Essays, Analyses and Meditations


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Civilization

  • Cognitive Science usually tries to explain how the mind works. But i feel that another way to find out who we are is to look at what minds do. The behavior of any animal is a clue to how its mind works. If i catalog the things that an ant does, i obtain a good base to understand how an ant's mind works.
  • One cannot understand organisms (and even less super-organisms) apart from the structures that their genetic program compels them to create.
  • What do human minds do? Ultimately they have created civilizations.
  • The human mind may have developed for the purpose of "survival of the fittest" but at some point the human mind started doing something that no other mind had done before: building civilizations.
  • It is surprising that most scientists of the mind do not spend more time studying civilizations. I feel that we can understand the human mind only when we analyze many civilizations, both ancient and modern.