Welllllllll....I think you're giving us a lot of cleverness wrapped in hyperbole. I mean, really, aren't your own biases leaking through just a bit much?
Slamming humanity for all the bad actors in the past, and talking about moral arguments at all, really, doesn't address what this thread is all about. Nor does it address the arguments from what, for lack of a better term, we've been calling classical ID theory.
Ultimately, I agree that part of the reason behind ID theory has always been to assert a moral philosophy (a religious viewpoint, even) into a science. And, to some extent ID's proponents have a point about there being a moral philosophy underpinning evolutionary thought.
What I think Tom Curtis was saying is something far more concrete and, actually, more correct. That ID proponents are always going to be around because there are always going to be gaps in evolutionary thought. I think it's only PARTIALLY because we lack full knowledge. I mean, really, if that were the ONLY thing wrong with evolutionary theory, people would probably be content to take a more wait and see attitude.
I think the bigger problem with evolutionary theory is its abuse by people who ought to know better. Specifically, because of the power of the concept of evolution, some in the field have gone forward with speculations about all sorts of stuff that goes well beyond the data. And, there's a role for that in science, but where things go haywire is when the proposed explanations are later taught as accepted truth.
That makes evolution into a belief, a dogma, instead of a scientific theory. The ID folks really do have a point there. And it's too darn bad that the criticism is even partially true. It invites the kind of squabbling that we've ended up with. In popularizing the concept, people forgot to teach that some unknowns still exist.
To me, that stiffles a lot of really good things. Kids might think we know everything there is to know in Biology and thus steer clear from studying it. That'd be a shame, I think.
Also, if teachers approach it as dogma, instead of as a very powerful theory with a good record of success in explaining observable phenomena, I think the effect is to dampen creativity and it's a lost opportunity to learn about how a living science really works.
I don't think teaching ID as a counter theory is the right way to address that particular set of problems. It might help in some aspects (like teaching people what a theory really IS and is NOT in science), but I think we'd be better served in teaching something about the gaps in evolution, and about the reasons why most practioners in the field believe it to be true, but are still working to test its predictions.
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Kagehi, you have gone way beyond what I am saying. I am not particularly worried about the religious motivations of ID advocates and creationists. There are good scientists with similar motivations; and there are atheists who are scientists who are just as bad in the converse direction. Very few of them confuse their ideology with their science, but some definitely do, and some (such as Dawkins) only avoid doing so by subtle distinctions which get lost in popular exposition.
I emphatically reject the notion that humans are not special. They are nothing special in terms of biology. It is true that they have an amazing adaption in terms of cognitive ability and language, but biologically these are no more exceptional than is sonar or navigation by migratory birds, and so on.
But humans are special in moral terms. They are unique, so far as we can tell, in that they alone on Earth are capable of moral agency. Creationists and IDists are motivated by the fallacy that because humans are morally special, therefore their origin must in some way be special also. But the argument that human origins are not special, therefore they are not morally special is also a fallacy.
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quote:What I think Tom Curtis was saying is something far more concrete and, actually, more correct. That ID proponents are always going to be around because there are always going to be gaps in evolutionary thought. I think it's only PARTIALLY because we lack full knowledge. I mean, really, if that were the ONLY thing wrong with evolutionary theory, people would probably be content to take a more wait and see attitude.
I think the bigger problem with evolutionary theory is its abuse by people who ought to know better. Specifically, because of the power of the concept of evolution, some in the field have gone forward with speculations about all sorts of stuff that goes well beyond the data. And, there's a role for that in science, but where things go haywire is when the proposed explanations are later taught as accepted truth.
Speculations that go well beyond the data breakdown into three sorts. First, scientists with new theories often present them to the media and in popular books in a manner which suggests the ideas are much more certain than they are. This is human nature. The scientific community responds to such excesses with damning reviews in science journals, and (if the theory is important enough), no holds barred criticism in yet more popular books.
This is not a problem with science. It is a problem with human nature, and as such is prevelant in all disciplines and belief systems. Science is distinctive in this respect only in that the criticisms tend to be more immediate, robust and cogent. It is a problem for science education, in that few people are scientifically literate enough to distinguish wild speculation from sober theory. It is definitely a problem in science journalism, where journalists would rather report shaky, but controversial theories than solid, ground breaking science. It is also a problem in anti-evolutionists, who take such examples as representing the entire field, while scrupulously ignoring the rebutalls.
The second way in which speculation goes well beyond the data are in "just so" stories. What is ignored is that "just so" stories are a first step in scientific enquiry. They are elaborate scenarios to flesh out an idea in order to elaborate falsifiable predictions. They are not unique to evolutionary theory. The most elaborate "just so" story in modern science is "string theory" which after 15 years of elaboration is still to produce a falsifiable prediction. The most famous "just so" story was Einsteins thought experiment that lead to Special Relativity, or possibly Schroedinger's Cat. Again, they are not a problem with science because they are not typically taught in textbooks or classrooms. And when discussed, they are treated as one of several views (which invariably they are when the need to be taught). Again, this is only a problem because critics ignore they whole of the literature; and the role that just so stories play in science.
The third way in which speculation goes well beyond the data is when science exposition is used to illustrate or inform philosophical or religous views. A panoply of famous Darwinists have done this, including Gould and Dawkins. Typically they are carefull to distinguish between the science which illustrates or informs the view, but does not justify it, and the philosophical view itself. But sometimes they are not as carefull as they should be and their readers are often less so.
Again this is not a problem for science. Atheists, agnostics, theists and pantheists are all entitled to their philosophical views; and their views will naturally be informed by their knowledge base. The suposition that Dawkins, for example, should not write books in support of his Atheism which draw support from science, or that his expositions of science should not mention his atheism amounts to an insistence that scientists should not be allowed to be citizens. In fact, it is a distorted prohibition. No one raised a furore about Fritjoff Capra's "Tao of Physics". No one objects to Christians writting works in which the works of nature are used to illustrate "God's glory". We don't have a problem with creationists because they use science to illustrate or inform their theism. We have a problem because they want to substitute pseudo-science in place of science. But Christians object strenously to open admissions of atheism by popular science writers. What is more, even reasonable Darwinist Christians describe as objectionable writtings such as "The Blind Watchmaker". The problem here is clearly not that some scientists are atheists, and admit it; but that many theists are incapable of saying, It is your opinion, and I disagree; but you were entitled to express it.
So, I don't think there is a problem with the abuse of evolutionary theory. Not that it doesn't happen. It does, occassionaly. Not more often than abuse of physics or even mathematics (think of Godel's theorem). It happens far less frequently than, for example the abuse of sociology, psychology (think of "The Bell Curve), or economics. I do think that there are a lot of people who lack perspective on the issue; often and most vocally because they are pushing a distorted science motivated by theism. (And I am not including Bob, or anyone else here in that number.)
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Tom, I agree with everything you say except when you say it is NOT a problem for science. It causes HUGE problems for science. Among which are:
1) Scientists still having to address theories that were dead before Darwin even published Origen
2) Spreading ignorance of the masses is never a good thing for science. Decision makers (school board members, legislators) are, in essence, part of those ignorant masses. It'd be a bit more difficult to create accurate impressions of scientific information and theories, but the benefits to science, and our society are worth it.
3) Funding. Every dollar spent teaching ID in science curricula is a dollar that could've been spent doing something about the woeful lack of knowledge about science. Every fight over ID or Creationism is, rather than an opportunity to educate, more like an opportunity to polarize. Perpetuation of the silly stereotype of scientist = God hating atheist.
4) I was serious about turning potential students off. I know that if I had felt we knew everything about the human mind I wouldn't have gone in Psychology.
but hey, I'm worried you might be thinking I disagree with you. I don't.
I just that that scientists suffer for this stuff in ways that might not be readily apparent.
In point of fact, evolutionary biology suffers dramatically if the general public starts to see that science as a dogmatic realm populated by people who will stomp unbelievers into the dust.
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Thanks Dag. I know you've read Finding Darwin's God. I was wondering if you felt like Miller's last 1/3 of the book (the theology part) was satisfying. I kind of felt like what he gave was more of a meta-theology, as in "I know it can't look like this...maybe it could look something like this over here..." but I felt he really could've used help from a solid theologian.
I'd be interested in your take on that both as a devout Catholic and well...just 'cuz.
I personally find the "evolutionary framework" to be a powerful way to give shorthand explanations for processes involving change over time in response to external factors.
Sadly, that's as far as it goes. Evolutionary biology is a robust science with both quantiative and qualitative research/observation to back it up.
Social darwinism, and all the other "petty darwinisms" are just arguments from analogy, and, as is pretty typical with such things, the analogy breaks down into a muddled mess if/when carried to too great an extent.
It's like the analogical models of the mind. "it's a computer..." "it's a switchboard..."
Well, it ain't.
Oh well...I wasn't referring to social darwinists in any of my previous posts because I tend to give them no thought whatsoever.
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quote:Thanks Dag. I know you've read Finding Darwin's God. I was wondering if you felt like Miller's last 1/3 of the book (the theology part) was satisfying.
I actually haven't. It's on a very long list of books I know I should read but haven't gotten around to. I'm on Chesterton now.
On a different topic, has there been much study of something I'll call "evolutionary design" (I have no idea if there's a "real" name for this)?
By this, I mean things that are clearly designed, such as computer programs, but that have been changed by intelligence over a long period of time - each iteration resulting in a functional (for some definition of the "functional") entity?
Prior to software, there were few individual entities that could be heavily modified. Buildings might be altered, but there's a limit to how much and for how long that can be done.
Whereas programs can be altered and "reproduced" at the same time. The parallel is even stronger when you consider that programs are almost all information that controls what other things do, much as DNA does.
Have there been any scientific studies about how one would differentiate between selected random evolution and evolutionary design?
(Note: I don't propose that God used iterative design to make animals and people. I just find the parallels fascinating.)
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quote: I emphatically reject the notion that humans are not special.
"Unique" might be a more neutral term to use than "special".
quote:So, I don't think there is a problem with the abuse of evolutionary theory.
That's kind of surprising. What if that sort of "abuse" or over-interpretation is used as a justification for some grandiose ideological argument?
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Bob, I assume you don't think I was supporting the exposition of ID. So the problem for science is the view of science that the general public gains if they get a distorted view of popular science writting, or of how science actually works. And that is the key point, it is a distorted view. For every Richard Dawkins there is a John Polkinghorne; for every Daniel Dennett, there is Dennis Lamaroux; for every Stephen Jay Gould, there is a Robert Bakker or a Simon Conway Morris.
So if the public gets the impression that science is a "dogmatic realm populated by people who stomp unbelievers into dust", it is because the many theistic scientists don't write well enough, or don't get the publicity they deserve, or don't write the books they should. Frankly, to answer a question directed to someone else, I did enjoy the last third of "Finding Darwin's God". It was the best part, IMO, and I'm an atheist. The answer to the Dawkins of this world is not to stomp on them and stop them writting, but to get the Christians to write enjoyable, interesting popular expositions of science in which their Christian belief is clearly reflected. The same goes for expositions of speculative scientific theories. Don't stop the expositions, but make the alternate views as readilly available.
The problem with requiring science writters to conform particular standards which exclude religious discussion or speculation is that it gives exactly the wrong impression of science. Science procedes by the ferment of ideas. It is because scienists violently disagree with each other, and will move heaven and earth to find a recalcitrant fact to demolish theories they don't like that science progresses. Keeping all that ferment of ideas away from the public will only mean it will only come into view when pseudo-scientists quote it out of context in their attack on science.
However, I do of course agree that problems are created for science by the publication of speculations without proper restraint. But it is not a problem in science, but a problem in society about their expectations of scientists. I think we agree on the symptons, but disagree on the diagnosis and cure.
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quote:"Unique" might be a more neutral term to use than "special".
Venus fly traps are unique. What I definitly meant is special. There are moral considerations we owe to humans that we do not owe to any other known species. What is more, the presence of humans makes the universe valuable in a way that no other Earthly life does.
quote:That's kind of surprising. What if that sort of "abuse" or over-interpretation is used as a justification for some grandiose ideological argument?
When that happens, the proper responce is to write very public reviews that clearly indicate what is well supported science, what is speculation, and what is philosophy in the book. You might well want to condemn the author for not distinguishing adequately between the three (if he didn't), but you should not condemn him for speculating or for philosophising. If anything, you should make it quite clear that it was his right to speculate (as a scientist), and his right to philosophize (as a citizen), and expound on the roles of each in science.
The problem, such as it has been, is not that speculative books have been written, but that too much of the responce to them has been not easilly accessible to the public.
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I think that's a fine view. I was thinking more in terms of folks that on the one hand criticize popular science-writing (flawed as it is), but on the other hand use it to prop up and justify their broad rationales for this or that ("this or that" = petty concerns, social change, whathaveyou depending on the author).
Also, by "ferment" in your previous post, I think you might have meant "foment".
Thanks. I agree that their is a problem of people who do use the criticism of popular science presentations as a means to argue for their own pet projects. In fact, we are beset with such problems, but you already know my solution.
I did actually mean "ferment", as in the process whereby yeast breeds in low oxygen environments producing alcohol as a byproduct. It was a metaphore. I looked up "foment" which means "to apply warm liquids to the surface of", and yes it to is a good metaphore. Possibly I misheard the second, and settled on the first. But a google search on "ferment of ideas" yeilds 9000 results, compared to just 127 for "foment of ideas".
Which do you recommend I use in future?
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quote:Originally posted by Tom Curtis: But humans are special in moral terms. They are unique, so far as we can tell, in that they alone on Earth are capable of moral agency. Creationists and IDists are motivated by the fallacy that because humans are morally special, therefore their origin must in some way be special also. But the argument that human origins are not special, therefore they are not morally special is also a fallacy.
No we are not. This is a popular mythology. There are dozens of research projects into animal behaviour that give lie to the idea that we are somehow moral while everything else isn't. There is nothing from any of that research implying that morals are solely a human domain and even less indicating that animals don't learn moral behaviour from each other, instead of functioning on pure instinct. This isn't *my* bias, this is simple fact. The last vestige of resistance some people have to the reality that we are not any *better* than anything else, beyond being better able to invent.
I am sure with enough time I could find many others that put a bullet in the idea that humans have something called morals and animals don't. But heck.. Before you *find* morals in an animal, you have to first assume there are some to look for, and unfortunately most scientists are Christians and this is one range of behaviours that there is a long track record of their religious bias making most of them, until fairly recently, insist they where not seeing it. Its simply another one of those God of the gaps situations, "Insert something special here!", where the gap has started to rapidly close. Like many misconceptions, including the concept held for over 50 years of similarly biased research that birds are all perfect visions of monogamy, and overturned by better tracking methods, this one is getting its legs cut out from under it. Its hardly my bias or my fault that once again the universe doesn't conform to what some people *want* it to be.
In fact, one theology site talking about the reciprosity issue started with, "I am not saying they are moral *like us*..." Uh, huh. As long as that's clear, we can all ignore the implications...
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Well...even if the differences between humans and animals are ALL matters of degree, they are ALL still there. I think it's a mistake to say that because some animals show evidence of some behaviors that humans do habitually, there's no difference between humans and animals. Tool use monkeys is probably a great example: sure, some monkeys make and use tools in specific tasks and pass that knowledge on to their offspring, but monkey tool use and tool use by humans are not the same.
If mankind disappeared, and someone came back a few million years in the future to see what the earth's critters were up to, it might well be that there'd be LOTS of technology around, but it'd take that time. Just like it did when humans evolved as tool users.
Some of that stuff really DOES depend on mental capacity -- whether we have good measures of mental functioning or not.
To me, this is exactly the KIND of result, btw, that one would expect if evolution explains things better than an ID theory. Capabilities and capacities that are present throughout the animal kingdom may get more or less expression depending on historical circumstances during the evolution of a particular species. And humans got an extra dose of few things like associative cortex, communication, small-group cohesiveness, and so on.
I'd be much more surprised to learn that humans shared none of their "defining" characteristics with other animals. That, to me, would simply scream out "special creation" for humankind.
And I don't for a minute believe in "special creation" for any species.
I believe that there's a special "something" between God and man. How it got there, and what the nature of it is, exactly, is getting into the realm of theology, so I'd rather leave that for a different thread.
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Kagehi, I want to make two points in responce to your argument.
The first is that even if we recognise a moral capacity in animals, the moral capacity in humans is so much more highly developed that that in itself makes them special. The same thing applies to our epistemic capacity. Certainly all animals are capable of coming to know certain things; but the epistemic capacity of humans is so great in comparison that that of animals pales in comparison.
This does not of itself make humans special, as opposed to unique, until you add in the factor of the good of knowledge. Knowledge is inherently good. Seeking knowledge is always worthwhile for its own sake. So we might note that cheetahs are faster than humans, and humans better knowers than cheetahs; and run the argument that each is unique and neither special. But we would be wrong to do so, for knowledge is an inherent good in a way that speed is not. And because of that, the greater capacity of knowing makes humans not just unique but special. The same point can be made of aesthetics; and above all, the same point can be made of morality.
This means that even on its home ground, your argument is flawed. Specifically, it reallies on a hidden philosophical premise that the moral value (or rational value) of the ability to act morally, and the ability to run fast, or see well, or camouflage yourself (and so for all the many areas in which different animals are better than humans) are the same. That premise is false, indeed, absurd. And what is more, regardless of whether you agree with me on this point, it is philosophical. So your conclusion is not a conclusion that follows from science.
(I may be wrong on this premise. You may be asserting that the moral capacity of some other animals is equal to the moral capacity of humans, a claim which is absurd on its face with respect to most animals, and prima facie false with respect to the possible exceptions such as dolphins.)
The second point is that you are simply confused as to what is meant by "moral", and the examples you provide are not primary examples of moral behaviour. Specifically, morality is a type of ethic, that is a stipulative set of rules (or value system) that guides behaviour. Moral systems are distinct from other ethical systems in that (at a minimum) they must be universalisable. They must satisfy Kant's dictum that no principle is an element of moral law unless it can be coherently universally acted upon.
One of the interesting things about humans is that they can act on the basis of moral principles (ie, universalisable ethics) because they are moral principles. In one example that is close to my heart, a man opposed an unjust system to the advantage of people who were not his immediate neighbours, or closely related to him with the consequence that he was banned; ie, that if he met more than two of his relatives at the same time, he was liable for imprisonment, and that if he met some particular of his relatives including at least one of his sons, and one of his daughters, both he and they would have been liable for imprisonment. He did this because it was the right thing to do, because the system he opposed was "morally wrong".
Now, my claim is that no animal (other than humans) has ever, or is capable of acting on that sort of principle. It is a distinctive capacity of humans, and is the most special thing about them.
What science has shown is that other animals can and do act in ways which coincidentally coincide with what would be moral behaviour. But it has also shown, were it has been capable of determining it, that basis of that animal behaviour has never been moral.
I am not claiming that the antecedents of this capacity cannot be found in animals. They can be. This capacity is a consequence of sociality, high linguistic ability, a definite sense of self, and the ability to reason abstractly. All of these are possessed either completely or at a rudimentary level by at least some animals. But only humans possess the whole package, so only humans are capable of morality.
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quote:Originally posted by Bob_Scopatz: Well...even if the differences between humans and animals are ALL matters of degree, they are ALL still there. I think it's a mistake to say that because some animals show evidence of some behaviors that humans do habitually, there's no difference between humans and animals. Tool use monkeys is probably a great example: sure, some monkeys make and use tools in specific tasks and pass that knowledge on to their offspring, but monkey tool use and tool use by humans are not the same.
If mankind disappeared, and someone came back a few million years in the future to see what the earth's critters were up to, it might well be that there'd be LOTS of technology around, but it'd take that time. Just like it did when humans evolved as tool users.
Some of that stuff really DOES depend on mental capacity -- whether we have good measures of mental functioning or not.
To me, this is exactly the KIND of result, btw, that one would expect if evolution explains things better than an ID theory. Capabilities and capacities that are present throughout the animal kingdom may get more or less expression depending on historical circumstances during the evolution of a particular species. And humans got an extra dose of few things like associative cortex, communication, small-group cohesiveness, and so on.
I'd be much more surprised to learn that humans shared none of their "defining" characteristics with other animals. That, to me, would simply scream out "special creation" for humankind.
And I don't for a minute believe in "special creation" for any species.
I believe that there's a special "something" between God and man. How it got there, and what the nature of it is, exactly, is getting into the realm of theology, so I'd rather leave that for a different thread.
See, I agree with everything up to the last paragraph, since to me there is no evidence to suggest that anything we define as gods are real things, so the only reasonable "special something" we might have is that of child and imaginary friend. Certainly more than, as far as we know, any animal can achieve, but hardly grounds to claim the sort of special status we do. But as you said, its an issue for a different discussion.
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quote:Originally posted by Tom Curtis: Kagehi, I want to make two points in responce to your argument.
The first is that even if we recognise a moral capacity in animals, the moral capacity in humans is so much more highly developed that that in itself makes them special. The same thing applies to our epistemic capacity. Certainly all animals are capable of coming to know certain things; but the epistemic capacity of humans is so great in comparison that that of animals pales in comparison.
This does not of itself make humans special, as opposed to unique, until you add in the factor of the good of knowledge. Knowledge is inherently good. Seeking knowledge is always worthwhile for its own sake. So we might note that cheetahs are faster than humans, and humans better knowers than cheetahs; and run the argument that each is unique and neither special. But we would be wrong to do so, for knowledge is an inherent good in a way that speed is not. And because of that, the greater capacity of knowing makes humans not just unique but special. The same point can be made of aesthetics; and above all, the same point can be made of morality.
This means that even on its home ground, your argument is flawed. Specifically, it reallies on a hidden philosophical premise that the moral value (or rational value) of the ability to act morally, and the ability to run fast, or see well, or camouflage yourself (and so for all the many areas in which different animals are better than humans) are the same. That premise is false, indeed, absurd. And what is more, regardless of whether you agree with me on this point, it is philosophical. So your conclusion is not a conclusion that follows from science.
(I may be wrong on this premise. You may be asserting that the moral capacity of some other animals is equal to the moral capacity of humans, a claim which is absurd on its face with respect to most animals, and prima facie false with respect to the possible exceptions such as dolphins.)
The second point is that you are simply confused as to what is meant by "moral", and the examples you provide are not primary examples of moral behaviour. Specifically, morality is a type of ethic, that is a stipulative set of rules (or value system) that guides behaviour. Moral systems are distinct from other ethical systems in that (at a minimum) they must be universalisable. They must satisfy Kant's dictum that no principle is an element of moral law unless it can be coherently universally acted upon.
One of the interesting things about humans is that they can act on the basis of moral principles (ie, universalisable ethics) because they are moral principles. In one example that is close to my heart, a man opposed an unjust system to the advantage of people who were not his immediate neighbours, or closely related to him with the consequence that he was banned; ie, that if he met more than two of his relatives at the same time, he was liable for imprisonment, and that if he met some particular of his relatives including at least one of his sons, and one of his daughters, both he and they would have been liable for imprisonment. He did this because it was the right thing to do, because the system he opposed was "morally wrong".
Now, my claim is that no animal (other than humans) has ever, or is capable of acting on that sort of principle. It is a distinctive capacity of humans, and is the most special thing about them.
What science has shown is that other animals can and do act in ways which coincidentally coincide with what would be moral behaviour. But it has also shown, were it has been capable of determining it, that basis of that animal behaviour has never been moral.
I am not claiming that the antecedents of this capacity cannot be found in animals. They can be. This capacity is a consequence of sociality, high linguistic ability, a definite sense of self, and the ability to reason abstractly. All of these are possessed either completely or at a rudimentary level by at least some animals. But only humans possess the whole package, so only humans are capable of morality.
Hmm. Lets cover this one at a time:
1. Moral capacity being more developed. I am not so sure of that. When confronted with things we don't know how to deal with or challenge our percieved position in the world we don't think at all, we act instinctively. There was research done during the last presidential election that showed this. Those who where strict democrats and those who where strict republicans *both* universally, when confronted with contradictory statements about their candidate showed brain scans that involved critical judgement when dealing with the canditate they apposed. When confronted with similar statements about their own candidate, the scans showed that all the critical thinking centers of the brain shut off, and the emotional ones activated. Faced with an attack on the *group*, they reacted by instinctual emotions, instead of logic. A species with a more advanced moral system wouldn't do that.
I see the same thing with epistemic ability. Confronted with contradictions to the fundamental "group" people belong to they stop thinking critically and just attack the challenger. While it is true we have greater capacity to understand, it doesn't automatically follow that we "will" know, if knowing something threatens some basic social norm, group belief or social system that frames the structure of ones own social group.
2. Interesting how often that "despite" my agreement that knowledge for its own sake is a good thing, the more ridged the structure someone grows up in, the more likely they are to reject this and declare some or even all forms of knowledge anethema. Again, what challenges the groups social structure is attacked, without regard to "if" its useful or the consequence of banning it is self destructive.
3. No, your misunderstanding me. I don't mean that humans are not better in many ways, just that we can't delude ourselves into thinking that being better doesn't mean we don't make similarly bad judgements and mistakes as animals. The last few hundred years we have shifted the structure of society, at least in most of the world, to one that emphasizes the persuit of knowledge. Prior to that fear of knowledge and the dogmatic declaration that anything that apposed the group had to be destroyed was the prevailing system. But many of the belief systems and structures that overlay the old world are still present and they react to such knowledge in precisely the same way they always did, by defending territory, snapping at anything that comes to close to the edges of their systems and trying to kill what ever gets to close. This is animalistic behaviour, not advanced morality or logic.
Thing is, I think I societies are more complex, we have the capacity, though it often goes unused, for understanding far more nuance and we build far more complex sets of rules. All this is true. What isn't true is that those systems are any more flawless, any less prone to mistakes, less arbitrary in many cases, ect. than what an animal might come up with. Just because you can build an oak table doesn't mean its always inherently more valid that simply using a flat rock, especially if you insist on ignoring common sense and haul the table around every place you go, so you don't have to look for a flat rock. Complex doesn't mean better. In some cases it can mean you need to rethink things.
5. Please, show me a univerally moral concept. No, come to think of it, lets not go there, I already spent a week of my life watching other people argue that point, only to have it revert to a case of the pro-universality guy proclaiming over and over, "Its universal because I say so!", and the other guy unsuccessfully pointing out numerous inconsistencies with the idea that every thing the other guy brought up was actually universal to everyone. At best all he managed to do is point out 2-3 cases where societies "generally" agree, but no case where they universally agreed on where the lines should be drawn between, "It is OK when..., but not when..." That is hardly universal, unless you use the ID tactic of redefining universal to mean, "roughly similar, with noted exceptions". Heck, the most morally relativistic people I know are usually the ones following some literalist version of a holy book. Why? Because someone that obsessed with literalism *must* find justifications for *everything* they do in their book, and the first time you have to twist it into a pretzel to justify something, it becomes that much easier to bend it the next time. Result - Everything you want is justifyable, everything you don't is condemnable and supposed universal morals go out the window.
I general I think we agree on the data, just not the interpretation. What you see as true differences, I see as a secondary symptom of being able to build complex systems of rules and our need to justify those as somehow superior. Call it herd mentality, pack mentality, tribalism or what ever, its still far too dependent on raw emotional concerns and instinctual thinking to justify the level of hubris and self congradulation we apply to it.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:1. Moral capacity being more developed. I am not so sure of that. When confronted with things we don't know how to deal with or challenge our percieved position in the world we don't think at all, we act instinctively. ... Faced with an attack on the *group*, they reacted by instinctual emotions, instead of logic. A species with a more advanced moral system wouldn't do that.
Why would a group with a more advanced moral capacity than (for example) chimpanzees not do that? Are you aware of similar studies of chimpanzees which show "criticism" of other groups is reacted to by critical thinking, while "criticism" of the in group is reacted to emotionally? If not you have not shown that human moral capacity in this respect is not more advanced than that of chimpanzees.
And what is more, even if you had you would not have shown that overall human moral capacity is not superior. There are other aspects to moral capacity, and in many of them there are not equivalents from the animal kingdom. I have cited an example of someone willingly accepting disruption of kin sociality, and disadvantage for his kin to advantage strangers. This is not something for which equivalents can be found in the animal kingdom. There are no chimpanzee Bonhoeffers, let alone a chimpanzee Ghandi. While human moral capacity demonstrably extends to that of a Ghandi, nothing parallel can be found amongst animals.
quote:2. Interesting how often that "despite" my agreement that knowledge for its own sake is a good thing, the more ridged the structure someone grows up in, the more likely they are to reject this and declare some or even all forms of knowledge anethema. Again, what challenges the groups social structure is attacked, without regard to "if" its useful or the consequence of banning it is self destructive.
What point are you making?
quote:3. No, your misunderstanding me. I don't mean that humans are not better in many ways, just that we can't delude ourselves into thinking that being better doesn't mean we don't make similarly bad judgements and mistakes as animals. The last few hundred years we have shifted the structure of society, at least in most of the world, to one that emphasizes the persuit of knowledge. Prior to that fear of knowledge and the dogmatic declaration that anything that apposed the group had to be destroyed was the prevailing system. But many of the belief systems and structures that overlay the old world are still present and they react to such knowledge in precisely the same way they always did, by defending territory, snapping at anything that comes to close to the edges of their systems and trying to kill what ever gets to close. This is animalistic behaviour, not advanced morality or logic.
I would go further, because we have greater moral capacity, humans are capable of making greater moral mistakes than are animals. I need only cite Hitler, for whom there is again no moral equivalent outside of the human species (but multiple equivalents within it). But again I do not see the relevance. A cheetah's normal pace is no faster than that of a man walking. A cheetah, just like a man walking is capable of falling over, of tripping. None of that has any bearing on the fact that cheetah's are superior runners to humans.
Now, you claim that I misunderstand you, ie, that you are not claiming that humans are not superior in many (presumably moral) ways. But the issue between us is not simple superiority. My claim is that humans are moral agents in a way that no animal is; and that this makes humans special. You are willing to conced uniqueness, but not specialness. At heart this comes down to a value judgement. Is moral capacity at which humans are superior just another attribute of no greater importance than, for example, the capacity to dig, which moles are superior at? IF moral goodness is inherently good, not merely instrumentally good, than the superior moral capacity of humans does make them special - of greater value than other animals, all else being equal.
quote:Thing is, I think I societies are more complex, we have the capacity, though it often goes unused, for understanding far more nuance and we build far more complex sets of rules. All this is true. What isn't true is that those systems are any more flawless, any less prone to mistakes, less arbitrary in many cases, ect. than what an animal might come up with. Just because you can build an oak table doesn't mean its always inherently more valid that simply using a flat rock, especially if you insist on ignoring common sense and haul the table around every place you go, so you don't have to look for a flat rock. Complex doesn't mean better. In some cases it can mean you need to rethink things.
It is not a matter of greater complexity of sociality. It is that human principles can be (even of often they are not) of a different type than animal social "rules". Animal social rules are essentially self centered, in that the applicability of a rule to a given individual is defined by the relationship of that individual to the self. Some animals have a rule approximately eqivalent to "Thou shalt not kill". When they do, it applies to kin. It applies to members of a social group capable of reciprocaly beneficial acts. But it does not apply to outsiders. Many human ethics are like that also. The ancient Hebrews had an ethical rule, "Thou shalt not kill", but it did not prohibit genocide.
But some humans have developed and acted on rules whose beneficiaries are not defined by relationship to the self. Their rule that "Thou shalt not kill" is applied to everyone without restriction (although often the rule is more complex). Some Americans, for example, treated the rule that "All men are created equal ..." as applying to all men, and not being restricted to ethnically determined beneficiaries, when the appropriate ethnic group is defined by the actors membership there-of. Some South Africans treated the principle that people should not be governed without their consent as governing all races, not just their own favoured white race.
When people universalise their ethics like that, they have turned their ethics into moral principles. And this is a capacity that humans have, and which some have acted on in quite exceptional ways. But animals are simply not capable of the conceptual moves to do the same thing. And nor have any animals exhibited a universalised ethic. This is a distinctive capacity of humans, which makes them special.
quote: Please, show me a univerally moral concept. No, come to think of it, lets not go there, I already spent a week of my life watching other people argue that point, only to have it revert to a case of the pro-universality guy proclaiming over and over, "Its universal because I say so!", and the other guy unsuccessfully pointing out numerous inconsistencies with the idea that every thing the other guy brought up was actually universal to everyone.
Your way of phrasing this question shows you have a presumption of moral relativism. You do not ask me to show a moral concept that is accepted in all societies; but one which is true in all societies. If I were facetious, I could say, "Always treat others as ends in themselves, and never exclusively as means to an end." It is a moral concept which is true in every society, even though it is not acknowledged in all societies.
quote:1. Moral capacity being more developed. I am not so sure of that. When confronted with things we don't know how to deal with or challenge our percieved position in the world we don't think at all, we act instinctively. ... Faced with an attack on the *group*, they reacted by instinctual emotions, instead of logic. A species with a more advanced moral system wouldn't do that.
Why would a group with a more advanced moral capacity than (for example) chimpanzees not do that? Are you aware of similar studies of chimpanzees which show "criticism" of other groups is reacted to by critical thinking, while "criticism" of the in group is reacted to emotionally? If not you have not shown that human moral capacity in this respect is not more advanced than that of chimpanzees.
And what is more, even if you had you would not have shown that overall human moral capacity is not superior. There are other aspects to moral capacity, and in many of them there are not equivalents from the animal kingdom. I have cited an example of someone willingly accepting disruption of kin sociality, and disadvantage for his kin to advantage strangers. This is not something for which equivalents can be found in the animal kingdom. There are no chimpanzee Bonhoeffers, let alone a chimpanzee Ghandi. While human moral capacity demonstrably extends to that of a Ghandi, nothing parallel can be found amongst animals.
Ok, maybe.. But less than ten years ago we didn't believe that what we "have" observed was true either. I am sure we could find cases of misplaced socialization, for example, where a female defends something not even of her species, from her own kin.
quote:
quote:2. Interesting how often that "despite" my agreement that knowledge for its own sake is a good thing, the more ridged the structure someone grows up in, the more likely they are to reject this and declare some or even all forms of knowledge anethema. Again, what challenges the groups social structure is attacked, without regard to "if" its useful or the consequence of banning it is self destructive.
What point are you making?
Just that greater capacity for knowledge is easilly derailed by misplaced morality.
quote:I would go further, because we have greater moral capacity, humans are capable of making greater moral mistakes than are animals. I need only cite Hitler, for whom there is again no moral equivalent outside of the human species (but multiple equivalents within it). But again I do not see the relevance. A cheetah's normal pace is no faster than that of a man walking. A cheetah, just like a man walking is capable of falling over, of tripping. None of that has any bearing on the fact that cheetah's are superior runners to humans.
Now, you claim that I misunderstand you, ie, that you are not claiming that humans are not superior in many (presumably moral) ways. But the issue between us is not simple superiority. My claim is that humans are moral agents in a way that no animal is; and that this makes humans special. You are willing to conced uniqueness, but not specialness. At heart this comes down to a value judgement. Is moral capacity at which humans are superior just another attribute of no greater importance than, for example, the capacity to dig, which moles are superior at? IF moral goodness is inherently good, not merely instrumentally good, than the superior moral capacity of humans does make them special - of greater value than other animals, all else being equal.
I supposed it depends on your definition of superior. As you pointed out, Hitler is a perfect example of it going wrong. And its hardly likely that he considered himself immoral. The problem is, when people start talking about inherent good, they are not talking about the capacity to form reasonable moral standards, they are usually talking about enforcing "their" moral standards, which they are usually sorely unqualified, do to their emotional investment, in judging. Such standards don't persist because *they* are better, but because those that believe them are able to come up with more complex justifications for them. Only someone on the outside of the group are generally able to see the flaws in the logic.
quote:Animal social rules are essentially self centered, in that the applicability of a rule to a given individual is defined by the relationship of that individual to the self. Some animals have a rule approximately eqivalent to "Thou shalt not kill". When they do, it applies to kin. It applies to members of a social group capable of reciprocaly beneficial acts. But it does not apply to outsiders. Many human ethics are like that also. The ancient Hebrews had an ethical rule, "Thou shalt not kill", but it did not prohibit genocide.
But some humans have developed and acted on rules whose beneficiaries are not defined by relationship to the self. Their rule that "Thou shalt not kill" is applied to everyone without restriction (although often the rule is more complex).
Sorry, but bullshit. We are just as self centered as animals in why we believe in some moral standard. Press anyone hard enough and you find that their justification for acting a certain way, even if it provides no direct benefit, *still* makes them feel better or has some other emotional center, which determines "why" they do it. Our rules are more complex, we are better at teaching our kids that X is good because Y, but in the end I have never met anyone who is purely or inherently atruistic, or who presented with someone or some thing that conflicts with their goals or vision of how the world should work, doesn't abandon some aspect of their moral code to get back at the percieved threat. I think this is the key myth, the one single concept in human morality that people believe, for which there is not one scrap of evidence, but which is so deeply ingrained into the very justifications we use that is inseperable. Its simply a statement, "It makes me feel good about myself and the world to believe that I am truely altruistic to everyone", five minutes before they prove otherwise by cussing out someone in traffic. Its a justification used by those that do next to nothing, for why someone else will do something, used by fundies to justify trying to change the world to one of actual intolerance, by claiming they are trying to make everyone more tolerant, etc. Anyone that thinks they don't act from selfish motives, hasn't examined their own emotions and thoughts on the subject well enough to tell the difference in the first place. Yes, we can invent myths that benefit us or our offspring, by making the world safer for *everyone*, but I don't care if you are sterile, familyless and dying when you do something that helps everyone else, you are still doing it becuase *you* feel some benefit from doing so, even if its purely emotional. If we didn't gain something from it, we would never do anything. But somehow, "It makes me feel better.", is considered less self centered, by our definitions, than, "Because I personally made money off it." I don't agree. I do agree that its generally a better reason than pure greed, but its still basically being done for "you", not everyone else.
posted
I agree, actually. If, say, helping someone neither made you achieve a greater sense of inner peace nor, however indirectly, made you safer, why would you help that person? Of course, many traditional "good" things are in practice still worth doing. For instance, it's worth feeding the hungry because, if nothing else, people who don't have enough to eat tend to get angry and turn to violence to meet their needs.
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Reading through some interesting posts. Forgive my brevity, but I'd like to comment/question on some points along the way without forgetting anything. (I could take notes, I suppose, but I'm a lazy human).
quote: (from Bob_Scopatz) I believe that there's a special "something" between God and man. How it got there, and what the nature of it is, exactly, is getting into the realm of theology, so I'd rather leave that for a different thread.
This seems a little odd to me. A lot of the discussion around this thread could be condensed into "humans have big brains, animals do not. 'nuff said. humans is special." What makes me curious about this comment is that the general tendency among people is to think that "big brains" and technology have removed humans from a close association with earth/nature/god. It leads me to wonder which direction Bob thinks we are moving?
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quote: What makes me curious about this comment is that the general tendency among people is to think that "big brains" and technology have removed humans from a close association with earth/nature/god. It leads me to wonder which direction Bob thinks we are moving?
Bob thinks that if your first sentence is true, then we are moving the wrong direction.
Okay, without going into theology, I think it's a mistake to assume that humans are removed from earth or nature. I'll leave questions of religion out of it.
Basically, I look at human capacities as being completely explainable in an evolutionary framework, eventually. That puts us right smack in the thick of things in terms of earth and nature go. We share genetic makeup with every living thing on earth...some more than others, of course, but still, the point is that we are all of a piece. And forgetting that has led us down some particularly destructive paths. Racism (generally relying on the belief that external characteristics, geography, or parentage govern a person's human worth) is just one part of the error. Our failure to view the earth as our shared home...a resource that not only gave us our shape, but on which we and all other creatures depend has generated some sad episodes in our stewardship of the planet.
As for what humanity may become? I currently don't view homo sapiens as a name we've quite earned yet. I think we put too much stock in our superiority or specialness to be viewed as fully sapient. Or, perhaps we are sapient, but lack enlightenment.
And that's where I hope we're heading.
An enlightened species would take better care of its world, and everything in it, it seems to me.
Again, I'm not going down the theology side of this issue. What I believe there is not important to this discussion. Suffice it to say that I believe enlightenment and God are inextricably tied in ways that we do not fully understand. Eventually, we may. And, perhaps it will have something to do with our big brains, and maybe even our technology. But I don't think it will have to do with divorcing ourselves from our nature.
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I find your arguments very compelling, but your word-use and spelling continue to perplex me in ways that distract me from your argument - leading, for example, into thoughts/recommendations that you should learn to fly a helicopter in Hawaii and befriend a vietnam-vet who drives (not his own) a ferrari.
Kagehi,
I think you win by a couple points. But, I'm biased.
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quote: (from Bob_Scopatz) Okay, without going into theology, I think it's a mistake to assume that humans are removed from earth or nature. I'll leave questions of religion out of it.
There were no questions in that regard, Bob. The question I posed was about technology, not theology.
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quote:Ok, maybe.. But less than ten years ago we didn't believe that what we "have" observed was true either. I am sure we could find cases of misplaced socialization, for example, where a female defends something not even of her species, from her own kin.
Not only will they find such examples of misplaced socialisation, they have found them. In the most common case, birds will often feed cuckoo chicks in preference to, or better than their own chicks. I am sure more benign cases can be found. Certainly they have been observed in domestic animals. But Ghandi was not an example of "misplaced socialisation", and nor would such cases in some bizzare way be the moral equivalents of Bonhoeffer.
quote:The problem is, when people start talking about inherent good, they are not talking about the capacity to form reasonable moral standards, they are usually talking about enforcing "their" moral standards, which they are usually sorely unqualified, do to their emotional investment, in judging. Such standards don't persist because *they* are better, but because those that believe them are able to come up with more complex justifications for them. Only someone on the outside of the group are generally able to see the flaws in the logic.
It doesn't matter what people are usually talking about. What matters is whether there are such things as moral standards, and whether they are inherently good. If there are such things, and if they are inherently good, the fact that humans are superior at discovering them, and acting in accordance with them, ie, of being moral, makes them valuable in a way that other animals are not.
I feel that you are trying to argue against the existence of moral standards (or their inherent value) without explicitly doing so. You need to be more explicit, to definitly assert the non-existence or arbitrary nature of moral principles, and not assume that arguments against moral realism are arguments against my conclusion on any basis other than the fact that they deny moral realism.
quote:Sorry, but bullshit. We are just as self centered as animals in why we believe in some moral standard. Press anyone hard enough and you find that their justification for acting a certain way, even if it provides no direct benefit, *still* makes them feel better or has some other emotional center, which determines "why" they do it. ...
First, as a technical point, moral principles are not restricted to altruism, and nor was I talking about altruism. In particular, rights based ethics are typically not altruistic in that they do not dictate actions taken to give others benefit, but rather only prohibit some acts which cause others harm. The question is regarding the circle of benefit from the principle. Thus the first interpretation of the "Declaration of Independance" which insisted that "All men ... have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" restricted its application to male people of European ancestry, and so did not restrict the holding of slaves of African ancestry. As such it was not universalised, and was not a moral principle but a declaration of self interest. In the fifties, the declaration was finally interpreted as a moral principle, a principle that applied genuinely to all, though since then George W Bush has tried to remove it as a moral principle by insisting that "all men" only applies to US citizens.
On a related point, I am not claiming that genuine altruism does not exist in animals. Animal motivations to help others in a restricted group may well be genuinely altruistic, ie, performed with (effectively) no thought of the potential benefit to the agent or its kin. Such actions will approximate in effect to actions based on reciprocal altruism, or kin altruism so long as the group of potential beneficiaries suitably controlled. Specifically, if a social group are all kin, genuinely altruistic behaviour restricted to within the social group will be as beneficial in Darwinian terms as a stricter kin or reciprocal altruism and so is as likely to be selected for by Natural Selection. But this is true only if the group is so restricted. That is why the human capacity for universalisable principles acting as the basis of actions is very rare in animal species, and probably unique to humans.
Second, I am not so silly as to deny that all humans have self orientated motivations, and indeed that those motivations dominate in controlling most people most of the time. Nor am I so silly as to deny that human motivations are complex, so that any act will be the consequence of a variety of motivations (both for and against), and so that if you break down the motivations of even the most altruistic act, there will be some self orientated motivations amongst them. But neither of these admissions is enough to sustain your denial of the existence of genuinely altruistic acts.
If one person, just once in their life, acts on a group of motivations one of which is altruistic, and such that if that motive had not been present, the person would have done something differently, then altruistic motivations exist, and so do altruistic acts. Even in this extreme case, no psychological explanation of human behaviour would be complete without the inclusion of altruism.
But the human condition is far from this extreme case. Genuinely altruistic motivations are common in humans, and are sometimes overriding motivations; sometimes even the dominant motivations in deciding the course of someones life.
Attempts to show that all apparently altruistic motivations actually reduce to selfish motivations are invariably contrived and specious. As one example, it is suggested that people often perform altruistic acts because it will make them feel good. The question ought to be raised, why does it make them feel good? If is is simply because they have acted according to some arbitrary principle, then their choice to act on an altruistic principle rather than a self serving principle is unexplained. They would have been better to choose the self serving principle, and consequently both become rich and get to feel smug about it. Alternatively, if they feel good because they have helped someone, then the feeling good is explained by a pre-existing altruism. The apparently altruistic motivation has not been reduced after all.
Returning to the example of the morally principled person I have already refered to, whose principled actions had the effect of cutting of relationships with immediate kin, I can show the true absurdity of the anti-altruist dogma. By choosing to act in the principled manner, and teaching his children to do the same, it had the following predictable consequences:
He lost his political career (he had been president of a political party, if I remember correctly); he sabotaged his chances of promotion and professional advancement; he became largely cut of from familly interactions except with his wife; he suffered random harrassment from the police force; one of his sons also found his professional career and political career (one time president of the national union of students) terminated; this same son was subject to arbitrary arrest and torture resulting in crippling spinal injuries; this same son was forced to flee the country and live in exile; on of his daughters was also forced to flee the country; this daughter was later killed by a letter bomb along with one of his grand-children. His chosen course did not make all of these effects explicitly predictable, but it was predictable from the time that he chose them that effects of this general type were likely to follow.
Now, purely on the basis of self interest, he chose radically wrongly. He should have remained politically uninvolved, with the probable consequence that he would have become a millionaire, that his familly relationships would have been unimpeded, and that, when the whole system came down, he would have been able to recieve a subsidised immigration to another western country as a refugee, as did so many of his compatriotes who remained uninvolved politically.
The absurdity of the anti-altruism dogma is that it suggests that these decisions stem from self interest. It is transparent, I would think, that decisions based on disguised self interest should typically lead to benefit to the self; and transparently, that is not the case in this, and many other situations.
clod:
quote:I find your arguments very compelling, but your word-use and spelling continue to perplex me in ways that distract me from your argument - leading, for example, into thoughts/recommendations that you should learn to fly a helicopter in Hawaii and befriend a vietnam-vet who drives (not his own) a ferrari.
I apologise for the spelling. At the age of eight I had an unfortunate experience with the English language. I was taught a spelling rule that "I before E except after C", then given a spelling list of ten words, not one of which obeyed the rule. I then decided that it was a bad joke, that they were making it up as they went along, and that I couldn't be bothered playing arbitrary and meaningless games. I was right about the first two points, but I should not have given up, as you can clearly testify. (Hint, it will stop being distracting if you stop thinking of it as important.)
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quote:There were no questions in that regard, Bob. The question I posed was about technology, not theology.
Actually, your statement was about technology (and big brains). Your question was completely indeterminate and could be about anything and everything.
I interpreted it that way, and answered without getting into theology.
If you wanted to know where I thought we were heading vis a vis technology, you should've asked. My answer is simple -- if I knew, I'd be a much wiser investor than I currently am.
quote:Originally posted by Tom Curtis: [QB] Kagehi:
quote:Ok, maybe.. But less than ten years ago we didn't believe that what we "have" observed was true either. I am sure we could find cases of misplaced socialization, for example, where a female defends something not even of her species, from her own kin.
Not only will they find such examples of misplaced socialisation, they have found them. In the most common case, birds will often feed cuckoo chicks in preference to, or better than their own chicks. I am sure more benign cases can be found. Certainly they have been observed in domestic animals. But Ghandi was not an example of "misplaced socialisation", and nor would such cases in some bizzare way be the moral equivalents of Bonhoeffer.
Actually, I didn't mean to imply that it hasn't been seen, nor do I include things like cuckoo chicks in that category. One that comes to minds was a lion that adopted a wilderbeast calf for a time in the wild. While it might have been tied to emotional stress from recently losing a cub, it shows a capacity even in less... I don't think there is a proper word for it that doesn't express human centric assumptions, but I think you get the point.
quote:It doesn't matter what people are usually talking about. What matters is whether there are such things as moral standards, and whether they are inherently good. If there are such things, and if they are inherently good, the fact that humans are superior at discovering them, and acting in accordance with them, ie, of being moral, makes them valuable in a way that other animals are not.
I feel that you are trying to argue against the existence of moral standards (or their inherent value) without explicitly doing so. You need to be more explicit, to definitly assert the non-existence or arbitrary nature of moral principles, and not assume that arguments against moral realism are arguments against my conclusion on any basis other than the fact that they deny moral realism.
No, I am not denying morals, I just don't feel that arbitrary concepts like "inherently good" should be applied to them. Such a term doesn't imply mere success or survival, but are loaded with connotations that tend to lend themselves to people making arbitrary distinctions about their moral standards being inherently good, "Simply because I believe them!" Its the hidden meanings that jump out at you from such phrases that I object to. We have a superior capacity to invent justifications, morals are a combination of very primitive, basically unchanged, emotional systems, with complex rules and stories tacked on to guide us in how to control those basic emotions. This means most moral systems are a collection of mostly stable ideas, with a few truely great one, and some horrifyingly scary ones. Standing on the inside, its damn hard to tell which are which. In that respect, being able to invent such complex structures can actually make the result slightly inferior and unintentionally destructive. I like to call it, "The Chaos Theory of Social Engineering", instead of understanding "why" we act a certain way, then shaping the structure to fit what we are, we dredge up failures from 100, 200, 300 or more years in the past, tack on some random stuff we think might fix it, them sit back and watch all the other ants, since we rarely do anything that inconveniences the person that came up with the new-old theory, and wonder why the only result was to retarget the resulting mess, instead of stopping it. And everyone is so *sure* that someone else simply screwed it up somehow, because well... they turned out OK using those same rules. It frustrates the hell out of me every time I see it.
quote:On a related point, I am not claiming that genuine altruism does not exist in animals. Animal motivations to help others in a restricted group may well be genuinely altruistic, ie, performed with (effectively) no thought of the potential benefit to the agent or its kin. Such actions will approximate in effect to actions based on reciprocal altruism, or kin altruism so long as the group of potential beneficiaries suitably controlled. Specifically, if a social group are all kin, genuinely altruistic behaviour restricted to within the social group will be as beneficial in Darwinian terms as a stricter kin or reciprocal altruism and so is as likely to be selected for by Natural Selection. But this is true only if the group is so restricted. That is why the human capacity for universalisable principles acting as the basis of actions is very rare in animal species, and probably unique to humans.
True, most animals can't anthropomorhise and even those that can often don't exist in places where they can *afford* to do so. If you never learn to use a skill, it doesn't matter if the ability to do it is there or not, you may literally never learn it, like trying to teach language to someone past the critical point where they need to develop the brain structures for it.
quote:Second, I am not so silly as to deny that all humans have self orientated motivations, and indeed that those motivations dominate in controlling most people most of the time. Nor am I so silly as to deny that human motivations are complex, so that any act will be the consequence of a variety of motivations (both for and against), and so that if you break down the motivations of even the most altruistic act, there will be some self orientated motivations amongst them. But neither of these admissions is enough to sustain your denial of the existence of genuinely altruistic acts.
Well, the problem here is you still have to define "genuinely altruistic acts." I have seen people that truely believe in such try to do so and invariably they come up with some justification for it that isn't. True altruism by any definition must be something that gives "no" benefit, not even a percieved, but later proven invalid one. The problem with that definition is that its patently false. If they don't do it because it makes them feel good, they do it because not doing so would make them feel bad. And both are learned from some place. Nature provides the "ability" to gain emotional reward or avoid pain, but how has to be invented and instilled by teaching what ever definition someone else has come up with. Best case, they do what they do because they learn to feel rewarded, worst case you get some clown like this clown:
Ironic name... But basically, the sort of person where the invented "structure" and "fear" are the only things that apparently keep them in line. These sorts of people, who seem to think that giving up their pacifier will cause them to pull a David Banner and become some sort of monster scare the hell out of me. Why? Because odds are, they are right. They have no moral compass, no sense of right and wrong. The follow the rules because someone told them, "You will be sorry later if you don't!", instead of, "It can be fun to help people." This is what you get when you assume that having the capacity for superior morals means shit if they never internalize the rules and **feel** something when they do the right thing.
I wasn't the only person who this clown gave the creeps to:
quote:If one person, just once in their life, acts on a group of motivations one of which is altruistic, and such that if that motive had not been present, the person would have done something differently, then altruistic motivations exist, and so do altruistic acts. Even in this extreme case, no psychological explanation of human behaviour would be complete without the inclusion of altruism.
So, show me such a person. Then show me why doing that was not a result of how they where taught to think, but inherent to being human. I simply don't buy it. If you don't teach someone "how" to use inherent abilities, then they will never learn to use them, same as with speech, socialization in general, etc. Its the boy raised by wolves syndrome. Without the rules, the ability becomes no more functional in them than their appendix. But, since it "must" be taught, you get people ranging from the hypothetical ones you describe, who do X, simply because, with on understanding or awareness of what they gained from it, to those that think they "must" evangelize their view to everyone, because it drives them nuts when they "aren't" trying to do what they think is good.
Its also possible to become addicted to *anything* that makes you feel good. All it takes is a) learning to feel good doing it, and b) having a gap in your life that needs to be filled with your chosen obsession. Such people would strip naked in public to give away their clothes to cold people in a blizzard and never once realize that they are just masking a different issue, and probably freezing to death in the process. I would classify such a person as having a mental disorder, just like a sex addict or compulsive gambler. Most people would attribute it to your "genuine altruism". Why? Because when it appears on the surface to be positive, we don't bother to look closely at it, nor ever consider that the reason might have more to do with compulsion or obsession, than choice. This isn't imho a good thing.
quote:But the human condition is far from this extreme case. Genuinely altruistic motivations are common in humans, and are sometimes overriding motivations; sometimes even the dominant motivations in deciding the course of someones life.
Again - Evidence. And I mean real evidence, like brain scans proving they are not getting an endorphin kick from it, not annecdotal ones that amount to, "I can't see how it benefitted them, so it must be genuinely altruistic." As someone with a skeptical mind and scientific view, I want to see evidence before I believe that some magic line exist between, "this is altruism, but not the genuine type", and, "this other thing is genuin altruism". The evidence suggests that this distinction is arbitrary, not real.
quote:Attempts to show that all apparently altruistic motivations actually reduce to selfish motivations are invariably contrived and specious.
Why? What possible grounds exists for excluding them from skepticism and scientific examination, save your own specious assumption that they "must" exist?
quote:As one example, it is suggested that people often perform altruistic acts because it will make them feel good. The question ought to be raised, why does it make them feel good?
Because we reward ourselves and are taught by something called parents that certain things either "should" make us feel good, or they suggest we do things which do give some tangible benefit, which we then project to a much wider context, such as sharing our candy with our brother, which tends to make us more likely to share later, unless the result produces a negative experience instead. Some people learn nothing but negatives, they become sociopaths, and only maybe 1/100th of 1% of those people have a medical condition that prevented them learning. They simply failed to do so for various reasons.
quote:If is is simply because they have acted according to some arbitrary principle, then their choice to act on an altruistic principle rather than a self serving principle is unexplained. They would have been better to choose the self serving principle, and consequently both become rich and get to feel smug about it. Alternatively, if they feel good because they have helped someone, then the feeling good is explained by a pre-existing altruism. The apparently altruistic motivation has not been reduced after all.
So, because the capacity exists to "be" altruistic, and that capacity is employed, its by definition "genuinely atruistic", regardless of the reason it was done? This is like arguing that someone who never learns human language, but does great bird calls, has "genuine language skills", because they manages to tell an ornithologist who has studies bird calls where to find a blackberry bush, using the correct call. Yeah, in theory it might be possible, since it would require some innate language skill, but that doesn't mean they can turn around and learn to speek French. Point being, yes, the capacity exists, but its on the purely animal level, to go past that you need to "learn" to do so. Otherwise this is no more genuine than a dog saving the child of someone it doesn't know from drowning in a river. Hardly the sort of mistake a species that lacks some human "genuine altruism" would make, since even dogs form packs and are still basically operating from that mentality. Why save the young from some other unrelated pack? If such a thing exists, it exists on a primitive level, not some advanced human one.
quote:Returning to the example of the morally principled person I have already refered to, whose principled actions had the effect of cutting of relationships with immediate kin, I can show the true absurdity of the anti-altruist dogma. By choosing to act in the principled manner, and teaching his children to do the same, it had the following predictable consequences:
He lost his political career (he had been president of a political party, if I remember correctly); he sabotaged his chances of promotion and professional advancement; he became largely cut of from familly interactions except with his wife; he suffered random harrassment from the police force; one of his sons also found his professional career and political career (one time president of the national union of students) terminated; this same son was subject to arbitrary arrest and torture resulting in crippling spinal injuries; this same son was forced to flee the country and live in exile; on of his daughters was also forced to flee the country; this daughter was later killed by a letter bomb along with one of his grand-children. His chosen course did not make all of these effects explicitly predictable, but it was predictable from the time that he chose them that effects of this general type were likely to follow.
Now, purely on the basis of self interest, he chose radically wrongly. He should have remained politically uninvolved, with the probable consequence that he would have become a millionaire, that his familly relationships would have been unimpeded, and that, when the whole system came down, he would have been able to recieve a subsidised immigration to another western country as a refugee, as did so many of his compatriotes who remained uninvolved politically.
The absurdity of the anti-altruism dogma is that it suggests that these decisions stem from self interest. It is transparent, I would think, that decisions based on disguised self interest should typically lead to benefit to the self; and transparently, that is not the case in this, and many other situations.
Hmm. First, people are horrible at statistics. I am sure that he might have predicted "some" of the potential consequences, but most people look at the most positive outcome when doing something they like and the worst when doing something they don't. They would rather risk literal life and limb to buy and ice cream, but hide under the bad at the mere idea of going to a dentist, for fear of the dozens of things that may happen to them once there. Put simply, even those of us that "might" think about such consequences will simply ignore most or all of the likely ones, if we are doing something we want to do. We are also a product of everything that we learn. If what we learn tells us X is true, we will defend X like it was our own child. In more primitive times the only things that fell into the category where our tribe and our own children. Now "principles" fall into that category as well as other things. I can see lots of justifications for doing such a thing that are on some basic level self interested. The mere fact that a whole mess of negative and not directly predictable things happened, all of them bad, is irrelevant. Myself, I have a stubborn streak, which I *learned* from my father. The more someone pushes me around, the less flexible I become.
I can see myself starting out just like this politician, upholding some principle I believed in, then just getting more and more intransigent and resistant, the more they did to me. This isn't altruism, its learned behaviour. Its something I didn't inherit, its something I was taught and sometimes it seriously screws things up for me. But, I, understand the source and why I act that way, even if, when I am simply acting on what I feel, I don't realize I am doing it.
But I think we are taking in circles here, or maybe just doing what I once did at college with an electronics engineering technology guy, being a CIS instead, we tended to use different words to describe the same things, this resulting in a two hour argument about the flaw in current AI design and what needed to be done to fix them. In the end I got suspicious we where talking at cross purposes, asked him to stop and let me restate what I meant a different way, and it turned out we where basically saying the same thing. I get the feeling this might be the case here too. We may agree in the broadest sense, but our definitions of some critical concepts are screwing things up enough that its difficult to pin down what we "do" disagree about and to what extent.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Actually, your statement was about technology (and big brains). Your question was completely indeterminate and could be about anything and everything.
I interpreted it that way, and answered without getting into theology.
If you wanted to know where I thought we were heading vis a vis technology, you should've asked. My answer is simple -- if I knew, I'd be a much wiser investor than I currently am.
So, basically, you felt inclined to make a theological statement, then begged-out of answering any questions about it? or, turned-tail and ran with a fart-joke (humor) to cloud your trespass?
I asked the question I wanted to hear your thoughts on.
TC,
I think your definition of self-interest is a bit narrow and self-serving for your arguments. Kudos on learning the english thang, at all.
Posts: 351 | Registered: Jan 2006
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I didn't make a theological statement. I answered the question you asked, whether or not it was the one you had in mind is a matter I can't be responsible for. Chalk it up to a less-than-perfect communication medium. I can see how your current question is implied in what you said originally, but seriously, that's not the question you asked.
As for your "real" question, take it as a given, if you will, that I don't have (or choose not to share) an answer on the question you now have posed.
I don't see anyone else leaping into the breech either. Perhaps you'd care to share your views on the matter and we can use that as a jumping off point.
However, since you've now crossed the line into personal attacks, I suspect you may not get many people willing to actually enter into a discussion with you.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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I wasn't being rude, and I will chalk it up to a less-than-perfect communication medium. I should have added one of these , maybe.
I don't see any personal attacks (and certainly didn't intend any), but perhaps that's where one of my blind-spots lie. Thanks for helping me locate it. This is always a good thing.
I hope by ciao you aren't thinking of leaving Hatrack already? I've enjoyed your posts...even that one I called rude.
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posted
I know this addresses something further back but it's bugging me.
KoM, your entire argument with Dagonee about vitamin C and octupus eyes, is totally useless and irrelevant to a creationist. You seem to be missing a big point of the creationist argument. One which nicely packages a lot of stuff philosophically in a way that is palatable to many intelligent people.
You see, Creationists believe that Creation was perfect, but once we got past the first few chapters of Genesis we now live in a fallen, flawed world. And that the falling happened extremely rapidly, particularly after the Noahic flood, at which time, the entire setup of the priciples the world ran on were altered.
Some intelligent people that I respect, figure that mutation rates went exponential at that point in time. They believe that it's the nature of the fallen, flawed world that leads to increasing entropy and all of the mutations and evolution we see today. They also believe that the fact that some of the mutations can work to help us survive is because God is merciful, and wouldn't let the world go completely to Hell.
I'm not saying that this is *true* but that rational people can believe it.
posted
Yes, rational and ill informed people can believe that.
Informed people understand that natural selection can only increase information in a genome if the effective mutation rate (ie, the rate of mutations with actual phenotypic effect) is approximately 1/N where N is the number of basepairs in the genome. Other factors, including sexual reproduction can affect this, but not significantly - no factor alters the effective mutation rate by an order of magnitude. What is more, for any species which has developed by natural selection, the effective mutation rate will evolve to match the maximum permissible mutation rate.
Humans reflect this. The mutation rate in humans is such that on average, each new child has three novel mutations with phenotypic effect, which is close to the maximum permited for a sexually breeding population with human birth rates.
For the creationist supposition that mutations went exponential for a time, the mutation rate would have been such that each new human would have had literally thousands of mutations having phenotypic effect, the vast majority of them harmfull. Such a high rate of mutation would have resulted in extinction in just a couple of generations.
The suposition of literally thousands of mutations is based on creationist claims that, for example, zebras and horses belong to the same kind, so that the genetic divergence between them has arisen in the 6 to 8 thousand years they allow since Noah's Ark.
Posts: 24 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:No, I am not denying morals, I just don't feel that arbitrary concepts like "inherently good" should be applied to them. Such a term doesn't imply mere success or survival, but are loaded with connotations that tend to lend themselves to people making arbitrary distinctions about their moral standards being inherently good, "Simply because I believe them!" Its the hidden meanings that jump out at you from such phrases that I object to.
"Inherently good" has quite a precise meaning. It is something which is good in itself, and contrasts with intrumental goods, ie, those things which are good because of their tendency to bring about desirable outcomes. As a matter of logic, it is not possible that there be instrumental goods if there are no inherent goods.
Even if we treat inherent goods as subjective, so that what is inherently good for me need not be inherently good for you, there still exist a class of goods which can be considered rational end goals as organising principles of a life. For some end goals, we can recognise that it is rational to pursue them as a passing whim, because the fancy takes us. We might, for example, sing a nursery out of whimsy and for no other reason. If we do, the singing of the nursery rhyme becomes for us a subjectively chosen end goal. But some one who made the singing of nursery rhymes the organising principle of their life would be recognised as irrational.
There are other end goals, however for which this is not the case. If someone made pleasure the organising principle of their life, we might consider them wrong, but we would not consider them irrational. Pleasure makes sense as a subjectivally chosen end goal of a life (as distinct from just a moment). The same can be said of the pursuit of sporting excellence, the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit (or creation of beauty), and the pursuit of the good of all persons. These then, are inherent goods. The are goods desired for their own sake.
Because I am restricting my discussion to subjective inherency, I must admit that different people may choose different end goals, and different combinations of end goals. As such, my claim is then that anyone who chooses morality as their end goal must also (for the sake of consistency) recognise humans not just as unique, but special because they have a moral capacity in a way which no other animal possesses. By the same token, someone who chooses physical prowess as an end goal must recognise certain other animals - tigers and peregrine falcons come to mind - as not just being unique, but special. In contrast, if you do not recognise morality, nor the pursuit of knowledge, nor aesthetics as being (for you) end goals of your life, then you have no reason to consider humans special (for outside these areas, humans aren't specially gifted).
I believe that we can go one step further, that there are some inherent goods that are objectively good, so that people who do not include them in their end goals are guilty of limited rationality. But I do not need to for the sake of this discussion. Even the existence of subjective inherent goods shows the claim that humans are not special, only unique goes beyond science, involving as it does an implicit value judgement.
quote: We have a superior capacity to invent justifications, morals are a combination of very primitive, basically unchanged, emotional systems, with complex rules and stories tacked on to guide us in how to control those basic emotions. This means most moral systems are a collection of mostly stable ideas, with a few truely great one, and some horrifyingly scary ones. Standing on the inside, its damn hard to tell which are which. In that respect, being able to invent such complex structures can actually make the result slightly inferior and unintentionally destructive. I like to call it, "The Chaos Theory of Social Engineering", instead of understanding "why" we act a certain way, then shaping the structure to fit what we are, we dredge up failures from 100, 200, 300 or more years in the past, tack on some random stuff we think might fix it, them sit back and watch all the other ants, since we rarely do anything that inconveniences the person that came up with the new-old theory, and wonder why the only result was to retarget the resulting mess, instead of stopping it. And everyone is so *sure* that someone else simply screwed it up somehow, because well... they turned out OK using those same rules. It frustrates the hell out of me every time I see it.
Congratulations. You have just dismissed the whole field of moral philosophy as being non-existent.
quote:True, most animals can't anthropomorhise and even those that can often don't exist in places where they can *afford* to do so.
It is not a matter of anthropomorphising. The abolitionists who argued that enslavement of Africans was as immoral as the enslavement of humans were not "anthropomorphising"; and neither are the current moralists (such as Peter Singer) who argue that animals should be extended moral rights.
quote:Well, the problem here is you still have to define "genuinely altruistic acts." I have seen people that truely believe in such try to do so and invariably they come up with some justification for it that isn't. True altruism by any definition must be something that gives "no" benefit, not even a percieved, but later proven invalid one. The problem with that definition is that its patently false. If they don't do it because it makes them feel good, they do it because not doing so would make them feel bad. And both are learned from some place.
Have you noticed how absurd this claim is? I mean, seriously? Take a hypothetical example. Suppose someone sees a woman being threatened with rape by a gang. They intervene in the almost certain knowledge that the gang will turn on him and beat him to a pulp, but in the hope that the woman will have the opportunity to escape as a result. The only conscious thought they have at the time of intervening is that it is necessary to stop the woman from being raped because rape is wrong.
Now, should they survive, it is probable that the man will feel good about what they have done. Therefore, you say, it wasn't altruism that led him to intervene. As you say, "True altruism by any definition must be something that gives "no" benefit, not even a percieved, but later proven invalid one."
Hogwash. The action in the scenario was taken without any consideration of potential benefit to the man. Therefore, it was not taken for any benefit that might have been recieved. The mere fact that benefit arises does not mean that the action was taken for that benefit. If we were to inist on that, then parity would demand that we also insist that if harm arises then the action was taken in order to recieve that harm.
What is more, even if benefit is expected, it does not follow that the action was taken for the sake of that benefit. In the scenario, the man expects to spend several minutes lying on the ground being kicked repeatedly by five strong men; to wake hours later (if at all) with multiple broken ribs and a variety of other injuries. His expectation is of extreme pain; but your thesis is that if he also expects some mild pleasure that therefore he took the action for that pleasure. No matter what the relative proportion of expected pain or disadvantage to expected pleasure or advantage, by your thesis the existance of any expected pleasure or advantage means that the supposedly altruistic act was not altruistic. Again I say hogwash. This is not a believable theory of human motivation, but merely an absurdity.
quote:Again - Evidence. And I mean real evidence, like brain scans proving they are not getting an endorphin kick from it, not annecdotal ones that amount to, "I can't see how it benefitted them, so it must be genuinely altruistic." As someone with a skeptical mind and scientific view, I want to see evidence before I believe that some magic line exist between, "this is altruism, but not the genuine type", and, "this other thing is genuin altruism". The evidence suggests that this distinction is arbitrary, not real.
The supreme irony here is that you required no evidence to arrive at your sceptical outlook regarding altruism. You merely found it congenial, and started applying absurd definitions and evidentiary standards to the opposing view.
Now, feel welcome to prove me wrong and indicate the study using catscans that showed that "altruistic" and "egoistic" motivations stem from identical parts of the brain, with identical brain activation patterns for each. As no such study has been done, you may find it difficult.
What has happened is that people have a range of motivations, some altruistic, some egoistic, and some not related to that plane at all. For a combination or reasons including poorly thought out science (in a few cases) and really atrocious philosophy (in the majority of cases) some people have wanted to deny this. But, having formulated the intention to deny it they simply assume that it must be true unless their opponents provide the evidence they never even looked at.
As to the presence of endorphins, I have already answered that above. But, try banging your head against the wall. That will release endorphins as well. Doesn't make it rational, and doesn't make it the reason you did it.
quote:Hmm. First, people are horrible at statistics. I am sure that he might have predicted "some" of the potential consequences, but most people look at the most positive outcome when doing something they like and the worst when doing something they don't. They would rather risk literal life and limb to buy and ice cream, but hide under the bad at the mere idea of going to a dentist, for fear of the dozens of things that may happen to them once there. Put simply, even those of us that "might" think about such consequences will simply ignore most or all of the likely ones, if we are doing something we want to do.
Very people are so bad at statistics as to not recognise the likely consequences of publicly opposing the Apartheidt regime in South Africa.
quote:I can see myself starting out just like this politician, upholding some principle I believed in, then just getting more and more intransigent and resistant, the more they did to me. This isn't altruism, its learned behaviour. Its something I didn't inherit, its something I was taught and sometimes it seriously screws things up for me. But, I, understand the source and why I act that way, even if, when I am simply acting on what I feel, I don't realize I am doing it.
It is becoming very apparent that nothing will be allowed to count as altruistic behaviour by you. If they behaviour results in any slight benefit, no matter how outweighed by the harm it also results in, you won't count it as altruistic. If the principles that lead to the behaviour are learned, no matter how altruistic the principles, then the behaviour doesn't count as altruistic. And so on and on, with no evidence ever being allowed to count against your belief.
Well, congratulations. As a citizen it is your right to hold and propogate such absurd beliefs. But I have to point out that they are not in anyway based on science, just on attrocious philosophy.
Clod:
quote:I think your definition of self-interest is a bit narrow and self-serving for your arguments.
I'm not sure I follow. My definition allows, for the sake of argument, that altruistic acts performed for kin count as egoistic rather than altruistic; it allows that altruistic acts performed for members of a group with which you frequently interact, and hence from which you can expect reciprocal altruism, as egoistic. If that is too narrow, it can only be because even allowing the possibility of any altruism is too narrow a definition of egoism.
Posts: 24 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:No, I am not denying morals, I just don't feel that arbitrary concepts like "inherently good" should be applied to them. Such a term doesn't imply mere success or survival, but are loaded with connotations that tend to lend themselves to people making arbitrary distinctions about their moral standards being inherently good, "Simply because I believe them!" Its the hidden meanings that jump out at you from such phrases that I object to.
"Inherently good" has quite a precise meaning. It is something which is good in itself, and contrasts with intrumental goods, ie, those things which are good because of their tendency to bring about desirable outcomes. As a matter of logic, it is not possible that there be instrumental goods if there are no inherent goods.
No, "you" give it that precise meaning. It might even be the dictionary definition of it, but people don't consult dictionaries every time they make such statements, to make sure they are using the right word. What someone who believes in a literal divinely inspired morality means by "inherently good", is *not* the same thing you do.
quote: We have a superior capacity to invent justifications, morals are a combination of very primitive, basically unchanged, emotional systems, with complex rules and stories tacked on to guide us in how to control those basic emotions. This means most moral systems are a collection of mostly stable ideas, with a few truely great one, and some horrifyingly scary ones. Standing on the inside, its damn hard to tell which are which. In that respect, being able to invent such complex structures can actually make the result slightly inferior and unintentionally destructive. I like to call it, "The Chaos Theory of Social Engineering", instead of understanding "why" we act a certain way, then shaping the structure to fit what we are, we dredge up failures from 100, 200, 300 or more years in the past, tack on some random stuff we think might fix it, them sit back and watch all the other ants, since we rarely do anything that inconveniences the person that came up with the new-old theory, and wonder why the only result was to retarget the resulting mess, instead of stopping it. And everyone is so *sure* that someone else simply screwed it up somehow, because well... they turned out OK using those same rules. It frustrates the hell out of me every time I see it.
Congratulations. You have just dismissed the whole field of moral philosophy as being non-existent.
No, invalid perhaps, but then a lot of philisophical arguments have been rendered invaid by a better understanding of the world, it doesn't stop some people from still making the same arguments.
quote:
quote:True, most animals can't anthropomorhise and even those that can often don't exist in places where they can *afford* to do so.
It is not a matter of anthropomorphising. The abolitionists who argued that enslavement of Africans was as immoral as the enslavement of humans were not "anthropomorphising"; and neither are the current moralists (such as Peter Singer) who argue that animals should be extended moral rights.
Yes it is. You can objectively observe how an animal acts and even show that its brain structures are triggered in the same way our are in relation to certain things, or you can make wild guesses that behaviour X "looks like" Y, and simply assume your right. The later is anthropomorphising and its what people who send their pets to fake pet psychologists and pet psychics do, they project both thought and behaviour on them that *isn't* realistically possible, based on what the real science shows to be actually possible. Animals may on some level project their own thinking on us, but on a qualitatively weaker level, and they certainly don't derive complex justifications for why they must be right, in the face of contradiction.
quote:
quote:Well, the problem here is you still have to define "genuinely altruistic acts." I have seen people that truely believe in such try to do so and invariably they come up with some justification for it that isn't. True altruism by any definition must be something that gives "no" benefit, not even a percieved, but later proven invalid one. The problem with that definition is that its patently false. If they don't do it because it makes them feel good, they do it because not doing so would make them feel bad. And both are learned from some place.
Have you noticed how absurd this claim is? I mean, seriously? Take a hypothetical example. Suppose someone sees a woman being threatened with rape by a gang. They intervene in the almost certain knowledge that the gang will turn on him and beat him to a pulp, but in the hope that the woman will have the opportunity to escape as a result. The only conscious thought they have at the time of intervening is that it is necessary to stop the woman from being raped because rape is wrong.
Umm. Sorry, but you are not seeing how absurd your example is. Some people may have no problem with rape, would never lift a finger to help someone being raped, simply fail to recognize that it was happening or even cheer the rapists on. It *all* depends on what they learned to think about it. No one starts out knowing something is wrong, they learn what is expected of them by society, then learn to determine right and wrong from a combination of their own empathy and the rules their society create to justify when, how and if they should express that. In a culture where rape is acceptable, the reason for stepping in will have nothing to do with the rape itself, if they interfere at all. In much of the middle east, such an act would be interferred with as a means to stop the rapist from sinning, and to jail the women, so she can later be stoned to death for tempting him. Those who believe in that version of reality do what they do because they "think" they are being just and I am willing to bet few if any lose sleep over doing it. For every example you can come up with to try to show some innate moral standard, I can find people or a society that does the exact opposite and believes they are acting morally when doing so.
quote:Now, should they survive, it is probable that the man will feel good about what they have done. Therefore, you say, it wasn't altruism that led him to intervene. As you say, "True altruism by any definition must be something that gives "no" benefit, not even a percieved, but later proven invalid one."
Yep. The problem is simply using "true" in there. True, to use your argument about "inherent good", has a specific meaning. It implies something pure and untouched by secondary factors. Find a different word or admit I am basically correct.
quote:The action in the scenario was taken without any consideration of potential benefit to the man. Therefore, it was not taken for any benefit that might have been recieved. The mere fact that benefit arises does not mean that the action was taken for that benefit. If we were to inist on that, then parity would demand that we also insist that if harm arises then the action was taken in order to recieve that harm.
See, this is your assumption. But science has shown that in most cases we react, then look for justifications for why we did. This "might" on the surface seem to make you right, but other research has shown that the reason for this is simply that a whole series of thoughts go on in our heads, and only after a decision coalesces do we become aware of the choice. In other words, you can claim that he reacted entirely without thought of reward, but there where probably hundreds of competing thoughts going on, many giving justifications for acting, and he would never be aware of any of them. Mental disorders like scitzophrenia are in fact a failure of this system designed to integrate such desperate thought processes. The person becomes aware of themselves thinking a bunch of different things, but lacking proper integration, they don't recognize them as their own thoughts, and some that slip through in the worst cases might be telling them to stand and watch it happen. Normal people filter out all but the most strongest and relevant threads, then build a justification for their action *after the fact*, based on those threads.
You can't argue with biology and nueroscience by talking about philisophical explainations, which is all your are really providing.
quote:Now, feel welcome to prove me wrong and indicate the study using catscans that showed that "altruistic" and "egoistic" motivations stem from identical parts of the brain, with identical brain activation patterns for each. As no such study has been done, you may find it difficult.
See my prior statement on how the brain works. Besides, doing the "right" thing and the "wrong" thing both trigger the part of the brain that involved inhibitions and moral behaviour. The amount of activity is the only issue, as well as if justification is "invented" or "learned". Learned justifications are, if I where to guess, going to come from the logical half, given that its mostly retrieval and integration, doing a known wrong thing is more likely to trigger the creative side, since justification must be invented, not simply integrated from existing behaviour. Otherwise, your point is invalid anyway, there is no "altruism" brain component, just a, "what do I do in this morally charged situation" one. If something as specific as an "altruism" section existed, I would have read about it, and I read a *lot* about brain structure and function.
quote:What has happened is that people have a range of motivations, some altruistic, some egoistic, and some not related to that plane at all. For a combination or reasons including poorly thought out science (in a few cases) and really atrocious philosophy (in the majority of cases) some people have wanted to deny this. But, having formulated the intention to deny it they simply assume that it must be true unless their opponents provide the evidence they never even looked at.
This is the first thing I entirely agree with.
quote:It is becoming very apparent that nothing will be allowed to count as altruistic behaviour by you.
No, just nothing "inherently altruistic". That is where the sticking point is. Biology design us so that altruistic behaviour makes us want to repeat it, that isn't denying altruism, its simply stating that you shouldn't confuse what you "think" is altruistic, like becoming an evangelist and trying to *help* people by banging on their doors, is the same thing as helping a kid that is being beaten up. You can call the later "true", "inherent" or what ever, but the point is, its not something that you can't be taught to ignore or even help the bully do, and still feel good about. We can't "morally" justify sticking a bunch of kids in a box to see what rules they derive on their own, without interference, so its impossible to say "which" types of moral or altruistic concepts are innate and which are entirely learned, let alone "how" they are derived. Lacking a clear an precise means to define which are which, its rediculous to talk about inherent or true anything. Doing so is not helpful, since there is no clear deliniation and everyone can come up with any definition they like as to what fits there.
quote:Well, congratulations. As a citizen it is your right to hold and propogate such absurd beliefs. But I have to point out that they are not in anyway based on science, just on attrocious philosophy.
See, here is the problem. I consider arbitrary association of a behaviour to some category, just because you want it to exist, to be absurd. As I have said, I don't deny altruism, just arbitrary and entirely philosophy based assumptions of what fits into someone's definition of such, especially when research implies that justification *follows* action in all case, not the reverse. Someone not understanding why they did X, doesn't mean it automatically has to be Y, it just means their own thoughts are conflicted enough that they don't know. Since both long term and short term moral acts arise from the same part of the brain, there is no qualitative assumption that can be made than the less specific and explainable act *must* arise from some unfound, apparently non-existent, altuism component in the brain. The fact that the can, according to on recent article, even accurately "guess" what you will think next, based on those same scans, the odds of some unknown and as yet undetected altruism system existing is highly unlikely:
quote:No, "you" give it that precise meaning. It might even be the dictionary definition of it, but people don't consult dictionaries every time they make such statements, to make sure they are using the right word. What someone who believes in a literal divinely inspired morality means by "inherently good", is *not* the same thing you do.
So what. You are not having a discussion with someone who believes in a "literal divinely inspired morality"; you are having a discussion with me. So why do you insist on interpreting my words as meaning what a fundamentalist would mean by them in the face of my explicit definitions? Are you only capable of arguing against straw men?
quote:It is not a matter of anthropomorphising. The abolitionists who argued that enslavement of Africans was as immoral as the enslavement of humans were not "anthropomorphising"; and neither are the current moralists (such as Peter Singer) who argue that animals should be extended moral rights. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes it is. You can objectively observe how an animal acts and even show that its brain structures are triggered in the same way our are in relation to certain things, or you can make wild guesses that behaviour X "looks like" Y, and simply assume your right. The later is anthropomorphising and its what people who send their pets to fake pet psychologists and pet psychics do, they project both thought and behaviour on them that *isn't* realistically possible, based on what the real science shows to be actually possible.
So now we have it on record that you believe the abolitionists, in insisting that african slaves were humans with human rights were anthropomophising, ie, were treating a nonhuman thing as human.
quote:transitive verb
Definitions:
treat nonhuman thing as human: to give a nonhuman thing a human form, human characteristics, or human behavior our tendency to anthropomorphize wild animals
I'm pretty sure that is not your opinion; that you have merely been thoughtless rather than racist. But you really ought to think a bit more about what I actually write before jumping in with absolute certainty that I am wrong.
quote:No, just nothing "inherently altruistic". That is where the sticking point is. Biology design us so that altruistic behaviour makes us want to repeat it, that isn't denying altruism, its simply stating that you shouldn't confuse what you "think" is altruistic, like becoming an evangelist and trying to *help* people by banging on their doors, is the same thing as helping a kid that is being beaten up. You can call the later "true", "inherent" or what ever, but the point is, its not something that you can't be taught to ignore or even help the bully do, and still feel good about. We can't "morally" justify sticking a bunch of kids in a box to see what rules they derive on their own, without interference, so its impossible to say "which" types of moral or altruistic concepts are innate and which are entirely learned, let alone "how" they are derived. Lacking a clear an precise means to define which are which, its rediculous to talk about inherent or true anything. Doing so is not helpful, since there is no clear deliniation and everyone can come up with any definition they like as to what fits there.
The problem here is that I have never talked about "inherent altruism". I have talked about "inherent good" as a property of moral capacity, not of humans. And I have clearly defined what that means. I have talked about a human capacity to be moral. But a capacity to be moral is not the same as being inherently moral, let alone inherently altruistic. Humans have a capacity to learn language. But by stating that I have not asserted that humans have an inherent language. Likewise, humans have a capacity to be moral. That does not mean they have an inherent moral system, or even (as I have already pointed out) that there is an objective moral system.
It is now evident that the view you are arguing against is so complete a strawman that it does not even constitute a caricature of the view I am arguing for. Consequently, I won't waste my time discussing it with you unless you care to reread my prior comments, and actually comment upon my opinions.
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quote:I'm not sure I follow. My definition allows, for the sake of argument, that altruistic acts performed for kin count as egoistic rather than altruistic; it allows that altruistic acts performed for members of a group with which you frequently interact, and hence from which you can expect reciprocal altruism, as egoistic. If that is too narrow, it can only be because even allowing the possibility of any altruism is too narrow a definition of egoism.
Let's set aside your passion for winning this argument for just a bit - though I quite like it!
I'm not one for longwinded-sidewinding paragraphs, so let me bullet-point a few things.
1. [question] As particularly evidenced in the quoted paragraph here, you seem to regard egoism as opposite altruism. You may have meant to put "quotations" around "altruism" if you were allowing for alternative explanations in your argument. But, either way, is that your viewpoint? That those two words are antipodal?
2. [clarification] I'm not sure that you actually defined altruism (and I'm too lazy to reread), but you did provide some examples. I think that the examples you provided circumscribe a rather narrow set that serves to substantiate your argument.
3. [another example] Martyrdom. Self-identification. If a person who commits allegedly "altruistic" acts self-identifies with personal-perception or a community-based belief system that honors/rewards this behavior, doesn't that make the the altruistic act selfish (egoism).
-Ugh - that was messy and I'm not doing the point justice. Please ignore this point, if you like. I speak english, and sometimes I have great difficulty composing my thoughts.
4. [more to the point - another question] It would seem to me that any action taken intentionally by a being with a "self" is, by definition, selfish. My understanding of "altruism" is that it is equivalent to selflessness.
- so the question I might pose to you is this: A person commits an action, cognizant of what s/he intends to do. How can it be both selfish (egoism) and selfless (altruism)?
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1) Altruism and Egoism are contraries. That is, an act cannot be both altruistic and egoistic at the same time, though it can be neither. (And yes, I probably shoud have used quotation marks.)
2) The examples I presented were counter examples to the claim that all human acts are egoistic (or that no human acts are altruistic). They are not intended to provide an implicit definition of altruism, but to be clear examples of acts which are altruistic, and which it would be incoherent to call them egoistic.
3) That depends on what you mean. If a person subscribes to a belief that performing some heroic sacrifice will result in eternal reward, and if their reason for performing the act is the expectation of that reward, then the act is egoistic rather than altruistic.
If they believe that performing the act will give them great renown such that their deeds will be told in song a thousand generations hence, and that this is a more desirable thing to acheive than life itself; and if the achievement of the renown is the reason for the act, then it is egoistic rather than altruistic.
If their community believes that acts of a certain kind are good to do, and the person performs the act because they agree with the community, that in no way tends to make the act egoistic.
4) Any act performed by a self is performed by that self because of motives which are that self's motives, but that has no bearing on whether the act is egoistic or altruistic (or something else). The words "altruistic" and "egoistic" were introduced to distinguish between two different kinds of acts and motives of agents. To simply redefine one of the words so that it applies of all acts by agents only reduces your vocabulary. It means that were before the revision of language we could say of an agents act that it was performed for their own benefit, or that it was performed for someone elses benefit; after the revision all we would be able to say is that the act was performed by an agent.
Finally, as I have already said, an act cannot be both egoistic and altruistic at the same time. There is a slight confusion here because for purposes of evolutionary psychology (or ethology), acts which benefit kin or immediate social groups are considered to be for the benefit of the agent, because in evolutionary psychology the only benefit recognised is the propogation of genes. Any act which tends to increase the average propogation of your genes (including their duplicates in your siblings and cousins) is considered selfish, as are acts of recoprical altruism (which tends to increase average propogation of genes for all members of the group). This means that "egoism" so defined is not what is normally called egoism. Some silly philosophers (or scientists playing at philosopher) have used this extended meaning of "egoism" to argue that maternal sacrifices aren't "altruistic" without noting that they are using a technical term outside of its technical context in doing so. Kagehi has been doing this, and for the sake of argument, I have not disputed it because:
a) It is possible to argue, the ethologists definition is the most suitable for this discussion; and
b) Even given the extended meaning of egoism, I can easilly make my case. There are human acts which are altruistic even in the special sense of ethology; they are not unusual; they are not aberations; they are the result of a unique capacity which humans have and which SFAIK no other animal has.
And for a final point of confusion, altruistic acts are not necessarilly moral acts as I defined them in my original claim. An act can be alstruistic without being moral, and not all moral acts are altruistic.
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quote:No, "you" give it that precise meaning. It might even be the dictionary definition of it, but people don't consult dictionaries every time they make such statements, to make sure they are using the right word. What someone who believes in a literal divinely inspired morality means by "inherently good", is *not* the same thing you do.
So what. You are not having a discussion with someone who believes in a "literal divinely inspired morality"; you are having a discussion with me. So why do you insist on interpreting my words as meaning what a fundamentalist would mean by them in the face of my explicit definitions? Are you only capable of arguing against straw men?
Are we the only two people in the universe that might read this? If not, then their definitions are as relavent and ours.
quote:
quote:It is not a matter of anthropomorphising. The abolitionists who argued that enslavement of Africans was as immoral as the enslavement of humans were not "anthropomorphising"; and neither are the current moralists (such as Peter Singer) who argue that animals should be extended moral rights. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes it is. You can objectively observe how an animal acts and even show that its brain structures are triggered in the same way our are in relation to certain things, or you can make wild guesses that behaviour X "looks like" Y, and simply assume your right. The later is anthropomorphising and its what people who send their pets to fake pet psychologists and pet psychics do, they project both thought and behaviour on them that *isn't* realistically possible, based on what the real science shows to be actually possible.
So now we have it on record that you believe the abolitionists, in insisting that african slaves were humans with human rights were anthropomophising, ie, were treating a nonhuman thing as human.
Sorry, wasn't paying attention and forgot to clip out your racism strawman from it. No, I didn't mean that at all. I just quoted the whole block, instead of the specific part I was refering to, and you decided to jump on the part I wasn't talking about. Sorry for the confusion.
quote:The problem here is that I have never talked about "inherent altruism". I have talked about "inherent good" as a property of moral capacity, not of humans. And I have clearly defined what that means. I have talked about a human capacity to be moral. But a capacity to be moral is not the same as being inherently moral, let alone inherently altruistic. Humans have a capacity to learn language. But by stating that I have not asserted that humans have an inherent language. Likewise, humans have a capacity to be moral. That does not mean they have an inherent moral system, or even (as I have already pointed out) that there is an objective moral system.
Good is a term I find even less definible in the sense you are trying to. Its so vague and imprecise a term that everyone has a different definition for it. But in a general sense, that its certainly beneficial that some capacity exists for forming such rules, your correct. Good though is simply too vague and for some people seriously loaded with a lot of "assumptions" about what it means that go way beyond how you are using it.
quote:It is now evident that the view you are arguing against is so complete a strawman that it does not even constitute a caricature of the view I am arguing for. Consequently, I won't waste my time discussing it with you unless you care to reread my prior comments, and actually comment upon my opinions.
What is clear is that I am arguing for non-vague, non-loaded words, applied to *actual* behaviour, while it seemed, at least initially, that you where implying something less tangible and where instead just using phrases I think should be avoided like the plague, do to how less rational people will invariably misread them. All you have to do is look at how people in the ID crowd quote mine a few words or a sentence out of something condemning their ideas, then claim it promotes them instead, to realize that being imprecise and using loaded words that they pick *because* they imply mystical gibberish, is *not* beneficial. Worst thing is, its all to easy to misread someone that is on your own side as one of them, precisely because they refuse to use less loaded terminology.
As for it being a strawman.. I don't think so. Its as important, if not more, to understand what and how altruism works, than that is simply exists. Its merely assuming it does, then arbitrarilly pegging some things are "good", without even a clear definition of what "good" is intended to mean in the context, that get people in trouble in the first place. But by all means, this has gone from what I intended to argue into something very muddy, probably in no small part, as I said before, because we are *not* using the same assumed definitions or words to convey our intent.
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quote:Originally posted by Tom Curtis: b) Even given the extended meaning of egoism, I can easilly make my case. There are human acts which are altruistic even in the special sense of ethology; they are not unusual; they are not aberations; they are the result of a unique capacity which humans have and which SFAIK no other animal has.
And I would argue that a) this is an unproven assertion on your part and b) there are instances of animals, such as family pets, acting without thought of their own safety, to save what "isn't" even one of their own immediate family or owners family, which invalidates the assertion anyway. The question still arises if they might have projected their association with "some" humans to an association with "all" humans, thus also invalidating the more literal definition of altruism, but that isn't at this point all that eailly tested. My objection is to applying a default presumption of altruism, when laking sufficient evidence to prove if it was, or that such a definition is even relevant.
Yes, we come up with words to describe things we don't understand, so they can be more easilly categorized. The problem is, we also find ourselves having to merge some of the categories, when later evidence suggests the original terms where invalid, e.g. Willow Wisps become a form of lightning, instead of evil spirits that lead people to death in swamps. This doesn't mean the term isn't still applicable to the phenomena, since it more precisely describes how it differs, just that it is not longer valid to presume they are completely different phenomena. I.e. Your claims that altruism and egoism are polar opposites is only valid if you first presume that one of them is uniquely human or that they derive from different sources. If they don't, which seems likely, then they are subcategories of the same behaviour, not two seperate and opposing ones. I don't think I can be any clearer than that.
It comes down to an assumption on your part, not a known fact supported by additional evidence. I just happen to distrust, "Just so.", stories.
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quote: 4) Any act performed by a self is performed by that self because of motives which are that self's motives, but that has no bearing on whether the act is egoistic or altruistic (or something else).
I fail to understand how the "self's motives" can differ from selfishness. I think you're being cagey on this point. And, conflationary, indeed.
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quote:I fail to understand how the "self's motives" can differ from selfishness. I think you're being cagey on this point. And, conflationary, indeed.
Let's start with the obvious - you can only act from your own motives. That someone else has a motive has no direct bearing on your actions by itself. So, by definition, every motive that forms a direct basis for your action is your self's motive (ie, your motive).
Does that mean it is selfish? No! Consider the definition of "selfish" from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
quote:selfish One entry found for selfish.
Main Entry: selfˇish Pronunciation: 'sel-fish Function: adjective 1 : concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others 2 : arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others <a selfish act> - selfˇishˇly adverb - selfˇishˇness noun
Supose I hear about some people in a distant country that have been effected by a tidal wave; that I feel sympathy for their suffering; that I then take money which I had saved to upgrade my computer and give it to a charity inorder to alleviate that suffering.
Now, at this stage it is an open possibility that my action did not "aris[e] from concern [for my] own welfare or advantage in disregard of others". In fact, prima facie, I have disregarded my own advantage (and improved computer) from concern for the welfare or advantage of others (the alleviated suffering of tidal wave victims). But it is not an open possibility that I acted from motives which were not my motives. In this putative case, I have a motive (aleviating the suffering of the destitute) which outweighs the strength of another of my motives (upgrading my computer so I can play more recent and larger computer games).
Now, we could revise the meaning of "selfish" to mean "an act that flows from a motive of the actor". From the Merriam-Webster definition, there can be no doubt that this is a revised definition. It would also be a useless definition, for essentially every act flows from a persons own motives. Consequently, saying a persons act was selfish would convey very little information. At most it would inform you that the act was not the result of coercion or a hypnotic trance.
Despite the poverty of the revised definition, it is from time to time suggested that the revised definition is part of the meaning of the normal term. That claim is false, as shown by the dictionary definition. Almost always when it is made, however, the person who makes it is arguing that all actions are necessarilly selfish, and that in consequence there are no altruistic acts. But in doing so they are trading on an ambiguity. They use the revised definition to argue that all acts are selfish; then they use the standard definition to argue that selfish acts are necessarily not altruistic, and conclude that no acts are altruistic. That is transparently a bad argument. It is made worse by the fact that the revised definition has no use other than in this rhetorical legerdemaine.
So, yes I am being cagey, in that I am explicitly avoiding a well known argumentative fallacy. But no, I am not being conflationary. On the contrary, I am resisting the conflation of two distinct meanings of "selfish", and providing clear grounds for resisting that conflation.
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posted
Tom, I'm not a 7-day literalist by any stretch. Heck, I'm an agnostic fairly frequently. And I generally agree with your rebuttal.
Again though you make an assumption. You assume the rules are the same today as they were then. (whenever "then" was... there are certianly 7-day literalists that are not necessarily young earth creationists)
quote: no factor alters the effective mutation rate by an order of magnitude.
You are making the same fallacious assumption that many creationists make. The Earth is Not a Closed System.
And the answer, however simplistic, is that God could have. (And we won't even talk about a drastic influxes of UV radiation which certianly can send mutations up at exponential rates)
Those creationists who understand that the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not apply directly to the Earth because the earth is Not a Closed System, actually have far more options. Even though radioactive decay rates are now constant, and through them we get linear extrapolations of age,we are still gambling that the decay rates were always like they are now.
However if the Fall affected everything down to the quantum state of atoms, there's no guarantee that the gamble is correct.
Dispensationalists believe that God changed the guidelines for communicating with humans several times throughout history, even if there was a steady progression towards the ultimate Crucifixion of Christ. And, they believe the rules are going to change again in the future.
This is why it does not seem fallacious to them, to think that God could have changed the rules of the initial Creation. Especially when the Bible says they changed at least twice.
Scientists don't have the liberty of speculating on "rule changes" though, they have to look in the now and the evidence as it is now. (Although when you look at quantum physics, even they admit the quantum rules changed frequently at the point of the big bang.)
I think that they would be able to accomplish more, by deliberately addressing things indirectly rather than head on, which always causes a clash that polarizes things even more.
quote:Dispensationalists believe that God changed the guidelines for communicating with humans several times throughout history, even if there was a steady progression towards the ultimate Crucifixion of Christ. And, they believe the rules are going to change again in the future.
The irony here is that this is just goal post moving. First century Christians thought the second coming had already happened. Why? Because the Roman campaigns, as recorded by Flavius Josephus, an "adopted" member of the Flavian family, who was Jewish originally, excatly parallels both the prophecies of the book of David *and* the path, nature and linearity of the events that the Bible says happened with Christ. Who where the first official Christians? The Flavians, Herods and Alexanders, all of whom had direct blod ties to each other and close relationships. Who was the first pope (or at least the first that it is claimed one of the disciples gave that position to? One of the Flavians. Who was the second coming according to all of them, Titus Flavias, who led the campaign the brought about the fall of the temple and of the Jewish state in the 40 years prophecied.
One person even goes so far as to suggest that the reason that the only historical references to Christ are a few passing mentions of a very common name and the New Testimate itself, the parts of which where all written 50 - 100 years after the fact, was that both the NT and Josephus' campaign history where written together, as a means to replace the militant messiah proclaimed in the book of David, with one that embodied concepts that might produce piece, while at the same time emphasizing submission to the Roman empire, but not fighting against it. The only providence for an earlier draft of the NT comes from someone that might have been sitting in a Roman prison at the time and wrote it 50 years after the fact. Worse, the rest of it is known to be written by several people that *never* could have even met Jesus, given the time frame, so no prior version from the time period is even possible, unless it was pure word of mouth, and we know how well that works...
Atwill may get some stuff wrong, I am hardly an expert of Roman history, but most of the argument I have heard against his interpretation have been nitpicking about details that are not provable. For example, why would the public stance of someone that faked such a thing imply they faked it? If you don't have a letter or document stating they knew is was all made up, how do you know that the official public statements are accurate ones, not them playing the part? I think the idea is compelling, even if the evidence is at least as sketchy as for the reality of the NT (actually, given how scetchy that is, its more a case of how scetchy the evidence of who wrote what and when that is the problem). Too much of it fits too well. The book BTW is Caesar's Messiah, by Joseph Atwill. Even if he got 90% of the wrong, he is still right about two things, the NT has less evidenciary sources to confirm it than any other book in history and too many things in the campaign recorded by Flavius Josephus fits with the events in the NT. The only question is, was the history written to fit the NT, or the NT written to parody the historical events? Since no provable written version of the NT exists "prior" to the near simultanious writting of that campaign, its currently impossible to say.
One thing is certain, the modern belief in the end of times contradicts early Christian assumptions about when it was supposed to happen. Put simply, there is no real evidence, even within the history of their own religion, that implies they are right and some vast change is going to take place that rewrites the rules.
And, as you said, its a mute point anyway, since science can't test, "What if God made it work in some way that makes no sense at all according to current rules in some obscure past?". They can however run limited simulations that prove that unless something equivalent to 2+2 = 5 happened, any change in such state in the universe would render it incompatible with any sort of life that we know of, or even any life at all, since even planet formation shouldn't be possible in many/most such universes. In those that they might, its hardly certain life could exist in them or that anything can be so fundimentally different there that you can ignore some form of entropy, nothing would ever die, etc. Science can look at such rule changes in simulation, but on some level its still dependent on basic assumptions, mathimatical ones if nothing else. If no existing rule is valid, you might as well start doing 'x/0' type math. Its not even possible to simulate something you can't define logical rules for.
Damn hard to argue with someone that, unlike a scientist, won't run a simulation to try to find if such a universe is even possible, but just says, "It really happened, prove me wrong!".
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quote: Damn hard to argue with someone that, unlike a scientist, won't run a simulation to try to find if such a universe is even possible, but just says, "It really happened, prove me wrong!".
I agree it is difficult to argue against. More precisely I'm trying to highlight why arguing against it, in the way which has been going on here (which I enjoy) with logic and rebuttals etc, is not the way to go about changing "hearts and minds" as it were on this topic.
I personally don't think that *any* experiment can be run in this universe to prove or disprove whether the other universe is possible. But, I think that's where the questions should start with the uber-creationist argument.
For the record, I was raised as a 7-day literalist. As a child, I rapidly came to the conclusion, that the point of the story was was a)that God *could* have done it that way if He'd wanted to, whether or not he actually *did* and b)regardless of the mechanism of how we got there at some specific point God gave man a soul, different from the animals.
The question that I pondered on for a very long time, which can be taken several ways, one quite tounge in cheek, is this: "Did friction exist in the Garden of Eden?" Friction always generates entropy increases. Was the "perfect world" a universe without entropy?
This sort of question can be asked more respectfully than a direct confrontation, and gets the more sensible Creationists thinking outside their box, and thinking in more scientific methods. It gets them realizing that things are different now whatever they were then, and that they need to put their ideas in context the facts and reality of where we are today.
Thanks again for the rebuttal. I think we might be getting somewhere.
I'm no expert in argumentation, but your reliance on the dictionary quote seems like an "argument by authority". Is that allowed? The definition is curious, and subsequently so is that of "selfless", as the definition is derived from that of "selfish".
(that's actually kind of interesting, in the sense that the "good" term is derivative of the "bad" one - hmph! interesting.)
Perhaps better terms can be coined. One for any action emating from the self's motives, and one for it's opposite - any action that emanates from the self but without regard to the self's motives.
This would appear to be an arduous task.
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