The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #139650   Message #3215491
Posted By: GUEST,Lighter
30-Aug-11 - 06:07 PM
Thread Name: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
Deceit may be an evolved ability, but that doesn't make it "hard-wired." It may "evolve" under the press of circumstance on the individual rather than the species level.

What may be "hard-wired" in apes and humans is a general ability to solve problems in novel ways. (Whether humans can ultimately solve any problem remains to be seen.) If a problem can be solved through deceit, that doesn't make deceit, in and of itself, a "hard-wired" (i.e., instinctual and ineradicable) component of the human mind.

I can feel like fooling someone, but I can also decide not to. "Hard-wired" deceit would just kick in, like breathing. Whether apes can "stop themselves" from deceiving, once they get the impulse, I don't know.

Also, humans are not apes.

Just something to keep in mind.