Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 12:16:54 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: "Neal E. Westfall" <nwestfal@directvinternet.com> Cc: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <3D6FC4A6.5E7590AC@mindspring.com> References: <20020830103133.J40693-100000@Tolstoy.home.lan>
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"Neal E. Westfall" wrote: > On Fri, 30 Aug 2002, Terry Lambert wrote: > > Glasses keep near-shighted people in the gene pool longer than > > they would otherwise be. Myopia is still an adverse condition. > > Is this a good or a bad thing? It's an example of adversity which is not also evolutionary pressure. I could just have easily picked diabetes or any other recessive genetic trait that would normally be fatal, if it were expressed, and for which we now have treatment which keeps the people with the trait in the gene pool long enough to reproduce and pass the trait on to their offspring. > > > But blowing them up -with- the sanction of the state is the right way? > > > > Of course. Society defines morality. > > Society enacts laws. Whether or not they are moral or not would depend > on a standard by which you could judge them to be moral or immoral. > Such a standard would have to be non-arbitrary and transcendant to all > societies. Whether or not such a standard exists determines whether > we can talk about ethics, morals, etc. at all. If not, everyone is > just blowing smoke. All societies enforce standards of conduct upon their members, and people are members of many societies. Morality relationships are generally hierarchical on one axis, and peering on another (i.e. society condones the soldier that kills the soldier of the enemy state, but not the clerk at the grocery store down the block, even though both are human beings). Morality is dictated by the larger society, in any given context. It doesn't need to be transcendent, per se, it merely needs to transcend the individual, or the smaller society within the larger. You may say some activity (e.g. killing another human being) is "not right". What you really mean is "it's unethical"; to borrow from Dave Hayes, you are actually saying that it would violate your internal code of conduct. What this actually means, however, is that you will not tolerate it in yourself, and so you will also not tolerate it in others. When you get a group together into a society, and there is general agreement that a particular ethic is shared, to the point that the society is willing to censure the activity _as a society_, then at that point, it becomes a moral for the society. Individuals do not have morals, though individuals may *be* moral or *act* morally or *demonstrate* morality. If you want to boil down this whole discussion so far, it's that Dave has an ethic which he would like to convert into a moral, by getting other people to share it. This ethic venerates the rights of the individual over the rights of the state (the society to which the individuals belong). My own objection to this is, first and foremost, that the rights of the state take precedence of the rights of the individual, as the state is composed of individuals, and the yardstick we must therefore use is that of the greatest good for the greatest number. I personally believe that Dave is intentionally ignoring the fact that membership in nominally open online societies is by way of self-selection. It is convenient for him to take this position, since he can't people to self-select into a society which agrees with his ethic, and he doesn't understand complexity sufficiently to create a society on his owm but he believes that he understands it sufficiently to impose his ethic on a preexisting society. What I find amusing about this whole thing is that those people who share his ethic have already self-selected membership in the society composed of "people who share Dave's ethic". He's just having a hard time getting them to self-assemble at a particular forum, or finding a forum where they have already done so. The reason this is amusing is that he attempted to create a forum in which his principles were also embodied in the nature of the forum itself, and it failed. The failure arose from people who attacked it... and which Dave has so far failed to recognize as "trolls", in the same sense that he is asking everyone else to accept, when he could not. > > > The ones that break out and forcibly reproduce are the best suited to > > > survival in hostile environments. By definition even. > > > > Nature seems to vote against that one. > > Nature has no vote. It just is. "Natural Selection" is an oxymoron. > According to naturalism, scientific theories are to be non-teleological, > right? Self-organizing systems don't have to admit non-teleological basis. Science acknowledges "gosh numbers", such as "PI", "e", "G", or "The Fine Structure Constant", etc., without needing to acknowledge a non-teleological cause with a set of thermostats that can be adjusted, one of which reads "Speed of Light" or another which reads "Planck Length". > There are other alternatives... I was arguing in the context of Dave's claim of mankind's "academic arrogance". > > Accessory after the fact, receiving stolen property, etc.. > > Is this wrong? Does it matter if an action is wrong or not, if a penalty will be assessed for the action regardless of your own personal views of right and wrong? If you want to avoid the penalty, you must act as if you believed the action were wrong, regardless of your personal beliefs in the matter. > > > > It was a reference to the fact that society dictates conditions > > > > to individuals, and That's The Way It Is. > > > > > > Members of society routinely and frequently violate these conditions, > > > and That's The Way It Is. > > > > And we punish them, and That's The Way It Is. > > When we punish them, is our justification for doing so solely because > we have the guns and the will to do so? Pretty much, yes. > > Or if you can't win a conflict with all of society against you, > > and are forced to cooperate. > > Sometimes cooperating with society is evil, even if you can't win. You cooperate one way or the other: society moves you out of its field of attention. It matters little whether you volunteer to go, or go kicking and screaming: go you will. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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