-gatherer societies, this doesn’t mean they’re not valued.

I think there’s a flaw, or a bind, inherent in these ideas.  If women need men to provide them with resources – this makes them dependent, and this dependency can be exploited by men.  However, in the “simple” nomadic hunter-gatherer societies, this doesn’t seem to happen, probably because of all the other levelling factors.

This kind of s…[Read more]

@unseen:

Davis wrote:
Let’s reread Freedom Evolves over the holidays or say, some time in the next three months.

You have to admit, that’s a reasonable response.  It took me three years to understand A Natural History of Morality by Michael Tomasello, and now I can rattle off any part of it (the theory).  Maybe this is because the book makes sen…[Read more]

@davis – it would be informative for you to explain some of the theories you have read about.

The true freedom in life is to be able to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.

Richard Foster

@unseen – I’ve done some research into why rape and coercion of females was unlikely in our prehistoric past.  It seems that patriarchy may have a U-shaped history: present in great apes, absent in most of human history for a number of reasons, and present again in modern settled humans.  Patriarchy, or the dominance of females by males, is the l…[Read more]

PopeBeanie wrote:
So is consciousness always relegated to the back seat,

I think free will pretty much lives in the conscious mind.  If that’s true, then the question becomes, how to make the conscious mind more free.  We are constrained by all kinds of internal constraints, and some of these may be unknown to the conscious mind.  Buddhism mi…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Get herpes and you become horny because the virus wants other hosts. Get a certain cocktail of bacteria and you will become depressed. Have mania and you will have racing thoughts. Get your period and you will have pain and not be yourself. Any mental illness will make you feel, behave and decide in the way that mental illness…

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Ivy wrote:
Whether those decisions are done in a state of calm regulation in a fluffy happy-go-lucky world, or a terrifying event where we are in straight primal mode, either way…I do believe we act in a way that we decide to.

Do we not always act in a way that brings us pleasure?  Whether in the short or long term.

Unseen wrote:
what do YOU mean by “objective morality”? Morality based on principles built into reality itself?

That’s what I mean.  It’s an illusion.

Unseen wrote:
Much of what we do isn’t even handled by the brain. It’s taken care of automatically by the autonomic nervous system. When you duck a flying object, it’s not even really a decision,…

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Psychological perceptions may not match up with actual reality in the normal way, since psychology is shaped by evolutionary history.

“Objective morality” is a perception that does not correspond to what people who believe in it think it does.  Does this have anything to do with free will?

Presumably, free will consists of 1) conscious…[Read more]

It’s not necessarily true that the perception of free will is an illusion – rather, it’s a perception.  “Illusion” implies that it’s a false belief.

There are other things we perceive that are caused evolutionarily by reality – such as the belief in objective morality –  the belief – or perception – that one’s morals are objectively true, e…[Read more]

I would guess that the solution* lies in finding the right conceptual framework for reality, that incorporates both physical determinism and the human experience of free will within constraints.  Perhaps, the human experience of free will lies in a different conceptual domain than physical determinism, so it’s like comparing apples and…[Read more]

Ivy wrote:
But if we make a conscious effort to become self aware around any particular issue, that cycle can be broken. So yes. We have free will – to a point.

I think this is consistent with the saying “knowledge is power”.

What do you think it means for free will, if the entirety of spacetime is created as a single 4-D shape at the Big Bang?  I.e., all of spacetime exists as a lump, and we have a path through it that we labour along during our lifetimes, that begins when we are conceived, and ends when our life ends, and our location on that spacetime path depends…[Read more]

I don’t think it was unethical for you to be there.  The church was providing community work, after all.  You contributed to the church by all accounts.  All perfectly proper in my opinion.

@garyclouse – I think you’re talking about common or garden morality.  Who’s to say it’s not ethical, to help in-group members over out-group members?  To reciprocate?

Ivy wrote:
Does that mean it’s all true what they say? Does that mean that they believe is the truth? I don’t know. Maybe some of it sort of.

Surely this is why religion continues to have credibility – it is credible to some extent.