application of evolution

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by boagie

A lot of morality and/or ethics might be understood this way, as the biological extension of ones self interest. Do you think it has this universal application across the board?

No, I think we're far too complex for any single explanation to suffice. But it does help illustrate the ontogeny of our moral systems.

Originally Posted by mashiaj

but religious morality not at all because it is in opposition with the survival instincts and behaviors such as sex, material wealth, greed, violence etc.

You think material wealth, greed, and violence are necessary for survival in a species that evolved to live in social communities? Not ALL religious morals are counterproductive -- I mean look at the kashrut laws in Judaism. The dietary restrictions, restrictions on how to handle a dead body, etc, were all basically public health / hygiene laws that were codified into religious commandments.

Originally Posted by Mr. Fight the Power

I imagine you said this for more of a lark than for profundity

It was the concluding sentence of a longer post in which I elaborate the view a bit more...

but this is a remarkably self-centered way of looking at it. Unfortunately it is the way most of our species look at nature.

I don't at all understand this comment. We are PART of nature. It's incongruous for us to believe that our moral judgements are somehow outside of it. That doesn't abdicate our responsibility by any stretch, nor do I ever make that case. Insofar as we CAN control ourselves we have responsibility towards nature -- but that's not what this post is about.

The apparent fact of the matter is, however, that morality does not revolve around what we think to be moral

There are many cultural variations, including some that have produced patently immoral things. But that has more to do with our penchant for creating complex belief systems, which codifies morals that are ever far away from what's natural. After all, do you really think the Christian ideal of chastity is really natural? No, but at the same time the idea of charity probably is somewhat innate.

The morality of nature is certainly not coincidental, and should it so deem, nature could have changed what is "moral" altogether.

Note how I qualify in my subsequent post that "I make no case for nature producing behavior that corresponds identically to human ideals of morality" and "it so happens that the behaviors we judge as morally good are often those that we do anyway -- like compassionate things."

Would having read my subsequent post have changed your response to me?

[Mr. Fight the Power]

Originally Posted by boagie

Mr. Fight the Power,

It will be interesting to hear something further along this line Mr. Fight the Power. I have not found in the past that I often disageed with you. You make it sound however as though nature had intend something, that nature has a consciousness, admittedly certain behaviour were selected out, and nature undoubtedly give us the mental prowess to make evaluations/ judgements through selection. Morality is quite a meaningful concept, obviously it could only, like all other meanings, be the property of a conscious subject. I have heard something of this nature in the past that somehow there is an objective morality--a naturalized epistemology. I did not understand it then, and I do not understand it now, perhaps as this dialogue moves along however, I will see the errors of my ways.

No, I do not believe nature to be conscious or intentional.

I only meant to point out that we like to think that we decide what is right or wrong, better or worse, more advanced or less advanced, and judge nature by this. In doing this, we neglect the fact that it is not we but nature who decides this.

When I drop the rhetoric and admit that nature is the causal algorithm that it is, it simply means that there is no ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, better or worse, more advanced or less advanced.

[Mr. Fight the Power]

Aedes,

Hopefully my response to Boagie clears up my original objection, and please don't believe "self-centered" was an attempt to call you into question. I simply mean that that viewpoint tends to treat humans as the center of the universe.

I just wanted to point out that it is not coincidental that morality appears in nature. It is the same factors of evolution that produce morality in nature as produce morality in our social behavior, but since we wish to associate things as our own (and everyone is wont to believe that he or she is the ultimate judge of right and wrong), we like to act as if we decide what is right and wrong and are amazed when it is reflected in the "wild".

It is the same thinking that causes people to consider humans more advanced than bacteria. Such thinking is only reasonable in the context of what it is to be human. Certainly a bacteria, if it could think such thoughts, would consider humans to be undesirably fragile.