God's not finished

"In this way creatures begin to acquire autonomy. Autonomy does not mean 'free will', although autonomy is clearly a necessary precursor of the state we ourselves enjoy, a state in which we can at least wonder whether or not we have something called 'free will'. It merely means that, although decisions may still be unconscious and automatic, the place where decisions are made no longer lies somewhere between the creature and its environment (which is where we might suppose that the decisions of amoebas, or anemones, or sundews take place). Rather it rests firmly within the brain of the creature concerned."

"Moreover, the paradox of consciousness-that the more consciousness one has, the more layers of processing divide one from the world is, like so much else in nature, a trade-off. Progressive distancing from the external world is simply the price that is paid for knowing anything about the world at all. The deeper and broader consciousness of the world becomes, the more complex the layers of processing necessary to obtain that consciousness. The more complex the layers of processing. the greater the chance that the properties of those layers, like the properties of all representational systems, will be imposed on what is represented, causing distortions of which the processor can hardly be aware. Indeed the clarity and detail that complex representations provide are so great, so convincing, that it is hard to believe they could ever be defective or misleading as a guide to the real.

Finally it is absurd to speak about a true view of the world' because it is not even true for any creature that what is perceived is the world itself."

• Derek Bickerton, Language & Species

@Nomadlost

Pride will make you cry is still stuck in my head, do you have a link to that?

"Everyone will have favorite theories which they believe to be correct (heliocentrism, evolution, and so on). But a thousand years ago, very little of what we now regard as 'knowledge' was accepted, and the bulk of what was accepted would no longer be regarded as 'knowledge'. Who could predict with any confidence what will be 'knowledge' a thousand years from now? Yet people a thousand years ago were every bit as convinced by their 'knowledge' as we are by ours, and as those a thousand years hence will be by theirs."

"By looking at our search for truth' in this way we can make evolutionary sense out of an activity that otherwise would appear both bizarre and unique. No other species searches for truth', but other species, like ours, seek to extend their representations of reality in ways that will be advantageous for them. Moreover, the present a***ysis of that process should not be taken as a license for either absolute skepticism or absolute relativism. Some of our discoveries really do stand up better than others, some of our beliefs really do have more support. Moreover, our knowledge of the world does tend to increase over time. But it is still 'our knowledge, the knowledge of a particular species at a particular stage of its existence, rather than some transcendental revelation of a deeper reality.

It is natural that a species with language should initially believe that it had somehow found the route to such revelations. The principle of exhaustiveness seems to tell us that our model of reality is a complete model. Our practical successes in the world seem to tell us that, with the aid of constructional learning and the principle of causal primacy, we can solve any problem that we may set ourselves and overcome any obstacle that lies in our path. But what has been called 'the search for truth' might be better and more modestly regarded as a dialogue-among ourselves, and between ourselves and nature-from which we learn whatever aspects of nature and of ourselves we may need to know in order to go on surviving and seeking-that being the mode of existence that language imposes on us."

"Those who have power in a society control its myths, which is to say the linguistic constructs that supposedly enshrine the common purposes of the society. Even if these myths are not formally taught, they are quickly absorbed from those around us. Perhaps no alternatives will be presented to us, or the only alternatives offered may identify us, if we choose them, with despised and persecuted minorities. And we cannot say, 'We don't like any of this, we will stand aside, we won't negotiate'. We have to negotiate. We have to have some model of the world, or—if we can get around the language of 'we' and 'having'- -some model of the world has to be part of us, and grow in us, and guide our conduct, if we are to be creatures at all."

• Derek Bickerton, Language & Species