Aspies don't see the purpose of things.

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/ ... 2010-05-29

Well, ok, Aspies don't see the world as acting according to purposes very much compared to most people, and are less likely to invoke responses such as God, destiny, or anything else like that in explaining why particular things happen. They were less likely to even engage in anything similar to that way of thinking about reality.

So basically what you're saying is, we're less likely to be taken in by intellectual boondoggles?

If this is true then I'm even more confused about the existence of spiritual aspies. I suppose they're just more influenced by societal or communal conditioning.

Interesting. I wonder if Aspies are less likely to indulge in conspiracy theories, too.

an article recently posted by Awesomelyglorious:
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.c ... ns-of.html

I wonder if aspies are also more comfortable not "Knowing" (capital K) - that is, less emotional wrt.the emotion of knowing.

I'd always find my atheistic naturalism much more theoretically thorough then the average person. One reason could be that I read a lot more atheistic literature (i.e. many articles on the Internet Infidels well before the tide of "New Atheism" books). But another reason could be, as this article suggests, the consistent lack of teleological thinking.

The notion that every event doesn't have an overaching, global, intentional cause or interwoven master plan of intentional causes just wasn't that hard to grasp. The literature keep repeating it to the point wher it sounded dull (in spite of my obsession with it).

And I was always agast at the vernacular of typical theist-atheist exchanges:

"So, you believe in nothing?" - What on earth is that supposed to mean? I believe in the existence of the Universe, for one thing, and the relative veracity of the natural sciences in describing it. I believe in some sort of moral realism, and so on.

"So, when we die we just go 'poof'?" - How the heck could that happen, that would describe a violation of the law of conservation of mass. We don't disappear so much as our constitent parts break down and are redistributed throughout the universe. While a fire may no longer exist in its present state after it is put out with water, we don't speak of it "just going 'poof'" rather than being transfered to some sort of fire heaven.

"You don't believe in fate?" - On the one hand, I am a (macroscopic) scientific determinist*, on the other hand, I don't believe in the sort of anthropocentric predetermination of causes people who agree with fate subscribe to.

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* I admit that at the microscopic, Quantum levels, indeterminacy and probability plays a role. But by the time you reach higher levels, things get more deterministic.

There is no Point to the human race. The human race is a biological accident, as are all other species of plants and animals on this plant. We and all other living things are a Happening.

ruveyn

That's the type of anti-teleological thinking I could never get. If life has been evolving based on a semi-deterministic process (natural selection) which takes advantage of randomness (genetic drift) towards certain trends (better suitability towards the environment in question), how is that "accidental"? It's not thought-out but its not pure coincidence, it's mechanistic process.

On a side note, this article reminds me of concerns Taner Edis brought up at "How secular can we get?":



It seems that few people, even people of high-average atheism, possess a systematically naturalist, a-teleological, perspective of the world.

What a great article! Mechanism asks how s**t happens, but mentalism asks why.

But such expressions are still relevant in a world full of teleological thinking. So many people put forward ideas infused with so many spiritualistic things. Even philosophers are full of this, even though most are atheists.

http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

As solid numbers of the profession are Platonists, believe in an objective aesthetic, and that kind of nonsense. Don't they recognize that these positions make no sense in relationship to an evolutionary origin of man? I mean, Alex Rosenberg, who wrote this gem: http://onthehuman.org/2009/11/the-disen ... o-reality/ basically admits that what saved him was that he read a book by Daniel Dennett that forced him to rethink his positions.


Well, heck, even though aspies may be less teleological, I don't think we are ateleological either. The recognition that reality has no purposes suggests that even we have no purposes. It fundamentally questions the psychological unity we all take for granted to force us to recognize that every brain is full of mechanisms that mindlessly roll forward, with no regard for consistency, logical validity, truth, love, coherence, only the physical laws of nature. It also forces us to recognize that the objects we take as basic were not designated objects by the universe. The universe considers nothing to be a chair, and there is no fundamental ontological disconnect between a chair and the floor it sits on, or the air surrounding it, just a difference of the composition of reality that the brain identifies as important based upon mechanisms that exist because they allowed certain arrangements of DNA to continue to propagate.

Heck, I would argue that even our very language is full of reification, further reflecting the flaws of our brain functions in modeling reality, as nouns are nouns rather than mere models.

The comments on the article were quite disturbing. People were proving the premises of the article (not the hypothesis) without even realizing it. They assigned hidden meanings, accepting things without thinking and various other things.

This brings up an interesting point though. If theists and atheists think the same way, what causes the split on the cognitive level? Both associate events with higher powers, but one says it's false and the other says it's true. How could the same process lead to such different results? The only thing I can think of is that both parties don't actually analyze the situation, but go right to what they perceive to be the simplest and most likely answer. People with AS take a second to think of a few possible causes and the one that makes the most sense based on the available information.

From this point of view there is no reason to think that people with AS are more or less likely to be theists. This is based off my limited information, so is in need of alternative ideas. Any suggestions?

This I kind of agree with you here. A mystery is like an equation that's missing numbers. Some people will put a variable or symbol where the number ought to be. Others will keep trying numbers and see if it checks out, although it never really does.

I don't think that's it. Humans in general have a strong tendency to assume agency behind events, and explain events by agency. This only means that aspies might assume agency less often.
This says nothing on the actual prevalence of agency.

The article is very interesting to me. I've bookmarked it and discussed it with my mother. It relates to another thread I posted here, about how people with AS supposedly are less inclined to suppress modus ponens in handling possible exceptions.

It may be that autistic people reason a little differently from those outside the spectrum; at least, I suspect there are differences between the way I reason about everyday situations and the way other people do, and maybe this is the case and it's also how other people on the spectrum are too. I don't think anything close to a definitive account has been reached for the Sally Anne test, and that the closest is still the "impaired theory of mind" notion, but this article and related research still contributes to what from my perspective is an at least somewhat intuitive picture.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that people on the spectrum are better candidates for being atheists.

Humanity is not a biological accident, it is a biological catastrophe.

That is far from a fact. That is a moral judgment which is mere opinion.

The eruption of the Siberian and Deccan Traps was a catastrophe. The impact of the Chixilub asteroid/meteor was a catastrophe. Army ants do as much damage to the landscape is humans and the rats caused wide spread death in Europe. All species which multiply widely cause catastrophes.

ruveyn

From someone of your moral stance I find your retort both highly amusing and highly ironic. Humans, admittedly, are not yet as capable as meteors and volcanoes but current events indicate great progress in the matter and with your outlook dominating many of those in power and the ingenuity already demonstrated it doesn't seem humans have far to go. Your denial is also opinion mere or otherwise.