Evolving Systems Course: PGnotes20

Making sense of ourselves in an evolving universe

Paul's notes - Session 20

Course subject: evolution (physical, biological, cultural, individual)

Course method: co-evolution, co-constructive inquiry, evolving by telling/hearing each other's stories, using them to create new ones, individually and collectively = co-constructive dialogue

Course arrangements:

• Thoughts from this week's discussion in forum by Monday evening.
• Paper for Wednesday: essay based on discussion/reading/thoughts about the brain as the site of story construction; usefulnesses/problems/questions?
• For Thursday discussion: Illusions, ambiguous figures, and impossible figures: informed guessing and beyond
• Individual meetings

Thursdays	Group A	Group B
9 am	Elisa	Genesis
9:30	Aijingwen	Julie
2:30	Ilana	Christine
3:00	Angela
3:30	Hillary
4:00	Eva	Valentina
4:30	Mattie	Kayla
5:00	Carolina	Jordan

Culture as consequence of biological evolution?  Addition to biological evolution?  Differs from biological evolution in what ways?

the whole course?	evolution biological and cultural: similarities and differences?	fashion: a test case of cultural evolution as descent with variation and selection?

Culture and cultural change

• What similar and different cultural practices have developed in our two esem section meetings?
• What new cultural practices might evolve from the intersection of the two?

Moving on to individual change

• Biological change influence cultural change and vice versa
• So too cultural change influences biological change and vice versa?

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

Despite ongoing cultural change, ongoing individual change, there is only evolution

Individual life begins as babies, what do we start with?  before culture/individual experience?

• Alison Gopnik, How Babies Think, Scientific American (July, 2010), 303, 76-81
• Paul Bloom, The Moral Life of Babies, NYTimes Magazine, May 5

"Morality" as another aspect of evolution, biological/cultural/individual?  To be continued, after

A look at the brain

• Phantoms in the brain
  
• Ramachandran TED video

• The Brain - is wider than the Sky -
  For - put them side by side -
  The one the other will contain
  With ease - and You - beside-

  The Brain is deeper than the sea -
  For - hold them - Blue to Bue -
  The one the other will absorb -
  As sponges - Buckets - do

  The Brain is just the weight of God -
  For - Heft them - Pound for Pound -
  And they will differ - if they do -
  As syllable from Sound -

  Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Experience, understanding, morality as construction of brain

Capgras: story that could be otherwise