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Sexual Selection

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 4 months ago

Sexual Selection

The treatment of the mind has been so historical that we should wonder how so many modern theorists are blind to the circumstantial bases for their models. Miller's criticism is a good one. The metaphor of mind-as-computer can certainly be useful; it can also become a dogma, an underlying assumption, which twists and distorts our actual experience of mental phenomena into programs, circuits, and viruses. (Is this what we mean by neuroplasticity?)

The storytelling monkey: the elaboration of our metaphors, perhaps beyond their practical limits, seems to be a common theme of our history. Useful stories are usually ones taken with a grain of salt; their truth is not in their Truth, but in their revelance, their practicality, the application of their wisdoms. William James used the term "the cash value of an idea" - the extent to which our experience backs it up. We can turn to the Greek bandit Procrustes, twisting and stretching his victims to fit the bed that he himself adjusted. Let us be Theseus, and place Procrustes on his very own rack. Our metaphors, once they must be stretched and distorted simply to match our experience... isn't that the primary feature of an idea outliving its usefulness?