(snip)
><http://www.coba.usf.edu/Marketing/Faculty/Kennedy/6-consum/tsld011.htm> to
>see the pyramid in graphic form. The pyramidal shape reflects the number
>of people worldwide stuck in each category.
Oh. I was under the impression the context was "within any one person's
mind". Sorry 'bout that.
>It was Kohlberg who developed a theory about the stages of moral reasoning
>in children, much like Piaget did regarding cognitive development. See
><http://moon.pepperdine.edu/gsep/class/ethics/kohlberg/Stages_Moral-Developm
>ent.html>.
>
>I think that both psychological theories, taken jointly, might give us some
>ideas about 'the desires behind all human behavior'.
I disagree. I think it can be deduced logically, drawing on a framework
of current data from the "hard" sciences, and constraining the results to
be consistent with established meta-system and evolutionary principles.
It worked for me.
>>When you reduce (or, in this case,
>>/attempt/ to reduce) a system to its bare essentials, you're trying
>>to separate the wheat from the chaff to get the clearest picture you
>>can, [snip]
>
>Yes. And although Wade might have a point in stating that ultimately
>everything reduces to 'a genetic level, on a cellular level, on a
>neuro-biological level', a study that doesn't distinguish different things
>is useless. (For example, conducting a study to prove that ultimately
>every desire is a thought, which can easily be reduced to the biological,
>would be of little usefulness.)
Yes. But the problem in that case is in assuming that the reduction
will lead to some single, isolated and well understood structure that
these "drives/desires" can be ascribed to (cells, genes, etc.). That is
the single most fundamental mistake I see in this line of reasoning.
You can't plumb the nature of a flock by studying one of its basic units
(bird). In this case, the error comes in failing to realize that the
mind can't be understood by studying one of its functional components
(drives/desires: motivator) in isolation. Attempting to study the
motivator system itself, even without the ultimate goal of having it
shed light on the phenomenon of mind, is misguided. You may end up
with specific answers to specific questions, but it won't gain you a
greater /understanding/. Since the motivator works within the context
of the synergistic cooperation of Motivator-Facilitator-Memesphere (MFM)
(i.e. "mind"), any description of drives/desires, no matter how accurate
and concise, will not tell you /why/ they are the way they are (or,
more to the point, why they /have/ to be that way).
>We need to start somewhere, to explore possible distinctions -- which
>ultimately may, or not, reduce to a common basis. This basis might not
>even be so common after all -- there might be different kinds of
>'neuro-biological levels', in the same way that there are different kinds
>of cells and genes.
Exactly. You have to make sure you have perceived /all/ the emergent
levels between expressed behaviour and cellular/genetic behaviour, or
you will be "missing something", and any subsequent attempts to derive
the properties of one level from the properties of what you /think/ is
the next level down will be fruitless (and frustrating). All attempts
I've seen to extract a "causal chain" leading up to sentience (the mind)
have either missed the basic MFM emergent system entirely, or attempt to
divine the nature of each part separately, without realizing that
the nature of any single part, taken out of context, won't tell them
anything about why the mind should have the properties that it has.
>The whole issue of our biological needs, as opposed to the values we learn
>or choose or are infected by, seems relevant. We all share the same
>biological needs for food, shelter, company, etc. -- why is it that our
>values differ? (Why do some dedicate their lives to preaching one religion
>or another, or risking their lives for a political cause, or attempting to
>become president, or to producing the next great symphony, while others
>think those aims are total nonsense?)
Because the details (not the fundamentals) of each part of the MFM
system are slightly different from one person to the next (excluding neural
abnormalities, of course).
>> The real problem here is, even if he /had/ reduced it to its essentials,
>>it wouldn't have helped him plumb the nature of the emergent mind,
>>because it only clears up one aspect of it: the motivator. It does
>>nothing to point to the fact that the mind is an emergent system
>>risen out of the synergistic co-operation of motivator (emotion),
>>facilitator (intelligence) and memesphere (memory). So, assuming that
>>was his motivation for making the list (or even thinking along those lines)
>>in the first place, he missed the mark twice.
>
>Yup. We'd have to read the study to know what the author intended. No way
>we can guess from the deep coverage afforded by the ABC news article.
True enough. I just took and educated guess :-)
Dan