complexity

Aspirations, successes, challenges (1994-2005), and update

Interesting discussion in the emergence group this past week, based on a presentation/paper by Mikio Agaki to be continued next week.  Here's my my read of what Mikio is about, why it matters to all of us, where I am currently worried he may get into trouble, and what the implications are for the future.

There is a long-standing debate as to whether or not nonhuman animals experience emotion. Serious debaters of this issue represent varying fields of thought, from veterinary medicine to religion. Do other species lack the chemical or neurological capacity to receive such signals? Are we that different?

Those outside the field of veterinary medicine may not know, but our brain chemistry is so similar to that of dogs that behavioral disorders are treated with the same

For many of us in this world, love appears to be the sole purpose for living. We live to find and experience love and sometimes even die for love. Human beings appear to have a "genetic clock," such that they mature, fall in love with a mate or several mates, and thereafter spend their adult life having children. Like most other animals, humans appear to have an innate purpose to reproduce. Humans, like other animals, repeat this "life cycle" over and over. However, there appears to be one major difference between man and the rest of the animal kingdom in this life cycle. We seem to make this life cycle even more complex than it really is. It is because of the way in which we love that causes this complexity.

Honestly, I was having trouble coming up with a straight answer for this whole “rights” of the reader verses the writer mess so I have decided to start over and go through my thoughts as systematically as I have time for. So, I will try to write down my thoughts as they develop temporally.

 

With regard to the rights of the writer:

Recent conversations in the emergence working group on "unintended consequences" have reminded me of a book on the problem of "unconceived alternatives", and those in turn relate in interesting ways to issues in philosophy of science, in neurobiology, in human social organization, and, of course, in life in general. Let me see if I can explain.

My most current extended writing on complexity, emergence, and beyond ... into a "hybrid" world involving both chance and intention. Recently published in the interdiscipinary journal Soundings (Volume 90, Issue 1/2, pp 301-323, 2007). Available as a Word file.

And assigned as a reading in a recent course. Which in turn triggered an essay by a student in that course, Alexandra Funk, making an interesting link to Mary Catherine Bateson's 1989 book Composing a Life. An excerpt from Alexandra's essay ...

The concepts of specification and generalization are an unavoidable and innate part of human nature that have a high cognitive and social importance. However, they also have limitations which reduce our accuracy as we move up and down the orders of magnitude. In this paper, the biological and perceptual limitations of generalization and specification will be analyzed and critiqued with relation to the anatomy of the human species and then applied to the usefulness, application, and accuracy of literary genres.

Web Paper 1

Presented here is some evidence for biological factors involved in homosexual orientation and behavior, including microanatomy, psychoendocrinology, and genetics, though much of the research literature supports the view that it is due to an interaction of biological, psychological, and social or factors, as is the current understanding of much human behavior. I do not aim to fully endorse either a biological or environmental explanation for homosexuality, but merely to present some evidence for the influence of both on sexual orientation.
Background

A web search of the words “reptile behavior” will likely show you a number of less-than-stimulating explanations. For example, Encarta Encyclopedia’s section on reptile behavior exclusively discusses the reptilian inability to thermoregulate (1). A search for “reptile brain” may bring up a common view that mammalian brains contain “layers of more sophisticated reasoning” over a reptilian foundation (2). Essentially, our lack of understanding has caused us to pigeonhole these creatures to a simplistic and inferior place in relation to mammals, but how valid and conclusive are our assumptions? What is our evidence?