FBI on Einstein

Lisa & Ian Murray seamus at accessone.com
Thu Sep 7 11:07:13 PDT 2000


You're supposed to be _just_born_ knowing certain things. I

don't think this is such an outlandish idea. For instance,

it could be the case that there is a knowledge X without

which no complex living being is likely to survive. The

process of natural selection would filter strongly for such

beings so that before long their genes would specify X as a

starting state for their nervous systems. They would "just

know" X as a result of evolution. Noam Chomsky's theory about

an innate language capability could be an example of this kind

of knowledge. Mathematics, or some of mathematics, could be

another. Many mathematicians seem to experience mathematics

in this way -- it's _already_there_ -- not in the experience

of the being, but in the being itself. ======

Right. What is now nature _may_ have once been nurture. What biologists call the Baldwin effect. Or following G. C. Williams, the spectrum from facultative to obligate [Justin's sensible allegiance to propensities and dispositions with all their attendant explanatory problems are relevant here]. The biological world is an experience and experient [agency] saturated system. Doug's query on nature/culture is coincident with the issue of experience/non-experience and life/non-life. Why would we be the only organism to need math to survive?

Ian



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