I haven’t read the book. Here are some of my thoughts on the content in the above post. These thoughts may be invalidated by other parts in the book as I haven’t read the book and this is only the first quarter summary of the book.
According to Korzybski, the unique quality of humans is what he calls “time-binding”, described as “the capacity of an individual or a generation to begin where the former left off”.
Robert sussman here posits that there are three human behavioural traits not found in chimps or any other animal; they are unique and exemplify what it means to be human.
Symbolic behaviour—the ability to create alternative worlds, to ponder about the past and future, to imagine things that don’t exist.
Language—the unique communicative venue that enables humans to communicate not only in proximate contexts, but also about the past, the future, and things distant and imagined, allowing us to share and pass our symbols to future generations.
Culture—the ability found only in humans for different populations to create their own shared symbolic worlds and pass them on. Although chimpanzees can pass on learned behaviour, they cannot pass on shared and different world views.
Time binding seems to be the same as culture.
But religion is a ‘primitive science’
Aren’t religion and science disparate concepts? I get that they both provide theories about how the world is, but to refer to religion as scientific in any way seems strange to me.
Manhood of Humanityis: “What is a human?” Answering this question correctly could help us design a civilization allowing the fullest human development. Failure to answer this question correctly will repeat the cycle of revolutions and wars.
This seems to be a pre 1900 view of the world, i.e. before relativity, quantum mechanics, complexity theory etc.
This book goes over what I mean. Below is part of the abstract that explains it.
“Early theorists believed that in science lay the promise of certainty. Built on a foundation of fact and constructed with objective and trustworthy tools, science produced knowledge. But science has also shown us that this knowledge will always be fundamentally incomplete and that a true understanding of the world is ultimately beyond our grasp. In this thoughtful and compelling book, physicist F. David Peat examines the basic philosophic difference between the certainty that characterized the thinking of humankind through the nineteenth century and contrasts it with the startling fall of certainty in the twentieth. The nineteenth century was marked by a boundless optimism and confidence in the power of progress and technology.”
So, I basically I disagree that knowing “what is a human” is all you need to build a utopia.
Second, I don’t think that there is necessarily any way to set up society so that everyone is perfectly satisfied. People are both similar to each other, but divergent as well. We are individuals, but have an underlying human nature. There is no human template or certain way that things can be so that it is exactly the same for everyone and perfect for everyone as well. There is going to be conflict and this, to an extent, is necessary. Perfection like certainty may be forever elusive. There is of course underlying common patterns or human universals. I take the view that non-teleological evolution means that human nature is not immutable or timeless. Human nature does not refer to an unchanging essence. Instead, it describes what the members of humanity currently happen to be like. People have common propensities, predispositions, norms and needs and these cause a certain probability and likelihood for humans to have certain traits. Another way of putting this is that there is ‘species-typical’ behaviour, but the resultant behaviour is going to be diverse. An example is laughing. We laugh because of our biology, but what we laugh at is extraordinarily variable. The cognitive ability of human’s means that their behaviours are more diverse than other animals and that their thought patterns have a greater impact on their behaviour.
I do believe that understanding these common patterns or human needs is extremely helpful. An example is that infants who are touched gently on a regular basis gain weight and grow at better rates than babies who lack this contact. If you are designing a society or writing a policy, then understanding these needs can be immensely helpful. Some work I have found on human needs are below:
Maslows ranking of needs, but I don’t think the current research backs up the order or idea or ranking.
There’s also this book by Martin Seligman and others which classifies the character strengths and virtues Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. New York: Oxford University Press and Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Summary here:www.viacharacter.org/www/C...ths/VIA-Classification#nav
I think, though, that people intuitively know the human needs because they are human themselves. The greatest atrocities that are commited by humanity to other humans are not due to a lack of understanding of the human needs, but because certain people are excluded from being deserving of being able to meet these needs. In the past certain discriminating factors, for example, melanin in skin, religion, and patriotic allegiance have been used as indicators of bestiality, lowliness, inhumanity and other degrading qualities. In summary, I think the issue is more of a perspectival one, i.e. with people’s maps. You need to not only ask what are the fundamental human needs, but you need to also ask how you can get people to create maps that allow them to best fulfill these fundamental human needs. I am sure that there are also a multitude of other considerations that you would need to think about if you were to design a civilization that allowed the fullest human development possible.
This seems to be a pre 1900 view of the world, i.e. before relativity, quantum mechanics, complexity theory etc. [...] Early theorists believed that in science lay the promise of certainty. Built on a foundation of fact and constructed with objective and trustworthy tools, science produced knowledge. But science has also shown us that this knowledge will always be fundamentally incomplete and that a true understanding of the world is ultimately beyond our grasp.
Not really. Korzybski speaks strongly against the idea of certainty and how recent advances in science have shown it to be wrong. That’s a substantial part of what Science&Sanity is about.
In summary, I think the issue is more of a perspectival one, i.e. with people’s maps.
Korzybski was the person who came up with using the word map in this way.
I haven’t read the book. Here are some of my thoughts on the content in the above post. These thoughts may be invalidated by other parts in the book as I haven’t read the book and this is only the first quarter summary of the book.
Robert sussman here posits that there are three human behavioural traits not found in chimps or any other animal; they are unique and exemplify what it means to be human.
Symbolic behaviour—the ability to create alternative worlds, to ponder about the past and future, to imagine things that don’t exist.
Language—the unique communicative venue that enables humans to communicate not only in proximate contexts, but also about the past, the future, and things distant and imagined, allowing us to share and pass our symbols to future generations.
Culture—the ability found only in humans for different populations to create their own shared symbolic worlds and pass them on. Although chimpanzees can pass on learned behaviour, they cannot pass on shared and different world views.
Time binding seems to be the same as culture.
Aren’t religion and science disparate concepts? I get that they both provide theories about how the world is, but to refer to religion as scientific in any way seems strange to me.
This seems to be a pre 1900 view of the world, i.e. before relativity, quantum mechanics, complexity theory etc.
This book goes over what I mean. Below is part of the abstract that explains it.
So, I basically I disagree that knowing “what is a human” is all you need to build a utopia.
Second, I don’t think that there is necessarily any way to set up society so that everyone is perfectly satisfied. People are both similar to each other, but divergent as well. We are individuals, but have an underlying human nature. There is no human template or certain way that things can be so that it is exactly the same for everyone and perfect for everyone as well. There is going to be conflict and this, to an extent, is necessary. Perfection like certainty may be forever elusive. There is of course underlying common patterns or human universals. I take the view that non-teleological evolution means that human nature is not immutable or timeless. Human nature does not refer to an unchanging essence. Instead, it describes what the members of humanity currently happen to be like. People have common propensities, predispositions, norms and needs and these cause a certain probability and likelihood for humans to have certain traits. Another way of putting this is that there is ‘species-typical’ behaviour, but the resultant behaviour is going to be diverse. An example is laughing. We laugh because of our biology, but what we laugh at is extraordinarily variable. The cognitive ability of human’s means that their behaviours are more diverse than other animals and that their thought patterns have a greater impact on their behaviour.
I do believe that understanding these common patterns or human needs is extremely helpful. An example is that infants who are touched gently on a regular basis gain weight and grow at better rates than babies who lack this contact. If you are designing a society or writing a policy, then understanding these needs can be immensely helpful. Some work I have found on human needs are below:
Maslows ranking of needs, but I don’t think the current research backs up the order or idea or ranking.
Manfred Max-Neef talked about fundamental human needs
There’s also this book by Martin Seligman and others which classifies the character strengths and virtues Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. New York: Oxford University Press and Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Summary here:www.viacharacter.org/www/C...ths/VIA-Classification#nav
I think, though, that people intuitively know the human needs because they are human themselves. The greatest atrocities that are commited by humanity to other humans are not due to a lack of understanding of the human needs, but because certain people are excluded from being deserving of being able to meet these needs. In the past certain discriminating factors, for example, melanin in skin, religion, and patriotic allegiance have been used as indicators of bestiality, lowliness, inhumanity and other degrading qualities. In summary, I think the issue is more of a perspectival one, i.e. with people’s maps. You need to not only ask what are the fundamental human needs, but you need to also ask how you can get people to create maps that allow them to best fulfill these fundamental human needs. I am sure that there are also a multitude of other considerations that you would need to think about if you were to design a civilization that allowed the fullest human development possible.
Not really. Korzybski speaks strongly against the idea of certainty and how recent advances in science have shown it to be wrong. That’s a substantial part of what Science&Sanity is about.
Korzybski was the person who came up with using the word map in this way.