Posted on 05/20/2002 12:53:27 PM PDT by rpage3
See source for details....
Aw shucks. I guess mine were, too. (Man, I hope we don't have to go another 600 replies.)
I'm rather curious about this notion that a dead organism is "functioning". ;)
Let's say the corpse of the organism is decomposing in the soil across the street over there providing nutrients in the soil. Is that not a 'function'?
The wicked person who lives a long happy life and the moral person who steps in front of a bus and dies instantly can both be said to be functioning "normally" in the non-random, personal, theistic scheme. God's will, right?
Yes. The concepts of "normal funtioning" and dysfunction in your example only make sense in terms of a personal, theistic scheme. In the atheistic scheme it is not even coherent to describe a person as wicked, much less view the problem of evil as a problem, or to see it as a problem that the moral person gets hit by a bus. The problem of evil is only a problem to theists.
As far as I can tell, there's no purpose at all.
I've said exactly that on the supposition that evolution were true, but ask Jedi Girl.
Cordially,
I missed this the first time around, but around 6:30am this thread took off on a troublesome tangent because of it. (Maybe that's why I woke up at 6:30, thinking maybe I should stay up & start my day early. My nightowl nature made me go back to sleep instead!)
I can see your point - to a point - about morality being a group phenomenon. However, I think it's very very easy to take that concept too far. (I think JediGirl has fallen into that trap.)
Two problems in particular I see. 1) I think that for humans, the reproductive urge is very indirect, and less important a foundation of morality than you seem to think. If it were, then the more prosperous societies would have at least as high a birthrate as struggling peasant societies. But they don't. Young adults in prosperous societies may have more ability to indulge our sex drives than youth who have to work the fields from sunup to sundown, for instance, but we've also developed moral codes and technologies that prevent such indulgence from creating more babies. And every prosperous society seems to use them. (Note: Even Europe, with its welfare states that subsidize out of wedlock births, has a lower-than-replenishment birthrate.)
2) Assuming that morality is based on passing on our genes strikes me as awfully collectivist, and collectivism is squarely at odds with our nature as rational beings with free will. Communism of any form may be the best "strategy" for ants, to take AndrewC's example, precisely because ants' brains have, what, a couple dozen neurons? Free will is something that only people with a sufficient capacity for thought can sustain.
You can look at morality as placing the long-term needs of the group over the short-term desires of the individual.
Reading that passage again, I think that's your biggest mistake. I look at morality as placing the individual's long-term interests over the individual's short-term interests. I agree that a person's long term interests tend to be maximized by their cooperation within the context of a particular kind of society (but not just any society!), but the society is secondary to the fundamental goal: The individual's long-term interests.
IMO this avoids the trap of thinking that morals are determined by which group one is in: Society is merely a tool we use to sustain our long-term values.
p.s. Ayn Rand would be much less charitable with you... :-)
You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today - and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
- Ayn Rand (via John Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged)
Upon reflection, this definition actually does work better than the one I posted before. Excuse me while I shift my paradigm...
Homosexuality was once regarded as a perversion but is now widely accepted as an acceptable lifestyle because society says it is "okay", they don't want to interfere with the private lives of others.Though I have to agree with you in this specific context, I think there has to be a place for Is -> Ought. Otherwise Ought is arbitrary.You have just stumbled into the "is-ought fallacy." Just because certain moral behavior is observed - that says that doesn't require that people OUGHT to be doing it. A conclusion about the nature of morality cannot be made from mere observation of different cultural moral practices. Morality is not judged empirically.
Morality is a set of basic principles governing our behavior in order to maximize our eudaimonia - our flourishing as living human beings, with the kind of life that's appropriate to our nature as human beings. Therefore, one must determine as best she can just what constitutes our nature. A moral code that led to poverty, death, destruction, & degradation, would have no legitimate claim to anyone's allegiance. (Unless they know of no alternative! Perhaps Sparta was a "better" society than Athens, for its time. The Nazis, Commies & the Taliban, OTOH, had/have no excuse.)
So in a fundamental sense, it seems clear that Is must lead to Ought. In practice I think it clearly does.
FWIW, here's how Rand sees it:
It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of "life". To speak of "value" as apart from "life" is worse than a contradiction in terms. "It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible."In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between "is" and "ought."
- Virtue of Selfishness
What??? That's not supposed to happen. We're supposed to be closed-minded ideologues! Head...spinning...nothings...constant...anymore???
If, however, evolution works only through the passing-on of genes, then from an evolutionary standpoint lower-than-replacement societies are an evolutionary dead end.
. I look at morality as placing the individual's long-term interests over the individual's short-term interests.
But in the "long" term (which isn't very long on a geological scale) all individuals die. Which is to say, long-term individual needs have no lasting meaning. Here again if we are to grant the truth of evolution, the only long-term "need" for me as an individual is that my genes are passed on and protected in future generations. I cannot protect my progeny after I die -- only the group, which exists after I'm gone, can do that. Note that evolution is not exactly silent on the proper means for such protection; for example, the first thing a new Silverback gorilla tries to do is kill the former leader's offspring so that they cannot compete with his own offspring.
p.s. Ayn Rand would be much less charitable with you... :-)
Which is quite all right, considering that many of us are rather uncharitable toward Ayn, whose objectivist philosophy cannot withstand contact with the theory of evolution.
‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.’ (Luke 20:17)
"There is a certain inevitability about Christ. He is the fulfillment of Herod's worst nightmare. Herod killed John the Baptist, and when Christ followed, the ruler thought John had risen from the dead. In a sense, it was true. Jesus' first appeals to the corrupt king were made through the Baptist."
"Christ is uncompromising; inexorable. He is unpreventable, unstoppable, unavoidable. An outline of the creation's future is discernible in the personality of Jesus. The new world order will bear the stamp of his character."
"The invincibility of Jesus is good news. It confirms our deepest hope-that the highest values known to humankind, will overcome, and reign. It is good strengthening to believe that... Spirit---is higher than matter. No one really wants to inhabit a world where material values rule. The incarnation of such values are exampled by Adolf Hitler, or Idi Amin."
"It is good news to know that we are loved by a 'tough love'; a love that is not willing to give up, or let go, and hence, a love that suffers long. In short we are loved by a love that will triumph. "Love never fails."
I already answered that. Some ask "why?" I ask "why not?"
1) I think that for humans, the reproductive urge is very indirect, and less important a foundation of morality than you seem to think. If it were, then the more prosperous societies would have at least as high a birthrate as struggling peasant societies....
If, however, evolution works only through the passing-on of genes, then from an evolutionary standpoint lower-than-replacement societies are an evolutionary dead end.
True, from a very long-term perspective. But we are what we are, and it seems to me that our "moral imperative" to pass on our genes has been made very, very indirect. It probably worked well enough in prehistorical times, but not anymore.
But the implications for that contradiction won't really be felt for many more generations - after all, the world's population is still increasing even today. I trust that eventually most civilizations will be somewhat free, and therefore prosperous, and I predict their birthrates will fall as well. Maybe my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter will be hurt by its effects, but I have a hard time worrying about such a vague risk to her. :-)
. I look at morality as placing the individual's long-term interests over the individual's short-term interests.
But in the "long" term (which isn't very long on a geological scale) all individuals die. Which is to say, long-term individual needs have no lasting meaning. Here again if we are to grant the truth of evolution, the only long-term "need" for me as an individual is that my genes are passed on and protected in future generations. I cannot protect my progeny after I die -- only the group, which exists after I'm gone, can do that.
Ah, but that's why it's important that we leave the moral landscape at least as "clean" as we find it! For our childrens' sake (and so on for at least a few generations).
Note that evolution is not exactly silent on the proper means for such protection; for example, the first thing a new Silverback gorilla tries to do is kill the former leader's offspring so that they cannot compete with his own offspring.
Yeah, that says something about the morality of hereditary monarchies, doesn't it!
Gotta go, & I'll be away from the 'puter for a couple hours...
9/11 Firemen?
That's where you are wrong. Our society supports abortion (which is in fact "death and destruction") and is a primary reason why people of european descent are have a negative population growth rate - and will cease to exist in a few hundred years (or sooner) unless this trend is reversed. Your thesis is thus disproved by prima facie facts.
I am not an Ayn Rand fan. Here objectivism has no foundation whatsoever other than a purely subjective one that favors total personal autonomy. This philosophy goes directly contrary to the philosophy of Jesus Christ who said to value others above yourself. I'll take Jesus over Ayn thank you very much.
Jesus never said any such thing.
Not in those exact words, but this is essentially the same.
Jhn 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Jhn 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
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