[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dave,

Dave said:
An aside. (I think an important one) when the word 
"evolution" popped into my mind above I decided to 
search both texts for its use. ZaMM (1) Lila (82) A huge 
difference. In comparing and contrasting MoQ-1 and 
MoQ-2 "evolution" is not used in the first  at all and is a 
significant part of the second. Even though the many 
branches of evolutionary science have been making big 
strides in last 50 years they still have not come up with  
definitive agreements between them on what, when, why, 
where, etc makes humans different (or not) from all rest. 
And this is particularly the case of what qualities 
developed in our human ancestors allowed them to 
emerge from biological level. So the misunderstanding 
and discord here is in part because of the lack of progress  
and agreement in science.

Matt:
That's really interesting about the references to evolution, 
though one shouldn't discount talking "evolutionarily," if 
you will, like the mythos-over-logos section in ZMM, when 
the focus was cultural evolution.

I think the main problems with "definitive agreements" in 
how us humans evolved out of the muck have been 
primarily problems for philosophers, and scientists talking 
philosophy (like Wilson, Dawkins, Pinker, Chomsky).  The 
trouble has been the isolation of "what" we are talking 
about to then be able to isolate the when, where, why, 
and how.  For instance, if you say "the mind" is what 
differentiates us from the monkeys, then you have a lot 
of trouble spelling out the rest.  However, if you say 
"language," your job is a lot easier (just so long as you 
don't also reinstitute "mind"-problems, like Chomsky).  I 
think current discord is around because we're still 
hammering out what this paradigm-shift to Darwin 
means, and some people are suggesting that the job of 
the scientist would be easier if we stopped throwing 
him mysteries, but rather problems.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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