Dogma: A new perspective.

[Speakpigeon]

Each dogma is essentially historically contingent but the fact that dogmas are a fixture of all human societies is a direct consequence of natural selection. Whenever we use this notion of natural selection, we better give the time-frame involved to get some perspective. For example, the general logical capability of the human brain is the end-product of something like at least 525 million years of nature selecting neurobiolological systems over the entire surface of the Earth, over the whole thickness of the biosphere, in the seas, in the atmosphere, on the ground, and indeed below ground. No one is going to beat that with a computer any time soon. We may be tempted to think of dogmas as motivated essentially by social politics. This seems to be what people talk about when they discuss a dogma. Usually, there will be some implicit reference to the dogma of the Catholic Church at the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Descartes. Yet, the word “dogma” comes from the word “opinion”, or “belief”, in ancient Greek. Thus, dogmas as we think of them today are merely the socially generalised equivalent of our personal, individual beliefs. It’s belief on a social scale. Now, obviously, our personal beliefs would play a major role in our lives even without the dogmas we come to believe through our being part of a social group. And if the fact that the many beliefs we have independently of the dogmas we have are essential to our ability to function properly both in society and more generally in our environment, may be we need to recognise that dogmas play a similar role for social groups, including societies and indeed civilisations. So the capability to have beliefs probably goes back to at least the first dinosaurs 251 million years ago and certainly the first mammals around 210 million years ago. But to have a dogma requires, according to the sense of “socially generalised belief” I use here, some significant social relations, and here it’s more difficult to assess when this may have happened. Still, we’re probably still talking in millions of years, so nothing like the paltry 2000 years of things like the Catholic dogma. This certainly is enough to support the idea that dogmas are part and parcel of how any social group will inevitably function. That is not to say dogmas are necessary, merely that our societies work that way and we should keep that in mind before we try to dispose of them here and there without much thinking about what to put in place instead. History shows how dogmas are removed only for other dogmas to take their place. As I see it, dogmas, and dogmatic people, are there to stay and should be regarded indeed as necessary as long as we don’t know exactly how to live, and indeed survive, without them. I certainly wouldn’t be alive myself if not for the dogmatic people trudging along regardless of what our smart elite says. Obviously, we need our Copernicuses and our Einsteins to remove the ground under the feet of some of our dogmas, but only those dogmas that are obsolete because someone happens to know what to replace them with, and this ain’t going to happen everyday of the week. Still, the smart elite at the time of the Enlightenment successfully removed the Catholic Church’s dogma. Yet, it was only to replace it with the scientific dogma. It also seems a characteristic of our time that many different, and indeed incompatible, dogmas are allowed to somehow co-exist within the same societies. Indeed, the idea that this is a good thing should be regarded as a dogma of our democratic societies and a distinguishing fixture compared to all authoritarian regimes that still exist today.
EB

[11011]

i don't think dogma is human nature per se, i think it's a feature of over-socialization, which is a feature of societies increasing in complexity, as it is deemed a requirement of their reproduction/safety

and the reason for dogmatism rather than more tolerant transference of beliefs generation to generation conducive to the reproduction of society is out of fear (expressed through strict and uncompromising socialization and disallowance of the individual to find their own values/truth) that the wealth and power amassed in the social class or organization will be lost, or the foundation of society will crumble, if the beliefs are compromised.

basically, it IS human nature to question and to NOT regard things are incontrovertibly (key word) true, and because of this, knowing this, dogmatism exists to repress this tendency, the fear even within the dogmatic individual, their own doubts about it all, is being transformed unto unquestioning belief and obedience in whatever, and the expectation that others follow, or rather requirement or else

and i view it as a personality trait; while some people feign dogmatism to be part of some organization or please someone, those who really espouse what they believe in this fashion were usually raised from birth in accordance, although sometimes it can take a funny twist, often dependent on the trends of the era the child vs parent finds themselves in

for example, well i don't like using hitler examples as they are overused in philosophy and have a pro-jewish bias, but it's all that can come to mind atm, so hitler didn't have a great relationship with his dad, little strained, partly because his dad didn't let him grow up to be an artist, wanted him to go into more administration type things, like he did, so basically hitler's individuality and exploration was being squashed from an early age (though he still managed to produce some descent art), so when he didn't get into art school, and he was living it pretty rough, he joined the army and then went into politics, where he could treat others like his dad treated him, or something along those lines

but i wonder what makes someone choice one or the other. at point do they abandon being true to themselves, exploration, etc, and instead settle on identification with someone they probably hated growing up. maybe weakness, maybe a sense of having no other choice, maybe fear of failure

sometimes we think we'll only be successful at something we know, and if all we know if what we've been taught, then we go with that, even if we hate it, deep down

[Age]

Each dogma is essentially historically contingent but the fact that dogmas are a fixture of all human societies is a direct consequence of natural selection. Whenever we use this notion of natural selection, we better give the time-frame involved to get some perspective. For example, the general logical capability of the human brain is the end-product of something like at least 525 million years of nature selecting neurobiolological systems over the entire surface of the Earth, over the whole thickness of the biosphere, in the seas, in the atmosphere, on the ground, and indeed below ground. No one is going to beat that with a computer any time soon. We may be tempted to think of dogmas as motivated essentially by social politics. This seems to be what people talk about when they discuss a dogma. Usually, there will be some implicit reference to the dogma of the Catholic Church at the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Descartes. Yet, the word “dogma” comes from the word “opinion”, or “belief”, in ancient Greek. Thus, dogmas as we think of them today are merely the socially generalised equivalent of our personal, individual beliefs. It’s belief on a social scale. Now, obviously, our personal beliefs would play a major role in our lives even without the dogmas we come to believe through our being part of a social group. And if the fact that the many beliefs we have independently of the dogmas we have are essential to our ability to function properly both in society and more generally in our environment, may be we need to recognise that dogmas play a similar role for social groups, including societies and indeed civilisations. So the capability to have beliefs probably goes back to at least the first dinosaurs 251 million years ago and certainly the first mammals around 210 million years ago. But to have a dogma requires, according to the sense of “socially generalised belief” I use here, some significant social relations, and here it’s more difficult to assess when this may have happened. Still, we’re probably still talking in millions of years, so nothing like the paltry 2000 years of things like the Catholic dogma. This certainly is enough to support the idea that dogmas are part and parcel of how any social group will inevitably function. That is not to say dogmas are necessary, merely that our societies work that way and we should keep that in mind before we try to dispose of them here and there without much thinking about what to put in place instead. History shows how dogmas are removed only for other dogmas to take their place. As I see it, dogmas, and dogmatic people, are there to stay and should be regarded indeed as necessary as long as we don’t know exactly how to live, and indeed survive, without them. I certainly wouldn’t be alive myself if not for the dogmatic people trudging along regardless of what our smart elite says. Obviously, we need our Copernicuses and our Einsteins to remove the ground under the feet of some of our dogmas, but only those dogmas that are obsolete because someone happens to know what to replace them with, and this ain’t going to happen everyday of the week. Still, the smart elite at the time of the Enlightenment successfully removed the Catholic Church’s dogma. Yet, it was only to replace it with the scientific dogma. It also seems a characteristic of our time that many different, and indeed incompatible, dogmas are allowed to somehow co-exist within the same societies. Indeed, the idea that this is a good thing should be regarded as a dogma of our democratic societies and a distinguishing fixture compared to all authoritarian regimes that still exist today.
EB

Just replace dogmas, belief, assumptions with honesty, openness, and a willingness to change, then absolutely everything will be perfectly fine. For evidence of this, just do it and SEE what happens.

[Age]

i don't think dogma is human nature per se, i think it's a feature of over-socialization, which is a feature of societies increasing in complexity, as it is deemed a requirement of their reproduction/safety

and the reason for dogmatism rather than more tolerant transference of beliefs generation to generation conducive to the reproduction of society is out of fear (expressed through strict and uncompromising socialization and disallowance of the individual to find their own values/truth) that the wealth and power amassed in the social class or organization will be lost, or the foundation of society will crumble, if the beliefs are compromised.

basically, it IS human nature to question and to NOT regard things are incontrovertibly (key word) true, and because of this, knowing this, dogmatism exists to repress this tendency, the fear even within the dogmatic individual, their own doubts about it all, is being transformed unto unquestioning belief and obedience in whatever, and the expectation that others follow, or rather requirement or else

and i view it as a personality trait; while some people feign dogmatism to be part of some organization or please someone, those who really espouse what they believe in this fashion were usually raised from birth in accordance, although sometimes it can take a funny twist, often dependent on the trends of the era the child vs parent finds themselves in

for example, well i don't like using hitler examples as they are overused in philosophy and have a pro-jewish bias, but it's all that can come to mind atm, so hitler didn't have a great relationship with his dad, little strained, partly because his dad didn't let him grow up to be an artist, wanted him to go into more administration type things, like he did, so basically hitler's individuality and exploration was being squashed from an early age (though he still managed to produce some descent art), so when he didn't get into art school, and he was living it pretty rough, he joined the army and then went into politics, where he could treat others like his dad treated him, or something along those lines

but i wonder what makes someone choice one or the other. at point do they abandon being true to themselves, exploration, etc, and instead settle on identification with someone they probably hated growing up. maybe weakness, maybe a sense of having no other choice, maybe fear of failure

sometimes we think we'll only be successful at something we know, and if all we know if what we've been taught, then we go with that, even if we hate it, deep down

What makes any person choose one or the other is 'past life experiences'. It really is just that simple.

[planetlonely23]

The nature of humans is search for certain rules that are aimed to conduct our behaviour, all of that expressions contains the will of the people in the several range of the human stability. that are religion, political-social an economical beliefs, family and scientist positions. In each different area all dogmas are transfer to describe the purpose of our fate. I don't believe we are attached to one specific dogma for ever, only we need to assess what it is the best.

[Speakpigeon]

i don't think dogma is human nature per se, i think it's a feature of over-socialization, which is a feature of societies increasing in complexity, as it is deemed a requirement of their reproduction/safety

and the reason for dogmatism rather than more tolerant transference of beliefs generation to generation conducive to the reproduction of society is out of fear (expressed through strict and uncompromising socialization and disallowance of the individual to find their own values/truth) that the wealth and power amassed in the social class or organization will be lost, or the foundation of society will crumble, if the beliefs are compromised.

And so dogma is the way societies work.

basically, it IS human nature to question and to NOT regard things are incontrovertibly (key word) true,

I don't think people have the time to question much. Questioning is hard work and is costly in terms of time and energy. So, people will usually only question whenever there is a problem serious enough to justify them investing the necessary time and energy.

and because of this, knowing this, dogmatism exists to repress this tendency,

That's true of the kind of official dogmas imposed by political powers, like in the case of the Catholic Church at the time of Copernicus and Galileo or that of Stalin.
However, even in democracies, most people are dogmatic about certain things. So dogma isn't necessarily based on fear. My guess is that people have the dogmas that they perceive as being essential to preserve their personal interests. Fear is only a particular and extreme case in this respect.
EB

[Logik]

For example, the general logical capability of the human brain is the end-product of something like at least 525 million years of nature selecting neurobiolological systems over the entire surface of the Earth, over the whole thickness of the biosphere, in the seas, in the atmosphere, on the ground, and indeed below ground. No one is going to beat that with a computer any time soon.

False premise.

That life on Earth has existed for 500-700 million years - fine. Homo sapiens only appeared on the map recently (in perspective). And we could vanish just as quickly as we appeared.

And so IF you are going to be appealing to the Lindy effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect ) in order to justify "logic" recognize that a jelly fish has survived for 700 million years of evolution WITHOUT logic.

You are over-estimating the practical value of reason when it comes to winning the game of natural selection. In this game avoiding stupidity is FAR easier than seeking brilliance: https://fs.blog/2014/06/avoiding-stupidity/

It's reason-worship. Arrogance - plain and simple.

In simpler logical games (like chess, arithmetic, etc. ) computers are already better than humans.

[attofishpi]

In simpler logical games (like chess, arithmetic, etc. ) computers are already better than humans.

Actually, I think they are just faster at such things - sure, this is better from our standpoint as they are our tool, and we like efficiency.

DOGMA=AM GOD

[Logik]

Actually, I think they are just faster at such things

If intelligence is defined as "rapid adaptation with new information" (e.g learning) then fixing a bug takes significantly less time in a computer than it does in a human brain.

Still in the context of chess. The Stockfish testing framework ( http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests ) is a thing of beauty.

Every change to the chess engine is tested against older versions of itself.

If the "new version" beats the "old version" - the change is accepted.
If the "old version" beats the "new version" - the change is discarded.

Drop-by-drop fills the ocean. That's why Stockfish has a 3400 ELO rating, while the best chess player has 2850.

This is how far we have come in the 23 years since Deep Blue ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue ... _computer) ).

[attofishpi]

Actually, I think they are just faster at such things

If intelligence is defined as "rapid adaptation with new information" (e.g learning) then fixing a bug takes significantly less time in a computer than it does in a human brain.

Ya, but it ain't. ...and I see no intelligence in a machine.

..thanks for the interesting content regarding stockfish

[Logik]

Ya, but it ain't. ...and I see no intelligence in a machine.

But do you see intelligence in man-machine symbiosis?

If I outsource (some) of my thinking to a machine (and I do), and I can correct errors faster and more permanently...

[attofishpi]

Ya, but it ain't. ...and I see no intelligence in a machine.

But do you see intelligence in man-machine symbiosis?

If I outsource (some) of my thinking to a machine (and I do), and I can correct errors faster and more permanently...

No, because I don't consider me putting a gear into 1st instead of 3rd when attempting to move a car from a stationary position as symbiosis.

[Logik]

No, because I don't consider me putting a gear into 1st instead of 3rd when attempting to move a car from a stationary position as symbiosis.

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