PETER: I see that you are currently having a conversation with Richard about nature vs. nurture. I find it curious that you have yet to say where you stand on the subject as to whether the instinctual passions are at core genetically-encoded or whether they are the result of an imperfect nurturing process.

I remember when I first came across the radical proposition that each and every human being born was pre-primed with the instinctual passions – chiefly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire – I questioned whether or not this was a fact in my own experience. I remember very carefully and quite deliberately running through a checklist as it were of items making evaluations based solely on my experience and my own observations, the purpose being to put either a tick in the box, or a cross in the box. Whenever I was undecided I either went looking for more information or, better still, dug deeper into myself in order discover the source and the nature of the instinctual passions.

Some of the items I recall from my checklist –

1. Are non-sentient animals instinctually driven – do they exhibit instinctual fear, aggression, nurture and desire?

2. Are sentient animals other than the human animal instinctually driven – do they exhibit fear, aggression, nurture and desire?

3. Do I empathize with sentient animals fear, aggression, nurture and desire?

4. If so, do I empathise because I am also a feeling animal and as such associate with like feelings in other animals?

5. If so, is it a fact that I, exactly like all other sentient animals, not only exhibit instinctual fear, aggression, nurture and desire but also experienced these instincts as passions – i.e. primal deep-seated emotions.

6. Have I experienced these deep-seated instinctual passions at some stage in my own life – i.e. had I ever been overcome by an irrational fear, had I ever been overwhelmed by an urge to completely obliterate someone or something, had I ever been consumed by jealousy or compelled to copulate, no matter what the consequences and so on?

7. If the answers to the above questions are affirmative, do I lay the blame for my being inflicted by these passions and for my inflicting them upon others on my upbringing – on an imperfect nurturing at childhood – or do I experience these passions as being something deeper, something instinctual?

8. Have I observed the emergence of these instinctual passions as being an inevitable consequence of human animals being feeling beings not only in my own children but in all children beginning in the very first years of childhood and coming to full fruition at puberty?

9. Do any of the religious/ spiritual notions make sense – (a) are all children born innocent only to suffer an inescapable corruption at the hands of others, (b) are all children born sinners, or (c) are all children born pre-primed with a karmic millstone, and finally, if there is a loving God, how could She, He or It be so perverse as to have manifest such a calamity as this?

10. If in my own experience and by my own observations the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are indeed genetically-encoded does it then not make sense that the way and the means of becoming free from these passions is to become aware of them in action in my daily life, when and as they occur no matter how subtly or how brutally to the point when my intelligence is finally able to be once and for all free of their insidious influence?

11. If so, am I ready and willing to literally devote ‘my’ life to this task and to this end?

This list is by no means exhaustive, but I well remember that the whole question of whether or not the instinctual passions were indeed genetically-encoded by blind nature was crucial to my really beginning to question the ancient yet still prevalent religious/ spiritual notions of the causes of evil in human beings. It was also pivotal in my realizing that, given Richard’s experience that these passions are ‘software’ as opposed to being hardwired, I too had the opportunity to become free of the human condition in toto, should I so desire.

My suggestion is that, provided you are old enough to have experienced puberty, you too have sufficient life experience to be able to make up your own mind on this issue based on your own experience of how ‘you’ yourself tick and your own observations of other animals, be they non-sentient or sentient, rather than having a subjective opinion one way or the other based solely on what others believe to be true or false.

14.1.2006

RESPONDENT: Peter thanks for your thought provoking reply.

PETER: It’s good to hear that my reply has provoked some thinking on the subject – after all, if it wasn’t for the human ability to think and reflect homo sapiens would not be homo sapiens but would be still be chimp-like, sitting in the poring rain all night long, getting soaking wet. Thinking per se is much derided these days given the current fashion for ‘no-thinking’ spiritual movements and religions and the ensuing inevitable spin off – the ‘no-such-thing-as-facts’ scientific theorizations and philosophies.

*

PETER: I see that you are currently having a conversation with Richard about nature vs. nurture. I find it curious that you have yet to say where you stand on the subject as to whether the instinctual passions are at core genetically-encoded or whether they are the result of an imperfect nurturing process.

RESPONDENT: I tend to be slow with my evaluation. At any rate I recognise that I am not an expert. What I do see is experts arguing and I suspect that this must be because things aren’t cut and dried yet and that consensus has not been reached about many topics regarding nature vs nurture. My observations are meagre and need augmentation.

PETER: In my university years, I came to understand that the so-called ‘experts’ who taught me the things they had been taught had little to no practical hands-on experience of what actually went on both in the design process and in the building process. I simply went out and found out for myself. I did the very same thing with regard to the question of whether the passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are learnt or whether they are instinctual.

A bit that I wrote might throw some light on some of the aspects of the human aggressiveness that I looked into at the time in order to make my evaluation –

[Peter]: ‘At one point in my investigation of the Human Condition I was studying what the psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and the like had discovered about human behaviour. I came across an experiment the results of which rocked me to my very core. A series of experiments were conducted at Yale University in the early sixties to test people’s obedience to authority. The most famous was the ‘Milgram experiment’. Stanley Milgram advertised for participants to undertake a ‘memory study’, and subsequently pairs of volunteers would turn up at the laboratory at the appointed time.

One was designated as ‘teacher’, the other as ‘learner’, and it was explained to them that the study was concerned with the effects of punishment on learning. The ‘learner’ was then conducted into a room, seated in a chair, his arms strapped to prevent excessive movement, and an electrode attached to each wrist. The real focus of the experiment was the ‘teacher’. After watching the ‘learner’ being strapped into place, he was taken into the main room and seated before an impressive shock generator. It had a row of thirty switches ranging from 15 volts – ‘Slight Shock’, to 450 volts – ‘DANGER, Severe Shock’. The ‘teacher’ was then told to administer the learning test to the man in the other room. When the ‘learner’ responded correctly, the ‘teacher’ moved on to the next item; when the other man gave an incorrect answer, the ‘teacher’ was told to give him an electric shock.

He was to start at the lowest level and increase the level each time the ‘learner’ made an error. The ‘teacher’ was a genuine ordinary participant, but he did not know that the ‘learner’ was actually an actor who received no shock at all, but was faking a response. The real aim of the experiment was to see how far a person would proceed in a situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim. The actor-learner’s ‘response’ at about 150 volts was a demand for release, at 300 volts an agonizing scream; at 450 volts he was writhing in tortured agony.

In the test EVERY participant went on to administer 300 volts to the learner, with sixty-five percent going to the full 450 volts! Most participants obeyed the instructor, no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seemed to be, and no matter how much the victim pleaded and screamed to be let out. This experiment has since been repeated thousands of times at different universities, with identical results. And those participants were just the ‘you and me’ of this world! Ordinary, average, typical human beings!

Reading about this experiment had an earth-shattering effect on me. I had already had glimpses of this behaviour in myself. The willingness to kill for a cause in Rajneeshpuram, the thrill of killing that I had felt, the joy of revenge – and this is ‘me’ at my core! What more incentive did I need than this to rid myself of this lust for violence? This instinctual passions of aggression that blind nature has programmed in us all. I also read books and watched programs on TV about that horrendous outbreak of genocide – the Holocaust; the systematic starving, gassing and burning of millions of people. The camp guards were ordinary 50-year-old men and women – ordinary people like those in Milgram’s experiments, the ‘you and me’ of this world. When push comes to shove, human beings become monsters, and it does not take much pushing – we even seem to enjoy it!

Another TV program I watched reported on the fire bombing of Dresden and other German cities during the war. Vast areas of these cities were turned into raging firestorms of such intensity that people were sucked off their feet into the inferno, and babies were ripped from their mothers’ arms. This was a deliberate policy of revenge for the German bombing of English cities. Civilians were deliberately targeted. The Americans similarly incinerated Tokyo, causing more deaths than both atomic bombs combined. Of some 50 million killed in the Second World War, 30 million were women and children. When the Allies saw the German concentration camps after the Second World War, they put hundreds of thousands of German soldiers in open fields – in winter – and surrounded them with barbed wire. They then fed them below minimum survival rations and slowly starved or froze thousands of them to death over the winter. To increase the torture they backed open truckloads of food up to the perimeter fence and left them there to rot. They were the ‘good guys’ and the other side had to be punished for their wrongs!

What we call justice is, after all, nothing more than revenge and retribution. An eye for an eye! Such is the appalling extent of malice and sorrow in this world. Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

*

I remember when I first came across the radical proposition that each and every human being born was pre-primed with the instinctual passions – chiefly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire – I questioned whether or not this was a fact in my own experience. I remember very carefully and quite deliberately running through a checklist as it were of items making evaluations based solely on my experience and my own observations, the purpose being to put either a tick in the box, or a cross in the box. Whenever I was undecided I either went looking for more information or, better still, dug deeper into myself in order discover the source and the nature of the instinctual passions.

RESPONDENT: This maybe a misrepresentation, but you say you dug deeper into yourself in order to discover the source and the nature of the instinctual passions – on the face of it this sentence presupposes the instinctual nature of the passions. Did you mean you dug deeper into yourself in order discover the source and the nature of the passions, without presupposing their possibly instinctual nature?

PETER: When I started my investigations into these matters I, like everyone else I knew, took it for granted that the reason I felt fearful was because someone was out to get me or that someone would strip me bare as it were and that my anger was justifiable because someone else was wrong or doing me wrong. I had always blamed others or circumstances for these passions just as did everyone else I knew, thereby unwittingly accepting the status quo notion that imperfect nurture/ environment was the cause of human aggressiveness and misery.

*

PETER: Some of the items I recall from my checklist – <snipped for length>

This list is by no means exhaustive, but I well remember that the whole question of whether or not the instinctual passions were indeed genetically-encoded by blind nature was crucial to my really beginning to question the ancient yet still prevalent religious/ spiritual notions of the causes of evil in human beings. It was also pivotal in my realizing that, given Richard’s experience that these passions are ‘software’ as opposed to being hardwired, I too had the opportunity to become free of the human condition in toto, should I so desire.

RESPONDENT: That’s an interesting set of considerations to ponder over but I am still able to entertain alternative postulations that are not being killed off by any sense of necessity in what you say. What you say is appealing but that’s all. I don’t hold the following theory, I’m only entertaining it (in the sense of that wonderful quote provided by No 92 in another post ie ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’ – Aristotle), amongst others but it just as plausible to me:

PETER: It’s good to keep in mind that Aristotle made his living and got his kudos from being a philosopher, hence what he is saying can be paraphrased as –

[Peter]: ‘It is the mark of a shrewd philosopher to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’ [endquote].

Given his vocation, his words of wisdom can be seen as nothing more than a disclaimer clause or a ‘get out of jail’ card, one that apparently strikes a chord for those with similar motivations.

RESPONDENT: Environmental conditioning may be the active factor that tips humans and animals into destructive behaviours later (or sooner!) in life. Some subsystems due to genetic coding may be present that are neutral until they encounter conditions which trigger destructive reactions. The instincts may well be hardwired.

Richard may have dealt with the conditioning that triggers destructive reactions. He may well have dealt with the finger that pulls the trigger but the trigger may still be intact. Deal with the finger or the trigger and the effect would be the same – harmlessness. I fail to see how a subjective observation could deliver a definitive answer to the question though. Watching your kids and animals may be explainable by your theory but it could be explained by other theories too. Self observation cannot yield much in the way of internal physiological data. I cannot yet see the factors that make your theory necessarily true.

PETER: I see from other posts to this list that you hold it to be a fact that nothing can be known for a fact. Holding such a stance makes a nonsense of trying to conduct a sensible conversation, let alone come to a sensible conclusion, about anything at all … let alone a subject so close to the bone as to why malice and sorrow is intrinsic to the human condition and, as archaeological evidence reveals, always has been.

*

PETER: My suggestion is that, provided you are old enough to have experienced puberty, you too have sufficient life experience to be able to make up your own mind on this issue based on your own experience of how ‘you’ yourself tick and your own observations of other animals, be they non-sentient or sentient, rather than having a subjective opinion one way or the other based solely on what others believe to be true or false.

RESPONDENT: Quite right.

PETER: I am left wondering what it is you are acknowledging as being ‘quite right’ … purely because your philosophical conviction that nothing can ever be know to be a fact would inevitable prevent you from seeing a fact, let alone acknowledge that a fact is a fact even if it was staring you in the face as it were. With this mindset, it would obviously be impossible for you to make up your mind about anything.

17.1.2006

PETER: Some of the items I recall from my checklist – <snipped>

This list is by no means exhaustive, but I well remember that the whole question of whether or not the instinctual passions were indeed genetically-encoded by blind nature was crucial to my really beginning to question the ancient yet still prevalent religious/ spiritual notions of the causes of evil in human beings. It was also pivotal in my realizing that, given Richard’s experience that these passions are ‘software’ as opposed to being hardwired, I too had the opportunity to become free of the human condition in toto, should I so desire.

RESPONDENT: That’s an interesting set of considerations to ponder over but I am still able to entertain alternative postulations that are not being killed off by any sense of necessity in what you say. What you say is appealing but that’s all. I don’t hold the following theory, I’m only entertaining it (in the sense of that wonderful quote provided by No 92 in another post ie ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’ – Aristotle), amongst others but it just as plausible to me:

PETER: It’s good to keep in mind that Aristotle made his living and got his kudos from being a philosopher, hence what he is saying can be paraphrased as –

[Peter]: ‘It is the mark of a shrewd philosopher to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’ [endquote].

Given his vocation, his words of wisdom can be seen as nothing more than a disclaimer clause or a ‘get out of jail’ card, one that apparently strikes a chord for those with similar motivations.

RESPONDENT: So nothing that Aristotle ever said is useful or valid?

PETER: I am not aware that Aristotle ever said anything useful or valid in regards the question of whether or not the deep-seated passions of fear aggression, nurture and desire are genetically encoded.

Soon after I came across actualism I went out and purchased a few second-hand books on philosophy and was far from impressed with what I can only label as rarefied ivory-tower thinking by men who showed few signs of being in touch with reality, let alone being in touch with their feelings.

Personally I found getting in touch with my own feelings absolutely essential in understanding the human condition and how it is manifest as ‘me’, which is precisely what I was explaining in the excerpt from my journal in my last post to you.

*

RESPONDENT: Environmental conditioning may be the active factor that tips humans and animals into destructive behaviours later (or sooner!) in life. Some subsystems due to genetic coding may be present that are neutral until they encounter conditions which trigger destructive reactions. The instincts may well be hardwired. Richard may have dealt with the conditioning that triggers destructive reactions. He may well have dealt with the finger that pulls the trigger but the trigger may still be intact. Deal with the finger or the trigger and the effect would be the same – harmlessness. I fail to see how a subjective observation could deliver a definitive answer to the question though. Watching your kids and animals may be explainable by your theory but it could be explained by other theories too. Self observation cannot yield much in the way of internal physiological data. I cannot yet see the factors that make your theory necessarily true.

PETER: I see from other posts to this list that you hold it to be a fact that nothing can be known for a fact. Holding such a stance makes a nonsense of trying to conduct a sensible conversation, let alone come to a sensible conclusion, about anything at all … let alone a subject so close to the bone as to why malice and sorrow is intrinsic to the human condition and, as archaeological evidence reveals, always has been.

RESPONDENT: You are kidding me, right? You are shutting down conversation based on another discussion between me and Richard? You are also going to take what I said at the level of parody, as Richard did, and that’s the end of the discussion? I am amazed.

PETER: I don’t take what you have said at the level of parody, I assumed you meant to write what you wrote.

On more than a few occasions, I have spent hours in conversation with people about the human condition, only to have them bring an end to any sensible conversation by declaring that New Age theoretical scientists and mathematicians, having been seduced by Eastern Mysticism hypothesize that matter at the sub-microscopic level (as in beyond observation) doesn’t have a definitive existence and its very existence is so uncertain that we could well regard it as being illusory and that space and time are not constants but have an existence that is relative (as in relative to a human observer) thereby opening the door to all sorts of imaginative theorizing such as Big Bangs, parallel universes, black holes and so on.

Here are but two examples I have written about in the past where people have reverted to playing the no-such-thing-as-a-fact card in order to thwart the possibility of engaging in, or continuing on a sensible down-to-earth conversation about the lot we humans unwittingly have found ourselves born into.

[Co-Respondent]: Hi Peter, when you say ‘the world as-it-is’ what do you mean ... the actual world or the world as it is perceived by ‘me’?

[Peter]: I remember having a discussion with a spiritualist about this very topic soon after I abandoned spiritualism to become an actualist. He believed that the fact that everyone has a self-centred affective perception of the world meant that the physical world was a self-created illusion. We happened to be standing in front of his car at the time and I reached out and touched the glass of the headlight and asked whether or not the headlight existed in fact given that we could both see it and both touch it. He said that while we could both see it, we saw it from different perspectives, he from one angle, me from another, therefore we perceived it differently. I then realized that pursuing the matter was a waste of both his time and mine because here was a man who refused to talk sense and was determined to live, and remain living, in a world entirely of his own making.

This incident, coming as it did in my early years of investigating the human condition, highlighted the fact that in my spiritual years I had also retreated from the world as-it-is – the world of interactions with fellow flesh and blood human, of tangible palpable things and actually occurring events – into an utterly self-centred world – a world of affective interactions like-feeling souls, of ethereal non-substantial things and supposedly illusionary non-consequential events. It was then that I realized that I had in fact wasted a good many years of my life trying to be anywhere but here and anywhen but now.

But then again, it was hardly a waste of time because I know by experience the seduction of dissociation and lure of dissociative states. Peter to No 32, Re: A perception, 25.3.2005

And …

[Peter to Alan]: He and I chatted socially for a while, catching up on the last 12 months and he asked if I was still writing. I said I was, explaining that I was corresponding on two mailing lists at the moment, one of which was a spiritual list. He said he wasn’t into spiritual things lately but was reading a book about one of Ramana Maharshi’s devotees. He then proceeded to tell me a particular anecdote about Maharshi reported in the book that had appealed to him. A woman had evidently asked Maharshi a question about the ‘self’ and he had picked up a piece of fruit from a nearby bowl. Holding the fruit up in his hand he said

[Ramana Maharshi]: ‘Here is a piece of fruit, here is my hand, I see it and it is registered in my mind as a thought. Therefore I think I see my hand with a piece of fruit in it, but it is not real as it is only a product of the mind – only the self, who is watching this thought arising is real.’ [endquote].

I looked at him and tapped the wooden table we were sitting at and said ‘Are you telling me that this table is not real, not actual in that I can tap it, feel it, see it?’ He said he had no trouble with that, so I pointed to a tree across the road and said that if I died tomorrow that tree would still be there unless someone chopped it down in the meantime. He started to look like he was willing to engage in an intellectual argument about my statement. I realized I had once spent an evening with this same man going around his belief-system in ever-broadening and erratic circles and I saw no sense in continuing the conversation about what is illusionary and what is actual on such a delightful afternoon. As the sun was setting behind some buildings and it was a good time to go anyway, I abandoned him in mid-objections and we paid up and left.

Later that evening, while musing about my quick departure, I saw that it simply made no sense to continue a discussion with someone who was hooked on solipsism. Of course, he wasn’t fully convinced, nor fully deluded, but he liked the appeal of a way of looking at things that made him the centre of all that was happening. So, for a little solace and respite from the real world he would indulge in a little ‘self’-ish escapist fantasy by reading spiritual books and, no doubt, a bit of going-in-and-getting-lost meditation. A few years ago I would have stayed to try and convince him of the madness of solipsism but those days of needing to convince others are long passed. The conversation did, however, remind me as to how far I have come to being seen as mad from both a real-world and spiritual-world viewpoint. I see ever more clearly how no one wants to be here and everyone is frantically and desperately trying to be ‘there’. Those who fail on the spiritual path to get so far out there that they never come back spend their lives straddling both worlds, occasionally grateful for brief moments of being ‘Present’ there but generally resentful at having to be here at all. Peter to Alan, Re: illusion vs actual, 4.6.2000

RESPONDENT: Before you go can you answer one question?

PETER: I am not going anywhere as you put it – it’s you who are playing the cards, it’s you who are steering the conversation in the way you want to (as you are doing in this post).

I am simply pointing out that playing the card you are currently playing,

[Peter]: ‘makes a nonsense of trying to conduct a sensible conversation, let alone come to a sensible conclusion, about anything at all … let alone a subject so close to the bone as to why malice and sorrow is intrinsic to the human condition and, as archaeological evidence reveals, always has been.’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Before you go can you answer one question? Q: If an observation comes along that contradicts what you call a fact, what happens to your fact?

PETER: Given that this is your speculation, could you explain what other observation would possibly come along that would contradict the fact that human beings are instinctually-driven animals and that this instinctual program manifests itself in homo sapiens as instinctual passions mainly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire – given that this is the topic we are talking about. An observation that we are not of-the-earth animals, but made in the likeness of some God, perhaps? An observation that we are indeed aliens seeded here by an alien not-of-earth civilization from a yet to be discovered planet perhaps? These are amongst the common ones – or did you have something else in mind?

RESPONDENT: This is what I said – some theories are so good that they might as well be called fact ... with the proviso that a single contrary observation can render your fact into falsehood at any time. What on earth is so reprehensible about that statement that you would abort a conversation in which you were happy to engage in before you read something ... what ... offensive? ... in another conversation? Or is this all just to avoid answering my previous point? I do wonder.

PETER: As far as I can see I have answered all your points, but just to make it clear, the topic of this conversation is nurture vs. nature, specifically the question as to whether the deep seated passions such as fear, aggression, nurture and desire are caused by imperfect nurturing/ environment or are biologically inherited?

Your stance is that one can never know which is a fact in this case because a single contrary observation can render the fact into falsehood at any time – thus it is that you bring an end to the discussion by evoking the mind-numbing over-arching, all-consuming principle that one can never know anything for certain.

*

RESPONDENT: I fail to see how a subjective observation could deliver a definitive answer to the question though. Watching your kids and animals may be explainable by your theory but it could be explained by other theories too. Self observation cannot yield much in the way of internal physiological data. I cannot yet see the factors that make your theory necessarily true.

PETER: My suggestion is that, provided you are old enough to have experienced puberty, you too have sufficient life experience to be able to make up your own mind on this issue based on your own experience of how ‘you’ yourself tick and your own observations of other animals, be they non-sentient or sentient, rather than having a subjective opinion one way or the other based solely on what others believe to be true or false.

RESPONDENT: Quite right.

PETER: I am left wondering what it is you are acknowledging as being ‘quite right’ … purely because your philosophical conviction that nothing can ever be know to be a fact would inevitable prevent you from seeing a fact, let alone acknowledge that a fact is a fact even if it was staring you in the face as it were. With this as a mindset, it would obviously be impossible for you to make up your mind about anything.

RESPONDENT: You are so wrong. This must be a joke. You really don’t seem to understand my position, do you? If I didn’t work with facts I would be dead by now (eg ‘the bus is bearing down on you’).

PETER: Look, if you are now changing your position then fine – I have spent years divesting myself of so many beliefs, opinions, platitudes, opinions, truths, psittacisms and the like which I unwittingly took to be fact. T’is par for the course in the becoming free of the human condition.

If a bus is indeed a fact to you, as in being a physical object that has an independent tangible existence in its own right, irregardless of whether a human being is observing it or not, then why should not the chair be a fact and that it is blue in the electromagnetic wavelengths ranging from approximately 780 nanometer (7.80 x 10-7 m) down to 390 nanometer (3.90 x 10-7 m10-7 m) be a fact, irregardless of whether a human being is observing it. If you regard these as facts, in that a hypothetical contrary observation does not turn the big metal box on wheels into a falsehood and nor can it turn a blue chair white let alone make it invisible, then why not apply similar down-to earth evidentiary observations in the matter of determining for yourself as to wether or not the deep-seated passions of fear aggression, nurture and desire are indeed genetically encoded.

22.1.2006

PETER: I notice since writing this post that Richard has since covered the same ground in his most recent post to you, but I will send it off anyway.

RESPONDENT: Can we forget Aristotle for a moment? The point I was really interested in seeing you address was this one:

[Respondent]: ‘Environmental conditioning may be the active factor that tips humans and animals into destructive behaviours later (or sooner!) in life. Some subsystems due to genetic coding may be present that are neutral until they encounter conditions which trigger destructive reactions. The instincts may well be hardwired. Richard may have dealt with the conditioning that triggers destructive reactions. He may well have dealt with the finger that pulls the trigger but the trigger may still be intact. Deal with the finger or the trigger and the effect would be the same – harmlessness. I fail to see how a subjective observation could deliver a definitive answer to the question though. Watching your kids and animals may be explainable by your theory but it could be explained by other theories too. Self observation cannot yield much in the way of internal physiological data. I cannot yet see the factors that make your theory necessarily true.’ (17.1.2006)

Can you address my point above, despite what you think of my position on facts?

PETER: And yet I have addressed precisely this point, vis.–

{Peter]: ‘My suggestion is that, provided you are old enough to have experienced puberty, you too have sufficient life experience to be able to make up your own mind on this issue based on your own experience of how ‘you’ yourself tick and your own observations of other animals, be they non-sentient or sentient, rather than having a subjective opinion one way or the other based solely on what others believe to be true or false.’ [endquote].

And not only did I address it, but you yourself succinctly agreed with my response, vis –

{Respondent]: Quite right. [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Try looking at it this way – it may not just be me you’re answering. Others may be interested.

PETER: I am always cognizant of the fact that although I am having a personal conversation with you, we are having this conversation on an Internet mailing list and as such even if you are not interested in what I have to say then it may well be of interest to others who are reading.

*

PETER: I see from other posts to this list that you hold it to be a fact that nothing can be known for a fact. Holding such a stance makes a nonsense of trying to conduct a sensible conversation, let alone come to a sensible conclusion, about anything at all … let alone a subject so close to the bone as to why malice and sorrow is intrinsic to the human condition and, as archaeological evidence reveals, always has been.

RESPONDENT: You are kidding me, right? You are shutting down conversation based on another discussion between me and Richard? You are also going to take what I said at the level of parody, as Richard did, and that’s the end of the discussion? I am amazed.

PETER: I don’t take what you have said at the level of parody, I assumed you meant to write what you wrote.

On more than a few occasions, I have spent hours in conversation with people about the human condition, only to have them bring an end to any sensible conversation by declaring that New Age theoretical scientists and mathematicians, having been seduced by Eastern Mysticism hypothesize that matter at the sub-microscopic level (as in beyond observation) doesn’t have a definitive existence and its very existence is so uncertain that we could well regard it as being illusory and that space and time are not constants but have an existence that is relative (as in relative to a human observer) thereby opening the door to all sorts of imaginative theorizing such as Big Bangs, parallel universes, black holes and so on

RESPONDENT: To use a well worn phrase ... may I interject? You’re not currently in discussion with those people you have locked in your memory! I have hardly had a chance to get beyond this silly objection of yours to see if we can have a sensible discussion.

PETER: And yet they are not people I have ‘locked in my memory’ as you put it, I still meet and no doubt will continue to meet people whose intelligence is similarly hobbled by such beliefs on a reasonably regular basis, indeed some of them correspond to this very mailing list.

By the way, it was you who introduced the notion that is impossible to know something to be a fact because there always must be a proviso, not me.

*

PETER: Here are but two examples I have written about in the past where people have reverted to playing the no-such-thing-as-a-fact card in order to thwart the possibility of engaging in, or continuing on a sensible down-to-earth conversation about the lot we humans unwittingly have found ourselves born into.

RESPONDENT: <snip 1009 words(!) about Peter’s past encounters with soliptical scammers that I have no interest in and wonder why it is being brought up so strongly, I’m not one of them so let’s get out of the past!>

PETER: Although I suspect you will have no interest in this response either I shall take your advice and go ahead anyway as others who read this may find it to be of interest.

Recently I happened to have a conversation with a man of similar age as I am about the generational changes that have occurred in the things that were once regarded as facts and ‘givens’ as opposed to what is being taught to the current generations. What we both observed was that there had been a marked swing from an empirical, pragmatic view of the world of people, things and events towards what has been termed a post-modern view of the world – a view that includes such notions as relativism, subjectivism, reductionism, anti-foundationalism, existentialism, deconstructionism, scepticism, nihilism and so on.

Broadly speaking, postmodernism thinking has it that knowledge can only be subjective in that an individual can only construct their own view of knowledge relative to their own particular time, place, social position, etc., or to put succinctly that there is no such thing as objective knowledge and universally-verifiable facts because knowledge can only ever be subjective.

With the majority of the people in the world being taught this view by their parents, peers and teachers, it is little wonder that people have such difficulty in understanding something as objective, simple, straightforward, pragmatic and down-to-earth as actualism is.

*

RESPONDENT: Before you go can you answer one question?

PETER: I am not going anywhere as you put it – it’s you who are playing the cards, it’s you who are steering the conversation in the way you want to (as you are doing in this post).

RESPONDENT: Okay, okay – are you able to translate my colloquial speech into whatever you prefer ... silently?

PETER: ……………….

*

PETER: I am simply pointing out that playing the card you are currently playing,

Peter]: ‘(...) makes a nonsense of trying to conduct a sensible conversation, let alone come to a sensible conclusion, about anything at all … let alone a subject so close to the bone as to why malice and sorrow is intrinsic to the human condition and, as archaeological evidence reveals, always has been.’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Before you go can you answer one question? Q: If an observation comes along that contradicts what you call a fact, what happens to your fact?

PETER: Given that this is your speculation,

RESPONDENT: This is not a speculation, it’s a question and you haven’t answered it.

PETER: The reason I didn’t answer your question was that I was seeking clarification as to what specific observation you had in mind that would contradict the fact that human beings are instinctually-driven animals, i.e. I was trying to keep the conversation on topic rather than have it degenerate into vague generalities.

RESPONDENT: Surely you have experienced this scenario before or are you infallible?

PETER: This was my response to a similar and similarly-loaded question from my previous post –

[Peter]: ‘I have spent years divesting myself of so many beliefs, opinions, platitudes, opinions, truths, psittacisms and the like which I unwittingly took to be fact. T’is par for the course in the becoming free of the human condition.’ [endquote].

As such, I do find it somewhat bewildering that many people who write to this mailing list have such difficulty in divesting themselves of even one single belief masquerading as a fact … let alone be able to put sufficient of them on the table for scrutiny such that one is eventually able to break free of the ingrained habit of believing.

*

PETER: Given that this is your speculation, could you explain what other observation would possibly come along that would contradict the fact that human beings are instinctually-driven animals and that this instinctual program manifests itself in homo sapiens as instinctual passions mainly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire – given that this is the topic we are talking about.

RESPONDENT: Though you haven’t answered my question I will try to answer yours: The way you have expressed your question shows how certain you are of your position, but other just-as-intelligent human beings are not as convinced as you. I dare say they have thought as deeply about the issues as you. Here are some quotes and their sources:

• [Dr. David Adams]: ‘The statements on this Website are based on over 20 years of laboratory research on the evolution, brain mechanisms and dynamics of aggressive behavior in animals and humans...

...This book is a scientific rebuttal of those who claim that war is inherent in human nature. It provides extensive scientific evidence on the nature of the aggression systems which shows that war and other institutional behaviors have no direct genetic or neurophysiological basis. Next time you hear some expert expound on the biological basis of warfare, ask him or her if they have recorded from single neurons or isolated single genes of aggressive behavior as in the data provided here. And ask if they have tried using methods such as cross-cultural anthropology as done here to get at the prehistoric cultural origins of these behaviors.’ http://www.culture-of-peace.info/aggression-intro.html

• [Dr. David Adams et al]: ‘IT IS SCIENTIFICALLY INCORRECT to say that war or any other violent behaviour is genetically programmed into our human nature. While genes are involved at all levels of nervous system function, they provide a developmental potential that can be actualized only in conjunction with the ecological and social environment.’

‘IT IS SCIENTIFICALLY INCORRECT to say that in the course of human evolution there has been a selection for aggressive behaviour more than for other kinds of behaviour. In all well-studied species, status within the group is achieved by the ability to co-operate and to fulfil social functions relevant to the structure of that group.’ http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3247&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

• [Dr. David Adams et al]: ‘IT IS SCIENTIFICALLY INCORRECT to say that war is caused by ‘instinct’ or any single motivation. The emergence of modern warfare has been a journey from the primacy of emotional and motivational factors, sometimes called ‘instincts’, to the primacy of cognitive factors.’ (ibid)

These are strongly backed statements, far stronger than anything you have come up with so far.

PETER: I don’t know how discerning you were in selecting the quotes but this is the author’s stated position with regard to aggression from the preface of the book you quoted –

[Dr. David Adams]: ‘Aggression, in the form of anger against injustice, is a critical and valuable component of consciousness development. I suspect that my readers will find that they, too, must undergo such a change of mind if they are to fully appreciate the positive value of aggressive behaviour.’ www.culture-of-peace.info/aggression/human3.html

And from a section of the website entitled ‘The Anger of Activists as a Basis for Optimism’

[Dr. David Adams]: ‘It would appear from my preliminary work that anger is positive and constructive for the motivation of peace movement activists when it is collectively harnessed and directed against the agents of militarism themselves or the system of political-economic relations in which they function. As one noted religious pacifist told me. ‘We must love the good and hate the evil.’’ www.culture-of-peace.info/anger/chapter6-6.html

Personally, I fail to appreciate anything positive at all in aggressive behaviour nor do I see the anger of those who rile against some ideology, belief, political viewpoint, culture or creed that contradicts their own as being either positive or constructive, I simply see it for what it is – people being angry.

As for your second link to a UNESCO website, the manifesto – apparently based on the same author’s ‘over-20-years-of-laboratory-research’ – is offered as supporting evidence for a program to teach non-violence to children. The obvious question that arises is – do they also teach the children that they should ‘fully appreciate the value of aggressive behaviour’ given that it is part and parcel of the same author’s thinking on the subject?

RESPONDENT: I am aware that there are plenty of people who support your position and you could dig up relevant quotes.

PETER: Actually there are very few who publicly dissent from the popular view but here is a quote from one man who has had over 30 years of on-the-ground research studying the physical evidence of human beings’ violence towards other human beings since the very beginnings of the emergence of homo sapiens –

[Steven A Le Blanc]: ‘Prehistoric warfare was common and deadly, and no time span or geographical region seems to have been immune. We need to recognize and accept the idea of a non-peaceful past for the entire time of human existence. Though there were certainly times and places during which peace prevailed, overall such interludes seem to have been short-lived and infrequent. People in the past were in conflict and competition much of the time. Which groups prevailed and survived, and how people interacted with their neighbours, had a great impact on the way we humans organized our societies, how we spread over Earth, and why people settled as they did. Today in parts of the world, things are much the same – war is a constant and critical part of their lives. These wars are not an aberration, but a continuation of behaviour stretching back deep into the past. To understand much of today’s war, we must see it as a common and almost universal human behaviour that has been with us as we went from ape to human’. ‘Constant Battles. The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage’ Steven A. LeBlanc with Katherine E. Register, p8

RESPONDENT: My purpose in providing these quotes is to amplify my point – nothing you have said so far has the ring of necessity about it. I’m not saying that my mind is settled either way.

PETER: If the purpose of the quotes was to support a case for lack of proper nurture being the cause of human aggression, I can only suggest you do a little more reading before firing them off, but then again your concern is apparently not so much about the veracity of any contradictory observations but more about the fact that contradictory observations exist.

RESPONDENT: I’m pointing out that to settle my mind (and many others) you would have to come up with evidence that would silence the whole nature vs nurture debate without recourse to ad hominem techniques such as ‘I came to understand that the so-called ‘experts’ who taught me the things they had been taught had little to no practical hands-on experience’.

PETER: I have not the slightest interest in silencing the whole nature vs. nurture debate for that is an impossibility.

And since when has an observation about the essential difference between theoreticians and hands-on practitioners been an ‘ad hominem technique’?

*

RESPONDENT: Before you go can you answer one question? Q: If an observation comes along that contradicts what you call a fact, what happens to your fact?]

PETER: Given that this is your speculation, could you explain what other observation would possibly come along that would contradict the fact that human beings are instinctually-driven animals and that this instinctual program manifests itself in homo sapiens as instinctual passions mainly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire – given that this is the topic we are talking about. An observation that we are not of-the-earth animals, but made in the likeness of some God, perhaps? An observation that we are indeed aliens seeded here by an alien not-of-earth civilization from a yet to be discovered planet perhaps? These are amongst the common ones – or did you have something else in mind?

RESPONDENT: That’s a vivid imagination you are exercising. Did I even suggest such things or are you debating with your memories again?

PETER: The answer to your loaded question is neither. I was simply seeking clarification as to what specific observation you had in mind when you asked [Respondent]: ‘if an observation comes along that contradicts what you call a fact, what happens to your fact?’ [endquote] – i.e. I was trying to keep the conversation on topic rather than have it degenerate into vague generalities.

*

RESPONDENT: This is what I said – some theories are so good that they might as well be called fact ... with the proviso that a single contrary observation can render your fact into falsehood at any time. What on earth is so reprehensible about that statement that you would abort a conversation in which you were happy to engage in before you read something ... what ... offensive? ... in another conversation? Or is this all just to avoid answering my previous point? I do wonder.

PETER: As far as I can see I have answered all your points, but just to make it clear, the topic of this conversation is nurture vs. nature, specifically the question as to whether the deep seated passions such as fear, aggression, nurture and desire are caused by imperfect nurturing/ environment or are biologically inherited?

Your stance is that one can never know which is a fact, in this case because a single contrary observation can render the fact into falsehood at any time – thus it is that you bring an end to the discussion by evoking the mind-numbing over-arching, all-consuming principle that one can never know anything for certain.

RESPONDENT: This is a mockery and you have no real idea of my position. There are indeed positions I hold as fact ... but I hold my facts only until they are contradicted! So far you haven’t indicated what you do with your facts beyond holding them to be absolute truth.

PETER: First of all, facts pre se are neither ‘my facts’ nor ‘your facts’ –

Fact – ‘What has really happened or is the case; truth; reality: in fact rather than theory, the fact of the matter is; something known to have happened; a truth known by actual experience or observation: scientists work with facts.’ Oxford Dictionary

Secondly, I fail to see the difference between holding a position that facts are only facts until they are contradicted and holding a position that one can never know anything for certain – but then again I am neither a relativist, nor a subjectivist.

Thirdly, I do not regard a verifiable objective fact as being an ‘absolute truth’ – as you are most probably aware, this is a derogatory term that subjectivists often revert to when describing facts and actuality.

Subjectivism – The doctrine that knowledge, perception, morality, etc., is merely subjective and relative and that there is no objective truth; a theory or method based exclusively on subjective facts; the quality or condition of being subjective. Oxford Dictionary

Subjectivist – an adherent or advocate of subjectivism. Oxford Dictionary

RESPONDENT: Does this mean you hold them even if contradicted or do you never make mistakes?

PETER: As I don’t hold verifiable objective facts to be ‘my’ facts let alone to be ‘absolute truths’ you are doing nothing but creating an argument that appears to be solely based on the currently-fashionable view about facts and knowledge, as I have made clear to you above – in short it’s a beat up.

RESPONDENT: Can we please leave this little cul de sac? <snip more of the cul de sac>

PETER: It’s entirely up to you, after all it’s your cul de sac – I left it behind long ago.

*

PETER: My suggestion is that, provided you are old enough to have experienced puberty, you too have sufficient life experience to be able to make up your own mind on this issue based on your own experience of how ‘you’ yourself tick and your own observations of other animals, be they non-sentient or sentient, rather than having a subjective opinion one way or the other based solely on what others believe to be true or false.

RESPONDENT: Quite right.

PETER: I am left wondering what it is you are acknowledging as being ‘quite right’ … purely because your philosophical conviction that nothing can ever be know to be a fact would inevitable prevent you from seeing a fact, let alone acknowledge that a fact is a fact even if it was staring you in the face as it were. With this as a mindset, it would obviously be impossible for you to make up your mind about anything.

RESPONDENT: You are so wrong. This must be a joke. You really don’t seem to understand my position, do you? If I didn’t work with facts I would be dead by now (eg ‘the bus is bearing down on you’).

PETER: Look, if you are now changing your position then fine –

RESPONDENT: So you get a glimmer of understanding about my position and interpret that as a change in my position?

PETER: I was simply acknowledging that at least you do acknowledge that there are such things as facts – and apparently without your stock-standard conditional qualifier in this case, although it was obviously somewhat premature in my observation given your reversion to your stock-standard qualifier in as in ‘I hold my facts only until they are contradicted’ and ‘facts can be highly contextual’.

*

PETER: [Look, if you are now changing your position then fine] – I have spent years divesting myself of so many beliefs, opinions, platitudes, opinions, truths, psittacisms and the like which I unwittingly took to be fact. T’is par for the course in the becoming free of the human condition.

RESPONDENT: So you have had the capacity to change what you have mistakenly call fact. The question is – are you still capable of doing so?

PETER: I don’t know how much of the archived correspondence you have read on the Actual Freedom Trust website, but a common theme can be discerned in a good deal of it. Some of the people who come across the Actual Freedom Trust website are apparently sufficiently intrigued by what is written that they then subscribe to this mailing list and enter into a discussion with the authors based on a single point of contention they have about what they have read. Very often the correspondents steer these discussions into a who-is-right-and-who-is-wrong, ‘t is, ‘t isn’t discussion, with the result that the correspondent leaves in a huff having failed to get the author in question to admit that the correspondent is right, gets very angry at the author in question and leaves, or hangs around in order to support any other similarly motivated correspondent irregardless of whether or not they hold to the correspondent’s belief or viewpoint.

*

PETER: If a bus is indeed a fact to you, as in being a physical object that has an independent tangible existence in its own right, irregardless of whether a human being is observing it or not, then why should not the chair be a fact and that it is blue in the electromagnetic wavelengths ranging from approximately 780 nanometer (7.80 x 10-7 m) down to 390 nanometer (3.90 x 10-7 m10-7 m) be a fact, irregardless of whether a human being is observing it.

RESPONDENT: Okay, so let’s put the chair in a dark room. Is it still blue? Let’s put it under green light. Is it still blue? It’s a fact that the chair is blue in certain conditions – i.e. in white light. Do you understand why I raised such an example? I was trying to demonstrate that facts can be highly contextual and that we need to be careful of what we label as fact. You’re not dealing with your straw-man solipsist here.

PETER: Indeed not. If I were to label you, I think secular subjectivist might well be appropriate given that a solipsist would say that the chair is blue is a subjective judgement and that the chair has no substantive existence because only a ‘self’ can have a substantive existence whereas a secular subjectivist would say that the chair is blue is conditional, and that the chair has no objective existence in that its existence can only be known and experienced relative to an observer, i.e. subjectively.

To put it more generally, a subjectivist interprets the world of people, things and events via the perception and subsequent interpretation of ‘self’ whereas a solipsist is convinced that the world of people, things and events is but a creation of ‘self’ – the distinction being a matter of degree, not of kind in that both interpretations are completely self-centred.

Look, I am not apportioning personal fault and blame here, far from it. All I am endeavouring to make clear is that the current conditioning, which almost all human beings now living in the what is often referred to as the post-modern era have unwittingly had foisted upon them – through no fault of their own or anyone else specifically for that matter – is one that is but a short step away from being full-blown solipsism.

*

PETER: If you regard these as facts, in that a hypothetical contrary observation does not turn the big metal box on wheels into a falsehood and nor can it turn a blue chair white let alone make it invisible, then why not apply similar down-to earth evidentiary observations in the matter of determining for yourself as to wether or not the deep-seated passions of fear aggression, nurture and desire are indeed genetically encoded.

RESPONDENT: Yes, Peter, if it were only that simple. Let’s see what we can do to make it simple ... we could just insist that it is so. That would make it very simple indeed.

PETER: I do acknowledge that there is a price to be paid for not being a follower of one or other of the currently fashionable philosophies, beliefs or convictions – the loss of pride in giving up one of one’s dearly held convictions and the loss of the feeling of belonging to a group that has similar convictions, and so on – but the benefit gained is tangible and of no little consequence in that one is indeed taking the first tentative steps to beginning to exercise autonomous thinking for the first time in one’s life.

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