If ensoulment happens at conception, what about identical twins?

I’ve written elsewhere on how the human conception and development process is so fragile that (not counting abortions), only about 50 percent of conceived embryos wind up developing into human babies, and how this ought to cast doubt on the metaphysical validity of the “conception at ensoulment” idea, officially held by the Roman Catholic Church, among others, that a human soul is created at the moment of fertilization of a female egg cell by a male sperm cell.

So, what about identical twins? There’s only one conception.

Do they share a soul? Is that why some people believe twins have (quasi)-telepathic communication with each other?

Or did the “original” soul split when the embryo did? If so, can each “half-soul” develop into a full soul, or do souls need to undergo only mitotic division? But, if a “half-soul” can become a full soul, what’s the smallest bit of soul division that can become a full soul?

What about conjoined (“Siamese”) twins? Does that original soul fully divide, or is it only a partial, incomplete division, like that of the embryo?

What if one conjoined twin is good and one is bad? If the soul doesn’t fully split, can a god send half to heaven and half to hell?

Those of you who regularly read my blogs know I’m a materialist, so I personally don’t think there’s anything to worry about. But maybe Pope Benedict needs to worry about this in between antagonizing Muslims (and don’t tell me he was clueless about what he was reading and what provocation it might seem to be).

And, we haven't even talked about chimeras; go here.

Update, May 2, 2021: Fascinating Smithsonian piece here. If you're familiar with what chimeras are, namely a human fetus that has absorbed another in the womb, the discovery that moms can become chimeras from their fetuses is ... fascinating.

Evolutionary Psychology, Dan Dennett, and the supposedly algorithmic nature of evolution

In my previous post about the wrongness of Evolutionary Psychology, after connecting the dots that led to that conclusion, I then started thinking about Dan Dennett’s strong, even vociferous, support for the algorithmic nature of evolution.

Then, further dots connected, as I realized how connected this is to his being a strong adaptationist.

If adaptations cause traits that approach the optimal or even reach it, we can define “the optimal” as a specific point. This, then, gives us something analogous to convergent series in mathmatics, whether geometric or arithmetic series.

One formula for either type of series solves any convergent series.

I don’t know if Dennett — or other strong adaptationists who are also “algorithmists” — have consciously thought of this analogy, but I’m thinking it has had to be floating somewhere in their minds. Even if not, it’s one of the better arguments that I think could be mustered for the algorithmic reduction of evolution.

Well, first of all, I think this is a case of Dennett being hoist by his own petard, found guilty of not reductionism but greedy reductionism.

That, though, is a secondary point.

The main point is that, since adaptationism simply isn’t true, per my previous post, and not only isn’t true, but as quasi-utopian and arguably philosophically idealist isn’t good science, that an algorithmic understanding of evolution that is pinned to adaptationism also fails on both counts.

Evolutionary psychology — adaptationism defined sub specie Leibnitz

Adaptationism: “The Leibnitzian view of how gene-based evolutionary changes produce the optimal development of traits in individuals, therefore individuals as individuals, and secondarily, species composed of groups of such individuals.

Now, no confirmed Ev Psycher may like that definition, but if the shoe fits, that adaptationism claims this is the best of all evolutionarily possible worlds (or nearly so) …

How else can you describe a theory that says most or all traits are optimal adaptations? It’s too bad Gould was too mild-mannered, and neither Eldridge nor Lewontin among others has the pen of a Voltaire to have produced this definition already.

And that is why I am not an Evolutionary Psychologist, although I do certainly consider myself to be some sort of evolutionary psychologist (per Buller).

Another way to look at this, perhaps, is to see that adaptationism, whether specifically put in the service of Ev Psych or not, smacks of utopianism. Materialist utopianism, perhaps; less-than-all utopianism, when compared to religious utopias, dependent on the “omnis” of traditional theology. BUT, utopianism, nonetheless, and arguably a more dangerous utopianism precisely because it’s in the guise of a scientific theory.

Sure, the “optimal development” traits tend toward may be hedged, with “many” or “most.” OK, then I’ll hedge my previous paragraph and call adaptationism quasi-utopian.

Nonetheless, I am an ev psycher, in small letters. I’m a naturalist, it seems clear the brain is the mind (making allowance for neurotransmitter chemicals outside the brain), I believe in evolution, even as details of the neo-Darwinian synthesis get hammered out toward a neo-neo-Darwinian synthesis (influenced by developments in areas such as symbiosis). Anyhow, take a naturalist approach that brain=mind, combine that with an acceptance of evolutionary theory, and QED, the mind must evolve along with the rest of homo sapiens (and other critters).

Just not in the way that Ev Psychers claim, including not “optimally.”

Some critiques of Ev Psych are right; its proponents have sniffed too much Paley, not nearly enough Hume, else they’d be much more skeptical about “optimal” ANYTHING in evolutionary biology.

Shostakovich riffs Mahler

In essence, I hear and feel the Allegretto second movement of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony as Shostakovich doing a scherzo-like parody of a Mahlerian Austrian Ländler slow movement. If you listen to a good interpretation of this symphony, in this movement, you'll soon grasp this.

You should feel a more emphasized version of the rhythm of the Ländler, along with the speed of the Allegretto underscoring this more; that’s where the scherzo part of the interpretation comes in. Beware of overly romanticizing conductors, especially of the “old school,” who take this movement, or Shostakovich in general, too slow.

More philosophical reflections from my national parks vacation

This is another philosophical/personal development poem whose ideas were generated during my recent vacation to the Pacific Northwest, and specifically to Olympic and Redwood national parks.


BEACHES OF FAITH

Beaches have many sounds.
First, like different snowfalls,
No two beaches sound the same
Under the deadfall of human feet.
At one, the sand screams;
At another, it scrunches.
And that’s just the beach sand,
To say nothing of the different roars
Of breakers and surf on sand and sea stacks.
Dover Beach’s sea of faith
Sounds much different at Olympic or Redwood.
It looks much different, too,
As the gleam of moonset on marine mirrors,
The ocean surge constrained by lurking volcanic headlands,
Brackets questions of ebbing faith within a particular context.
Faith in what? About what? For what? To what end?
The faith of Olympic and Redwood
Is not in, for, or to some transcendentally dead deity.
Rather, it is in a nonmetaphysically eternal recurrence,
That this world, this nature,
Simply IS,
And will be,
But like Heraclitus’ river,
Never will recur the same.
In that, I have faith indeed,
A faith as constant as the ebbing tides’ returning surge,
An Olympian faith for today.

Photography, memory and photographic memory

Ever since the first daguerreotype, analogies have been drawn to people whose memory seems to be photographic in nature and exactitude.

Ignoring the fact that memory doesn’t work that way in general, that both still and video photographers are editors and not passive recorders, and that still and video film, or digital sensors, are less light-sensitive than the human eye — plus the eye’s own extensive editor in the brain — the analogy does still have some thought-priming spinoff value, I believe.

Here’s one part of that.

I take many pictures on a vacation, but less than one-fifth of them make it into my hardcopy photo albums.

In some cases, that’s because I’m shooting 10, 15 or 20 different versions of the same shot, varying shutter speed, depth of field, exposure level, use and amount of fill flash and so forth.

But in other cases, I’m shooting things that I know are “snapshot” level. (I don’t mean that to sound denigrating, but I consider myself a good enough photographer to know I normally shoot better than that.)

Why? Especially when there’s at least some degree of conscious intent in the shot?

I believe it’s a way of using the act of photography — and the time invested — in helping incorporate those particular times of my vacations into long-term memory.

Some thoughts on child abuse recovery counseling, AA, PTSD and related matters

One prescriptive tool a number of these counselors recommend is writing with one’s alternative, non-dominant hand in order to recover one’s “inner child.”

But, does this actually have any benefits?

First, Ph.D. psychologist counselors, as compared to M.D. psychiatrists, let alone Ph.D. neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, aren’t renowned for their attachment to empirical research rather than feel-good theorizing. That’s why I have “inner child,” whether advocated by such counselors, Alcoholics Anonymous members talking about their recovery ideas, or others, in scare quotes.

Personally, and having done moderate or more left-handed writing off an on over the past few years, I doubt it.

First, I think the idea of an “inner child” is a construct. That’s not to say the idea isn’t still useful. Nor is it to say that we don’t have some subself that is more childlike (regular readers have read my numerous posts on the idea of subselves), and that, in at least some persons among people who have had childhood traumas, this subself isn’t larger and more active than in the general populace. But that’s all.

Anyway, to the degree alternate-hand writing accesses a child self construct, even then, it is probably not accessing a lot of unconscious or subconscious thought from this subself. The idea probably works in one of two ways.

Some people may be malleable or pliable enough in personality to un/subconsciously incorporate this idea wholesale from their counselors. In that case, what nondominant writing is accessing is most likely what the people subconsciously thinks their counselors want to hear about their clients’ inner children. In other words, outside of affirmation and “strokes” from a therapist, in these cases, nondominant writing is pretty valueless.

In other cases, though, where people who recognize, whether more subconsciously or consciously, the nature of a “child self” as a construct are involved, they may be able to go with the flow and project this constructed child self into the nondominant hand. That’s likely more valuable, but in this case, then what we are getting is an acted role which our own “daily show” consciousness believes is what this “inner child” is like.

A couple of caveats here, too. First, if one is too conscious about this, any insights will be forced. Second, the insights, as noted, may well be from one’s daily consciousness, and not any interior source.

Now, back to the idea of a “child self” and the idea, promoted in drug and alcohol recovery as well as developmental psychology, that this “child self” gets “frozen” by childhood trauma and never develops. (This leads to some AAers, and possibly some counselors, saying that one must “start again at age 13” or whatever, and then one “recovers at one year per year,” implying the whole person (if there actually is such a thing) is ultimately all behind the age-development curve because of the “frozenness” of this “child self.”

Well, first, I simply don’t believe human development happens that way. Even if a child trauma is great enough to produce some sort of actual, “split” or “partially split” child self, that subself is going to continue to develop, whether up, down or sideways. The deeper it appears to remain “frozen,” it seems more likely this is a subconsciously willed (yes, the subconscious has will) decision than an artifact of the original trauma.

Now, someone else might claim that subconscious willing is itself an artifact of the trauma. I say no.

Rather, it reflects differences in personality types — differences with a fair-sized genetic component, as illustrated by differences in post-traumatic stress disorder susceptibility in adults, to adult traumas.

Neuroscience and cognitive science have demonstrated such differences being reflected in differences in brain architecture in the amygdala and elsewhere. And the genetic research, while still somewhat weak evidentiarily, is coming along.

Hence, treatment such as anti-PTSD drugs, along with new directions in PTSD talk therapy, are important.

Counselors, even especially those leaning heavily on warm fuzzies, need to become cognizant of the research in this area and modify their treatment accordingly. And, armchair psychiatrists in AA and elsewhere need to take a page from Wittgenstein and stop dispensing advice that is not only clueless but potentially harmful, or at least detrimental, if they don’t know, and don’t try to know, what they’re talking about.