Immortalist wrote:
> Stephen Harris wrote:
>> Immortalist wrote:
>>> The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) is the seminal work of
>>> comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. In this text Campbell
>>> discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in
>>> world mythologies and religions.
>>>
>>> Campbell's insight was that important myths from around the world which
>>> have survived for thousands of years, all share a fundamental
>>> structure, which Campbell called the monomyth.
>>>
>>> THE SHORT FORM OF THE HERO STORY:
>>>
>>> The hero is introduced in his ordinary world, where he receives the
>>> call to adventure. He is reluctant at first but is encouraged by
>>> the wise old man or woman to cross the first threshold, where he
>>> encounters tests and helpers. He reaches the innermost cave, where
>>> he endures the supreme ordeal. He seizes the sword or the treasure
>>> and is pursued on the road back to his world. He is resurrected and
>>> transformed by his experience. He returns to his ordinary world with
>>> a treasure, boon, or elixir to benefit his world.
>>>
>>>
http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist2/hero.htm
>>>
>> This subject will eventually point to archetypes.
>>
>> Why is the Illiad remembered for centuries?
>> Why is Shakespeare remembered?
>>
I read your entire post before replying. These (my) questions are used
to introduce the *limitations* of a topic you mention later in this post,
"THIS LIST, COMPILED in 1989 and published in 1991, consists
primarily of "surface" universals of behavior and overt language
noted by ethnographers. It does not list deeper universals of mental
structure that are revealed by theory and experiments. It also omits
near-universals (traits that most, but not all, cultures show) and
conditional universals ("If a culture has trait A, it always has trait
B"). A list of items added since 1989 is provided at the end. For
discussion and references, see Brown's Human Universals (1991)
and his entry for "Human Universals" in The MIT Encyclopedia of the
Cognitive Sciences (Wilson & Keil, 1999)."
>
> Could we avoid making a Hero's journey, I think not & it is likely our
> lot.
>
> Habituation satiation, change and attention. We come upon conflicts and
> attempt to resolve them, sometimes becoming an example portrayed in
> some sort of learning story for others, hence the Hero, the one that is
> one of many folowable examples.
Yes, one on many.
>
There are limitations imposed by our environment and physical bodies
which constrain the range of our mental experiences within the pattern
of birth, life and death. So although the potential may be there, a
person of 18 years can be quite adult and another person of 60 can
still be a Peter Pan. Getting a little ahead, there are certainly
correlations between biological development and some mental maturity
matrix, but no causal rule, at least not one that can be discovered.
> I read the Lord of the Rings when I was a teenager.
>
>> Writers try to emulate Tolkien and fail so it is not
>> just the "story" but the way it is written, its inner
>> consistency.
>>
>
> Each story is like a game then? It is common sense to understand why
> different games have different rules. All the while the universal
> collection of universals influence the rules of each game similarly.
>
Yes, and game theory (finite vs. infinite games) is applied to this
topic. And your statement about universals means to me much what
I just said about our mental experiences are constrained by physical
factors required to survive within the span of birth, life and death.
At one level, we are all configurations of atoms with a common set
of laws of nature which we obey. Once sub-categories are created,
then there are governing principles specific to that domain which
are not true of a larger, less specified category.
>> What is it about the story that coincides with the mutual
>> recognition/approval within our consensus reality which
>> eventually gets measured as book sales?
>>
>
> Identification with the protagonist, as far as fiction goes, and a
> workable example of "how to do it."
>
That answer is a bit literal, but yes there are stock
formulas for churning out popular mystery or SF paperbacks.
> Here is an important line of text from the paste below;
>
> According to Leon Festinger, when physical
> reality becomes increasingly uncertain, people
> rely more and more on "social reality"-that is,
> they are more likely to conform to what other
> people are doing, not because they fear
> punishment from the group but because the
> group's behavior supplies them with valuable
> information about what is expected of them.
>
> ----------------------
>
I prefer to look at this as a cultural phenomenon since
culture is usually the term used to described inherited
wisdoms passed on from earlier generations-- and saying
'passed on from earlier societies' is pretty rare. Folk
wisdom such as "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".
Myths match with cultures. But, I agree with the basic premise.
> Rewards and Punishments Versus Information
>
I agree with this, but the information is too
specific about behavior displayed in shorter periods of time
than the time span and human psyche depth examined by Campbell.
>> One will probably answer some type of collective unconscious
>> which "exists" but will surely have an ineffable description
>> and not capturable by a computer program (algorithm). A mental
>> realm in the category which contains a "soul" (dualist).
>>
>
> But then the activities of the brain have been proposed to be
> sufficient for being all human experience and subjectivity in general.
> This by common and not specialized science.
That is called Physicalism, which I happen to agree with but it
is certainly disputed: "Physicalism is the thesis that everything is
physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that
everything supervenes on the physical." The founders of AI thought
that if the "mind" was produced by the physical brain, then such a
process could be simulated by a correct program, it was computable.
However, such a rule or group of rules might exist but there is no
way to discover those rules or if found by accident, knowing what
you found or verifying it, or that all possible events were covered.
You mentioned 200+ instincts. I've also read that one team found
over 1000 instincts and gave up trying to catalog them. How do you
write a computer program that knows *all* of the rules including
instincts and invokes them in appropriate situations when a human
would do so? So there is a big difference in asserting that all
brain states are physical so that all mental states have a physical
basic and finding a way to know what they all are and then further,
which the human brain does do, how to organize them all in a timely
and coherent manner, appropriately for each possible event so that
the response matches that of a typical healthy human.
This is background for what I will write towards the end of the post.
>
The general area which includes this subject, some sort of formula
or group of rules which will capture the essentials of human behavior
and corresponding mental states has been investigated for over 50
years under the umbrella of artificial intelligence. I think the
vocabulary in AI is quite useful since it was built to discuss how
to translate an English poem into French into Russian and back again
into English without garbling the poem.
>> Or one can propose the physicalist answer which says the mind
>> is generated by the brain. Humans have the same basic genetic
>> structure/blueprint for a brain, we live in the same general
>> environment (which has limited degrees of freedom)so we
>> share the same general perception of what reality is, which
>> does not require knowing what reality really is.
>>
>
> This is an old debate deserving of little attention. The evidence
> provided by neurology has killed the argument actually, but not
> necessarily so, only comparatively so, for it would be absurd to
> attempt to refute neurological evidence of nerve activities.
>
I'm not sure what you mean, since I think neurology is part
of the physicalism philosophical position. Maybe you meant
Dualism has little credibility nowadays in comparison to Physicalism.
>> They talk about the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics.
>> This comes about since the abstract constructs are built by the
>> same tool which generates our human construct of reality. Brains
>> contribute to survival, perceiving events as causes and effects
>> over a period of time. Humans don't have the type of consciousness
>> needed to make posts on Usenet without memory measuring the
>> passage of time.
>>
>
> They are a dead argument since they cannot answer to the evidence of
> science.
>
Too vague, what "they"? Mathematics is the evidence of science.
All physical theories of reality have a formal mathematical basis
which require *measured* and predictable outcomes. Both mathematics
and theories of reality are abstractions, not essentials of reality.
>> Humans are born, live and come to an end. Any allegory which
>> captures this process as a "truth" will be recognized. There
>> is nothing about Campbell's Hero's Journey which distinguishes
>> it as "real" (as in I can put a coat on if I get cold) intrinsic
>> part of reality from an abstract analogical idea which is a
>> concept such as "memes". The thing about positing archetypes is
>> the question, what is the mechanism for their continued existence,
>> what makes them enduring, which is a question which can also be
>> asked about karma and working off past life "lessons".
>>
>
>>From Hegel's chronological stage theory of history to language
> aquisition instincts, the idea of stages is common. Campbell's stage
> view is just one amoungst many, but a good one since it accounts for
> many things past and present simualtainiously.
>
I agree that there are many possible ideas for stages of development
and that Campbell's view is a good approximation, good enough to
help make Star Wars a success.
>> You aren't going to be able to find any physical evidence that
>> the pattern of a Hero's Journey is imprinted into the fabric of
>> reality just like other abstract ideas such as truth or justice.
>
> Actually the critical stage theory in neurology and developmental
> psychology have pretty much settled this matter and we do have good
> evidence for many layers of universal stages that things go through,
> especially humans.
>
?? The Hero's Journey is a description of a spiritual journey.
About growth and transformation of the individual's psyche as
it matures within a spiritual being. That is why I included the
Tarot reference. Of course there are biological stages to the
human physical process and some mental states can be reasonably
associated with them. Developmental psychology will have nothing to
say about spiritual growth because science deals with the physical
and does not take a position on the "soul" which is beyond its
defined scope. There are some scientists who adopt a more rigorous
position of: if it isn't physical and can't be investigated by
science then it doesn't exist; which is a philosophical stance.
"If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that
has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life you ought to
be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to
meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors to
you. I say, Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open
where you didn't know they were going to be." Joseph Campbell
Campbell presumes that people have "spiritual destiny", a unique path
that each soul can follow to their divine spark, and he presumes to
give advice of how to obtain/realize that destiny, "follow your bliss".
> I suppose that Campbell's stages, as far as they conform to our
> biological stages, could have some physical evidence.
>
They don't have a physical basis so no biological stage.
1) Language Aquisition Device
"Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) is credited with being the first
European linguist to identify human language as a rule-governed system,
rather than just a collection of words and phrases paired with
meanings. This idea is one of the foundations of Noam Chomsky's theory
of language. Chomsky frequently quotes Humboldt's description of
language as a system which "makes infinite use of finite means",
meaning that an infinite number of sentences can be created using a
finite number of grammatical rules.
(2) Color Aqusition Device
Like visual art, music affects our emotions indirectly, by changing our
mood. Little scientific research has been done to find exactly which
kinds of music tend to put people in which moods, but most people today
know the irritating effects of being exposed to loud, repetitive music
from a neighbour's flat or a fellow-passenger's Walkman.
However, there are still some remarkable regularities in our aesthetic
preferences.
When asked to choose between a selection of abstract paintings, most
people prefer the same one. Furthermore, they usually prefer the one
painted by a famous artist rather than versions of this that have been
modified in random ways by a computer.
The original paintings must embody features that the human visual system
is programmed to find most appealing. At present, scientists do not know
what these features are, but the artists who painted the popular
paintings must have had some intuitive appreciation of them.
(3) Sound Aquistion Device
Among the little scientific research that has been done in this area,
one intriguing finding is that many compositions by Mozart, such as
Eine kleine Nachtmusik, reliably produce good moods in those who hear
them. This happens even if the listener is not particularly keen on
classical music, which suggests that good composers tap into universal
musical preferences in the way that good artists tap into universal
visual preferences. Some support for this view can be found in recent
neuroscien-tific research, which has found that, when a person listens
to a classical melody, the neurons in different brain regions fire more
synchronously than when the person listens to a random sequence of the
same notes. The reason for this sense of melody, however, is still a
mystery."
SH: I quoted this information which you collected because it does point
that artists can produce art which is universally appreciated for many
many years. But it does not provide evidence that there is a Supreme
Being, a disembodied collective consciousness or any other supernatural
(beyond the explantion of physical cause and effect) source cause.
There are many translations of Homer. Some are considered "gifted" and
some are not. A rule may exist which encompasses the requirements to
form the pattern of a gifted translation. That does not mean such a
rule is knowable or can be discovered by human intellect or machine
calculation. There are many things like this that fall under the
heading of understanding the pattern of complex sequences/rules.
"Consider the problem of finding a rule for generating a sequence of
numbers such as 9, 61, 52, 63, 94, 46, 18, 1, 121, 441, ... . Here is a
rule for this sequence. First compute the squares of successive integers
beginning with 3, but, then, to generate the sequence, use, in place of
these squares, the squares each with its decimal digits written down in
reverse order (ignoring any lead zeros). N.B. This rule can be written
as a formal algorithm (or computer program). The problem of finding such
rules gets harder as the sequences to generate get more complicated than
the one above. Can the rule finding itself be done by some computer
program? Interestingly, it is mathematically proven that there can be
no computer program which can eventually find (synonym: learn) these
(algorithmic) rules for all sequences which have such rules!"
SH: An example of this is human evolution of mind/consciousness. There
are way more possible scenarios for how the mind came to evolve because
of random events in that evolutionary path (the "rule" of evolution)
than there are electrons in the universe--no computer simulation to
discover how humans became smart is possible.
>
>> If you were to examine all of literature you would find recurring
>> themes which capture the imagination such as courage, loyalty,
>> motherly sacrifice for young and so on; the events are all going
>> to have a beginning, duration and an ending.
>>
>
> If we look at the history of humans we find many different languages
> but ALL of these languages are translatable into each other. All have
> subjects verbs and objects.
>
> Different languages, different accents, same elements
> (subject/object/verb)
>
Is this supposed to mean something more than we evolved in similar
environments and have the same basic genetically dictated structures
for building the brain which perceives reality, a consensus reality?
>> This is not evidence that such virtual virtues have an independent
>> existence apart from there physical basis. I wrote this post because
>> I got the impression that you might have thought Campbell was giving
>> evidence which meant something.
>>
>
> Actually it is evidence but the evidence may be much weaker than other
> evidences we might produce.
>
This is not evidence for the idea that God made people aware of
themselves because the evidence equally supports an evolutionary
explanation.
>> The sun plays an important part of many myths. There were also myths
>> that associated the Wind with an elemental life because newborns came
>> into life with convulsive first breath of air or and when people died
>> they quit breathing. No matter how many myths in as many cultures there
>> were/are that the wind in the forest was actually a "spirit" it would
>> never provide any evidence that there was a real physical spiritual
>> entity (life Death) which actually existed.
>>
>> There isn't anybody who knows what it means to be an adult and what
>> you have to learn to become one. Nobody has a clue about what are the
>> stages of a spiritual journey or if there really is any such thing as
>> a spiritual journey in an objective sense (true for everyone) which
>> stands apart from the self-invented choices each person adopts for
>> themself if they even do that.
>>
>> You are all on your own, the Universe has no Parent, no wise men who
>> have trod the Path before you who can pass wisdom down to you from
>> some sort of completed "enlightened" perspective.
>>
>
> That would be hard to provide evidence for since you would have to have
> enquired of all men as to whether they provided passable wisdom or not
> and surely you have not done so.
I don't agree, it is easy to find evidence for, but impossible to prove.
Just as it is impossible to prove the existence of God or the lack of
existence of a magical unicorn.
Have you noticed how those ashrams work. There are a bunch of devotees
who follow the teachings of a Master (supposedly enlightened). Since the
devotees are not enlightened how do they know the Master is Engligtened
when they don't even know what enlightenment is? What or where is the
evidence that the Master is enlightened? Spiritual powers attributed to
Masters are in the same category as UFO abductions and ghosts, all claim
and no fact.
>
> There may or may not be a completed enlightened perspective, but I
> doubt you could determine which. What would be a completed enlightened
> perspective though?
>
Actually, that is my question. How do any of the millions of devotees
following dozens of Enlightened gurus know that their guru of choice
has a "completed enlightened perspective"? How do they know there is
even such a thing as an enlightened perspective? So though I don't
think there is a proof about Creationist vs. Skeptics debates, I
think plausibility favors wanting to see one example of physical
evidence about any supernatural claim.
As for finding rules which approximate human cognition:
> "Back in 1952, the philosopher and composer John Myhill wrote
> a lyrical article entitled "Some Philosophical Implications of
> Mathematical Logic: Three Classes of Ideas". The three classes
> are borrowed from mathematical logic, and Myhill names for
> them are the effective, the constructive, and the prospective.
> In logic, they are known more technically, as the recursive,
> the renotrec (short for "recursively enumerable but not recursive")
> and the productive. Their essense is described below.
... We finally come to the prospective
also know as the productive. Myhill's characterization of it is
this: "A prospective character is one by which we cannot either
recognize or create by a series of reasoned but in general
unpredictable acts." Thus it is neither effective nor constructive.
It eludes production by any finite set of rules. However--and
this is important--it can be *approximated* to a higher and
higher degree of accuracy by a series of bigger and better
sets of generative rules.
Such rules tell you (or a machine) how to churn out members
of this prospective category. In mathematical logic, works
by Tarski and Goedel establish that *truth* has this open-
ended, prospective character. This means that you can produce
all sorts of examples of truth--unlimitedly many-- but no
set of rules is ever sufficient to characterize them *all*.
The prospective character eludes capture in any finite set.
Thus I am skeptical of people who claim to know universal
wisdoms, other than as an approximation of Truth and Beauty,
and intuition does not serve as logical means of definition.
Stephen
