Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 Michael Starks 3rd Edition

673 Pages·2019·5.14 MB·English

by  Michael Starks

Talking Monkeys

Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and
Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews
2006-2019
3rd Edition
Michael Starks

Logical Structure of Rationality
Disposition* Emotion Memory Perception Desire PI** IA*** Action/Word
Cause World World World World Mind Mind Mind Mind
Originates
From****
Causes Changes None Mind Mind Mind None World World World
In*****
Causally Self No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Reflexive******
True or False Yes T only T only T only Yes Yes Yes Yes
(Testable)
Public
Conditions of Yes Yes/No Yes/No No Yes/No Yes No Yes
Satisfaction
Describe a No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes/No Yes
Mental State
Evolutionary 5 4 2,3 1 5 3 2 2
Priority
Voluntary Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes
Content
Voluntary Yes/No No Yes No Yes/No Yes Yes Yes
Initiation
Cognitive 2 1 2/1 1 2 / 1 2 1 2
System *******
Change No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Intensity
Talking Monkeys

Philosophy, Psychology, Science,
Religion and Politics on a
Doomed Planet

Articles and Reviews 2006-2019

Michael Starks

3rd Edition

Reality Press

Las Vegas Nevada
Copyright © by Michael Starks (2019)

ISBN 9781796843736

Third Edition 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted without the express consent of the author.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE........................................................................................ i

WITTGENSTEIN, SEARLE AND THE TWO SYSTEMS OF
THOUGHT

1. The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language
as Revealed in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle……2
2. Review of Making the Social World by John Searle (2010)
..................................................................................................... 111
3. Seeing With the Two Systems of Thought—a Review of ‘Seeing Things
As They Are: a Theory of Perception’ by John Searle (2015) 13 5

PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY

4. A Master Wittgensteinian Surveys Human Nature -A Review of Human
Nature-the Categorial Framework by PMS Hacker (2010) 174
5. Is there such a thing as pragmatics? -- Review of Concise Encyclopedia
of Pragmatics 2nd ed. (2009) ................................................... 204
6. Review of The Mind’s I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett
(1981) .......................................................................................... 236
7. Review of Radicalizing Enactivism by Hutto and Myin (2012)
..................................................................................................... 244
8. Review of The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker (2008)…270
9. Review of The New Science of the Mind by Marc Rowlands (2013)
..................................................................................................... 284
10. Endless Incoherence— A Review of Shoemaker's Physical Realization
(2009) .......................................................................................... 301
11. Scientism on Steroids: A Review of Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett
(2003).......................................................................................... 319
12. Review of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (2007)
.................................................................................................... 337
13. Another cartoon portrait of the mind from the reductionist
metaphysicians--a Review of Peter Carruthers ‘The Opacity of Mind’
(2011).......................................................................................... 356

MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND COMPUTERS

14. What Do Paraconsistent, Undecidable, Random, Computable and
Incomplete mean? A Review of Godel's Way: Exploits into an
undecidable world by Gregory Chaitin, Francisco A Doria, Newton C.A.
da Costa 160p (2012) ................................................................ 387
15. Wolpert, Chaitin and Wittgenstein on impossibility, incompleteness, the
liar paradox, theism, the limits of computation, a non-quantum
mechanical uncertainty principle and the universe as computer—the
ultimate theorem in Turing Machine Theory....................... 403
16. Review of 'The Outer Limits of Reason' by Noson Yanofsky 403p (2013)
.................................................................................................... 408
17. Review of The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth 358 p (1997)
.................................................................................................... 425
18. Review of Hyperspace by Michio Kaku 359p (1994) .......... 431

RELIGION

19. Review of Religion Explained-- The Evolutionary Origins of Religious
Thought by Pascal Boyer (2002)………………………….442
20. Review of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber 2nd ed 851p (2001)
.................................................................................................... 456
21. The most profound spiritual autobiography of all time? - a review of
"The Knee of Listening" by Adi Da (Franklin Jones) (1995)…4 75
22. Do our automated unconscious behaviors reveal our real selves and
hidden truths about the universe? -- A review of David Hawkins ‘Power
vs Force--the hidden determinants of human behavior –author’s official
authoritative edition’ 412p (2012) (original edition 1995)……….479

BIOLOGY

23. Altruism, Jesus and the End of the World—how the Templeton
Foundation bought a Harvard Professorship and attacked Evolution,
Rationality and Civilization. A review of E.O. Wilson 'The Social
Conquest of Earth' (2012) and Nowak and Highfield
‘SuperCooperators’(2012) ........................................................ 484
24. Review of Human Nature-- Sandis and Cain eds. (2012) ... 499
25. Review of “Are We Hardwired? by Clark & Grunstein Oxford (2000)
..................................................................................................... 519
26. Boring, antiscientific, antirational, creationist trash: A Review of
Adapting Minds- Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for
Human Nature by David Buller (2006) ................................. 523
27. Review of The Science of Marijuana by Leslie Iverson 283p (2000)
..................................................................................................... 526
28. A Review of Ecstasy: the complete guide Judith Holland Editor
454p (2001) ................................................................................ 533
29. Review of Listening Into the Heart of Things: on MDMA and LSD by
Samuel Widmer 302p (1997) (Translation of German Edition of 1989)
..................................................................................................... 542
30. A very brief review of the life and work of neuroscientist, physician,
psychoanalyst, inventor, animal rights activist and pioneer in dolphins,
isolation tanks and psychedelics John C Lilly 1915-2001. ... 546

SUICIDAL UTOPIAN DELUSIONS

31. The Transient Suppression of the Worst Devils of our Nature—a review
of Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has
Declined’(2012) ......................................................................... 552
32. The Dead Hands of Group Selection and Phenomenology Destroy a
Book and a Career -- A Review of Individuality and Entanglement by
Herbert Gintis (2017) ................................................................ 558
33. Is JK Rowling More Evil Than Me?.............................571
34. A Review of The Murderer Next Door by David Buss (2005)
.................................................................................................... 576
35. Will Hominoids or Androids Destroy the Earth? —A Review of How to
Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil (2012) ................................. 588
36. Suicide by Democracy-an Obituary for America and the World
.................................................................................................... 602
PREFACE

“He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics
than Locke” Charles Darwin 1838 Notebook M

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and edited to bring
them up to date (2019). The copyright page has the date of the edition and
new editions will be noted there as I edit old articles or add new ones. All the
articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about
anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8
million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and
deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the
table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is
critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every
important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of
this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some
control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things
are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their
constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable.

The first group of articles attempts to give some insight into how we behave
that is reasonably free of the theoretical delusions that are universal. In the
next group, I show how these insights apply by reviewing some books in
philosophy and psychology. Next I review books on science and religion
and finally provide reviews and articles showing how understanding of
both science and philosophy gives insight into the tragic delusions
destroying the world. People believe that society can be saved by science,
religion and politics, so I provide some suggestions as to why this is
unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known
writers.

It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so the first section
presents articles that try to describe (not explain as Wittgenstein insisted)
behavior. I start with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality,
which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind,
rationality, personality) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to
the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have
found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John
Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two
i
systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking
and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete
overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that
concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher
order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that
there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one
determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or
satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion.

Since philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as
Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run
throughout human discourse and behavior, so there is endless need for
philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy,
sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature,
religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology.
It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones
as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master
has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning with
the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s.

"Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are
irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This
tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into
complete darkness." (BBB p18)

The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that
leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton and
the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to
Hell on Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the
hardest to see. We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic
System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This
is the source of the universal blindness described by Searle’s The
Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinker’s Blank Slate and Tooby and
Cosmides’ Standard Social Science Model.

The astute may wonder why we cannot see System 1 at work, but it is clearly
counterproductive for an animal to be thinking about or second guessing
every action, and in any case, there is no time for the slow, massively
integrated System 2 to be involved in the constant stream of split second
‘decisions’ we must make. As W noted, our ‘thoughts’ (T1 or the ‘thoughts’
of System 1) must lead directly to actions.
ii
It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought,
language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or
less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave,
and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything
else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that
intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others)
view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious
automated System 1 actions or reflexes.

Thus, all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows
how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to
our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout
philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg
and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same
problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in
degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their
frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals)
via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens), but it’s clearly true.
While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are
wasting the earth and their descendant’s futures.

Many of the articles describe the ‘digital delusions’, which confuse the
language games of System 2 with the automatisms of System 1, and so cannot
distinguish biological machines (i.e., people) from other kinds of machines
(i.e., computers). The ‘reductionist’ claim is that one can ‘explain’ behavior
at a ‘lower’ level, but what actually happens is that one does not explain
human behavior but a ‘stand in’ for it. Hence the title of Searle’s classic
review of Dennett’s book (“Consciousness Explained”)— “Consciousness
Explained Away”. In most contexts ‘reduction’ of higher level emergent
behavior to brain functions, biochemistry, or physics is incoherent. Also for
‘reduction’ of chemistry or physics, the path is blocked by chaos and
uncertainty. Anything can be ‘represented’ by equations, but when they
‘represent’ higher order behavior, it is not clear (and cannot be made clear)
what the ‘results’ mean. Reductionist metaphysics is a joke, but most
scientists and philosophers lack the appropriate sense of humor.

Other digital delusions are that we will be saved from the pure evil
(selfishness) of System 1 by computers/AI/robotics/ nanotech/genetic
engineering created by System 2. The No Free Lunch principal tells us there
will be serious and possibly fatal consequences. The adventurous may regard
this principle as a higher order emergent expression of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. Hi-tech enthusiasts hugely underestimate the problems
iii