Evolution, Mind, and Culture: A Philosophical Exploration
Creationist Theories
Creationism posits that all life forms are the direct result of a god’s intervention, creating humans in His image and likeness. Some creationist narratives detail the origin of humans from direct acts of creation, while others incorporate elements like spontaneous generation to explain the emergence of life.
Fixism
Fixism, a dominant theory for over two millennia, championed by Aristotle, asserted that species are eternal, fixed, and unchanging. Each species possesses an immutable form. This anti-evolutionist theory aligns with creationism in its denial of species evolution, including human evolution. Fixism proponents developed the theory of catastrophes to explain fossil discoveries, suggesting that cataclysms caused extinctions, followed by divine intervention to create new species.
Lamarckism
Lamarck proposed that current species descend from earlier ones. This evolution, he argued, is driven by two laws: the law of use and disuse, where adaptations to the environment cause physical changes in individuals, and the law of inheritance of acquired characteristics, where these changes are passed down to offspring.
The Darwinian Revolution
Charles Darwin unveiled the mechanism of natural selection. It’s not individual effort that drives adaptation, but the environment’s selection of the fittest individuals. Natural selection, defined as the survival of the fittest, occurs when resources are limited, leading to a struggle for survival. Individuals with advantageous traits, like a giraffe with a longer neck, have a better chance of survival and reproduction.
The Synthetic Theory of Evolution
Darwin didn’t fully explain the origin of variability within species or its transmission mechanism. The synthetic theory of evolution, or neo-Darwinism, addresses this with the discovery of DNA structure and the concept of mutation. Mutations, errors in genetic material replication, cause anatomical changes. While most are harmless, some offer adaptive advantages and are passed on to the next generation. Evolution is essentially the interplay of mutation and natural selection.
The Specificity of Mental Phenomena
Two key features of mental states stand out: subjectivity, highlighting the intimate, personal, and intransferable nature of mental acts, and intentionality, where mental phenomena always refer to something beyond themselves, representing something with meaning. This experience of meaning is distinct and profound.
Hominization
Hominization refers to the evolutionary changes that transformed primates into humans.
Humanization
Humanization describes the process where primates began to interact socially, forming societies and developing language for communication. These interconnected societies are essential for humanization. Without humanization, there are merely primates; without primates, there is no humanization.
Educational Concept
This concept focuses on academic knowledge and learning. Once limited to privileged individuals, this knowledge became more accessible during the Enlightenment through education.
Anthropological Concept
This concept encompasses everything learned within a society through language. It involves individuals growing up within a society, adopting its customs and culture. Culture is tied to learning, and cultural life is inherently social. We only know what we learn, and no individual culture exists because what we’ve learned has been taught by someone. Every person has a culture and lives within a society.
Cultural Diversity
Cultural diversity is a historical and geographical fact. Culture adapts to various factors within a society.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own culture is superior to all others. An ethnocentric person views their culture as the best.
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism argues that cultures are incomparable because there’s no objective criterion for evaluation. Each culture has its own values. Understanding different customs requires understanding each society’s unique history.
Universalism
Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism share a common flaw: the negation of relationships between cultures. The former believes in its own culture’s superiority, while the latter claims each culture is inherently valid and unchangeable. Universalism offers a middle ground, suggesting that all cultures share common elements.
Reductionist Positions
The discovery of complex neural circuits related to perception, language, and emotions has led some philosophers to believe that many mental phenomena are merely physiological processes. This position, known as reductive materialism, denies the existence of the mind and its phenomena.
Behaviorism and Functionalism
Behaviorist psychology asserts that the mind is neither visible nor tangible, only perceivable through stimuli affecting the organism. Functionalism reduces the mind to a set of functions that transmit actions. Reductionist materialism offers a simple, economical explanation.
The Mind, Different from the Brain
Reductionism only explains the physiological mechanisms of mental acts. Neurophysiology can explain the dream process, but not the content of dreams. Popper’s three worlds theory argues that the mind and brain are related but distinct. Psychic phenomena possess unique characteristics different from the neuronal phenomena they are associated with.