Gregg, I enjoyed the reading your article, which I experienced as an organizing summary of relevant research and perspective on the evo-bio-psycho-social-philosophical-technological quest to understand who we are and what we are doing. One image that came to mind is that a tension point in our culture wars is the visceral, primate concern over receiving cucumber instead of grape as we engage in social exchanges. There is a scene in the film “Casino” in which Robert De Niro, playing a powerful casino owner, is having a meeting with an associate at a restaurant in the casino. He notices that he has received a muffin that has far fewer blueberries than the muffin on the plate of his associate. De Niro interrupts the meeting by storming into the kitchen, demanding that the chef put an equal number of blueberries in all of the muffins. The chef, deflated and incredulous, complains “do you have any idea how long that is going to take?” The scene came to mind because it seems to represent how easily our attention focuses on seemingly trivial exchanges of unfairness relative to our adapted situations, and yet our more complex social structures and justification systems appear to be nested as an extension of that earlier evolved, primate socio-relational mechanism. I recall the media flooded with headlines like “Trump receives two scoops of ice cream while everyone else gets one.” Which, to me, speaks to how we are often encouraged to transport to this shared level of primate consciousness in order to communicate and have our realities mirrored back to us in a way that allows us to feel that “we” dynamic also mentioned in your writing. The hope is that by understanding our phylogenetic and developmental process (Nancy) we may be able to transcend bids to exploit the vulnerabilities and ego traps that exist in the design of our structure. And yet, Mark has been making a powerful case (technology) that negotiating with the effects of media is a tremendous challenge, as advertisers and tech developers are unscrupulous, or at best inconsiderate, in their advanced awareness of our immediate physical, social, and mental needs. I hope all are well on this Saturday! -chance Sent from my iPhone > On Aug 18, 2018, at 8:02 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Dear list, > I spent some time this morning crafting a draft of a blog on What Makes Us Different. It ended up being a bit more expanded than I originally anticipated. My original focus was to paint the ToK/JH picture. But what emerged was a five page summary of the “puzzle pieces” of our uniqueness, drawn from the Sept 2018 Scientific American special issue that Joe shared. In reading through it, I decided it was good way to summarize the current state of knowledge of the puzzle pieces that make us different. > > I am sharing it here because I think it is a great topic for our list. I would welcome any suggestions or recommendations or additions. > > If we as a group have a sense of these puzzle pieces, then I think discussion about the central missing piece, the Justification Hypothesis (framed by the ToK metaphysical definitional system and the BIT formulation of the evolution of the animal mind) can be productively had. > > Best, > Gregg > > ############################ > To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 > > <what makes us different.docx> ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1