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ArisKatsaris comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong
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Because for a materialist the brain is a physical organ, and its characteristics much like any other physical characteristic.
Well is that true or not?
Well, is that true or not?
It's hard to tell because it's practically impossible to run double-blind experiments on the process of evolution.
But it wouldn't be the first time that scientists gave their blessing to the norms of the day when the empirical evidence didn't truly support the assertion. Politics being the mind-killer, we should probably expect that morally controversial scientific results are biased. I suspect the bias is in favor of the status quo, but I'm sure there are counter-examples.
A brain is also an information-processing system, and as such, by Occam's razor it seems more probable that information within it comes from its environment rather than genetics (the human genome fits on a floppy drive, but the set of all Disney movies does not, at present).
Some of the information within the human brain "comes from genetics" through the expression of genetics in the environment and its observation by the human in question.
For instance, I believe that I have brown hair, ten fingers, a hairy chest, the ability to count, and various other attributes. These beliefs are information in my brain; however, they are also more than a little bit "genetically determined". My brain didn't start out with a genetically-determined belief "I have brown hair"; rather, my body ("genetically") grows hair of a type that I've ("socially") learned to identify as "brown" rather than "blond", "black", "red", or other labels. In the counterfactual world where my genes expressed as black hair, I would believe "I have black hair".
Can you extend this argument to the sort of social messages conveyed in Disney movies, in anything more than a trivial way ("Humans make disney movies, so disney movies come from genetics")?
Hmm ... I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for here in terms of "social messages".
Disney movies contain characters having interpersonal cooperation and conflict — which are pretty damn universal in human societies, and we probably have some adaptations for them, at least some of which we accurately observe. Disney movies contain characters using facial expressions of emotion (e.g. wide-eyed interest or attraction; crying to express sadness or upset); etc.
So — Messages such as "cooperation lets you accomplish more than you could accomplish alone [and we have adaptations to enable us to do this]" or "humans are moved [instinctively] by other humans' expressions of emotion" ... sure.
However, if you're going for things like "Snow White conveys ideals of female submission and purity," ... no.
You think there's no message in the different moral judgment we are expected to have for Snow White vs. the Wicked Queen? Something about vanity, plus it doesn't hurt to notice that the morally upright woman is also better looking.
Oh, of course there is a social message there. I think eridu was asking whether I thought it was genetically determined.
By hypothesis, the Wicked Queen is the second most beautiful woman in the land. This seems to weaken that point.
Yes, that is exactly the sort of message that I care about.
I don't see how that follows, and "By Occam's razor" should only be invoked once you've established that two models are equivalent except for some extraneous detail.