Tag: Braintrust

  • Summing up

    In the final chapter of Braintrust, “Religion and Morality,” Patricia Churchland is doing an exegesis of The Euthyphro.

    The pattern of questioning strongly hints, however, that whatever it is that makes something good or just or right is rooted in the nature of humans and the society we make, not in the nature of the gods we invent. There is something about the facts concerning human needs and human nature that entails that some social practices are better than others, that some human behavior cannot be tolerated, and that some forms of punishment are needed. [p 196]

    That second sentence makes a nice summing up of the book, and it’s also what Sam Harris was trying to say but didn’t.

     

  • No one ever talked to me for more than a minute

    About appearing Normal, and being different (or not), and independence – Patricia Churchland has a telling little illustrative story in Braintrust. In a section of chapter 6, “Skills for a Social Life,” she discusses mimicry as a social capacity – it’s reassuring because it makes prediction easier.

    As social sizing up develops over a few minutes, assuming I got the preliminary signals I needed, I may be motivated to reassure you. So I play my part in mimicry so that you do not start anxiously watching me, making me even more uncomfortable. [p 160]

    There’s an endnote there. It’s the illustrative story. When she was a grad student in Oxford she was expected to go to the sherry parties

    that my tutor at Balliol College held for his male undergraduates. I was always uncomfortable, because as a colonial, and a country bumpkin to boot, I did not have the slightest idea how I should behave. Trying to assimilate the ways of young Englishmen educated at British “public” (private) schools was, quite simply, beyond me. Needless to say, with the exception of a very awkward Irish lad who was comparably handicapped socially, no one ever talked to me for more than a minute. [p 230]

    It’s a depressing little tale, because surely the tutor could have and should have managed things better. The English do love to play their little exclusion games though.