Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective of animal behaviour
deterministic ; pre-programmed
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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(Experiments reveal that humans have areas in which they repeat the same mistakes endlessly too, so it seems we might be "sphexish" as well).
Bunny and a Book 2008
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And then you need to decide if you are going to call something that might well be perfectly sphexish – without any ability to flexibly respond to novel circumstance – "intelligent" in the first place!
Bunny and a Book 2008
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(Compare Dan Dennett’s idea that when we get distressed by the notion that humans lack radical free will, it’s really because we’re concerned with being sphexish rather than with being determined per se.)
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Now, what might well bother us is to see ourselves as what Daniel Dennett calls “sphexish “: determined in some crude or stupid way.
tadanga commented on the word sphexish
"sphexish" - inflexible,mindless automatism ~ computer scientist Douglas Hofstader,
p.67 in "River Out of Eden",Richard Dawkins,N.Y.,Basic Books,1995
September 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the word sphexish
“They can be as sphexish or as intentional as you please.”
—Richard Dawkins, Viruses of the Mind (p. 11)
July 24, 2010