Appreciating the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide

Humanism
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Then don’t call it Abrahamic mindset that suggests a religious mindset. The name Abraham is only associated with religion.

What you are talking about is the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Dunning-Kruger effect, in psychology, a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:20, topic:9533”]
Wait a minute? You speak to brains?!? How’s that work?
In my experience, I’m speaking to faces and voices?

That is because you do not accept the fact that brains are autonomous organs and only occupy a male or female body by accident. It is the brain that speaks by producing action-potentials that trigger the vocal muscles.

I am sure you are aware of the current debate about transgender persons, who’s brain identifies as female trapped in a male body or vice versa?

So that must mean you’re telling me you treat everyone exactly the same way.
Is that a true fact?

Yes, intellect is gender neutral. Do you believe blind people are intellectually handicapped. Was Stevie Wonder intellectually handicapped? Was Hellen Keller intellectually handicapped.

Was Stephen Hawking intellectually handicapped because his body didn’t work? How about Peter Dinklage?

Did these people speak to males and females differently?

Do you speak differently to females than men? If so, why?

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“Dunning-Kruger effect” - now there’s an interesting notion and I can see how some of that holds true - perhaps related, but still it’s not the same.

Why are you ignoring that Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism, weren’t just religions!

They were society and Law and social custom and a prescribed way of thinking.

Saying that the Abrahamic Mindset is “only religion” reveals yet another blindspot.
Weren’t those religions central to tribes developing into great cultures? Didn’t those religions dictate every aspect of the life, economy, laws, social structure?

Modern society is the evolved outgrowth of that historic dynamic. And it’s been a very self serving dynamic full of exploitation and wanton destruction, and stupid decisions that have brought our now global society to the brink of its own collapse, and doing nothing but pouring more gas on the fire. This even though we are amazingly intelligent, but rather than wisdom we are the self-serving human and will pay dearly for our inability to look outside of our self-serving needs and desires.

At the heart of our human societal failure to our unwillingness to come to terms with actual physical reality, all we see is a larder for us to empty, along with zero vision of the future.

I mean we are destroying our life support system and destroying our ecomonic infrastructure, destroying the splendid weather cycles humanity and Earth’s other creatures have enjoyed these past 8-10 millennia.

Now, you’re telling me there’s nothing to see there? We got it all figured out?

I see a profound societal failures of judgment which implies a failure to understand and require an explanation.

I see a profound societal failures of judgment that’s worth getting to the roots of.

Too many celebrity talkers have become so infatuated with the wonderful ideas their mind creates, that they lose sight of the actually physical reality they are trying to render. link

I’ll wager that if you took some time to think about it, you’d acknowledge that on a fundamental level the Abrahamic religions are all about self-centeredness - ours as well as God’s.

These religions were founded on the basis of self-interest, they were focused on selected kernels of knowledge, born of an aggressive insecurity, and supported by a passionate sense of self-important certitude. Usually with empire building in mind while reeking with hostility towards outsiders, other teachers and learning. They did achieve results.

All the while pretty much ignoring the sovereignty of our Earth’s biosphere, her other inhabitants and the reality of our Evolutionary origins.

Consider, within the Abrahamic tradition our planet’s life support system and her inhabitants never rise above something to exploit until we suck it dry, then we move on to the next bonanza.

Whereas for me, Earth, her creatures and biosphere, her Evolution, these are my touchstones with physical reality. I feel time flowing through me as I travel through my days. I live within a mindscape that’s filled with an awareness of time in its entire spectrum, from microseconds, to my heart beat, to the days, seasons, years and decades, on to the eons of Evolution… link

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The condition you describe is the Dunning -Kruger Effect. Why are you making it so complicated?

I never think I know more than someone else, but I am pretty confident in my ability to reason on a logical level.

A learned scientist may catch me on detail, but seldom on my understanding of basic principles.

I seldom look at the proofs. I trust that peer review has been thorouh. I read the narratives and if I understand the narrative to the proofs, I understand the concept or principle.

If a subject is outside my knowledge I refrain from comment until I have examined the knowledge.

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and I sadly wonder why are you being so obtuse?
Light wine and brandy are not the same thing. :clinking_glasses:

That’s why we like each other I believe and strive to behave the same way. :tumbler_glass: :tumbler_glass:

You want more about Abrahamic Mindset, among its first tenets is the reduction and subjugation of women in social standing. We here in America 2022 separation of church and state since 1787, The Equal Right Amendment of 1997 has yet to ratified.

So why are you telling me I should refrain from the labeling a certain attitude that puts self before others, and that’s force a dualism into all our thinking that does as much blinker as it has helped enlighten.

Abrahamic Mindset? It demonstrates what I’m talking about to a tee. In all three religions and across all secular cultures that have been touched by them. It set the rules and everyone had to play their game, and days become generations.

sure, it’s an over-simplification, but isn’t every label an over-simplification? That why we are obliged to define ourselves.

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I guess my answer that I speak to minds rather than to men and women, should qualify as a satisfactory negation of possessing an Abrahamic mindset,?.. :scream:

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Yeah, that’s why this took a life time of learning and experience, and a few years of focused thought, exploration, writing.

Case For Reality

Because apparently someone needs to make one. Dissecting delusional thinking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Content

Cc’s Students’ Study Guide for The Case Against Reality.

(a non-scholar’s “scholarly” effort)

©2020 Peter Miesler

I intend to be a witness for a fact based Deep Time,

Evolutionary perspective on our Human Mind ~ Physical Reality interface.

And that’s why I’m actively seeking intelligent critique -

And why I’m more interested in finding people with whom all this resonates a wee bit, the defending gets old, especially when constantly confronted with more misunderstanding and straw men and defensiveness that actually picking apart the words I’m writing. Not trying to be harsh or snotty, and I do welcome all you have to offer because it’s better than the sound of one hand clapping, but you just won’t sit back look at those essays I wrote, allow them to at least percolate.

(7.01) An Alternative Philosophical Perspective - “Earth Centrism”

(7.02) Appreciating the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide

(7.03) Being an element in Earth’s Pageant of Evolution

(7.04) It’s not a “Body-Mind problem” it’s an “Ego-God problem.”

Give it a little time and then lets take it from the top. :v:t2:

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Absolutely. I suspect that we more agreement than disagreement on the subject…
Kindred spirits and all that… :innocent:

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For sure - for the Abrahamic mindset that you have set your sights on.
But that is not the Abrahamic Mindset that I’m trying to describe.

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I think I am getting the idea and am looking forward to finding confirmation in different
situations.

There might even be situations that warrant such a social arrangement?

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Not really keeping up with this thread, but here’s a random comment.
For me, after getting the full Evil Genius argument, Descartes' Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2003 Edition), and realizing he ends with a “first cause” argument for God, I had to think this out for myself. This was probably about the time someone was on this forum make a “zombie” argument, Zombies (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2003 Edition), which is taking the brain in a vat to the extreme that you are the only brain, and everyone else is fake.

Anyway. In the end, we only have the tools that we have, no matter what is “real”. The tools include concepts, like accepting that we can’t be 100% sure about what we know. We can calculate probabilities, but let’s say Descartes’ experiment is probable, and we’ve been wrong about physics for the last 500 years. It doesn’t change the tools we have to determine what the evil genius is and maybe even how to escape its prison. Whether we are hooked up to a Matrix, or beings on a planet surrounded by other life, the way we figure it out is the same.

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I watched a video by Fr. Matthew Pearson

Professor Destroys Relativism in 4 Minutes!
Feb 25, 2019

It was interesting, in its own way, but nothing to talk about. I mention it because of a comment more than the video itself.

John Tuel
1 hour ago

“Gonna have to provide some solid evidence that reality was “given” to us.”

I kinda like my response so am adding it to my collection over here considering it’s relevant to some discussions around here.

Don’t make it so personal. Reality isn’t “given” to “us”.

Isn’t Physical Reality the atoms, molecules, laws of physics, then galaxies and solar systems, then Earth and biology/geology, life, then ecosystems and creatures that kept getting more complex and learning how to think, move and manipulate better. Until one creature was able to reflect upon itself in a way that’s inconceivable to anything else out there.

Think about it, either everything you see, you are making up in your own mind, or you are part of something bigger. Don’t think there’s much middle ground there.

Do you know about the deep time of evolution unfolding one day at a time, and all the foundational steps needed before the environment created the massive foundation needed to create the human being, magnificent body and brain and the mind they produced and environment with resources to sustain it.

Physical reality created stars and planets, this Earth created life and thinking creatures. Earth created us and we created our Gods and philosophies and science.

Here’s a benchmark for appreciating the rest of it - Appreciating the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide.

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Well I’m at another crescendo, and though I’ve posted an earlier version of this, I can’t remember where and seems to me this would be a nice place for it anyways since I have the feeling this the final draft.

Now it’ll be interesting if I get any nibbled off the college kids.

(Am I allowed to say that at 67, if I have kids in their thirties?)

Inviting Intelligent Critique & Constructive Challenges:

Introducing a New Philosophical Perspective.

Peter Miesler, September 2022

Founded on a life time of learning through the findings of scientists.

Earth Centrism

Because Earth is our ultimate touchstone with reality and ourselves.

This insight leads to a realization that, for this complex living Earth that we experience, to exist at all, is proof positive that our Earth evolved down one particular pathway, no matter what we people imagine one way or the other.

Ours is to figure it out and appreciate - not to presume to define it!

We appreciate that we are evolved biological creatures born of Earth’s processes, as expressed through its singular Evolutionary Pageant.

We appreciation the profound divide between physical reality, that is matter, biology, laws of nature, on the one hand, and on the other, our thoughts unfolding from within our amazing minds, (or more descriptively, within the realm of our “human mindscape").

We appreciate that fundamentally awareness and life’s “consciousness spectrum” started over a billion years ago with the invention, then prospering, of the unbelievably complex organization of Eukaryote cells (some suggest guided by microtubules).

Keep in mind that in due time these cells created colonies of cells that demonstrated a sense of place and order and purpose or the organism would have collapsed into a chaotic blob. Increasingly complex creatures depended, at every step, on increasing awareness, sensing, processing, internal communication along with improving and refining manipulatory abilities.

By and by, along came one particular clade the eutherians, small nocturnal insect eaters who gave birth to the class of mammalian animals, which begat the primates, which begat hominids, which begat our modern humankind species.

Every stage required new refinements and developments within the complex sensing/body/brain system and the mind that they collectively produce - refinements that depended on previous refinements and lessons. Your Being is the sum total of all the days of Evolution that went into producing the human form you possess and live through, while your mind reflects the sum total of all the days you’ve lived and experienced.

I believe a genuine understanding of oneself starts with the realization that we are an evolved biological sensing creature, and that our consciousness is fundamentally the inside reflection of your body/brain dealing with itself and the environment/circumstance it is embedded within.

This understanding leads to another inevitable realization, namely that, our “Gods” are in truth creations of our own minds, tailored by our self-serving egos.

“I Am, therefore I Think”

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I also added this to my blog, since couldn’t resist a post script for my few regular visitors:

It’s been four years since first writing about my reflections upon a small epiphany I experienced. An insight which left a profound appreciation for the “Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide” through a deep-time evolutionary perspective. My essay describing it is titled: "The Missing Key to Stephen Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” and has been followed by a some revisions.

Then I started reading Donald Hoffman’s: “Case Against Reality: why evolution hide the truth from our eyes” and found it a prime example of modern self-delusion and getting lost within a mindscape still shackled by Abrahamic thinking, (self-serving, self-certain, quick to simplistic assumptions, with its echos of dualism, and so on ). His insults towards Earth Sciences was a challenge I couldn’t turn away from and two years ago I posted the first installment of Prof Donald Hoffman Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity - the prelude appeared, with my final being, A Preview of Cc’s “Hoffman playing Basketball in zero-gravity” a critical review of his "Case Against Reality,” last November.

My intellectual adventure has continued, with Daniel Dennett (someone I could at least take seriously) via his interesting book, “Consciousness Explained.” But that only drove me to Descartes and his “Discourse on Method” which turned out way more fascinating than I’d expected.

Though that still can’t hide the fact that Descartes lived in a time before science. Descartes was an accomplished mathematician, but beyond that he knew nothing of astronomy, physics, or light, or biology, his inaccurate human physiological knowledge didn’t rise much above that of an intelligent, inquisitive butcher’s.

In his defense, all Descartes had was his mind! 1600s learned texts were more opinion and wishful thinking, then evidence and facts to build upon. He was smart enough to recognize that, so deliberately focused on his mind to the exclusion of all the mucho blah blah of his day.

Still, today we have authoritative trustable knowledge flooding in at us from every direction. Not perfect, but there’s a process for separating the chaff from the grain, and the demand for Honesty and Truthfulness remains a prime cornerstone of science in a way that doesn’t seem to exist in the general society anymore. Individually all we need to do, is the homework & learning that comes with it.

Seems to me younger people should be skeptical of our historical intellectual heroes, after all, look at the mess they helped set into motion. Too much time spent on echo’s of religious arguments and genius egos busy out doing each other. Then that easy disregard for Earth’s natural balance sheets of systems & processes, that incidentally are what’s sustained us all these millennia of climate optimum, and long before.

Our collective disregard for accepting the concepts of conservation, making things last, not to be so gluttonous and obsessed with so many empty bells and whistles that the Hollywood dream machine keeps churning out for us. Working together with Earth’s natural system, nurturing

Why not take Earth’s Evolution seriously and do the homework to learn about what makes her tick?

Isn’t it time we recognize a new difficult really is steamrolling at us? We need real ideas and ways of seeing the world around us, because tomorrow keeps coming, and staying fixated on the rearview mirror is not the way to survive. The old truths failed your future, don’t be afraid of moving on.

As we continue into our future, catastrophe’s will happen more frequently, but so does the morning after. Many of us keep getting through it, survive and wake to face the new day. Now, more than ever, we need to take into account the need for honesty, fairplay, goodwill, cooperation and striving to better understand this Earth and her global heat and moisture distribution engine that we depend on for everything.

But now I digress into motivations for not walking away from this frustrating intellectual adventure of mine, and yes, I’d still appreciate some serious feedback.

Thank you for your time and interest,
Citizenschallenge at gmail

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That’s seen some touch ups, but nothing worth worrying about, besides short on time.
This has taken a couple weeks longer than expected but now that it’s done, I feel like sharing. It’s a nice collection, if you’re into this stuff, take a peek.

An Earth Centrist’s Student Bibliography,

Appreciating Earth’s Evolutionary Pageant and our animal nature.

©2022 Citizenschallenge

The previous post is my summary of an “Earth Centrist” outlook on life and our human condition, a perspective that acknowledges Earth as our fundamental touchstone with reality.

This Earth Centrist’s perspective can’t be attained by reading a description of it - unless it already resonates within you thanks to your own previous inquiry and inclination. That’s because each of us must engage in our own learning effort.

That is, living your moment and doing the homework and drawing your own conclusions from the evidence you’ve been able to gather. Your deeper understanding emerges out of your own efforts.

Since I’m no scholar, I’ve done my learning by way of some wonderful science communicators, mostly real scientists giving lectures via YouTube along with writing articles and books, with a few talented writers and science documentarians in the mix.

I’ve put together a bibliographic list of my favorites, and of course, it’s geared to the intelligent high schooler or early college student, and for other informed enthusiasts such as myself. It follows a natural progression from matter forming followed by mineral evolution and globally a “heat and moisture distribution engine” evolving, to geology and biology combining forces, on to the mysteries of complex dynamic living creatures. Then on to the greatest show on Earth with life’s collective consciousness spectrum.

Since my bandwidth is limited by my crowded day to days filled with other obligations, I’m sure I’m missing many awesome gems. So please do share should you believe you know of some presentations worth adding to this collection.

Featuring: Sean Carrol, NOVA/NASA, Robert Hazen, Robert Rohde, Richard Alley, Nick Lane, David Qualmen, Carl Woese, Lynn Margulis, Tsutomu Wantanabe, Angela Hessler, Svante Pääbo, Mark Solms, Antonio Damasio*,* Susan Greenfield*,* Jim Al-Khalili*. Finishing with introductions to* *David Attenborough’s incomparable tour of the evolution of Earth’s living creatures: " Life on Earth", and James L. Sadd’s wonderful introduction to the fundamentals of geology: “Earth Revealed”

Continued at Citizenschallenge: Earth Centrism - A Student's Bibliographic Resource - (2/2)

Cheers,

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