G Alston
Any explanation of the human condition that invokes anything other than purely 100% natural forces is equivalent to any and all other explanations starting with the same assumption.
-i’m sorry but that is puritanical thinking that quickly will fall on its face.
Just to clarify, I believe in biological evolution; i also believe in cultural evolution; it’s clear to me the former cannot explain the latter: any student of history can tell you there is no way to explain history biologically. But, you avow, in 50-100 years advances in AI will provide the keys, none of which we presently have.
That’s magical thinking, surely.
Anyway, I’m curious what you think these words that we are sharing are, in terms of a natural or physical phenomenon. When my mind reads the letters on the page, or hears a voice making sounds, it can associate the vowels and consonants and come up with the word. For example, S-c-r-ee-n is a collection of letters or sounds that has a physical or natural reality; but “screen” is something that is truly transcendent: it does not physically reside anywhere; it’s not imprinted on our neurons. Our minds fire a lot of neurons to associate s-c-r-ee-n and come up with “screen”, but “screen” like God, is really something transcendent; it’s among us, not physically in us or anywhere… it is an arbitrarily chosen collection of sounds that has meaning only in the context of a shared community of language rooted in a memorable historical event where some kind of screen, some physical object was pointed to while someone made the sign “s-c-r-ee-n”. The sign works only in a certain kind of ethical context; it is not indexical to nature like an animal signal.
