A Couple Different Thoughts About Evolution And How We Learned To Think.

[Guest Valk0010]

Would evolutionary theory automatically guareentee something like us, assuming we don't blow each other up we would sometime become a type 1 civilization and so on and so forth?

 

The reason I am asking this is because I have been thinking about how we learned to think. And what I have realized is that as far as I can tell, our ability to think must have grown like our ability to say, run. So when say we were in our homo erectus(don't know if this kind of thing would have happened then but I am just using it as a example) stage as a example, if we started to be able to think then it would have been nothing more then say I don't want to get eaten by a tiger cause I would die or get hurt really bad. That is a logical conclusion. Tiger's eat meat. We are meat. So tiger may eat us.

 

As we evolved and came to conquer our own domain, we didn't beat natural selection, we are in a sense still evolving (its why we for example some people don't need there wisdom teeth pulled). We still used and increased are ability that we learned to avoid getting eaten. This then stretched to the development of agriculture and the end of hunter gather societies on a mass scale. And as our brains got more complex and we got more in charge of nature, are ability to think expanded. Its why you say get a rise of science and philosophy rather then the simplistic ideas of religion. And as far as I can see that process is still going, because we are still coming to think in more complex ways. Like say try explaining relativity to a 1st century peasant. They wouldn't get it.

 

So in reality as far as I can see every factual discovery we have made comes back from that ability we first developed to keep from getting eaten.

 

Now to address some christian considerations. Like people saying evolution doesn't screen for true beliefs only useful ones. To me that seems like a distinction without a difference. Its for example very much true that if you don't run away from a tiger coming towards you that you may well get eaten. Its not just useful. Much the same different forms of agriculture, its true that you get better irrigation one way then you do others. Its not just useful. And with are abilities to deal with more and more complex ways and create more complex ways to survive we start to figure out what is or isn't true. Much the same as not getting eaten you know if say someone says god is both perfectly good and perfectly evil you know there are full of shit because they are being countradictory.

 

In a sense I am arguing that are reasonings skills are still evolving and come from a source that is complete understandable via natural selection. And that the more we are following that ability to survive and thrive we are able to use those tools to answer curious questions like if there is or is not a god.

[Vigile]

I had a hard time following that Valk. You're an intelligent guy who sometimes needs to take a bit more time and edit.

 

Regarding this beast we call human nature. I'm toying with the idea lately that much of what we consider natural human behavior is merely the result of the general paradigm we are in economically and socially. If the paradigm were to shift to something else, then humans would behave and respond differently to societal stimuli, needs and expectations.

 

Much of the uber competitiveness, wastefulness, etc... that we see as natural human behavior, may be no more than a biproduct of a consumer-driven economy.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

If you explained relativity to people in the first century, Epicurus and those like him would get it. Its not evolution, its education. Our minds haven't really evolved much in that way in the last 2000 years. Evolution takes place over larger time differences. The wisdom tooth part is correct though.

 

In all honesty though, I think we had our capacity to think since we were all an east african tribe speaking a click language in Kenya-Ethiopia, and that Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Erectus still outnumbered us worldwide.

[REBOOT]

[REBOOT]

The reason I am asking this is because I have been thinking about how we learned to think.

 

The bigger the brain the better you can adapt to your environment. Natural selection at work... we didn't learn to think, living organisms that were able to adapt proliferated those that didn't were eliminated.

 

Over a very long time high technology will eventually modify and shape the human form... probably larger multitasking oriented brains. Hint: the brain is a defense mechanism.

[par4dcourse]

Modern theory holds that conscious thought is a by product of language. No internal dialogue if there are no words. As objects and concepts began to be expressed as a particular utterance, then soon that utterance symbolized those objects, and we began to "think" about those things.

The ability to share concepts and plan gave the genus a huge advantage.

[Skankboy]

I'd say par4dcourse has it right. It's very possible that many animals have relatively high level of intelligence, but it takes more than smarts to build civ, it's takes culture (the passing of information from one generation to the next via non-genetic pathways) and culture requires language.

 

That's always been my take on it anyways.

[ExCBooster]

I think: well, sort of.

I do think that there's lots of evidence (and growing) that many animals do have a surprisingly sophisticated mental life. If consider my brain, it's the same thinking meat stuff in terms of chemical signals, and so on that's going on in my cat right now. It's just that he's specialized for thinking cat stuff, like ambushing and killing small animals. What makes my inner life so very special, qualitatively? Conclusion: it's not at all. Humans just happen to be very specialized for two things: culture and distance running. (Seriously. It's the

. Few other animals could run an ultramarathon. It's why we get along so well with dogs. They're social, and they can keep up.) As for if it's "superior" or inevitable "progress"... well, that's another question entirely. Evolution doesn't have an ideal it's going for. Every living thing that is alive today is just as successful as we are, just in their own solution to the problem of survival. As for the stuff that's extinct, it's not that they're worse, really, it's that they met circumstances they couldn't adapt to and overcome.

As for language, given several recent studies, among other things, I'm not so sure humanity is really all that different than the rest.