Wallace vs. Darwin (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 11, 2013, 18:54 (4040 days ago)

A fascinating discussion. Wallace believed in teleology behind evolution.
And it raises the issue so beloved to me: because of our consciousness we are different in kind from primates and Darwinism blurs that distinction.-"Wallace aside, Bowler seems to imply that the naturalistic explanation of the human brain is a settled question arising from certain "proofs" in the neurosciences, but this is by no means the case. Physician James Le Fanu's Why Us? paints a very different picture. In the 1990s the "Decade of the Brain" proposed that new technologies would unlock the secrets of the human mind, but these sanguine hopes ended in failure -- thoughts, emotions, intuitions, qualia, these all remained unaccounted for (see especially pages 9-23). Chris Smith has even called the mind Darwin's "unsolved problem." We are, he admits, no closer to understanding phenomenal or sensory consciousness than we were150 years ago. In fact, it could well be argued that Darwinian evolution has actually contributed to confusion on the subject of human psychology and mind by stressing animal/human continuities and encouraging a plethora of poorly designed studies loaded with unwarranted anthropomorphisms concerning animal behavior (see for example DC Penn, KY Holyoak, DJ Povinelli, "Darwin's Mistake," and Johan Bolhius and Clive D. L. Wynne, "Can Evolution Explain How Minds Work?")."-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/04/what_would_a_wo070971.htm