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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Greg or e who wrote (27745)6/29/2012 3:40:36 AM
From: 2MAR$  Respond to of 69300
 
All these immaterial concepts are compositions built upon the constructions that originally go back to earlier analysis of percieved forms & observations made of the proportional relationships within & between these forms . Some have likened mathematical formulas to building a cathedral in the brain/mind but always is built upon earlier intelligent & rational observations built up gradually & logically , our intelligence that evolved to do this itself is an adaptation of our evolutionary niche .

In his PNAS paper Pinker outlines two processes at work:

"One is that intelligence is an adaptation to a knowledge-using, socially interdependent lifestyle, the 'cognitive niche.'" And: "The second hypothesis is that humans possess an ability of metaphorical abstraction, which allows them to coopt faculties that originally evolved for physical problem-solving and social coordination, apply them to abstract subject matter, and combine them productively."

Together, Pinker concludes:

"These abilities can help explain the emergence of abstract cognition without supernatural or exotic evolutionary forces and are in principle testable by analyses of statistical signs of selection in the human genome." Pinker then outlines a number of ways in which the cognitive niche hypothesis has been and can continue to be tested.





To: Greg or e who wrote (27745)6/29/2012 4:02:51 AM
From: 2MAR$  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 69300
 
The most common thing all human beings know for a certainty is that death is true in all cases, no exceptions yet even in the face of this one most proveable aspect of life , men still have invented /imagined an alternative story which in itself speaks volumes on how we create immateriality out of the material at hand .

One could say that sound is "immaterial" , one cannot see sound waves yet look at the tremendous variety of reactions to sound we can have from soothing music to a fire alarm , crying baby to barking dog . And this is just one of the senses that we recieve impressions of the world , there is the sense of smell that often is from invisible sources (cannot be seen with the eyes ) one of the last senses they think endures in the mind/brain as the others fail . One can always remember the smell of that blackberry cobbler you had when just a young child that special summer , sometimes just like it was yesterday when you are 90yrs old.

Growing up naturally alongside increasing complexity of human societies & experience , theres myriads of things that have risen up that involve inherent conceptual meanings that are coopted around the growing identity of the tribe or nation. . We see most all based upon the unavoidable aspects of survival in life itself of mating, mariage & procreation, food shelter , clothing , coming of age & rites of passage...the immortality of the tribe . Plus all the alliances of relationships , order of powers & leadership , who gets to name the names & divide the spoils , confer justice, offer blessing etc .

Look at the power of names themselves , you are known as "gregoree" or people of earlier tribes habit of naming sons Abraham Ceasar or Joshua as if to confer some quality just in the naming of some hopeful desired fututre for their offspring . The power of such lay in the realm immaterial concepts & sympathetic psychology but all rise out of natural tendencies that can trace lineage far back to even before there was language or naming names but the roots of which were there .