mind-and-nature.html
July 24, 2008
1. Evolutionary and Environmental view of the "mind"
a. One way that humans may be connected to nature is that our minds may reflect evolutionary pressures in the way that we percieve the environment and process information.
b. If this is the case, it seems reasonable that we would be inately better at some types of tasks and that we might show some biases in the outcomes from our perception and cognition processes.
2. Some example tasks that humans seem to be good at are:
creating and using language as a major tool in cooperation -
facial recognition - which is important for identifying who is in our group or family and who isn't
navigation in many different types of environments - websites are designed around the concept of "wayfinding" and the sites are give an geographic feel
determining social norms and complying with most but not all of them - humans seem to have an inate drive to continually create some diversity
cause and effect reasoning - we are generally very good at looking for the source of a problem through, seemingly inate, logical skills that set up tests and eliminate non-causes. Thisi could have had high survival value in finding edible foods and understanding agents or situations that lead to diseases
estimating distances and processes at the human scale - it is said that people can look at a stream or gap in buildings and estimate with just one look whether they would be able to jump over it
driving in fog - deadly underestimation of speed
relationship between speed and energy required (Sachs, W.)
underappreciation for the scale of the extent of their city if it's beyond walking distance
inability to store and retrieve data unless it is categorized by nature derived parameters (except under one condition - alphabetically)
LATCH
- location
- alphabet,
- time
- categories (natrual kinds)
- hierarchy (level)
avoid slow drivers of human health problems (alcohol, tobacco, UV exposure, driving habits)
statistics - gambling
complex interactions where multiple actors are all simultaneously changing - feel need to boil these down to single or several dominant factors
All of these weakness can be explained with a description of the human mind that has evolved to be tuned to the constant interaction with its environment and depends on the person to be moving through the environment or to be observing relative changes.
Bateson
mind and and nature, isomorphic
self-generative grammar of living things for both ecology and mind
be responsive to the "pattern that connects"
- parts of species of same animal are compared to the same part (first order)
- compare to similar organisms (crabs to lobsters) (second order)
- the comparison of crabs:lobsters to human:horse (3rd order)
pattern changes through time
why do we demote circular logic when ecologies are circular?
Gibson
Reed
Hutchins
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