733. Motivation For Behavior: The Difference Between Deficits And Benefits

733.  Motivation For Behavior:  The Difference Between Deficits And Benefits

I value rationality as one distinctive and superior quality, by which human individuals differ from instinct driven animals.  This is a premise, which many people do not share with me.   I am fully aware that those, who value being guided and determined by unconscious instincts and inclinations more than by rationality, cannot and will not agree with the following application of rationality on how to live.      

As I myself am both a non-breeder and non-religious, both are for me expression of the same rationality.   As a member of a non-breeders' group, I asked some puzzled question to religious non-breeders.    
In the entries 656. The Placebo Church  and 441. An Ingenious Self-Deception I have already expressed my wondering about the weird Unitarian Universalist placebo church.   My question to a member thereof concerning what needs and deficits were met, ended as an impasse.  

I did not get an answer, I did not even succeed to convey my question.   The exchange has inspired the following thoughts.

 

A rational person has an awareness for the importance of evaluating behaviors and actions by the consequences and by comparing them with alternative options for its causes and reasons.

1.  One important factor is the baseline.   Behavior improving the subjective wellbeing can have one or both of these effects:  It either restores the baseline to the neutral state of neither pleasure nor displeasure, or it adds pleasure above this baseline.  
This is an important distinction, because I consider only this baseline of not suffering as a human right, while seeking pleasure can only be justified when nobody else is harmed or taken advantage of.  

2.   People, whose behavior is caused by a deficit, often get additional benefits above the baseline.   Sometimes they consciously only recognize the benefits as if gaining these were the original purpose of the behavior.   They are unaware or in denial that the initial purpose was restoring the baseline.   

3.   Another factor is the experience of cognitive dissonance, when people want to be more rational than they really are.  They want to consider themselves as rationally seeking benefits and not as if they were helpless robots succumbing to urges.   The denial of urges and deficits is a method to avoid experiencing cognitive dissonance.

4.   There are different kind of subjectively perceived deficits.   Deficits can be innate or acquired, they can be physical or cognitive.   Rational behavior requires thinking about all relevant factors and about the long-term consequences before coping with the perceived deficit.   Just following the urge is often irrational.   

 

A rational way of life requires people to scrutinize carefully all their inclinations to behave.   For this purpose they ask themselves several questions.   The ones in the not comprehensive following list are important

• Which is my baseline? 
• Do I only get benefits or are there needs, deficits, urges, wishes, discontentment, dishomeostasis hidden behind the experienced benefits?
• What would happen, if I resist the inclination to this behavior?
• What alternative behaviors are there?   

When interactive behavior includes reciprocal impacts by and upon others, rational persons apply these questions to others as much as upon themselves.   Not only the choice between respect and disrespect depends upon this, but also the choice between supporting and refusing to become a victim, between continuing the interaction and avoiding the person.

A few examples:

1.  Food
 

When a hungry, not obese person eats, this is rational.
When a not hungry but also not-obese eats something for the pleasure of the taste, it is unnecessary but not irrational.  
But when an obese person eats because of boredom, stress or a similar reason, then this is irrational.

2.  Alcoholism as an addiction
 

2.1.  There is no physical or real need for drinking any alcohol at all.   Not drinking is completely rational behavior. 
2.2.  When someone drinks restricted quantities of alcoholic beverages with sufficient intervals in between, this can be be considered as rationally enjoying the taste.  
2.3.  But in the case of someone feeling an urge for alcohol intake to reach the baseline, then this is an addiction.  
In the case of denial, the addict claims to drink for pleasure and does not recognize and acknowledge the urge.   He is not aware of the irrationality of his drinking.    
2.4.  An alcoholic having asked and answered the questions can admit, that his urge to drink alcohol needs an approach, which is anything between self-control and therapy, but not drinking. 


When irrational behaviors are reinforced or even instilled by a social norm, they become an even more devastating problem.   This is unfortunate for the many people, whose life would be better without acquired, harmful urges.   

There are special dynamics at work.  People are trapped, because they are allowed to consciously experience some benefits.  These benefits do not suffice to rationally justify the amount of sacrifices, which are required.   But unconsciously these people also experience the additional relief of some urge, of which they are consciously in complete denial.   This denial impedes them from considering and attempting other, more rational methods to deal with the urges.  
The urges instilled by the social norm lead to behaviors, which override any healthy individualistic approach towards living in a balance of giving and receiving in the exchange with the social environment.   By these social norms, people are deformed towards willingly allowing to be exploited and taken advantage of while being mistaken as being important and useful.   

These victims are not aware that the social norm serves only the interest of those, who use their power, influence and greed to usurp more such advantages. 

Two of these instilled behaviors are breeding and religious behaviors.  Breeding and religion have one aspect in common with alcoholism.   There are enough non-drinkers, non-breeders and non-religious people as evidence of the existence of alternatives.

3.  Breeding
 

3.1.  In modern western societies and even in some others too, there is no individual need for breeding.   Not breeding is a completely rational behavior. 
3.2.  Under some limited circumstances in the past and in some remote places, the survival of old people depended and depends on raising children.   These people have no need to belief in alleged benefits of breeding, they are succumbing to a necessity.  
3.3.  But someone feeling an urge to breed only for reaching the baseline has a serious problem, like an addict.    
As children cannot be undone, once the mistake was made, breeders are usually in denial of any remorse.  They insist that breeding has brought them benefits.   They do not recognize and acknowledge to have succumbed to an instinctive or instilled urge.   They remain unaware of the irrationality of breeding.     
3.4.  While breeders are consciously in denial, they implicitly often show a glimpse of belated rationality, when they stop further breeding after the first child.   But this is not a conscious change to rationality concerning breeding. 

4.  Religion

4.1.  A rational way of life is not deranged by any religious behavior.   A rational, responsible and considerate treatment of others requires rationality and the absence of any religious behaviors.   No rational person is religious.   No religious person is rational.
Religion manifests itself by observable religious behaviors, which not only include personal sacrifices of money, time and comfort, but even worse it also determines how others are treated.   

Weird ritualistic body movements only impact one person.   But often religion can cause as much damage as an alcohol addiction.     When someone wastes the family money on church donations and his time at the church service instead of with his partner, he inflicts damage on others for irrational reasons. 
Worse are those, who transgress, acquire religious forgiveness and feel free to continue transgressing.   A man, who by following his polygamous religion copulates with other women, deeply hurts his monogamous partner who experiences this as cheating. 
4.2.  Religious behavior is an expression of a belief, which can never rationally be justified.   What is based upon science and evidence, is not a belief.    Only pretending by outwardly imitated religious behavior can sometimes be rational self-defense, when needed for self-preservation.   
4.3.  Religious people's denial is extreme.   I have repeatedly asked religious people, which urges, deficits and experienced dishomeostasis causes them to be religious.   Asking this questions seems futile.  They just seem not to understand.  They enthuse about all their emotional benefits and even feel offended, when I keep on asking about the deficits.  These deficits are the core of what makes them religious and distinguishes them from rational people.     
4.4.  Some religious people overcome their denial.   When they finally get rational, the only possible reaction is to free themselves of all the religious beliefs.   But while remaining a believer, no religious person will ever admit, that they feel urges towards merely reaching a baseline of basic wellbeing, which rational non-religious people already have without any religion.      

Therefore, breeding and religion are as irrational as alcohol addiction, the only real difference is the social norm, which encourages breeding and religion, while alcoholism is considered deviant.

717. The Difference Between Animals And Humans

717.   The Difference Between Animals And Humans

Some people deny, that there is any decisive difference between animals and humans.   To me such a claim seems to be made by those in need of an excuse for allowing themselves the behavior of animals in disregard for the consequences. 

The most significant difference is the human ability of memorize sufficient knowledge and experience, which enables only humans for the long term anticipation of the consequences of their behavior.   Thus they are capable to recognize the harmful effects of instinctive behavior to an extent, which can lead to the conscious decision against such behavior.  

Under natural conditions, at some times animals find plenty of food, at others none.    Their instinct to eat as much as possible to store body fat is an evolutionary advantage for survival.   Until 10 000 years ago, and sometimes even much later, this was also the case for humans.
Today the reasoning ability enables humans to not always give in to the impulse to eat, because they want to avoid the anticipated consequence of obesity.    More precisely, the reasoning supplies the knowledge, but the balance between the power of instinctivity and the counter power of rationality and willpower determine the behavior.   Therefore some people are more than others able to keep their weight between healthy limits.  
Overfed pets just get fatter and fatter. 

It is the same concerning the survival of the species.    Animals do not hesitate to copulate, when they are driven by instincts, because they are unable to know, that at some time later, they will be severely punished with the atrocity of giving birth and the burden of raising the offspring.    

Only humans are capable to recognize early enough, that the survival of the species and procreation is a form of self-harming for the individual person.   The cognitive ability of a considerable number of humans to consciously reject procreation is a very unique trait of humans. 

The critical cognitive distance from instincts and the resulting freedom of decision is therefore what makes humans unique.   This ability to prevent self-harming comes along with the ability to also know, when the own behaviors cause harm and suffering to others.

 

When a cat catches a bird and drops it somewhere seriously wounded, the cat lacks any ability to recognize the suffering of the bird.  The same holds true too, when animals seriously hurt each other during struggles for the alpha position.   Animals cannot know, when the side effect of their instinctive behavior is strong suffering.
Humans can know this. Therefore it cannot be morally justified, that many humans use and consider their cognitive qualities only as a tool serving a more successful application of their instincts.   This aggravates the suffering of others instead of avoiding and preventing it.  People, who consciously follow their instinct, are knowingly cruel.  

This means that the cognitive ability to recognize the consequences of the own behavior brings along the moral obligation to avoid harm and suffering of others as much as of oneself.

 

Unfortunately, many people live by double standards.   When they benefit from using their rational brain, they do it.   But when others are concerned, they allow themselves willingly to be ruthlessly determined by instinctive drives. 

The same hunter, who during the day shoots animals feeling entitled to do so due to being a human, nevertheless claims in the evening his right to follow his animal nature by copulating like an alley dog with a prostitute, not perceiving the woman as an abused and degraded human being but only as an object.   Shooting at humans of another country or ethnic group driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct, he also has allowed himself to be controlled by an animal instinct, even though his reason could recognize this as absurd, as animal but as certainly not human.

Who feels superior to animals due to being human should also be congruent in not giving in to his own animal urges.    Excusing and condoning animal behavior by misrepresenting it as the human nature is not only absurd, but also the consequences are fatal, usually for all parties involved.

712. Online Discussion Forums: Observing The Peculiarities Of Behavior And The Group Dynamics

712.  Online Discussion Forums: Observing The Peculiarities Of Behavior And The Group Dynamics

The following is a fictive scenario as an illustration.

Imagine someone vacationing on a hot tropical island.   While traveling his shoe lace breaks and he needs to replace it as he needs his shoes when going back to his cold home.   Or maybe shoe laces are especially suitable to fix some item of his luggage.  In short, he has good reasons, why he wants to buy shoe laces.   But this does not imply, that he needs to discuss these reasons with any stranger.

So he asks people, where he can buy the shoe laces.   It is a simple question, and most probably people on the street, at the hotel reception or in the tourist office would give him an equally simple answer.  Either they are sorry not to know.  Or those who do know, give simply the directions how to find the shop.   Nobody in direct contact would start a discussion about his reasons to need shoe laces. 

But in the case of his asking the question on a local web forum concerning the life on this island, people probably would react very differently.   Rational behavior would be the same as that of the people when personally asked.   It would be either a suggestion about where shoe laces are sold or else no reply at all.   Instead he is prone to receive reactions like the following.

• He may get more or less serious suggestions like those to wear sandals or to walk barefoot.  
• He may get advice based upon some hearsay or subjective experience, like the one to better wear boots, because of someone having been bitten by a snake.
• He may be asked to publish a picture of the shoes and the broken shoe laces.  
• He may be criticized for being too stupid to carry spare shoe laces when traveling.
• He may be attacked by some locals as being one of those stinking rich foreign tourists, because some other tourists have done mischief. 
• Some people may divert to discuss their preferred color of shoe laces or the high prices on this island.  
• Some people may start a game about the most creative ideas of what to use instead of shoe laces.

Reading forum discussions and also being the recipient of reactions to having myself asked questions, the following are my generalized observations.  

The online behavior on forums is determined by the combined effect of the specifics of written and at least impersonal, if not also anonymous communication, and of some behavioral tendencies, which can be partly explained by evolutionary psychology.   

There is also a discrepancy when important but different uses of the web are confounded:  In my example, this is finding information and needing publicity for pursuing a goal vs. social dynamics.   
My example above illustrates this discrepancy, when someone joins any forum for no other reason except getting answers to one or more specific questions, but he is involuntarily exposed to weird and unwarranted reactions of many kinds.

1.  Specifics of written communication

Suitable written postings in any forum are not too long, so they are read, but they nevertheless contain sufficient information for the intended purpose.  Therefore when someone asks any simple question like in my example concerning the purchase of shoe laces, then it suffices to express the question in an unequivocal and precise way.   He could specify, where on the island he stays to be directed to the nearest shop.   But his reason to buy shoe laces are irrelevant.   

Indirect communication without being exposed to the other's direct reaction, and the anonymity of never going to meet in person disinhibits people from being rational, civilized, polite and considerate. 

2.  Distorted reactions for ego benefits

Being able to help and to give advice makes some people feel good about themselves.   Not knowing something, even if this just means a shop selling shoe laces does not trigger this reaction.  Some people even feel bad, when they have to admit to not know something, even a trifle.  

Some people do not listen long and carefully enough to what others are really telling them, before they blur out what they belief to know.  Pouring out their alleged superior knowledge over others makes them more to feel good than just listening. 
Giving advice without being asked for in written communication is a similar behavior.   It is a form of disregard for the abilities of the other and the unknown preceding efforts.   Giving unwanted advice insinuates, that the person is unable to have himself thought of and considered these options already.    

In a posting asking a simple question it suffices, when the question itself is well expressed.   Information inviting and enabling qualified but unwanted advice is not and needs not to be provided.  Any advice, asked for or unwanted, can never be any better than the information, upon which it is based. 

Some people do not so much feel good about the absolute amount of their own knowledge and skills, instead they get the most personal benefit when they subjectively experience an apparent superiority.  They need not so much to know, but to know better and to be right compared with another person.   In the case of any lack of real superiority, they derive this benefit by instead putting others down towards an apparent inferiority.

3.  Dealing with lacking information

Lacking information and being aware thereof makes wise and rational people cautious.   If possible, they acquire more information.   Else they are aware of not being able to know, which of several possible interpretations should be chosen.   They allow themselves and give to others the benefit of the doubt. 

But there are others.   They misunderstand things, they overlook important information, they jump to conclusions, they interpret statements based upon subjective experience.  They do not doubt their own interpretation of what they hear or read.   They project their own needs, attitudes and behavioral tendencies upon others.   They have no clue, that their projections are as incorrect as the others differ from them.

They are usually biased towards an unfavorable devaluation of and an underestimation of the poster of the question.    

This can mainly be explained by:

3.1.  The Dunning-Kruger effect

When people perceive and believe their own knowledge as the general baseline, they often are unable to comprehend, what others write, say or think.   Instead of doubting themselves, and of acknowledging a lack of information, they consider anything incomprehensible automatically as the others' flaws, ignorance and deficiencies. 

They feel entitled to patronize those asking the question.  They often believe to do a favor to those, to whom they proffer unwanted and uninvited advice.  
Without explanations and background information, uninvited advice is often ridiculous and completely irrelevant.   Such advice usually includes options or apparent options, which had already been considered and discarded.   The Dunning-Kruger effect impedes the comprehension, why advice is not needed, unless it is asked for.

3.2.  Attribution of a place and role

For some people, the web is a source for information.   For some questions, the best place to ask a question is a forum, which also has become a social structure formed by the most active members of the forum group.   The person simply asking a question does not automatically intend or wish to be given a place therein.   But the wish to simply get an answer is often not accepted.   Instead any posting on a forum triggers behavior towards attributing a place to the person, who is perceived as a prospective new member to be dealt with. 

Depending on the circumstances, this attribution process can either elicit competition based upon the hierarchy instinct.  In this case, the person gets forced into status struggles, even when the person does not fight, but is passively beaten towards the role of the underdog without any attempt of self-defence.   Luckily enough, those doing this beating can attribute a low place on the hierarchy, but they cannot know, if the target really feels the beating or is protected by a shell of indifference to competition.  

Else people are so different, that the question asked suffices to perceive and to drive away the person as being outgroup, who is not considered as suitable to be allowed into the ingroup. 

The methods for driving someone towards the role of the underdog or towards exclusion are the same.   Anything real or apparent, that can be interpreted as unfavorable is used as a tool for criticism and bashing.  
Alternatively, neither the question nor further clarifications are taken for serious, instead the poster of the question is the target of jokes.  

4.  Herd behavior

The general reactions to a question depend to a certain extent upon the hazard of who reacts first and how.  When the first reply happens to be useful, then all is well.   But if the first reply starts as one of the distorted reactions mentioned above, the herd often follows this tendency.

5.  How to react

When there is no answer to the question, but instead false interpretations are believed, the question is criticized, unwanted and absurd advice is proffered, then further participation in this forum is unwise and futile.  

When people are attempting to push a person into the role of the fool, the incompetent or the underdog, when misunderstandings and omissions are purposefully used to put someone down and to make him appear stupid or wrong, then all elaborate explanations are a waste of time. 
Writing explanatory postings would be like cutting off any of Hydra's heads.   It only instigates nine more heads to grow.  Any careful attempt to explain something only leads to more willful search for using new misunderstandings and more biased misinterpretations for more attacks. 

Sometimes group members like humble newcomers.   When somebody puts himself down and asks for help, calling himself a loser, then he is usually well received.   Somebody admitting weaknesses and placing himself at the bottom does not elicit any attempts to push him there.   As long as he stays at the bottom of the hierarchy, he is treated with pity and kindness.    

Asking rational questions is not an expression of being humble.  Self confidence is perceived as a provocation.    Merely asking questions after already having figured out what to do shows self confidence.   No wish to fight a way up in the hierarchy is also perceived as a provocation.  
Provoking people can be an unavoidable side effect of the pursuit of an important goal.   But when provocation only means reacting to a power struggle, this brings no benefits.

As soon as the search for information is turned into some other people's struggle to gain secondary benefits, the wisest reaction is to withdraw.   There will be no answer and it is better to move on. 

698. A Weird Man

698.  A Weird Man

Recently on a matchmaking site I got contacted by a man, who liked my profile.  As far as there was information in his profile, it also seemed to fit my own criteria.   He had indicated to be divorced.  

At first I was pleased.

But then he admitted, that after being separated for two years, he and his wife were still living in separate buildings but on the same jointly owned property.   In spite of the incorrect indication in his profile, he pretended or believed to be sufficiently honest by telling me this.   
  
I am not that much of an idiot to ever get involved with a married man.   

But I was curious to find out, if there was a chance, that he could be free soon.   In spite of his initial lie to be divorced, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and started to ask questions.

First he admitted, that they were attempting to sell the property and that he was postponing the divorce until after the property would be sold.  He claimed to follow the advice of a lawyer.   Yet he was not bothered to understand the legal problems.   (Sometimes lawyers advice, what brings them the highest fees, not what is best for their clients.)

He claimed that due to some outdated law in France he were forced to remain in his situation, which he presented as unchangeable, as if there were no alternative.  
This made no sense to me.  Why would owning property oblige the owner to live in it?  

When questioned further, he admitted to be at the mercy of his wife, in whose name the property was registered, while he had put his money into it.
At this point, his refusal of an immediate divorce may have made sense, but only in the case of hostility and of a legal fight between them.   

But after more questions I found out, that there was no battle, but that the wife had already agreed to pay a fair share after the selling, and that he trusted her to do so.  

Thus, even if he could not afford to live somewhere else until he had his money, there was certainly not the least logical reason for him to remain married.  As long as he was willing to remain alone, it made not much difference, because there are no implications upon anybody else except the still married couple. 
But in accordance with his wish to find someone else, he needs a speedy divorce.  A man, who has the option to get divorced, but refuses to do so under whatever pretenses and excuses has no moral right to approach single women.  

He believes himself to be an honest and decent person, but he behaves as inconsiderate and irresponsible as a jerk.   He not only contacts women under the false pretense to be single, but he intends to remain a married man for an undefined and unpredictable time. 
Selling property needs two parties.  Waiting until not only there is a buyer, but even one, whose offer is accepted by his wife, can cause him to remain a married man for a long time.   

But it gets even weirder.   When I pointed out to him his rational option to get a divorce as soon as possible, if he would choose so, he was not able to give any rational reason against doing it.  Nevertheless he did not accept, that a profile and contacting women on a dating site imply a moral obligation to get divorced.  Instead he claimed to not feel married anymore, expecting this to make him as available as a free man, as if this would entitle him to be considered as such.
 
He defined his persistent legal marriage as merely a piece of paper.   

I can fully agree with this definition of a legal marriage only as a very logical reason to omit legal marriage as obsolete and unnecessary.  Given sufficient emotional and cognitive commitment, a legal certificate cannot make it more binding than it already is.  

By getting legally married, people succumb to the acceptance of legally binding mutual obligations, by which they are henceforward bound, no matter if they like this or not.   Those who do get legally married do this, because at least at that moment they have subjectively sufficient reasons to accept being thus bound.    

Once accepted by signature, the ties and obligations of a legal marriage continue to exist, no matter how much or how little someone like this guy feels married and attached.  Only divorce or death can end the ties, which are henceforward no more at the disposition of an individual's choice.  

  
For any rational person, this guy is a married man, who refuses the get divorced.  Mistaking not feeling married anymore as being as free and single is a very weird and hazardous form of denial.
No matter this denial, as long as he remains married, his wife is like a time bomb, who could get into circumstances forcing him back to her at any time.  
Marriage laws may differ slightly between European countries, but in essence, wife and husband are obliged to take care of each other in any situation of need.   Assuming the age of that guy's wife to be probably at least near sixty, she could become helpless and dependent at any moment, no matter if by accident, sickness or mental states like dementia. 
As long as there is a husband, he is the one who is legally obliged to take care of her, not any welfare or social services.   Nobody would let him of that hook, just because his claim to not feel married anymore.  

This man's denial of such legal entanglements makes him a fool.  Some people are hazards not by being malicious but by being too foolish to understand the implication of their behavior and their denial.  

683. Research Confirms Biological Reasons Of Women's Plight

683.  Research Confirms Biological Reasons Of Women's Plight

Sometimes things appear to me so obvious, that I am surprised, when they are confirmed by research, which is presented as if it were a novelty.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130921092236.htm

"A recently published study strongly suggests men succumb to sexual temptations more than women -- for example, cheating on a partner -- because they experience strong sexual impulses, not because they have weak self-control."

"Overall, these studies suggest that men are more likely to give in to sexual temptations because they tend to have stronger sexual impulse strength than women do," 

"But when people exercise self-control in a given situation, this sex difference in behavior is greatly reduced. It makes sense that self-control, which has relatively recent evolutionary origins compared to sexual impulses, would work similarly -- and as effectively -- for both men and women,"

The misery and plight enforced upon women as a consequence of the physiological asymmetry between the genders is one major topic of this blog. The devastating consequences of men's recurrent dishomeostasis experienced as the urge to use female bodies for the removal of body waste cannot be explained by the mere lack of self-control. 

The reality of this drastic asymmetry is evident by the fact, that men often obtain the abuse of female bodies not only by payment and manipulation, but also by violence.  The latter is enabled by the unfortunate co-evolution of the urge towards abuse with the superior physical strength to force it upon unwilling victims.   

The evolution of these devastating strong male urges seems to make a lot of sad sense, when looking only at how it serves procreation.   Evolution serves the survival of the species, not the emotional and cognitive wellbeing of individuals.        

Female animals willingly copulate at the moment of estrus due to their lacking the cognitive ability to anticipate the consequences of giving birth and raising the offspring.   

When the human cognition evolved, this enabled women also to anticipate the experience of pregnancy and child rearing.  Some women perceive this is a horror, an abuse of their bodies and a form of slavery.  Logically they attempt to avoid this.  

The human species would probably have been extinct by now, had not the further biological evolution counterbalanced this by hiding the female estrus and by adding more male urges plus physical strength.   Thus pregnancies continued to be caused, no more only by compliance due to ignorance, but also by force upon unwilling women.  


In spite of more legal equality in modern western society, even in recent times the plight of women has been perpetuated by two main fallacies.  Both fallacies deny the physiological differences and attribute all asymmetry between the genders to education and culture.   Both fallacies are based upon the projection of the level of the own urges upon the other gender.

1.  The fallacy of the so called 'sexual revolution' is the fallacy of men, who project their higher urges upon women and claim, that women only feel abused due to sexual repression.   This dangerous male fallacy has proclaimed that if women were liberated, they would as much as men want to copulate like alley dogs and would as little as men need emotional commitment.

2.  The feminist fallacy overestimates men's willpower and unrealistically demands men to have the same easy self-control as women.   This is based upon the mistake to project their own lower female physiological urges upon men.   More about my suggestion for a more rational feminism in entry 566.  

 

According to the study, men's problem is not self-control, but the stronger sexual impulse.   But it is a banality to state, that stronger urges require stronger self-control.    Thus the same ability to exercise self-control does not automatically mean the same success of willpower over stronger urges.  

Thus any abolition of the abuse of women requires a change in the attitude and behavior of both genders.   This requires a shift of the focus away from both fallacies.  Neither the female demand of more self-control by men and nor the male myth of female repression leads to any improvement of women's plight.  

The focus needs to be on the full acknowledgment of the disruption and harm caused by the excessive male urges and a subsequent change of both men's and women's attitude and behavior.  

1.  Men need to acknowledge their instinctive urges for recurrent restoration of physiological homeostasis as asymmetrical and not reciprocal.  They need to learn and take for serious, that women have different needs.  Men need to accept the biological reality, that the magnitude of male urges cannot and will not be requited by women.   Men need to give up the devastating myth of the existence of less consciously felt but equally strong urges as being the women's defect, and the belief in this myth as the justification to overcome this alleged defect by hook or crook as if this would ultimately be beneficial for the women.  This is a male delusion with cruel consequences for the victims. 

Instead men need to recognize, that the only realistic expression of consideration and responsibility towards women means to refrain from commodifying and objectifying them.    

2.  Women need to acknowledge, how little men have control over the automatic triggering of their instinctive urges towards abuse, whenever they are exposed to the perception of stimuli from female bodies.  This is aggravated, when men are in the state of high dishomeostasis.  

Even those decent and nice guys, who have not the least conscious intention to let abuse follow the perception of any unwelcome triggers, need more self-control for stronger stimulation.   Whenever they need all their available self-control to cope with these urges, this may leave them depleted of any further willpower, which they need to cope with other urges.  This may make it more difficult to resist other behaviors like overeating or smoking.   This can be concluded from studies about the depletion of willpower as presented in entry 524.   

(The following may sound like a far fetched speculation: I am wondering, if obesity, alcoholism and other self-harming widespread behaviors of lacking willpower are not partially enhanced by the oversexation of the media and of everyday life.  Not abusing women may deplete many decent men of so much of their willpower, that they more easily succumb to other urges instead.)

 
Therefore women too have a responsibility and a moral obligation to be considerate of men's physiological affliction.   Women need to avoid triggering male instincts towards their bodies, unless they are in private with a man, with whom they either have or want a relationship. 

Most people would agree, that it is cruel to show a bill of money to a beggar and then tell him to keep his fingers off, because it is not for him to have.  This invites the beggar's attempt, if he grabs it, while of course this is not a justification.   The beggar needs willpower not to grab it.   He would not need willpower, as long as people just pass him by.   A woman presenting herself nearly naked or in any provocative attire does the same to any man in dishomeostasis, whenever she wants him to keep off her body.    

As unfortunate as it is, the misunderstandings between the genders lead to antagonistic struggles, in which in the end both genders suffer.   Men are able to enforce abuse, but women react by materialistic exploitation.  
The abuse of women and the exploitation of men can only be abolished by cooperation based upon the realistic acknowledgment of the biological asymmetry.   Studies like the one cited are a good beginning, but a much more widespread recognition of the true problem is needed.      

676. The Effects Of Attire - A Rational Woman's Subjective Perspective

676.  The Effects Of Attire - A Rational Woman's Subjective Perspective

Whatever people do to their exterior in the realm of attire and body modification, it has effects upon others' perception.  

In the following, the person choosing an attire is the source, the perceiving observer is the target of these effects.   

First some general thoughts:

These effects can

• convey information or clues suggesting and enabling surmises about the sources' invisible attributes.
• trigger or influence the targets' behaviors.  

The effects upon the targets depend upon

• the power of instinctivity leading to spontaneous and automatic reactions
• rationality and awareness controlling and impeding instinctive reactions.

Effects by the source are

• rationally intentional and successful in agreement with the target
• rationally intentional and successfully manipulating the target
• rationally intentional and not successful, when recognized and avoided by the target
• rationally intentional and counterproductive, when recognized and counteracted by the target
• unintentionally collateral and irrelevant.
• unavoidably collateral and counterproductive
• instinct driven, unaware and counterproductive.

The significance of these effects depends upon the subjective identity of the source:

• Strong instincitivity leads to an identity of predominantly being a body and this implies the expectation of benefits from effects upon another body. 
• A predominant rationality leads to identify with invisible traits of the brain.  By such an identity, benefits are expected by verbal communication and behavior. 

How to rationally deal with the effects of attire:

• As a target, it is of paramount importance to always attempt to evaluate and interpret the intention behind people's attire and to always strive for the full awareness of the own spontaneous, instinctive and irrational reactions.  
  Based upon this, a rational target can react independently to perceived effects and avoid being influenced to the own disadvantage. 
  
• As a source, costs and benefits of the effects of the chosen attire have to be carefully evaluated and compared. 
  Costs can be financial, invested time, endured pain, discomfort and social disadvantages.
  Most benefits to be gained by the effects of attire are only substitutes for what can be also gained by verbal communication and by intentional active behavior.   
  Rationally, benefits from attire and body modification are not worth the cost.

Subjectively:

As a rational woman with an identity based upon invisible traits of my brain and not upon traits of my body, the following is my personal attitude towards attire and body modification.

• As a target, I use other people's attire as a source of information.   This helps to know, whom to esteem, whom to avoid altogether, when possible, and how to avoid being influenced by the intention of the attire.    It is important to make conscious rational decision and to avoid spontaneous reactions.  
  
• As a source, I consider my attire not as an instrument to intend any positive effects.  Nothing of what could maybe be gained by external effects of attire is rationally justifiable. 
  But I have always attempted to actively avoid the undignified effect of triggering the abusive instincts of male animals.  It was futile.  Even though I always was a bit more covered than most other women, hoping to divert the animals to them was in vain.   Sadly enough, my experience at a younger age was, that short of wearing a tent, nothing helped to spare me being approached for the intention to abuse my body.  

Some examples of information important for a woman when evaluating a man.

• Occupation
  Some jobs and hobbies require protective and hygienic attire for practical reasons.   It is important to distinguish necessary attire from attire chosen for effects.
  
  
• General conformity
  Following fashions or limiting the scope of selectable attire according to what is considered as social rules and normative dress code is a form of petty submissiveness.  Examples are men, who hate to shave but continue to do so every day and men, who deny themselves the comfort of wearing sandals or who are bothered about avoiding specific colors of socks along with the sandals.    They are pathetic and ridiculous.
  Such men have a scaring effect upon me.  They can be a jeopardy to a woman, when by the same submission to conformity they also do hurtful things to her.
  
  
• Physical masculinity
  Intentional masculinity, which is expressed for example by investing a lot of time and effort into extensive work-outs for the purpose of muscle-build-up, includes a favorable attitude towards aggressiveness and an inclination to fighting and to competing for a high rank and a position of power and domination.
  Such a man is a high risk, not only because his strength allows him to physically force his will upon a woman, but also by the positive attitude to collateral effects of masculinity as is the objectification of and domination over women.  This effect scares me.
  
  
• Group conformity
  Some men enhance their own subjective masculinity by adhering to groups, which have traditionally cultivated a form of masculinity, which included abuse and degradation of women as a part of the conformity to the group.   They express the adherence to such groups by their attire and body modifications. 
  Outfit and tattoos of motorcycle rockers, street gangs, military and sailors are examples, where the effect of identifying someone as a group member is also recognizing him as a hazard to women.
  
  
• Manipulation
  Any men dealing with large amounts of money, for example insurance agents, bankers or dealers of luxury goods, who want to pursue their own pecuniary advantage by appearing as honest as they are not, choose the crooks' uniform.   Its effects are their method of enhancing the success of their manipulation.   
  Their attire is an expensive looking suit, a tie, a clean shaven face and a neat haircut.   Their trick is creating the false impression, that this intentionally over correct attire lures people to make the mistake to expect correct behavior. 
  Upon myself, the effect is the contrary.  I am so aware of this manipulative strategy, that I never trust a man in a suit and a tie and with a clean shaven face.
     
• Attitude based group membership
  Members and role bearers of religious, woo-woo and political groups of any kind use their attire to signal their group membership.    This has the effect that I can avoid those men, from whom I am separated by a mental abyss. 
   
  

Independence and intellectual identity
 

Wise, rational and decent, non-manipulate people do not make sacrifices of time, money or comfort for the purpose of exterior effects.  They consider and experience external vanity as foolish and irrational.  Their attire serves only their subjective comfort and wellbeing.   They do not attempt to influence others by superficial and manipulative effects, they use verbal communication and correct behavior instead. 

A man wearing cheap sneakers, jeans, t-shirts and a beard due to not being bothered to shave every day expresses by this his rational identity.  (To avoid misunderstandings:  This does not imply neglect.  Comfort does not preclude the attire to be clean and not tattered.)

Depending upon what else I know about his invisible traits and attributes, such a man can have an attracting effect upon me, and he is also a good candidate for becoming trustworthy as a kindred mind.

660. Mavericks, Outsiders, Misfits And Gender Roles

660.  Mavericks, Outsiders, Misfits And Gender Roles


Gender roles are a subset of social norms.   Gender roles accentuate those differences between the genders, which represent instincts.  Gender roles prescribe behaviors caused by these instincts and which enhance the breeding success.   This is not restricted to those instincts leading directly to breeding, it includes also those instincts, which aim at long-term benefits for all future bearers of the own genes.

Gender roles sometimes override people's innate inclinations and cause them to damage their own best interests.  

I consider the dire burden of procreation on women's bodies as biological abuse.   I am aware, that this is a drastic point of view, which can trigger hostility by some people, even though it is a very rational way to look at it.   

Whenever a person has a tumor somewhere in the belly and has it removed by an operation, most people would agree, that this is an ordeal, that nobody in his or her right mind would choose, if there were an option.   
In the case, when it is not a tumor, but a parasite like a worm, the situation is still the same.   This attitude does not even depend on the weight of what is an unwanted growth to be removed.   

But as soon as the parasite is a fetus, which is either removed by a Cesarean session or expulsed by a very painful procedure, then all of a sudden this is not called an ordeal to be avoided, even though a child's birth weight and size is much higher than tumors and parasites usually are.    Instead of recognizing, that this is an atrocity for women, which in contrast to growing tumors can be avoided, many people of both genders have the delusion, that breeding is the purpose of the existence of women.    They are mislead to believe, that having a womb is the same as being meant to use it.  

When comparing the suffering and damage to the afflicted body alone, the distinction between a child at birth and a tumor of the same weight and size makes no sense at all. 



When animals copulate, they follow their instinctive urges without any cognitive ability to anticipate the consequences.    Female (non-human) mammals have no option to avoid the ordeal of giving birth and raising offspring, because they cannot foresee it.  

The instincts leading to human breeding behavior had evolved in the animal ancestors, long before cognition and especially the included ability for anticipation have started to evolve.    As long as the evolution of cognition was evolving as a merely serving tool enhancing the success of the dominant instinctive behaviors, cognition could evolve towards enabling the human brain to amazing progress without causing disruption.   
Only when this evolution reached a ceiling, the conscious experience of individual wellbeing started to bifurcate from the wellbeing experienced as the consequence of maintaining the homeostasis of those instinctive urges, which lead to the survival of the species.  

A slight mutation. a haphazard genetic combination, and the result were and are individuals, whose cognition is not under an instinctive power strong enough to determine the goals and objectives of these persons' behavior.   Either their cognition has advanced one step further or their instinctivity is too low to override their cognition.   
As women, they fully anticipate the unwanted long-term consequences of breeding and they refuse such self-harm.  As men they are considerate and responsible enough to feel morally obliged to refrain from harming women by making them pregnant.   


Those, whose breeding instinct is still stronger than their cognition, but who nevertheless can also anticipate the harm of breeding, experience some cognitive dissonance.   The subconscious urges of the instincts are experienced as strong but vague, on the conscious level they are converted into attitudes, which are congruent with the instincts.   When there are also disparate and incongruent cognitive needs, this causes cognitive dissonance.  This is often solved by the impact of two distinct social influences.   

• Religious belief systems of any content promise rewards for procreation and threaten with punishment for the refusal.    The delusion of a god's power to do so in the afterlife is one example.
  
• Gender roles add artificial and irrational alleged value to instinctive behaviors and those traits favoring such behaviors.   In entry 647 I declared the gender role of masculinity as an obsolete anachronism.   The gender role of femininity is of course just as obsolete.    

Gender roles accentuate all those traits and behaviors, which are based upon physical traits and not on intellectual achievements.     To fulfill and comply with the gender roles does not require any intelligence or education.    Gender roles appeal especially to those, who are deprived of any choice, because they have a suitable body for the gender role, but no brains for anything better.

All those interests, skills and achievements, which require intelligence, creativity, education and sometimes maturity, are gender neutral.    To be a mother by choice requires femininity, to be a warrior by choice requires masculinity.    But the dedication to science, art, literature, languages, technology and other intellectual pursuits is favored by a predisposition, which can be labeled psychological androgynity.  


By unfortunate logic, only breeders continue to contribute their high instinctivity to the gene pool.  The conscious non-breeders do not contribute their more advanced cognition, unless they breed by accident or otherwise against their own wish.   Therefore the evolution towards a more dominant cognition has not completely stopped, but it is very slow.   

Persons, whose psychological androgynity is strong enough to not be overridden by irrational beliefs and non-fitting gender roles, are therefore not only a minority, but they are also under the strong pressure to conform to a majority's expectations.   
In spite of the difficulties of this adversity, it is nevertheless much better to accept being a non-conforming outsider than to suffer from the self-inflicted harm, which follows conforming to what is not suitable for the own innate identity.  


Therefore those who are mavericks, loners and outsiders are this for very good and valid reasons and not at all due to lacking any desirable quality.   They are not the allegedly flawed misfits, as whom they are not only treated, but also pressed towards accepting themselves as such. 
Not all of them have the awareness and self-confidence to understand, that they are lucky to be free from a biological burden.   They are made to feel excluded, while in reality they are spared the breeders' self-destructive and harming inclinations.   Feeling excluded is a fallacy of those, who have themselves very good reasons to avoid to be included.                

655. The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

655.   The Strategy Of The Self-Arranged Commitment Project

Sometimes men give me the feedback, that they disagree with my searching strategy as is outlined throughout this blog.    This disagreement is a mixture of lacking comprehension and of the error of considering the instinct induced focus as better than a more rational but eclectic and uncommon approach.  

But my approach and my strategy are not even my invention, very learned people have similar ideas.   I already mentioned Epstein's love project in entries 29 and 385.

Further information can be found on his website in many publications and interviews, some of it about his love project and about arranged marriages:
http://drrobertepstein.com/index.php/media-coverage

This short video gives a good introductory overview:
http://www.sandiego6.com/san-diego-living/this-week/tuesday/Science-of-Love-139242443.html



1.  The self-arranged commitment project.
 
When more than a decade ago I first read about Robert Epstein's love project, I perceived this as a very good representation of my own previously more vague inclinations and wishes.  At that time I had already implicitly developed the paradigm of my own matching strategy, but the awareness for this was still emerging.   I immediately recognized my own inclinations, convictions and attitudes in Epstein's idea and I fully agree with his principles.  

My own strategy for a 'self arranged commitment' differs only in details.        

• A signature under a contract is only of legal significance.   If there is not enough trust between two persons to feel bound by a verbal agreement, then there is no base to attempt a relationship. 
• Paying for counseling is too much of a financial burden.   In the case that not each partner is able to comfortably afford a fair share of this burden, it is not such a good idea to require financial sacrifices, which may jeopardize the project. 
• I consider a very careful choice of the suitable match as even more important than it seemed to Epstein.   He admits to not even have read most of the over 1000 emails he got after the announcement of his project.  Instead he chose for his first attempt a woman, whom he met in an airplane.  

As far as I can make a guess, Epstein developed his love project as a consequence of his psychological research and as a remedy against being misled by his own inclinations.   To me the idea of the self-arranged commitment comes as a most natural expression of my own needs.   It is the result of full awareness of my own inclinations.


2.  The influence of instinctivity.

Unfortunately, Epstein's love project is spontaneously counterintuitive to men, who react strongly to the effects of female bodies upon their instincts.   It needs some intelligence and theory of mind to comprehend its wisdom.

The self-arranged commitment project can be chosen for disparate reasons, which are connected with my recurrent topic, that individual differences in the power of instinctivity have a very strong impact upon personality, attitudes, perception, decisions and behavior.
   
Men with high instinctivity cannot help but experience instinctive reactions when interacting with possible mates.   These reactions blur and distort rational long-term reasoning.   

This works both ways.   Such instincts can cause

• strong physical attraction and fast infatuation.    
• strong frustration, when the expected infatuation is not experienced immediately.   

Both effects impede rational decision and a wise choice of a mate.  


The choice of the self-arranged commitment project is influenced by a man's instinctivity and by the quality of his theory of mind: 

• The stronger a man's instinctivity, the less he is prone to comprehend and accept my strategy of the self-arranged-commitment project.  Only a man with an exceptionally good theory of mind and ability for the long-term anticipation is able to think independently and to act rationally in spite of what his instincts urge him to and in spite of the distortion by infatuation.   
• The less physical infatuation at the beginning of a relationship, the better the chances of rational choices and reasonable behavior and long-term happiness.   Only a man with low instinctivity and high predominance of cognition can meet a possible match without any expectation for strong physical attraction and without immediate infatuation.  Only he has a sufficiently clear mind to consider long-term compatibility and to welcome a self-arranged-commitment project.   

Men's instinctivity causes often an asymmetrical constellation.    While men get immediately infatuated with bodies, women can also get infatuated and blurred in their decision, but in a very different way.   Women can get infatuated with the prospect of and hope for a safe haven, a reliable companion, a trustworthy lifelong partner, a mindmate, in short with the fulfillment of all their cognitive relationship needs.  
The asymmetry dooms the relationship.   When the man's infatuation wears out, he discovers the reality of how much or how little both have in common.   The woman, who enters a relationship for the purpose of getting her non-physical needs met, discovers after a while, that she was infatuated with a delusion, and there was no safe haven, only a man wishing to get access to a female body.   The man gets tired of the woman and the woman gets hurt.  

Starting a relationship as a self-arranged-commitment project is a method to avoid such an asymmetry.   The less a man is infatuated, when he agrees to build a relationship, the better are the woman's chances to be offered realistic prospects and no delusions.   

Therefore a self-arranged commitment project is for me a method to reduce the risk of getting hurt. 


3.  My inclinations towards the self-arranged commitment project.

I have never experienced or expected infatuation, immediate love or love at first sight or anything of this kind at the first encounter with someone, neither online nor previously offline.  It seemed natural to me to let love and attachment grow slowly.   Reciprocally meeting each other's basic criteria was to me always the starting point for the cooperation to create long-term attachment.    

I mistook this for the logical way how things were usually going.   For a long time I had the wrong impression, that most people were more rational and cognitive than they really are.   I thought that passion was an invention of novelists and that those men, who were driven be passion to annoy and to harm women, were only a sick and deranged minority.  

Only when learning about evolutionary biology and when the internet allowed me access to many public personal accounts of the experiences of real people, I understood the sad reality of the huge power of instincts over the majority of men.  It was really disheartening. 

I was not really astonished, that when Epstein created a project of what to me had always been sensible, reasonable and logical, it was perceived as an extraordinary and very novel project and stirred a lot of publicity in the media.      


4.  The scarcity of men inclined towards the self-arranged commitment project.

There is nothing wrong with being a nobody.   There is nothing beneficial in being famous.   Fame is merely the situation of being known by notoriety, admired, despised, envied or hated by lots of haphazard and insignificant persons.  

There is only one disadvantage of being a nobody.   There is no way of getting publicity, when there is a need to find something scare, rare and hidden.

Unfortunately there are very few men sharing Epstein's wisdom.  When I am in contact with men, whom I consider as hopeful candidates for a self-arranged-commitment project, they usually do not understand my intentions.   While hoping for a positive response, I am getting rejected as a consequence of their incomprehension. 
There are certainly a few men out there somewhere, who are innately suitable and motivated for a self-arranged commitment project.  Some may share this inclination, some may have been convinced by Epstein.   

Somewhere out there, there is one who would be as happy to find me as I were happy to find him.   But I just do not succeed to reach him.  
 
Epstein had one big advantage:   As the then publisher of Psychology Today, he had sufficient publicity, when he announced his love project on their homepage.    He got over a 1000 emails as a reaction, many from interested women.  

I am looking for and offering nearly the same as Epstein did.   But I am a nobody, I am unable to get sufficient publicity.  This blog is implicitly an elaborated synopsis of my self-arranged commitment project.   But writing 653 blog entries appearing in google searches in more than two and a half years has not given me even a tiny fraction of the resonance, which Epstein had in a few days. 

Life is not a novel.   If it were, a journalist from a widely read web site would discover this blog and help me to get the publicity needed to enable my mindmate to find me.   Or someone would start a matchmaking site especially for people interested in self-arranged projects of any kind and I could find my mindmate there.   

612. Objects, Purpose And Language

612.  Objects, Purpose And Language

In entries 610 and 611 I have been calling teleology a fallacy, because nothing can have a purpose without a person or entity acting towards this purpose, and the tree producing oxygen has not been created by anybody.   The fallacy of attributing the oxygen production to be caused by the animals' needs for oxygen is connected with the fallacy of the religious belief in a creator.  

I am taking it one step further.   Not even human made objects exist for a purpose. 

No objects, only intentional behavior and actions have a purpose.   The purpose of the objects used during specific intentional actions exists only in an acting person's mind.   An object is associated with a purpose in the cognition of the person producing it, using it or having at least knowledge, which other persons' particular intentional actions it is suitable for.
   
The entire material world exists without a creator and without a purpose.    Some objects are used as tools in the condition, in which they are found, like stones and sticks.   But also tools like a hammer are not made from nothing.   They are produced by collecting preexisting material and modifying it by the impact of chemical and physical processes.  


The teleological fallacy is related to the often blurred distinction between the real physical specimen of an object and the mere concept defining an object's name in a language. 

Defining a tool and giving it a name starts with a person's attempt to improve the successful performance of a purposeful activity.   A hammer is an example of an object with a combination of specific properties labeled with a word.   There is a cognitive sequence of first intending to drive nails into wood, then finding out, what properties are needed to make a tool for this purpose and then giving the projected object with these properties the name 'hammer'.   Without a need to nail something, the concept of a hammer would not have been developed.     Were carpentry exclusively done by using screws, there would be no purpose using nails and hammers.

Materially existing objects have no independent purpose until and unless someone uses them or considers and plans to use them.  A materially real specimen of an object having all the properties of the cognitive concept of a hammer exists in the absence of a human purpose or need for it.   The real hammer has the properties of the defined hammer independently of what it is used for.   While a hammer is produced to have the properties most suitable to nail, this does not make it unsuitable to be used as a weapon or as a paper weight. 
 

Any effect perceived as connected with the use of an object, is not caused by the object or by its existence, only facilitated and this automatically implies a person realizing a potential purpose of this object.    Without an acting person, any effect is not the result of a purpose.   

 

The distinction between the mental concept of a hammer and a real specimen is important to understand the impact of the teleological fallacy.
 

When as in the case of the hammer, the concept is often realized as real specimens, language reinforces the wrong attribution of the purpose, which is only correctly associated with the concept, also to the physically existing hammers.   

If there is a telos drive, it seems to have shaped the languages.   Languages often mislead to express oneself in a teleological way, because it does not offer sufficient ways to avoid the fallacy.    Even while being fully aware of mere coincidences, the limitation of language makes statements appear to express teleological thinking.   Unfortunately the teleological bias of the language also reinforces the teleological thinking, because language is learned early in life, before the full capacity for rational thinking has also been developed.  .

Conceptual objects can have a name and defined properties as being best suited for a purpose, while they do not or not yet exist as specimens.   There are sufficient examples of this in science fiction, fairy tales and fantasy.   The knowledge about objects can be conveyed by descriptions and definitions, while no specimen is present, in reach or available.  

 

Materially existing objects have no absolute and ubiquitous purpose.   They are more or less suitable, depending on their temporary purpose for and the individual needs of the person using them.    

 

The potential of serving a purpose for human use is not limited to what is produced, modified or adapted.    A stone and a hammer are both either tools while being used or merely existing material, while outside the scope of human handling and attention.  

Objects can exist without ever being used by any person for any purpose.    

Objects can be temporarily associated with a purpose by being used and discarded.

A stone is just a stone, until someone picks it up and throws it as a tool for the purpose of breaking a window.   When it remains on the scene after the incident, it again is just a stone.  
When someone uses the stone to crack nuts, and hands it over to someone else, who also uses it for the purpose of cracking nuts, it has temporarily become a nutcracker for them.  But the name nutcracker describes a temporary function, not an eternal property.   When they drop the stone and leave, it again is just a stone.   
 

Objects can be valuable and suitable for a specific purpose for one person but can be a piece of junk for another, who does not share the need for this purpose.   

Only the properties of objects can be observed, perceived and examined by any person, but not the objects' potential of all or any purposes, which they can be suitable for.   The examination of objects does not automatically reveal any information, for which purpose they have been produced and used by persons in a different culture or epoch.  

Persons from different cultures can use the same object for very disparate purposes.   


Teleological thinking is more than a fallacy distorting a person's cognition.   Even worse, the teleological fallacy unfortunately often leads to the subsequent fallacy of deriving justification of and excuses for behaviors from alleged purposes.  Thus also many harming and hurting behaviors are facilitated and reinforced.   Such alleged purposes can be attributed either to the victims themselves or to the objects, by which the victims are harmed.  

The Epicurean principle of not harming and not be harmed requires responsibility and consideration to be stronger than any alleged purpose of any available object.   The mere existence of any object whatsoever does not rationally justify or excuse its use.      

611. More About The Fallacy Of Teleological Thinking

611.   More About The Fallacy Of Teleological Thinking 

Yesterday I got a strange email in reference to entry 610 about teleology.   The sender, according to the name probably a guy, omits to introduce himself in any way and to tell me, why he contacts me and what he expects from me.    He merely informs me of his disagreement with my considering teleology as a fallacy in entry 610.    I am puzzled, what made him assume, that the difference between knowing or not knowing, that a person with a given email address disagrees, were of any significance to me.    

There are billions of persons on this globe, who disagree with my way of thinking.  Any of them only wastes his own and my time by informing me of the disagreement.  

This blog is not written for them.   I am elaborating my thoughts for the purpose of finding my mindmate being someone, who agrees as the result of his own independent thinking prior to reading this blog.     

The following are two quotes from his email:
"I can see no good scientific application for teleology." 
"A teleological universe remains quite possible on logical grounds."
 

These quotes show clearly, that he has not clue, what teleology really means and that he is himself someone caught too much himself in this fallacy to be able to gain mental distance from irrational beliefs of any kind.

When someone asks questions, then this indicates a reason to explain.   But someone declaring his disagreement implicitly states his own point of view as valid as mine.    A guy, who claims his teleological fallacy as equally valid as rational and scientific thinking is a clear example of the Dunning-Kruger-effect.    While such a haphazard disagreeing guy certainly as a person is of no interest to me, his email nevertheless inspires me to write some more about teleology.      

Teleology is a logical fallacy of thinking.    No scientist, who deserves to be called one, would use it consciously and deliberately as an appropriate method to explore and explain anything.  It just is not a scientific method.  The effect described in the research presented in http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102451.htm is the tendency of the human brain to spontaneously tend to succumb to this fallacy.   This does not make teleology any less a fallacy, it is only an indication of how careful scientists need to be to avoid it. 


The fallacy can be shown by comparing the following two statements:  

1. "Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe"   (From the research presented in
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102451.htm)
2. "Oxygen masks supply environmentally lacking oxygen so that people can breathe."

Superficially, both statements seem to be quite similar.    In both statements, oxygen is needed and it is supplied.   But there is a fundamental distinction between the teleological fallacy of statement one and the genuine intention in statement two.  

Oxygen masks are invented and produced by persons having knowledge and intention concerning what the masks are to be used for.   Without a known need for oxygen, such masks would not be invented and produced.   

All oxygen masks are made by humans or by human made machines.   The purpose of oxygen masks to supply oxygen when not otherwise available is the intended or expected beneficial outcome of the activity of producing it.   This is logically only possible, when there is someone performing the purposeful activity.  

There cannot be any intentional production without a producer, but things can exist and offer collateral benefits without having been produced by anybody.   

The teleological fallacy is thinking as if there were a causality, where there is none at all.   To believe that the trees have been produced by an acting entity the same way as the oxygen masks is the fallacy of simpleminded and gullible persons.   They invent a creator deity, which serves for them not only but also as an explanation for the existence of trees and more generally of anything, of which they derive benefits and which exists without having been produced intentionally by any human.      
 

Scientific research to look for evidence of oxygen masks which are not produced by humans is an option.   As long as such evidence has not been found, it can be considered as established, that oxygen masks are produced by persons, who can be traced.    

Any scientific attempt to find the producer of the trees is equally futile as the attempts to find evidence of the existence of any deity.    

Also the person selling oxygen masks knows, that they are produced by humans and what for.   The person planting trees to enhance the oxygen in the air knows, that trees produce oxygen.   But as a rational person he also knows, that the trees have not been produced by any person or entity for the purpose of breathing.   The rational person knows, that the existence of trees and of beings needing oxygen can either be coincidence or co-evolution, in which the evolution of beings in need of oxygen has been enabled by the evolution of the emittance of oxygen by the trees.

The teleological fallacy and the deity delusion are therefore related and reinforcing each other.   But it is difficult to know, which was first.
I doubt Pararajasingham's suggestion (http://www.reasonism.org/main-content/articles-by-other-authors/item/285-the-telos-drive-a-neurobiological-basis-for-religious-belief), that the telos drive having been there first suffices to explains religious beliefs.    

It is at least as probable, that the gullibility to the delusion of deities has been an evolutionary advantage to the species for very different reasons.   

Those women, who accept the self-harming by accepting the biological abuse of their bodies for procreation due to expecting a reward in the afterlife, have more offspring than those, who refuse to accept self-harming.  

Those men, who harm women by making them pregnant due to displacing the responsibility for doing this to a deity, also have more offspring than the more considerate men.   

Thus the gullibility to believe in the existence of deities has been incorporated into the gene pool.   Once someone believes in the existence of a creator deity, then the conclusion of attributing the existence of any not human made phenomena and entities to be allegedly produced by such a creator is apparently and subjectively logical to such a believer.   

But neither the deity delusion nor teleological thinking is logical to rational, skeptical and apistic persons like me.   

610. The Telos Drive And The Fallacy Of Teleology

610.   The Telos Drive And The Fallacy Of Teleology

Teleology is not a part of my rational thinking or of my identity.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology

"A teleology is any philosophical account that holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature."

I have been born, I am living until I die, and I do not exist for any purpose.   My own life has no general meaning or value except for myself and for those persons who choose to appreciate me.   The reasonable way of living without teleological tendencies is to avoid harming and being harmed and to make the best of a lifetime without any nonsensical sacrifices for anything happening after the own death.  
 

Being myself void of teleology, considering it as an innate human tendency did not occur to me until I read about the postulation of the telos drive:

http://www.reasonism.org/main-content/articles-by-other-authors/item/285-the-telos-drive-a-neurobiological-basis-for-religious-belief

"The telos drive is a hypothetical neuropsychological construct that I propose exists as a primitive instinct which, like all biological drives, may be modulated by higher cognitive function or environmental influences, and often forms the core of religious faith."

"This intrinsic drive is a need to find meaning and purpose for which religion (given its immense popularity) is perhaps the most powerful construction."

"I would argue that the telos drive is no different; it has been boosted so we assume everything is suffused with intention or purpose so that we may predict the behaviour of the world around us, thus staying ahead of the game we call survival. This exaggeration or boost causes us to see purpose within (human purpose) and without (cosmic purpose)."

Today I read this:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102451.htm

"despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities ..... cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose."

"Although purpose-based "teleological" explanations are often found in religion, ..... they are generally discredited in science. When physical scientists have time to ruminate about the reasons why natural objects and events occur, they explicitly reject teleological accounts, instead favoring causal, more mechanical explanations. ...... when scientists are required to think under time pressure, an underlying tendency to find purpose in nature is revealed. The results provide the strongest evidence yet that the human mind has a robust default preference for purpose-based explanation that persists from early in development."

""It seems that our minds may be naturally more geared to religion than science.""

So it seems that the telos drive is more ubiquitous than it had appeared to me.   But I doubt that it suffices as a direct explanation of religion.   I think that the telos drive and religion together are mainly enabling procreation.   

Drives and instincts have evolved as advantageous for the survival of the species.    I consider the search for a purpose and the delusion of the existence of deities are interdependently enabling, reinforcing or enhancing one direct advantage for the survival of the human species, which is the submission to and acceptance of suffering harm caused by being determined by the procreation instinct.  
Procreation requires two persons' contribution to a combination of harming and self-harming.  Women are harmed by the biological abuse of their body in pregnancy and birth and by the slavery of raising the brood.   Men are harmed by the obligation to provide at least materially for the offspring.  People are harmed by being deprived of resources, which competing alpha men usurp for their own offspring.   

Self-harming as a sacrifice for procreation needs a justification for accepting the harm.  When there is no rational justification, then imagining and inventing a pseudo-meaning and an alleged purpose can help to avoid cognitive dissonance.    The less people accept harm, the less they are prone to accept any purpose as a justification.  
Deities were invented with the attribute of having the power to reward in the afterlife for the suffering by procreation and to punish in the afterlife for refusing procreation.   They were also attributed to be omniscient and thus competent to demand procreation as a purpose not to be questioned.    

Harming others in spite of empathy, responsibility and consideration and avoiding cognitive dissonance also needs the strong justification of considering the harm as an unavoidable price for fulfilling a purpose.   
Deities were invented to transfer the responsibility for harming to the deity.  Thus the biological harm of procreation could be misinterpreted as if it were a purpose installed by an omniscient and powerful deity. 


The belief in having a purpose and the belief in the existence of a deity are interdependent.   Having a purpose implies to accept being used as a tool or utility and this leads to the question concerning who is doing the using.   A deity or higher power is a simple answer.     
Having the delusion of the existence of a deity leads to the question, why anything had been created by the deity, and what he meant to do with it.   Having a purpose only understood and known by the deity is also a simple answer.   

And simple minds prefer simple answers.