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Biotech

Journal Morosoph's Journal: On Evolution and Morality 21

Journal by Morosoph
In response to a .sig that I felt was simply wrong:

Real evolutionists get their morals from their biology textbooks.

I felt the need to respond:

Quick question: how do you deduce anything about morality from a physical mechanism?

Knowledge of underlying mechansims can help us to solve problems, but it doesn't affect the moral standards by which we judge our solutions, surely?

Besides, bringing up a moral dimension of evolutionary teaching is like saying that free markets cannot work because they rely upon people pursuing their perceived interests, which is morally wrong, so that they must not be believed to work.

Now I know that is isn't quite that simple, but penguinoid raised a different point: that evolution undermines religion. I should probably have pointed out that the Europeans don't view it that way, and in particular the Catholic Church, but instead I pointed out how atheists get to grow up to have meaningful values, as well as responding this:

First, your parallel is a bit off. The purpose of the free market is to use people's greed for the benefit of everyone, and I'm sure you will find that noone believes that people are all saints. What the free market does do is encourage such greedy behavior, by making it socially acceptable and outcompeting those that are not looking out for #1. This is indeed a moral issue with the free market, which should be taken into account when deciding if it is superior to the other alternatives. However, I am sure the alternatives have issues as well.

Well, briefly, the free market has no purpose. What could be a better illustration of the ID supporter's slides of thought?

All of this, I'm afraid, is another reminder of the increasingly prevalent view that language is reality.

Footnote: I was a bit hard on penguinoid (re: markets), as my language wasn't as precise as it could have been.

Nonetheless, more generally, the search for a first cause does have a tendency to infer meaning and intent from emergent "purpose".

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On Evolution and Morality More

On Evolution and Morality

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  • Markets exist to maximize efficient utilization of resources.

    They aren't always themselves very efficient to this end, but that's their purpose. The degree to which they to accomplish this goal can be said to be their degree of success.

    • Markets exist to maximize efficient utilization of resources.

      I disagree. Markets are what you get when people freely exchange goods and services; they have no purpose, although they serve many of our purposes, as that is the use that we make of them.

      Efficiency is a property that we read into markets with varying degrees of regulation, but the market exists before such measures take place. Efficiency is a measure of how well the market meets our purposes, but that is not the purpose of the market it

      • Epistemologically and ontologically speaking you are correct, but that's not a very interesting observation. The same could be said of ANY abstract thing.
        *shrug*
        • Maybe, and then maybe I'm wrong. I have long discussions with a neo-Hegelian about the whether 'essences' are real, and yes actually, I think that they are. They are however emergent, rather than 'Platonic' in nature.

          I didn't mean to be obtuse; the context of my JE is one centred around evolution, so lurking behind the discussion is the question as to whether there is a purposer.

      • I disagree. Markets are what you get when people freely exchange goods and services; they have no purpose, although they serve many of our purposes, as that is the use that we make of them.

        Markets exist because we made them. We made markets to benefit ourselves; since some people value one thing more than another, they trade the one thing for the other and are both better off.
        • Markets exist because we made them. We made markets to benefit ourselves; since some people value one thing more than another, they trade the one thing for the other and are both better off.
          Au Contraire! We made trades; markets, the laws of supply and demand... These are emergent.
          • Markets are emergent, not supply and demand.

            As long as I have skills that someone else does not, there is supply and demand. There is nothing emergent about it, that is just the facts that describe reality.

            That I trade the fruit of my skills for the fruit of someone else's skills may be emergent, but to call it so is not interesting since it may very well be necessary for sheer survival that such trades occur.

            That we then develop "markets" to facilitate trading IS emergent.

            • As long as I have skills that someone else does not, there is supply and demand. There is nothing emergent about it, that is just the facts that describe reality.

              Sorry. I meant the "law" of supply and demand. That is, how prices emerge, or the rate of exchange, in the absence of money. You are quite right: supply and demand are simple reality, however the rate of exchange follows from the dynamics of supply and demand, rather than just from their presence.

              Although it is something that we do collec

  • There is a great deal about morality in biology textbooks. It's about behavior in other species, several levels of description above "physical process." One can see that lots of species and even ecologies comprising multiple species have worked out rules of behavior that are more or less in the best possible interests of all. These rules arise quite naturally without any top-down design, and so they have no "purpose" and are subject to change.

    For our own species, are we really all that different? Yes,

    • I agree with you entirely, but I'm going to be nauseously pendantic :p

      Biology, in particular theories of evolving co-operation [google.com] help explain the values we have, but they're not the source for them, are they?

      • Then I don't understand what you mean by "the source." I always thought that salient characteristic of emergent properties is that they don't have(and don't require) a source.

        • Then I don't understand what you mean by "the source." I always thought that salient characteristic of emergent properties is that they don't have(and don't require) a source.

          Ah... I posted this article in response to this .sig:

          Real evolutionists get their morals from their biology textbooks.

          What you wrote is entirely right; I was simply pointing out (lest a careless reader miss the point) that a biological explanation of ethics is not synonymous with "getting morals from their biology textbooks

  • Now I know that is isn't quite that simple, but penguinoid raised a different point: that evolution undermines religion. I should probably have pointed out that the Europeans don't view it that way, and in particular the Catholic Church,

    To some extent. I don't think you can fit evolution, the statement "God created man", and Occam's Razor together in any way. I don't see why this would be any different in Europe, and I don't care what the Pope says.

    Well, briefly, the free market has no purpose.

    I would arg

    • To some extent. I don't think you can fit evolution, the statement "God created man", and Occam's Razor together in any way. I don't see why this would be any different in Europe, and I don't care what the Pope says.

      The Pope and his minions view the role of god very differently - as a personal guide, and a creator of the laws of the universe. Nurture, not nature, IFAICT. I agree that "God created Man" is a difficult one to square, but then maybe man was bound to come about given this universe? It's n

  • Duh (Score:2)

    by Elrac ( 314784 )
    I'd like to agree with you, but I'm afraid I didn't understand the original post. Was there a message, and did it have meaning? Perhaps I shouldn't be reading SlashDot at 2 am.

    • This [slashdot.org] was my first post.

      What I was trying to say is that evolution is a physical mechanism, and it's a mistake to confound what is and what ought to be. Evolutionary theory does not justify selfish or gene-centred action, unless we've already decided that such action is "good".

      Yeah, it's 1:00 am here. I need to go to bed myself!

      • I read all your comments here and I got very curious. European civilisations from Greek via Latin to early 20 c have been formed deeply influenced in human-centrism, the thought existing many entities are made from human perspective. That thought was almost died out in Europe but still in America, some people cannot steer clear of the culture formed in precentury. Human-centrism. You are entirely distinguished from all American pals here in this discussion.
        • When I follow the debate upon our origins, I see this strain to be extremely strong.

          To me it appears as almost a kind of arrogance: why would we be the centre of the universe? Wouldn't any creator look at the whole ecosystem, rather than just the apparent 'top dog'? If the creator was only interested in humanity, doesn't that imbue 'him' with arbitrary values, to pick only one species as the measure of everything? If the greatest creation is the measure of value, as opposed to the whole of creation, i

          • Christianity, existentialism are human-centristic. Structuralism is anti-egocentristic.

            Anthropocentrism means both human-centrism (good) and egocentrism (bad), I don't want to assert the superiority of one thought than another, so I carefully used the term 'human-centrism'.

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