Yeah... Some human knowledge is provably genetic. The 'knowledge' of pain responses, our reflexes, the feeding instinct and all. Maybe he means higher abstract structures though. Armodaad, what exactly do you mean by your signature?
I'm pretty sure that's what he does mean, and I fully agree with that. I'm just being stringent with terms. It's in doing so that we can prompt each other to consider things we might not have otherwise rather than pure pickyness or malevolence.
Of worth noting is that this is a prime observation where the atheist shoots himself in the foot when talking to the religious about the unlikelyness of god. Something the religious very rarely do, if ever, because they're so willing to bend the rules of their own definitions to make it fit whatever they like.
Once you mention the possibility of humans being born with 'prior knowledge' the question instantly arises, what is that knowledge, why is it there and who put it there. For the Religious, rock solid proof of the existence of God. For the realistic, and I feel no shame in adding, intelligent, DNA put it there.
Take a super simple piece of prior embedded knowledge, feeling pain when you're burnt.
Evolution of those children who don't possess this knowledge, out of the DNA chain, is going to occur very rapidly, since they'll probably kill themselves messing around with fires or getting burnt some other way long before they have a chance to reproduce. We take it for granted now that children, and adults, don't purposefully try to set themselves on fire, or enjoy the experience. Think about what would happen if this piece of logic were erased from both children and adults, starting now. The population would rocket vertically down over a few weeks or months as people died from burns.
How could this prior knowledge possibly have gotten into humanity? Exactly the same way the rest of the information, tangible or otherwise, get's into our DNA, random mutation. Out of the 99 systems that don't mind being burnt, one will, through random mutation. This system has an obvious advantage when it comes to reproduction probabilities, so the logic get's carried forward.
Simple, simple stuff. And you'll not that a lot of the prior knowledge humans are born with relates very specifically to things that will otherwise kill them; e.g. a strong urge to eat as much as possible.
Then you get on to personalities.
The more I think about this, the more obvious it seems. If you're willing to accept that your conscious experiences are an emergent attribute of your brain tissue, and that DNA directly effects how tissue forms in your body, then all that's left for you to do is put the two together to get, your DNA can carries some form of effect on your conscious experience. And that perhaps your personality is created in the same way your mother and father's DNA mixed to create something with physical similarities to both of them; different genes expressed in their brain tissue are mixed and matched into your's.
Incredible at first. But then consider this in the same way you would your eye colour. Not quite so incredible after all.
I have reached a point now where I would actually feel it more impressive if children weren't born with this prior knowledge, as it would imply some form of
absolute separation between genetics and consciousness. But there isn't such a separation, consciousness isn't untouchable.
Note that the solid logic of life, how to move your hands properly, how to make a computer work, don't seem to be passed on directly through DNA. I think this is probably something evolution would also work, creating humans are that able to pass on large quantities of factual data via their DNA (e.g. "Delivery coming on Friday, leave note"), but these factors are not directly life threatening, so it doesn't.
Further suggestion that what we believe we are, believe the world is or learn to do within these boundaries is highly dependant on our empirical experience of it.
Although I'm sure there are mutations of DNA out here that possess the ability to carry over larger quantities of information than others. A useful trait to look for whilst tracking it down would be children, preferably separated from their genetic parents at an early age (Orphans with living genetic parents), who have a similar thought pattern or personality. The stronger the match, the more likely it is their DNA is passing more of the information over, in it's reproduction, that relates to that child's conscious experience of their world. The investigation would also double up, as you could investigate the link between genetic carry over and how closely their thought paterrn and personality match that of their adoptive parents; taking into account how closely those parents match the child's genetic parents in terms of thought pattern and personality to ensure a fairer test. E.g. A child with genetic parents with a family history of kindness in a home with adoptive parents who teach it, empericially, to be nasty. Positive result for genetics = a kind child.
Edited by johnuk, 02 December 2005 - 02:03 PM.