[FRIAM] God

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Hi Russ, 

 

Hawking my wares again.  I am sorry but SOMEBODY has to read this crap.  The
argument of this paper
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311349078_The_many_perils_of_eject
ive_anthropomorphism>  is that the flow of inference is actually in the
other direction.  We model our view of ourselves on our experience with
others.  

 

Nick  

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Russell Standish
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2020 9:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] God

 

The theory which makes some sense to me is that we humans (as social

creatures) have evolved to anthropomorphise. This make sense for dealing
with other humans, who might be competitors, or compatriots. And the
modelling makes use of a remarkable trick - observe one's own mind, and use
those observations to model somebody else's mind. This explains why we have
self-awareness, if not consciousness.

 

The thing is, the same trick also works quite well with other animals, who
may be predators or prey, irrespective of whether other species actually
have minds or not.

 

So it makes sense that when some relatively rare phenomenon occurs, perhaps
a thunderstorm, that the alpha male stands up and makes threatening noises.
And it seems to work when the thunder goes away

 

 

eventually. And so the thunderstorm has been anthropomorphised. This got
extended to other phenomenon, eg famines get blamed on angry gods who can be
appeased by making the appropriate offerings. Eventually con-artists
exploited this with ever more elaborate stories that leveraged this innate
tendency to anthromorphise. I'm sure astrology started out as a cunning plan
to garner research funds for early astonomers from ignorant kings.

 

Like most evolutionary stories, this is a "just so" story. But I think it
has a grain of truth.

 

Cheers, Russell

 

-- 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)

Principal, High Performance Coders      <mailto:hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au>
hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au

                       <http://www.hpcoders.com.au>
http://www.hpcoders.com.au

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

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