Religion in Human Evolution

[Ibrahim]

Surely early childhood socialization is still just socialization. A neglected/isolated child will not develop properly, but one raised in any fashion should have the same basic capacities. They are simply trained differently, depending on the culture in question.

[Parodite]

The child psychologist your post made me think of most was Jerome Bruner. He had a theory of developmental psychology that, summarized with a Crayon, was that they pass through three stages of learning about the world. The first stage involves learning about the world by interacting with it. Reaching for things, putting them in your mouth, shouting at them, and just generally learning about the world through its reactions to you. He does not mean that the infant is learning about the world the way a deaf man would learn about the world if there were no one there to tell him: the mind of the infant is informed by his particular mode of interaction. The next stage is image-based, and the final stage is symbolic-linguistic. Some religious scholars have used his work to speculate on the early development of consciousness and religious behavior.

Makes sense. Will read some of this Bruner. Guuglin' I found this video, watched the first half hour. It's interesting also for heavens sake to just taste'n see the world of academia celebrating in this case Jerome Bruner's work and contributions. Also Piaget is mentioned.

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Mentioned and celebrated by these major folksies is Bruners work "The Process of Education". Found a PDF and will read it (as long as it doesn't bore me ) It can be downloaded here.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Surely early childhood socialization is still just socialization. A neglected/isolated child will not develop properly, but one raised in any fashion should have the same basic capacities. They are simply trained differently, depending on the culture in question.

Maybe. But it makes me wonder when I read westerner's fumbling accounts trying to explain fundamental differences in the conception of space or time by peoples like the Walbiri. Now, they have two eyes and the same equipment we do, so there is no reason to believe that they actually "see" anything differently (although that is debatable as well, IMO... the most recent research on the effects of psilocybin, for example, indicates that it does not stimulate areas of the brain to produce visual hallucinations, but instead dulls certain parts of the brain associated with linear thinking and other processes... people are beginning to think that perhaps it is not creating anything new, but merely weakening our filters... also, anyone who has had an intense psychedelic experience can attest to other strange sensory phenomenon: I have been able to hear conversations being spoken at normal voice levels 100 yards away as if they were right next to me, and to see a level of detail at a distance that is utterly unavailable to me normally... I have experienced the ability to be in a room full of people and selectively focus on different people speaking in the crowd, effectively muting everyone else, and to move from person to person doing this... other people have reported other phenomenon as well... if our sense are this malleable, there is no reason to believe that even they are experienced in the same way among all peoples, IMO).

But even if the senses work the exact same, it is difficult for me to even understand what is being said when I hear of the Walbiri living in a world that does not consist of a grid of homogenous space through which they travel different points of interest, but that those points of interest are themselves qualitatively unique existences, and that there essentially is no space between them, only "paths". It's as if those special points (mostly water holes and other areas of practical interest) are each a "world", and the space between them is some sort of limbo. When I realize that these people are not being metaphorical (and that my description of it is an attempt to make it somewhat legible, putting into more familiar spacial terms than are appropriate), and when I try to put myself into the mind of such a person (who has a conception of time that is just as puzzling to us), I begin to think it is inappropriate to assume that they have the same kind of Cartesian, "single point of observation beholding the various objects situated in space around him" perspectival type of consciousness that we take for granted.

The great majority of our thinking takes place below the surface, and most of the important stuff is processed by the Cabinet before the Executive is ever given the pertinent information to make a decision that has already been mostly decided. I don't necessarily have a problem believing that the "awake" conscious self-awareness might be only a small part of the overall picture, and that therefore it's not farfetched to believe that it could be radically different in different peoples while still making them and their behavior more or less recognizable to everyone else.

Obviously, part of the problem with any of this ethnography is that there are almost no peoples anywhere that we can say are free from our influence, even those discovered late by delicate anthropologists.

[monster_gardener]

Surely early childhood socialization is still just socialization. A neglected/isolated child will not develop properly, but one raised in any fashion should have the same basic capacities. They are simply trained differently, depending on the culture in question.

Maybe. But it makes me wonder when I read westerner's fumbling accounts trying to explain fundamental differences in the conception of space or time by peoples like the Walbiri. Now, they have two eyes and the same equipment we do, so there is no reason to believe that they actually "see" anything differently (although that is debatable as well, IMO... the most recent research on the effects of psilocybin, for example, indicates that it does not stimulate areas of the brain to produce visual hallucinations, but instead dulls certain parts of the brain associated with linear thinking and other processes... people are beginning to think that perhaps it is not creating anything new, but merely weakening our filters... also, anyone who has had an intense psychedelic experience can attest to other strange sensory phenomenon: I have been able to hear conversations being spoken at normal voice levels 100 yards away as if they were right next to me, and to see a level of detail at a distance that is utterly unavailable to me normally... I have experienced the ability to be in a room full of people and selectively focus on different people speaking in the crowd, effectively muting everyone else, and to move from person to person doing this... other people have reported other phenomenon as well... if our sense are this malleable, there is no reason to believe that even they are experienced in the same way among all peoples, IMO).

But even if the senses work the exact same, it is difficult for me to even understand what is being said when I hear of the Walbiri living in a world that does not consist of a grid of homogenous space through which they travel different points of interest, but that those points of interest are themselves qualitatively unique existences, and that there essentially is no space between them, only "paths". It's as if those special points (mostly water holes and other areas of practical interest) are each a "world", and the space between them is some sort of limbo. When I realize that these people are not being metaphorical (and that my description of it is an attempt to make it somewhat legible, putting into more familiar spacial terms than are appropriate), and when I try to put myself into the mind of such a person (who has a conception of time that is just as puzzling to us), I begin to think it is inappropriate to assume that they have the same kind of Cartesian, "single point of observation beholding the various objects situated in space around him" perspectival type of consciousness that we take for granted.

The great majority of our thinking takes place below the surface, and most of the important stuff is processed by the Cabinet before the Executive is ever given the pertinent information to make a decision that has already been mostly decided. I don't necessarily have a problem believing that the "awake" conscious self-awareness might be only a small part of the overall picture, and that therefore it's not farfetched to believe that it could be radically different in different peoples while still making them and their behavior more or less recognizable to everyone else.

Obviously, part of the problem with any of this ethnography is that there are almost no peoples anywhere that we can say are free from our influence, even those discovered late by delicate anthropologists.

Thank You Very Much for your post, Juggernaut.

the Walbiri living in a world that does not consist of a grid of homogenous space through which they travel different points of interest, but that those points of interest are themselves qualitatively unique existences, and that there essentially is no space between them, only "paths". It's as if those special points (mostly water holes and other areas of practical interest) are each a "world", and the space between them is some sort of limbo.

Obviously, part of the problem with any of this ethnography is that there are almost no peoples anywhere that we can say are free from our influence,

As far as other people who perhaps might not experience the world in a Cartesian way, perhaps those who are born blind and so remain.

It is possible that they still imagine Cartesian way based on touch, sound & smell but I doubt that they would be as certain about the coordinates of locations and would be very concerned about unseen barriers along the pathways.....

Remembering a book about a school for the blind which dealt with this....

A more difficult group to interview would be feral children....... If you can find any.......

Though I wonder if it would be easier to teach sign language to a feral child rather than verbal language similar to Koko the Gorilla who allegedly can sign.....

For that matter, why not ask Koko?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_%28gorilla%29

[Ibrahim]

Surely early childhood socialization is still just socialization. A neglected/isolated child will not develop properly, but one raised in any fashion should have the same basic capacities. They are simply trained differently, depending on the culture in question.

Maybe. But it makes me wonder when I read westerner's fumbling accounts trying to explain fundamental differences in the conception of space or time by peoples like the Walbiri.

This is, to me anyway, the interesting question. If I Western observer can't really comprehend the metaphysics of the Walbiri, then what is preventing them from doing so? Are humans locked in to a given system at/after a certain age? Or is it impossible for the human mind to truly adopt two of these systems simultaneously, and the Western anthropologists or tourist is (perhaps sensibly) unwilling to abandon his own metaphysics and really adopt those of the other culture?

I'm content with either of those scenarios, and both account for the inability to comprehend another system of thought, but still allowing for any human to have the same capacity to do so.

Now, they have two eyes and the same equipment we do, so there is no reason to believe that they actually "see" anything differently (although that is debatable as well, IMO... the most recent research on the effects of psilocybin, for example, indicates that it does not stimulate areas of the brain to produce visual hallucinations, but instead dulls certain parts of the brain associated with linear thinking and other processes... people are beginning to think that perhaps it is not creating anything new, but merely weakening our filters... also, anyone who has had an intense psychedelic experience can attest to other strange sensory phenomenon: I have been able to hear conversations being spoken at normal voice levels 100 yards away as if they were right next to me, and to see a level of detail at a distance that is utterly unavailable to me normally... I have experienced the ability to be in a room full of people and selectively focus on different people speaking in the crowd, effectively muting everyone else, and to move from person to person doing this... other people have reported other phenomenon as well... if our sense are this malleable, there is no reason to believe that even they are experienced in the same way among all peoples, IMO).

But even if the senses work the exact same, it is difficult for me to even understand what is being said when I hear of the Walbiri living in a world that does not consist of a grid of homogenous space through which they travel different points of interest, but that those points of interest are themselves qualitatively unique existences, and that there essentially is no space between them, only "paths". It's as if those special points (mostly water holes and other areas of practical interest) are each a "world", and the space between them is some sort of limbo. When I realize that these people are not being metaphorical (and that my description of it is an attempt to make it somewhat legible, putting into more familiar spacial terms than are appropriate), and when I try to put myself into the mind of such a person (who has a conception of time that is just as puzzling to us), I begin to think it is inappropriate to assume that they have the same kind of Cartesian, "single point of observation beholding the various objects situated in space around him" perspectival type of consciousness that we take for granted.

The great majority of our thinking takes place below the surface, and most of the important stuff is processed by the Cabinet before the Executive is ever given the pertinent information to make a decision that has already been mostly decided. I don't necessarily have a problem believing that the "awake" conscious self-awareness might be only a small part of the overall picture, and that therefore it's not farfetched to believe that it could be radically different in different peoples while still making them and their behavior more or less recognizable to everyone else.

Obviously, part of the problem with any of this ethnography is that there are almost no peoples anywhere that we can say are free from our influence, even those discovered late by delicate anthropologists.

Couldn't the problem also simply be rooted in the language or frames of reference, as per Wittgenstein? The differences might not be perceptive, and I'm advocating the position that we all have an essentially similar subconscious, so the problem could potentially be in communication. Its not that me and the bushman are having different experiences, only that we are describing the to one another using different frames of reference.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Surely early childhood socialization is still just socialization. A neglected/isolated child will not develop properly, but one raised in any fashion should have the same basic capacities. They are simply trained differently, depending on the culture in question.

...

This is, to me anyway, the interesting question. If I Western observer can't really comprehend the metaphysics of the Walbiri, then what is preventing them from doing so? Are humans locked in to a given system at/after a certain age? Or is it impossible for the human mind to truly adopt two of these systems simultaneously, and the Western anthropologists or tourist is (perhaps sensibly) unwilling to abandon his own metaphysics and really adopt those of the other culture?

I'm content with either of those scenarios, and both account for the inability to comprehend another system of thought, but still allowing for any human to have the same capacity to do so.

...

Couldn't the problem also simply be rooted in the language or frames of reference, as per Wittgenstein? The differences might not be perceptive, and I'm advocating the position that we all have an essentially similar subconscious, so the problem could potentially be in communication. Its not that me and the bushman are having different experiences, only that we are describing the to one another using different frames of reference.

Could be. But there is stuff like this, from a book by Tony Swain that is has been described in glowing terms by people I respect, but haven't a chance to get into myself. The book is A Place for Strangers: Towards a History of Australian Aboriginal Being, and it was written back in '93 so I really need to get on the ball.

Aboriginal people, prior to the intensive disruption of outsiders, had not allowed “time” to develop as a determinative quality of being. Temporal constructs are, I believe, not a “natural” human attribute but rather they are specific forms of intellectual organisation. Why Aborigines avoided this philosophical option is an important issue to which I will soon turn, but for the moment it is enough to recognise that there was no fashioning of time, linear or cyclical, but rather a sophisticated patterning of events in accordance with their rhythms.

Such a frame of reference can only be explained to a westerner, IMO, by rough analogy and approximation because it involved a different set of fundamental assumptions about the very water we swim in. In other words, it may be that not only their ideas are different, but the very scaffolding on which their ideas are hung may be of a different structure. And, yes, this is a result of environmental interaction and cultural training, for sure - it is no accident that desert nomads have a conception of space like I described above - and, yes, I think that the structure of our anatomy and certain shared experiences do provide us a common medium of communication, but it is nevertheless intriguing to imagine the possibility that there are fundamentally different ways of looking at and experiencing the world than the one we take for granted.

Swain's quote, you'll notice, is in direct contradiction to Eliade's conception of the aboriginal conception of cyclical time and the eternal return. Swain is explicit about his disagreement, apparently, and in essays and books in which I've seen his ideas referenced makes a convincing case for abandoning Eliade's theory, at least as a model for pre-contact aborigines.

[Enki]

But even if the senses work the exact same, it is difficult for me to even understand what is being said when I hear of the Walbiri living in a world that does not consist of a grid of homogenous space through which they travel different points of interest, but that those points of interest are themselves qualitatively unique existences, and that there essentially is no space between them, only "paths". It's as if those special points (mostly water holes and other areas of practical interest) are each a "world", and the space between them is some sort of limbo. When I realize that these people are not being metaphorical (and that my description of it is an attempt to make it somewhat legible, putting into more familiar spacial terms than are appropriate), and when I try to put myself into the mind of such a person (who has a conception of time that is just as puzzling to us), I begin to think it is inappropriate to assume that they have the same kind of Cartesian, "single point of observation beholding the various objects situated in space around him" perspectival type of consciousness that we take for granted.

This is actually how I view the world. The western conception of space and time is something of a gloss over my natural mode of thinking.

No one has ever really touched on the idea of Vikings eating Amanita Muscaria and dressing up like demons when going raiding. I kind of wish someone would. I don't think very many people recognize the truly surreal and tripped out versions of the lives people had back in the day. Oftentimes they are portrayed as these mud dwellers. The idea that they may conceptualize reality in a completely alien way that goes beyond social organization and the way they analyze phenomena is something that westerners are almost completely incapable of conceiving.

[Parodite]

Maybe people living in significantly different cultures do share a same "grammar of meaning and emotion", but learned to associate values to objects and situations differently.

For instance the emotion of fun, entertainment. In the middle ages here in the Netherlands it was great fun to see a cat, or a human convict slowly sink into a tub with hot boiling water on a public square, "behaving in such a funny odd way". Humor and entertainment are now associated with other things, situations, words.. but the neurological grammar can be exactly the same.

For us now, space-time is a big thing because it matters a lot in our daily lives, as well as in the fields of science and technology. But if space-time is only relevant in as far as certain locations and situations are concerned that are like "islands of meaning" surrounded by an ocean of nothingness... then of course space-time can even be considered not to exist for those people.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

But even if the senses work the exact same, it is difficult for me to even understand what is being said when I hear of the Walbiri living in a world that does not consist of a grid of homogenous space through which they travel different points of interest, but that those points of interest are themselves qualitatively unique existences, and that there essentially is no space between them, only "paths". It's as if those special points (mostly water holes and other areas of practical interest) are each a "world", and the space between them is some sort of limbo. When I realize that these people are not being metaphorical (and that my description of it is an attempt to make it somewhat legible, putting into more familiar spacial terms than are appropriate), and when I try to put myself into the mind of such a person (who has a conception of time that is just as puzzling to us), I begin to think it is inappropriate to assume that they have the same kind of Cartesian, "single point of observation beholding the various objects situated in space around him" perspectival type of consciousness that we take for granted.

This is actually how I view the world. The western conception of space and time is something of a gloss over my natural mode of thinking.

I would find it hard to understand how your basic mode of cognition could differ so fundamentally from the culture you were brought up in, although I could see the conception I described being a sort of philosophical filter through which you have come to habitually understand things.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

I think I've said it already in this thread, but one of the most important things to know if you're going to understand non-modern/non-western cultures even a little bit is that not everyone believes that conscious awareness is the end all of the human organism. Jaynes, for example, believed that consciousness was not central at all: he pointed out that we go through the majority of many of our days, performing all sorts of complex activities, such as driving and tying shoes, without any conscious attention, and he believed that consciousness was something like an emergency repairman, called upon to solve problems when instinct and habit failed. When encountering stress with an ambiguous source, consciousness was called up to find the cause. Once men began living in complex social environments with more constant unnatural stressors (walking down a street in LA, for example, results in the biochemical reaction designed for being near a herd of rampaging elephants), conscious awareness (not necessarily of the outside world, but even of talking to oneself, constantly describing things to oneself, practicing upcoming scenarios or replaying previous ones in the theater of the mind, etc) become a more frequent and common state, but it is hardly representative of the human experience in general.

So central to understanding the experience of other cultures is the fact that conscious awareness might have played a much smaller role in their daily experience, and yet it was not because it was less evolved, but simply that they may have been more balanced, than we are.

[Enki]

I would find it hard to understand how your basic mode of cognition could differ so fundamentally from the culture you were brought up in, although I could see the conception I described being a sort of philosophical filter through which you have come to habitually understand things.

I don't know either, but I spent my childhood being the weird kid and my teenage years and twenties mastering basic social skills that most others take for granted. I grew up with a complex that there was something that everyone else understood implicitly that I just didn't get. I constantly have to distill ideas from 'everything'. It's great for creative thinking, and the challenge it presents gives a strong basis for learning analytical skills, but it also makes basic 'common sense' a foreign idea to me. At least until recently. I am much more rooted and grounded in my society's mode of thinking now than I was in the past, something I sometimes lament. Makes me want to run off into the woods and commune with nature. If I lived in a shamanic culture, I am almost certain I would have been tracked into that path. I feel like only now I am in any position where I can make my natural talents work to my advantage. I had to spend a lot of energy and work trying to conform to the status quo just to get to a point where the way I think about things can be profitable. I've always kind of felt that my talents lent themselves to great things or a languishing loserhood because I do have an ability to see the big picture in a way that I don't think most people can, to the degree that without people who can bring me back to the here and now I float off into space and am lost.

This is why Big Data is so fascinating to me. It represents an opportunity to illustrate the big picture that was previously occluded to all but the wealthiest organizations in our society.

[Enki]

I think I've said it already in this thread, but one of the most important things to know if you're going to understand non-modern/non-western cultures even a little bit is that not everyone believes that conscious awareness is the end all of the human organism. Jaynes, for example, believed that consciousness was not central at all: he pointed out that we go through the majority of many of our days, performing all sorts of complex activities, such as driving and tying shoes, without any conscious attention, and he believed that consciousness was something like an emergency repairman, called upon to solve problems when instinct and habit failed. When encountering stress with an ambiguous source, consciousness was called up to find the cause. Once men began living in complex social environments with more constant unnatural stressors (walking down a street in LA, for example, results in the biochemical reaction designed for being near a herd of rampaging elephants), conscious awareness (not necessarily of the outside world, but even of talking to oneself, constantly describing things to oneself, practicing upcoming scenarios or replaying previous ones in the theater of the mind, etc) become a more frequent and common state, but it is hardly representative of the human experience in general.

I find this notion abhorrent. It is definitely adequately descriptive, but to me the idea of consciousness and the goal of life is to become fully conscious, for no experience at all to be rote and habitual. I've probably imbibed a lot of pop mysticism that has brought me to that conclusion.

I am not sure that I would call the analytical ideas you describe as being 'consciousness'. The OCD frame of reference where you are constantly describing everything is not fully conscious. Like when I don't want to think about a bad memory or something I will oftentimes habitually tell my family that I love them. But the feed is always on. I am almost never not thinking in a linguistic fashion. I talk to other people and they just don't have this experience. Like I like math strategy puzzle games. The type where a tile produce X units and you have to attack adjacent units with more units than the adjacent unit has and you use those to dominate space. My favorites right now are Auralux and Polywars I was talking to another Dad at a birthday party who I have always been friendly with but never became friends with about mobile apps. He talked about liking Angry Birds and I told him about the kind of games I like. He said that's too much thinking for him. For me it's actually a reduction in thinking, or a more smooth and focused form of thinking, thus relaxing. I get bored with Angry Birds. It gave me some insight into the differences that maybe were why this guy and I never became friends.

So central to understanding the experience of other cultures is the fact that conscious awareness might have played a much smaller role in their daily experience, and yet it was not because it was less evolved, but simply that they may have been more balanced, than we are.

Yes, possibly. Or conscious in a different way. I have a certain emotive consciousness in nature that I love to be in, but am almost never actually in. An awareness and centeredness that will actually make wild animals more friendly and the like. I move more fluidly and everything. I have no desire to go anywhere or be doing anything else. I've done some meditative Qi Gong practice that helps me manifest this mode of awareness but I am not skilled enough to call it up at will.

On my Shiatsu final in my last semester of massage school, I wasn't feeling that great, but I gave the best shiatsu of my entire life. I have found that I have performed at sports or video games at a higher level when I have some sort of ailment that impairs my cognitive functionality, like a cold or something.

The difference between Traditional Chinese Medicine and Modern Medicine is instructive here because TCM is based off of empirical study, but it's framework of balance and the different metaphors it uses to describe imbalance are interesting and I find them very useful. Too much heat makes you angry or overly exuberant. Too much wind makes you flighty.

[Hoosiernorm]

http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Mater ... 0199919755

Wondering if I should read this next?