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<- Back to 2006.04.21.


Excellent post. A few notes:

() Ongoing through the course of love and reproduction, I will
admit that I saw nothing lacking in the penguins.  Not because
their behavior didn't appear automatic; because my behavior
certainly is that, self-guided and totally beyond my help.

It leads yet again to the Festinger and Carlsmith experiment on
justification, which despite half a century of fame is apparently
still waiting to be understood by free choice fetishists.
Victims of their own language units.

() Your remark on dualists reminds me of a conclusion I reached
recently when researching different schools of philosophy -- the
cultural background of the fellows of the school is typically
more important in defining the school than its rhetoric.  For
example, 'mind stuff' and 'matter stuff' schools generally admit
to the same stuff, and there is scarcely a way to tell if "mind"
and "matter" are anything more than synonyms.

() If I may pick a nit, I don't think a disinclination to using
"love" on penguins is in any way scientific.  I doubt such a
concern would be raised if we were speaking of penguins having
heads or feet.  It's clear that we mean 'as penguin to human, so
penguin feet to human feet'.  To assume otherwise would be to
introduce an asymmetry, seemingly on the wrong side of Occam's
razor.  And the details of love are older and more fundamental
than those of heads or feet.

Most of the scientists I know would not object to penguin love,
though perhaps they would feel unscientific for it.  But there is
no science behind such a feeling, merely the appearance of
science... the kind that thinks routine tonsillectomy a good
idea.

I think it's what you're saying in...

() I quite like your middle ground between bad dualism and bad
monism, hammer, etc.

() Aside from its fine choice of subject matter, I can't say I
cared much for the film.  Without expecting its bold departure
from nature-film convention to lather us in data on penguins,
questions were raised and left unanswered in my mind: Is this
one troop the entirety of the emperor penguin species?  What
other species of penguin exist?  And what was the deal with weird
duck attack?  Seemed rather transparently staged, and hardly as
menacing as the narrator warned.  What sort of (meat-eating) duck
is this, alone in a herd of (unconcerned) penguins?

There were also some image quality issues -- the severe and
characteristicly digital noise in some of night shots most
glaring.

But it was enjoyable and interesting.

Carl Lumma - 09.08.05 - 6:21am

//
 
Many thanks to Carl for his insightful comments!  In response to
your 3rd point, let's not get into definitions of "scientific";
anyway, I only said that it's a use of language that might bother
the scientifically inclined.  However, you do raise an
interesting point as to why no one's bothered by the use of
"feet".  It's related, I think, to the eternal analogy/homology
problem in taxonomy.

To wit: are the extreme lower parts of penguins' lower appendages
called feet because they fulfill the same function as feet in
other organisms?  Or is it because human feet and penguin feet
derive from a common ancestor?  In common usage analogy is the
most important thing in defining a taxon or trait.  Penguins have
flippers, not arms, even though their flippers are homologous to
arms.

The taxon-forming rules are backwards in the brain, because
nobody knows what anything does.  A lot of animals have
hippocampi (seahorses) and amygdalas (almonds), but it is far
from clear what functions are shared by the homologous structures
in different orders.  The evolution of the brain is all about
modifying existing structures to perform new functions.

Why would a scientist shy away from love (aside from the typical
antisocial disposition)?  Because, I submit, it is deeply
subjective.  And the nature of subjective experiences is that
there is no known function for them.  My argument for penguin
love is by homology: they have some of the same brain structures,
they have some of the same behavior, so it's reasonable to
conclude that they have some of the same experiences.  IF they
have experiences.

I don't know why all of our discussions seem to converge on the
zombie problem.  (Maybe it's our equivalent of Godwin's Law.)
Perhaps it's because from some previous conversations I know that
your solution to the zombie problem is to deny the ontology of
subjective experience.  And free will, apparently.

On the other hand you say you like my (or rather St. Thomas's)
middle position, so maybe love and reproduction, as you so
eloquently put it, have changed your mind.  But I can't refrain
from making the metaphysical observation that it is only in an
ontology not bound to blind materialism that experience, love,
and freedom -- things which every human not on the verge of
suicide values above everything else -- can really be understood
in terms of their function and ultimately their meaning.

Also, I absolutely have to point out that it was not a duck that
attacked the penguins, but some kind of albatross.  And that
there are many kinds of penguins, though most of them don't live
that far south.

Dan - 09.13.05 - 1:43pm

//
 
I, on the other hand, must absolutely or relatively point out
that it was neither an albatross nor a duck that attacked the
penguin chicks, but the southern giant petrel (Macronectes
giganteus), which apparently is the principal predator of emperor
penguin chicks.

Meat-eating birds are not uncommon, especially as the emperor
penguin itself is a meat-eating duck, or rather, is a meat-eater
more closely related to a duck than, say, a pigeon, which I have
personally observed to eat (admittedly cooked) chicken.  Or than
the giant ravens daily fed raw beef at the Tower of London -- the
real beefeaters.  I suppose it also depends on whether the fish
that penguins eat can be construed as meat -- a definition the
Catholic church would deny -- since the anatomist will agree that
the analogous purpose of "muscle driving locomotion" is necessary
and sufficient to classify the marine tissue in question as meat.

To the extent that the pescophagic pelican is a meat-eating bird
(from outer appearance closely related to the giant petrel), we
can conclude that the giant petrel is also a fish-eating bird,
except that the particular fish has down instead of scales, is
cute, and now probably has a multimillion dollar conservation
lobby.

In any case, your perception of the lack of "concern" over
predators is another anthropomorphic juxtaposition.  Should we
expect that the penguins run or waddle away like subway
passengers from a turbaned Sikh maintenance worker?  While there
may be evolutionary reasons for our fear responses, the penguins
have evolved to herd and to huddle. That is the best, only
effective response for the penguins, as evolution has proven.

Carl, I am totally confused when you say "my behavior certainly
is [automatic], self-guided and totally beyond my help."  Who is
the self that is doing the guiding, if your help is not involved?

It is something commendable about your personality that most of
the scientists you know believe in penguin love, but most of the
scientists that I suspect are in positions of influence would
deny penguin love, for the fact that they would deny human love
as a coordinated firing of neurons.

If love, then, is a deterministic series of biochemical
processes, with no will or soul involved, then everything
experiences love, even the animals that don't happen to manifest
it via a photogenic behavior that includes the rubbing of
beaks/lips.  And if the ability to experience love is a criterion
for whether a species is worthy of preservation or special
respect, then we in the biological sciences have a whole lot of
explaining to do.

androthescient - 09.13.05 - 2:51pm

//

Hooray, comments are back!  And I think I had only seen the first
two prior to today.  Stunning good stuff, if I do say so.  Here's
a stab at a reply...

""
let's not get into definitions of "scientific" ... I only said
that it's a use of language that might bother the scientifically
inclined ""

Fair enough.  I only worry that in an effort to avoid making one
assumption (penguin love), they fail to avoid making an
apparently bigger one (no penguin love).

""
they have some of the same brain structures, they have some of
the same behavior, so it's reasonable to conclude that they have
some of the same experiences ""

It was once thought that human newborns didn't feel pain.  What
kind of nimrod would believe this, I can't imagine.  Given the
state of our understanding of pain even in those who can describe
it, and the potential consequences of being wrong about those who
can't.

Regarding functional vs. morphological taxonomy -- I guess I
prefer the former unless, as in the brain, it isn't clear.

""
I don't know why all of our discussions seem to converge on the
zombie problem. (Maybe it's our equivalent of Godwin's Law.) ""

:)

I suppose I could say that one of the problems with the zombie
problem is the ease at which other problems can apparently be put
into correspondence with it.

""
only in an ontology not bound to blind materialism that
experience, love, and freedom ... can really be understood in
terms of their function and ultimately their meaning. ""

I think I disagree.  I think love etc. have clear (if
unfalsifiable, along with the rest of the theory) evolutionary
roles.  Though I don't wish to endorse the whole of materialism
at this time.

""
your perception of the lack of "concern" over predators is
another anthropomorphic juxtaposition ""

I suppose you're right about that.

""
I am totally confused when you say "my behavior certainly is
[automatic], self-guided and totally beyond my help." Who is the
self that is doing the guiding, if your help is not involved? ""

I guess I would say, the parts of me that are linguistically-
enabled aren't the parts that are guiding my paternity.

As for other remarks about free will, I encourage the uninitiated
to look into the experiments I mentioned.  I do believe my
behavior is decided in real time by processes that are in some
sense within me and probably extremely sensitive to temporal
environmental details outside of me.  Whether any of them are
linguistic in nature is another matter.

""
If love, then, is a deterministic series of biochemical
processes, with no will or soul involved, then everything
experiences love, even the animals that don't happen to manifest
it via a photogenic behavior that includes the rubbing of
beaks/lips ""

I think the simplest assumption we can't avoid making, given that
we have absolutely no understanding of such things, is that
'everything is alive / conscious / loves to a degree commensurate
with its complexity'.

Carl Lumma - 05.11.06 - 11:12pm


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                                                 clumma@gmail.com