In order to answer the question, first we need to ask, “What is sound?” It seems like the answer to that question is fairly simple and straightforward. Most people would say that sound is a frequency within a set range. But that is not what sound is.
There are innumerable frequencies in the universe that we are completely unaware of because we cannot sense them. We don’t have the correct anatomy or the nervous system sensitivity required to experience them. If we did, what would they be like? Would it be a tactile sensation, a sound, would it be visual, or some other indescribable experience? We don’t know. That doesn’t mean that those frequencies don’t exist in the universe. We just don’t have an experience to associate with those frequencies.
Sound is an experience. Sound is something generated by your own mind. This is a key point. A frequency, in and of itself, is not the experience of sound unless there is someone there who is able to sense that frequency, and have their brain interpret it into something they can then experience as what we call sound. This is further evidenced by the fact that auditory hallucinations are possible. A person is able to have the experience of sound without there even being any frequency input from the external environment at all. Basically, it’s all in your head.
So, if a tree falls in the forest, absolutely it disturbs its immediate environment, which then sends out frequencies radially. But if no one is there in order to interpret those frequencies into the experience of sound, then no, it does not make a sound. In other words, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? No. Only your mind can do that.
This time of year, the best and brightest release their latest and greatest, and often most extreme (and therefore financially risky products). Here are just a few of the cool new products being released to the market today:
My quest to understand why progressives and conservatives clash so much in the political arena, and find out if and how we can work together and find common ground lead me almost nowhere, until I stumbled upon a class by George Lakoff called Mind Language and Politics at University of California, Berkeley. A paradigm shift occurred and has made me rethink much of what I knew about politics, communication, religion and even relationships. The implications of this are huge for both progressives and conservatives alike.
What makes Lakoff’s ideas so interesting, is that he starts off with explaining the brain and cognitive processes of learning involving metaphors. Then how these metaphors lead to learning of two core moral systems, and then onto how choice of words pulls up memory/information in the brain called Frames and how these frames are processed are relative to one of the two moral systems. These two moral systems are the basis for Progressive and Conservative thought. Our politicians are making decisions based on these moral systems.
Here’s the surprising part. Conservatives understand and know how to take advantage of Cognitive Frames despite possibly not full understanding why, thanks to Frank Luntz’ book: Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear. On top of that, they have an elaborate communication network, think tanks, educators, etc., that they started putting together in the 1970′s. But I digress, that is for another day.
Why is this important to understand?
For one, the meaning of a sentence will be interpreted completely differently depending on which moral system is being triggered by a frame. It is why progressives try repeatedly to use logic (see “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain” by Antonio Damasio and/or Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakofffor details)
) to convince conservatives why the progressive ideas are right, but then come away with no progress what so ever. Actually, Lakeoff has shown how this ultra common approach by progressives actually strengthens conservatives beliefs and arguments. Progressives are destined for failure unless they catch up with Conservatives understanding.
To dive right in without reading more, the following books by Lakoff will be helpful:
Frames are the cognitive structure of memory in cognitive science. A classic example of a frame being invoked would be to think about a “hospital”. In that frame you think of everything associated with the hospital frame, such as doctors, medicine, patients, nurses… each in turn can trigger a cascade of more frames being evoked.
The basic idea here is that the brain learns metaphors by noticing two things happening at once and they become associated. Think about “More is up.” A pile of cookies gets taller as more are stacked on top. This metaphor is learned and is used to transfer conceptual knowledge from concrete concepts to abstract concepts. Like the market is sky rocketing. The market fell [down].
According to Lakoff, two moral models arise from two primary metaphors. The first “metaphor is you are better off if you listen to your parents than if you do not” leading to the strict father model of morality. And the other being “you are better off if you are nurtured by your parents than if you are not”. Leading to the “nurturant parent model” of morality.
Every frame that is invoked get’s evaluated in reference to your moral model, so the interpretation and meaning can be dramatically different depending on if which model got invoked. Conservatives usually reference the strict father model and progressives the nurturant parent model.
Well, what about “moderates” and “independents”? They are what Lakoff calls Bi-conceptuals, people who have both moral systems, except each system gets called up depending on what cognitive frames they are linked to. Trigger a progressive frame, and the progressive moral system in that person, or vice-a-versa for the conservative frame.
Food For Thought
Think about how this plays into religion and not just politics. The same two basic moral models show up in Christianity…. One where they believe God is the strict father that must be obeyed and one shall be punished if you do not obey. And the other is a nurturant God who is loving and caring. Two different understandings of God.
One aspect of the “strict father model” is that the father is not to be questioned as they are the moral authority in the family. At the family level, that would be the father. The Government would be another strict father and the free market would be another. Each strict father is suppose to be self-responsible and disciplined. The failure of one is his own fault. And anyone who lacks discipline is immoral. Helping them is preventing them from becoming self-disciplined.
Another question. What if one or both of the models are wrong? Wouldn’t that mean the people following the models (even unconsciously as the usually are), are then morally wrong?
Post a comment if you would like me to go into more detail, or read up on Lakoff’s books as they are much more informative than my quick overview.
It is a commonly stated fact that our average life expectancy is increasing dramatically. People frequently like to spout off statistics on how the expected lifespan in the U.S. 50 years ago was only 65 years old, and 100 years ago the average life expectancy was only about 45 years old. Worldwide, the average person’s lifespan hovered between 30 to 35 years of age up until Midieval times. In contrast, a person born today in the U.S. can generally expect to live 77.6 years.
We like to attribute this significant increase to improvements in healthcare and technology, while smugly patting ourselves on the back. But humans were not actually dying en mass at these very young ages. In fact, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the typical lifespan for human beings has remained fairly constant for at least the last 2,000 years. For example, Benjamin Franklin died at age 84 in 1790, a time when the average life expectancy was around 40 years; he was not considered exceptionally old in his time. Socrates died at the age of 70 around 399 B.C., not of old age, but by execution.
In order to understand this discrepancy, it helps to clarify a couple of key points. One is the common confusion between the concepts of “average” and “typical”. These are two entirely different concepts, with the latter commonly being mistaken for the former. Also, we need to understand how life expectancy averages are calculated. Life expectancy is a calculation of the average age that people died, regardless of cause (post-natal). This includes one of the most dramatic influences on these calculations, infant mortality and childhood survival rates. Here is a simple example to demonstrate the effect infant mortality has on life expectancy: If you have 3 adults who live to age 80 and one child who dies at age 1, the average life expectancy created from those 4 deaths is 60.25. However, aside from the one infant death, all of the adults in our example lived to age 80, a good 20 year difference from the average. This is a good example of “average” vs “typical”. In this example, the “average” age of death is 60.25 years old, while the “typical” age is 80 years old. And that’s with “only” a 25% infant mortality rate. Human history has been riddled with childhood survival rates staggeringly more dismal than that. The Wikipedia page on life expectancy gives some prime examples:
During the early 1600s in England, life expectancy was only about thirty-five years, and two-thirds of all children died before the age of four.[22] The average life expectancy in Colonial America was under 25 years in the Virginia colony,[23] and in New England about 40% of children failed to reach adulthood.[24] During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically.[25] The percentage of children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730-1749 to 31.8% in 1810-1829.[26][27]
Unfortunately, these significant misconceptions of lifespan averaging are frequently overlooked, even by professionals. The resulting myth that extremely short lifespans were common is routinely promoted by highly respected and well known organizations such as the National Geographic, Reuters, and Nightline on NBC. With such authoritative sources as these regularly making these incorrect references, it’s no wonder most people assume it must be true.
Have you ever wished you could have taken a particular class back in college or at another college but never got the opportunity?
Maybe you are thinking about going to college to change careers?
Maybe you are about to go to college but you do not know what you want to major in?
Or you are in college and really want to take a course, but not sure if you want to risk your GPA for a class you do not actually need?
Well, there is a solution. It is called Open Course Ware (OCW). In 2002, MIT decided to webcast many of their classes and make them available to anyone for free online. Many other Universities followed suit. Later Apple joined in with iTunes University as a simple and easy way to get access to all the Open Course Ware.
From time to time we will post more in this series with ideas for classes and topics that one might find interesting. For now, here is a sampling:
PhysOrg.com reports that the gene associated with religiosity will eventually be present in nearly everyone. They attribute this to the higher reproductive rate of those who are highly religious – on average 6 children per woman, compared to the 2.5 children for the average American woman, and only 1.67 children for those who never attend church at all. It is noted that this difference is not biological in origin. There is no difference in actual fertility between the religious and secular populations. The difference is determined by cultural dynamics. Religious families tend to be encouraged by their beliefs and culture to have many children.
Often religion and science are pitted up against one another, assumed to be mutually exclusive arch enemies. But is this really the case? If a tendency toward religiosity becomes a trait common to the entire population, what impact will that have on science? Is secular science doomed?
One common assumption is that scientists are nearly always atheists. But a recent study on the beliefs of leading scientists paints a very different picture. Approximately one-third of leading scientists actively believe in God. And nearly three-quarters of scientists surveyed agreed that “there are basic truths in many religions.” This compares to 80% of the general population who feel the same way. There are many examples of famous scientists who believed in God, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, and Galileo Galilei. Modern-day scientists who believe in God include Francis Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project; Jennifer Wiseman, Chief of the Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics at NASA; and John T. Houghton, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who won a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. So we can see that science clearly can make great strides with scientists who believe in God. Indeed, science as we know it wouldn’t be the same without them.
Can a gene single-handedly determine whether one is religious or not? Is there a “religious gene”? Well, yes and no. A recent study on twins found that genes contribute to about 40% of a person’s tendency toward religious beliefs. However, the genes associated with religious beliefs are also associated with other behavioral traits, such as punctuality, orderliness, and collaborative abilities. Interestingly, those traits are all useful in a laboratory setting. Genetics is rarely as simple as it is made out to be.
In conclusion, like many subjects, this is not a black and white issue. Is science doomed? I think it’s safe to say that it is not. Will society be different than it is now? Perhaps, but it’s no simple task predicting what the impact will ultimately be. We are just beginning to understand the multitudinous ways in which we are, and are not, affected by our genes.
Here we hope to stimulate your brain by providing insight, questions, and thoughts on intriguing topics. We will dive deeper into the topics posted here or provide you with links to those who already have.
