In Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, 16, Peter Corinth's enhanced intelligence now controls his instincts and emotions. He can feel rage but control it instead of being controlled by it:
"Corinth willed the rage and grief out of himself, willed calmness and resolution." (p. 136)
He expects that human life in future will be both healthier and longer. We can look more closely at this prospect tomorrow.
Corinth thinks:
"Protean man - intellectual man - infinity!" (p. 138)
I notice this phrase first because, in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, human beings are described as their own protean enemy and secondly because we have also referred to Proteus himself, particularly in a poem by Wordsworth.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I only wish I managed to solve a Rubik's cube! I've sometimes got one color/side solved, but not all of them. I know, you have to be patient and keep plodding away at it.
Ad astra! Sean
Intelligence is the servant of instinct, not its master. Note that high-IQ people aren't better at emotional control than dull ones. That's a matter of character, not intellect.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that clarifies why I don't believe in the kind of Utopianism we see in BRAIN WAVE. Notions which Anderson himself moved away from--a can be seen in his very last books (such as STARFARERS and GENESIS, etc.).
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Catholic doctrine, which I do not accept, is that intellect and will are the two faculties of the immaterial soul. Thus, according to that doctrine, intelligence has not evolved as a tool or servant of instinct. Organisms that are motivated only by instinct do not have souls.
In my opinion, the instinct for self-preservation/species-propagation in a socially cooperative species has generated human morality. A self-conscious individual reasoning about and making moral decisions is on a very different level from an animal unreflectingly acting only from its immediate instincts.
If a tiger kills a man, then we shoot the tiger. If a man kills another man, then he is charged with murder or manslaughter. A court decides whether he is fit to plead. If he is, then he is tried and found either guilty or not guilty.
Inorganic matter, unconscious organisms, conscious organisms and self-conscious organisms are four ascending levels of being, each with its own irreducible properties but each also emerging from and affected by the lower levels.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That is correct, what you said about intelligence. But one of the consequences of the Fall has been how much harder it is for humans to control instincts or passions.
You don't accept Catholic doctrine, understood. I similarly disbelieve in materialism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And I suspect that you do not fully understand materialism. It is neither mechanistic nor reductionist. New, irreducible qualities emerge. Being (what is) is currently understood as energy, not as mechanically interacting particles with only the quantifiable properties of mass and volume. But our understanding of being develops all the time. "Materialism" is only the philosophical theory that being has become conscious. Consciousness is emergent. You do not agree with that - but do not identify materialism with reductionism.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I do understand, I just don't believe it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Well, that's alright. When people just say "materialism," they need to make clear what their understanding of it. (This applies to several words.) I think that, in earlier comboxes, you were surprised by my exposition of materialism.
Paul.
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