Survival of the fittest.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Pythagorean

It is hard to believe that someone who was raised reading the old testament (as I am guessing that you were) would hold the position that morality is something that comes easily.

What makes you think that I derive my moral position from my religious tradition? Surely you give me credit for being an independent thinker, and I derive my ethical philosophies from things much more relevant to me than religion.

Secondly, it's a very loose and unfair statement of my position to say I think that "morality is something that comes easily". There is a moral overtone implicit in the way you've phrased it. My position is that moral decisionmaking is innate to us; what are not innate are social and ethical conventions, including creating / disseminating / adhering to systematized moral schemes (be they rational like Kant's or traditional). But don't confuse moralization with morality. There's a reason why rational deontologists, rational utilitarians, people of all religious traditions, and atheists can agree on murder and violence being bad -- it's because the tradition is simply a moralization of what we already feel viscerally.

A moral choice is not the same thing as a monkey alleviated the suffering of his brother monkey by incurring suffering of his own. In fact, if this were a human test case, then incurring someone else's pain with no benefit to yourself might not be the "right" thing to do at all: because in the human world things are infinitely more complicated and open to changes of all sorts.

But what if it was NOT infinitely more complicated. Two human college students who volunteer for an experiment, for instance. One is starved, the other is shocked. Or perhaps two human prisoners of war at Guantanamo -- one is starved and the other is shocked. You really think it's somehow different than the monkey scenario if the humans are making the same choices?

It just seems absurd to me to say that we are all naturally moral by simply existing.

I didn't say it's by simply existing. We are all naturally ambulatory by having functional legs, not by simply existing. We see by having functional eyes, not by simply existing. But our legs don't only walk -- they can jump and kick; and our eyes can express emotion. Our brains are wired to do many things -- one of them is moral thought, which is what I'm talking about. Another one is to analytically discuss and debate moral thought, which is what we're doing in this thread.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Aedes

What makes you think that I derive my moral position from my religious tradition? Surely you give me credit for being an independent thinker, and I derive my ethical philosophies from things much more relevant to me than religion.

Secondly, it's a very loose and unfair statement of my position to say I think that "morality is something that comes easily". There is a moral overtone implicit in the way you've phrased it. My position is that moral decisionmaking is innate to us; what are not innate are social and ethical conventions, including creating / disseminating / adhering to systematized moral schemes (be they rational like Kant's or traditional). But don't confuse moralization with morality. There's a reason why rational deontologists, rational utilitarians, people of all religious traditions, and atheists can agree on murder and violence being bad -- it's because the tradition is simply a moralization of what we already feel viscerally.

But what if it was NOT infinitely more complicated. Two human college students who volunteer for an experiment, for instance. One is starved, the other is shocked. Or perhaps two human prisoners of war at Guantanamo -- one is starved and the other is shocked. You really think it's somehow different than the monkey scenario if the humans are making the same choices?

I didn't say it's by simply existing. We are all naturally ambulatory by having functional legs, not by simply existing. We see by having functional eyes, not by simply existing. But our legs don't only walk -- they can jump and kick; and our eyes can express emotion. Our brains are wired to do many things -- one of them is moral thought, which is what I'm talking about. Another one is to analytically discuss and debate moral thought, which is what we're doing in this thread.

The state of our existence is human, and morality is the natural state of humanity. If war, murder, and mayham were as common as moral behavior we would all be dead since we are far better at destruction of life than construction. In fact, all people are soon sickened of death and quit making it happen. Monkeys are like ourselves in making moral choices, but unlike us in the ability to make a reasoned immoral choice. A monkey may be determined to be more or less social, and more or less moral, because like most animals, he knows his own kind, and among his own kind feels protected and nutured.

Reason, human reason applied to morality is like the links of a chain, or the rungs of a ladder, and meant to reach a certain moral destination, or a point of behavior that can be socially justified. Yet; Reason often supports simple desire so that what all may know is immoral, like war, or genocide can be accepted as justified by an entire people even when it involves a whole series of actions which, if taken apart, are purely criminal. This monkeys are incapable of doing since they have no separate existence from others like themselves. Like them, morality is easy among ones own kind, and while we are able to concieve of larger nation states, we are also able to easily distinguish ours from theirs, and make war upon our kind when there is no substancial difference of thought or belief, or being between us.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Pythagorean

Virtue, of course, is innate (as the Greeks have taught us). But what can it be without experience? They will burn me as witch out of their virtue and their sense of what is good, but they do so in deep ignorance. Untutored virtue is worse than no virtue at all.

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I do not think that is the point of Knowledge is virtue as Socrates taught. I do not think any of them accepted that barbarians or people more primitive were capable of ethical behavior because they were not under the force of law or reason. Primitive peoples are less capable of immorality because their society is their source of identity. Even among the Greeks, to ostracise a person was one of the worst of punishments because all people had to belong some where, or be harried from place to place. Among primitives the world has a natural bifold division between near and far, friend and foe, family and enemy; and etc. The choice to stand outside of society, to criticise, to condem society was not one that any primitive individual could make. Only when there was some balance and peace established by law could one dare to be an outsider inside society. Socrates was the most immoral of men in his day because he counted on the respect of his fellows to protect them while he abused them for their rights, and it was a deliberate choice meant to steal something essential to all people, which was their freedom.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Pythagorean

I basically agree with you here. Before you mentioned that change was good and I just wondered what you meant by that.



Well said, Fido. You seem to have a good grasp of the authentic realities that pre-modern people had to face. The tightly woven pre-modern societies faced grave difficulties together as a tribe, whereas the modern man is dissociated from these honour bound connections. And the dethronement of the virtues is a modern "enlightened" development. One that goes hand in hand with the discovery of new scientific methods of utilizing nature in a non-theistic context for the betterment of man's practical needs. Man is treated as an empirical body and the ties of honour take second place to the bodily requirements. I wonder would you agree with this general assessment?

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Change is good, but to be possible it must be general. If you look at some society like Rome, or Greece; they could not change and were incapable of change until the Christians came along with a new morality, and best of all, leadership based primarily upon merit, as Plato may have encouraged. It is not just people, and it is not just ideas that change societies for the better, that close the door on one epoch, and open the door to another; but new people with new ideas. People must be hard pressed to accept change, and when change is accomplished they too soon go back to resisting change, so people are forced to await great tides of war or revolution, or pandemics before change is made possible simply because it is unavoidable. I think it is unfortunate that so many try to organize revolution when people organize most often to resist change, and it is for that reason that most relationships are formed; not to do, but to resist doing. When change begins the attempt to ride it to power often kills the beast in birth so no one can have change, and no one rides the beast no where.

[Pythagorean]

Originally Posted by Arjen

I think that the point you are making is that survival of the fittetst is an a posteriori "rulebase" with which we judge if any being was the fittest (from an a posteriori point of view). The rulebase is really small though: the only condition that needs to be met is the fact that a being survived others in any kind of examination. You base your "rulebase" on science in the sense that science is empirical in nature and therefore is a trustworthy means of examining nature because nature is reality and vice versa in every sense of the word. I would personally like to change the word reality for actuality, but that is not really important.

Am I correct in understanding you so far Pyth?

Yes, Arjen. That's about right. That is how I would interpret survival of the fittest.

[Pythagorean]

Originally Posted by Aedes

What makes you think that I derive my moral position from my religious tradition? Surely you give me credit for being an independent thinker, and I derive my ethical philosophies from things much more relevant to me than religion.

Secondly, it's a very loose and unfair statement of my position to say I think that "morality is something that comes easily". There is a moral overtone implicit in the way you've phrased it. My position is that moral decisionmaking is innate to us; what are not innate are social and ethical conventions, including creating / disseminating / adhering to systematized moral schemes (be they rational like Kant's or traditional). But don't confuse moralization with morality. There's a reason why rational deontologists, rational utilitarians, people of all religious traditions, and atheists can agree on murder and violence being bad -- it's because the tradition is simply a moralization of what we already feel viscerally.

Your position, as I see it, is not that moral decision making is innate to us, your position is that making sound or good or making the right moral decisions are what is innate to us. And I would agree that if we find ourselves in a position to make an important decision then, of course, it is we who have to make the decision. Ultimately it rests upon our individual conscience as to the choice that we decide upon.

I would ask you this: why is it, do you say, that there is a minimum age restriction placed upon high office? Why must you have reached a certain age in order to carry out important duties pertaining to life and death decisions? Isn't the answer to this question that it is because we require a certain amount of experience in order to be capable of making the hard decisions?

And why is it, I would ask you, that murder and especially violence are always wrong? In the middle of a war, for example, many individuals must resign themselves to killing other individuals. Also, if someone were to come into your house, for example, and take everything you own including your pretty daughter and lovely wife, why would violence be wrong then? Only a pacifist renounces all violence and murder. Moral decisions do not pertain to banalities but to the toughest of times. It is only when they mean something important do decisions really count as such. These types of vital decisions are the real moral ones, and we will fail to make the best choices when we are untutored in the hard school of life.

A boy who is raised as a pacifist will be unable to protect himself in the face of agression. He will be at the mercy of others. And another boy who is innocent will not be capable of deciding whether or not violence is necessary and he, as an innocent, would probably choose violence (the most viceral alternative) when simpler non-violent alternatives exist.

But what if it was NOT infinitely more complicated. Two human college students who volunteer for an experiment, for instance. One is starved, the other is shocked. Or perhaps two human prisoners of war at Guantanamo -- one is starved and the other is shocked. You really think it's somehow different than the monkey scenario if the humans are making the same choices?

Yes, I think it's very different. First of all these aren't moral decisions, they are reflexes. Real life is vastly different. Hard moral decisions oftentimes require us to clearly oppose our most cherished opinons, most deeply ingrained intuitions (or else they don't count as such). I ask you, what kind of moral decisions could you be thinking of if they don't require the highest level of difficulty and the highest level of human intellection?

A decision to wage all out war, for example, that would costs millions of individual lives, such a decision, if we were to rely upon your logic, would only require the simplest level of patriotic furor and jingoism!! Isn't this true?

I didn't say it's by simply existing. We are all naturally ambulatory by having functional legs, not by simply existing. We see by having functional eyes, not by simply existing. But our legs don't only walk -- they can jump and kick; and our eyes can express emotion. Our brains are wired to do many things -- one of them is moral thought, which is what I'm talking about. Another one is to analytically discuss and debate moral thought, which is what we're doing in this thread.

I agree that morality or virtue is innate. But I don't believe that untutored people are or should be responsible for making profound decisions. Such people, as are want to be generally illiterate, seem to me to be precisely the ones who posess the most contemptible social pathologies. (Such as leaning in prayer to a stone, erect, penis when there are free libraries of books located in each of their cities to teach them the art of meteorology, for example. [That's meant to be a fertillity joke, that is not really a joke] )

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Pythagorean

Your position, as I see it, is not that moral decision making is innate to us, your position is that making sound or good or making the right moral decisions are what is innate to us.

This isn't an either/or, because my position (which I've derived from reading research on the subject) is that we're not entirely a blank slate when it comes to actual moral choices. We ARE inclined towards benevolence and disinclined towards violence. Read the article I linked.

This doesn't mean we always make good decisions, and it doesn't mean that a moral instinct cannot be overridden by other competing priorities (whether irrational or rational). But it does mean that we're not equally inclined towards morally good or bad decisions unless taught otherwise. We don't default to murder and violence in the absence of education.

I would ask you this: why is it, do you say, that there is a minimum age restriction placed upon high office?

You're losing me here... I'm not saying that we are knowledgeable, mature, experienced, trained, literate, or capable of complex cognition from birth. These develop over time. But disinclination towards violence IS innate. Hence the example of the survey done of kindergartners in the article I've linked.

Yes, I think it's very different. First of all these aren't moral decisions, they are reflexes. Real life is vastly different.

How do you come to the conclusion that it's a reflex for a monkey but it's real life for us? Is that based on a biological conclusion about the cognitive capacities of a monkey (which greatly exceed 'reflexes'?) Or is that based on some kind of anthropocentric assumption that the living universe naturally divides into humans and not humans?

Hard moral decisions oftentimes require us to clearly oppose our most cherished opinons, most deeply ingrained intuitions (or else they don't count as such).

True. But not all moral decisions are hard, and all moral decisions are moral.

I ask you, what kind of moral decisions could you be thinking of if they don't require the highest level of difficulty and the highest level of human intellection?

Hmm, well, I held the elevator door for an old woman in the hospital yesterday even though I was in a hurry. And a couple weeks ago someone almost blindsided me with their car because they were changing lanes without seeing me, but instead of giving them the finger (my first inclination) I waved at them that it was ok. And I tipped a crappy waitress a while back even though she didn't do a good job, but I know that they're paid terrible wages and they need to survive on tips. MANY moral decisions have low stakes and low complexity, yet are still moral.

A decision to wage all out war, for example, that would costs millions of individual lives, such a decision, if we were to rely upon your logic, would only require the simplest level of patriotic furor and jingoism!! Isn't this true?

Are you exaggerating just to make a point? Because this isn't by any stretch what I'm talking about. A decision to wage all out war is not really a moral decision unless you're Hitler and you're doing it without consideration for anything else. War is a strategic decision that has moral implications, including weighing complex morals against one another, but it also has innumerable NON-moral components.

I NEVER EVER said that we are born knowing all that one needs to know to make complex decisions. And since we are not capable of truly abstract thought until pre-adolescence, the morality of a complex decision might not be evident to a younger child. But this is not inconsistent with my position that we ARE innately moral and inclined towards what we would consider good moral decisions.

I agree that morality or virtue is innate.

Then what's the deal with all that I've been responding to up above? That's all I've been saying.

But I don't believe that untutored people are or should be responsible for making profound decisions.

And I never said that we're born knowing how to fly an airplane or replace a heart valve.

Such people, as are want to be generally illiterate, seem to me to be precisely the ones who posess the most contemptible social pathologies.

Hmmm, do we need to search the archives of highly educated people with contemptible social pathologies? And do we quickly ignore the VAST majority of people in this world who are uneducated and illiterate who seem to care for one another, raise families, do their jobs, and go about their lives without harming people? I'm not sure literacy (for instance) correlates so cleanly with social pathology (though I'll grant you that psychiatric and substance problems will lead to BOTH social pathology and poor educational status).

[Arjen]

Originally Posted by Pythagorean

Yes, Arjen. That's about right. That is how I would interpret survival of the fittest.

Would you also agree with me then that science and religion take the same place in the question of which animal/species is the fittest? Namely that of rulebase?

[Pythagorean]

Aedes,

Since I can't really see a way forward, I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree on this subject. If you have any additional thoughts I would certainly give them my consideration.

Thanks

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[Pythagorean]

Arjen,

I don't see how religion comes into the picture. Survival of the fittest doens't seem to me like an idea that western religions would associate themselves with. Or else maybe I'm not fully comprehending you somehow.

But I would say, as I've stated previously that the scientific, pragmatic, positivistic perspective doesn't seem very far from the usual connotations of survival of the fittest.

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