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Author Topic:   Morality without god
Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 348 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 301 of 1221 (682308)
12-01-2012 7:03 AM
Reply to: Message 282 by Straggler
11-30-2012 9:27 AM


Re: Selfless Persons Selfish Genes
Twins who have the same genes are not the same person. If you were cloned the genetically identical clone would not be the same person you are. Thus your person-hood must consist of something more than your genes alone.
This is surely inarguable?
A pair of complex entities do not share the same relationship to each other that one complex entity shares with it's constituent parts.
If the twins were absolutely identical then they would occupy the same space at the same time. Could you tell their person-hoods apart then? If they were absolutely identical would they not overlap at every conceivable point.
Consider the parts of a car and the car itself. The car has a function or ability that the parts do not have on their own. At what point during assembly does the car begin to exist? After the car exists, how many parts do you have to take away to make the car not exist?
Compassion and empathy and love are evolved traits which assisted genetic propagation in our ancestral environment.
But the fact that this is the case doesn't mean (as you seem to be insisting) that selfless acts are therefore impossible.
Action and benefit are like cause and effect where the effect begins to influence the cause. This seems to happen when you get consciousness.
I am questioning the possibility of selfless acts because of the reasons that we do everything else.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 282 by Straggler, posted 11-30-2012 9:27 AM Straggler has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 302 by kofh2u, posted 12-01-2012 8:11 AM Dogmafood has not replied
 Message 304 by Straggler, posted 12-03-2012 11:48 AM Dogmafood has replied

  
kofh2u
Member (Idle past 3820 days)
Posts: 1162
From: phila., PA
Joined: 04-05-2004


Message 302 of 1221 (682311)
12-01-2012 8:11 AM
Reply to: Message 301 by Dogmafood
12-01-2012 7:03 AM


Re: Selfless Persons Selfish Genes
Action and benefit are like cause and effect where the effect begins to influence the cause.
There must be such a selfless gene according to the Theory of Evolution.
THIS IS BECAUSE BENEVOLENT ACTION WAS A BENEFIT TO OUR EVOLUTION, DE FACTO SINCE WE EVOLVED.
Nash, the Noble Prize winning mathematician used Group Theory to prove that one gins more, is more successful, when one works for the benefit of his group or neighbors than if he opposes them in competiion or otherwise to try to gain ground.
This is essentially a mathematical proof that bread cast upon the waters of other people's lives returns many fold.
(Nash received the prize for exactlythat Game Theory proof, by the way.)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 301 by Dogmafood, posted 12-01-2012 7:03 AM Dogmafood has not replied

  
Dawn Bertot
Member
Posts: 3571
Joined: 11-23-2007


Message 303 of 1221 (682347)
12-01-2012 1:27 PM
Reply to: Message 266 by Tempe 12ft Chicken
11-28-2012 11:19 AM


Re: Law of Non-contradiction
On your comment about without a creator, again all I can say is that you are shoving God into the explanation. You can see that we are moral beings and you believe in God, so you just close your eyes and go, "Well, God must have done it." However, if we are looking at reality, then we must remove any unevidenced answers. It is irrational to leap to God as the first guess, when the evidence is non-existent that there is even a god. Plus, a group could determine whether their morals are getting better by studying the suffering and benefit that decisions cause. In other words, we can learn from previous mistakes and hone our morality, a process which has been continuing for hundreds of thousands of years..
Lets start with this statement, to try and simplify what is actually taking place here. I want to clarify, because it is obvious you still dont understand the basics.
Dont you find it ironic, that in the first place you require of me to evidence both logically and physically, the actual existence of God, but when i require the same of you concerning the actual existence, of right and wrong and morality actually, you cannot provide this in the least.
The best you have done thus far is to suggest that you have a relative morality. Well by simply rules of logic a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time, that is it would violate the law of Non-contradiction.
So from your position, you cannot even establish the existence of actual right and wrong, muchless define how it can be actual, valid or absolute.
Since it is not absolute, it must be relative. If it is relative, that is, it doesnt apply across the board to all species, then it is contradictory as any kind of actual right or wrong.
Now since it is not actually right or wrong, it cannot actually exist and not exist at the same time
To maintain that it both exists and doesnt exist at the same time, as you do, is a violation of simple logic
Simply put, if you require me to establish the actual existence of God, then one would wonder why you would not be required to follow your own rules
I have already established from a logical perspective, what would be required for an actual right and wrong or morality to exist., with or without God's existence.
Since however, you do not bellieve in God, it only remains for your to set out in a rational logical way, how right and wrong are actually right and wrong
Perspectives from your perspective, wont work, because the rules get changed when other species are involved
You do realize, that your suppossed rational, that other species, designated for your consumption, only applies to your perspective, correct?
Why do you think the chicken runs from you in a panicy type way, in the barnyard?
Unless you can establish across the board, why your actions are actually moral, more than pointing out that you kill them less viloently, than others, wont work
Here is a simple question. Why dont your standards of murder for humans, apply the same way to animals? Isnt life, just life? What makes human life more deserving of higher or better standards?
When you can make a logical distinction here as opposed to a strickly human personal perspective, you will be on your way to establishing atleast a logical approach
Dawn Bertot
Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.
Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.
Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.
Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 266 by Tempe 12ft Chicken, posted 11-28-2012 11:19 AM Tempe 12ft Chicken has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 307 by Taq, posted 12-03-2012 1:28 PM Dawn Bertot has not replied
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 Message 324 by Tempe 12ft Chicken, posted 12-04-2012 11:52 AM Dawn Bertot has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 304 of 1221 (682513)
12-03-2012 11:48 AM
Reply to: Message 301 by Dogmafood
12-01-2012 7:03 AM


Re: Selfless Persons Selfish Genes
It seems you now implicitly accept that there is more to person-hood than genes alone.
Dogma writes:
If the twins were absolutely identical then they would occupy the same space at the same time.
Erm...I've never heard of twins (or clones) that "occupy the same space at the same time". That seems a rather unnecessary distraction.
Dogma writes:
I am questioning the possibility of selfless acts because of the reasons that we do everything else.
No. It's exactly the same reason. Selfish genes. That's the point.
quote:
Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.
- Matt Ridley, "The Origins of Virtue"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 301 by Dogmafood, posted 12-01-2012 7:03 AM Dogmafood has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 317 by Dogmafood, posted 12-03-2012 10:34 PM Straggler has replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 305 of 1221 (682517)
12-03-2012 12:03 PM
Reply to: Message 287 by GDR
11-30-2012 2:44 PM


Re: Selflessness Test
GDR writes:
I just don’t buy it.
Then you are flying in the face of accepted evolutionary theory with regard to the origins of morality in exactly the same way (and on exactly the same basis - incredulity) as creationists do with regard to physical constructs.
How are you proposing that compassion, empathy, morality etc. etc. did arise? Are you suggesting God magically implanted them at some point or what?
GDR writes:
To go back to the proverbial guy throwing himself on a hand grenade to save others, he not only dies himself but also any descendants that he might have. He has very effectively not only removed himself from the gene pool and the society but it also means that he is now unable to pass on his genes to the society and the gene pool.
In the closely related hunter-gatherer ancestral environment an individual act of sacrifice can lead to the ongoing survival of others carrying many of the the same genes.
The key to grasping this idea is to think of it from the genes-eye-view rather than that of individual carriers.
quote:
Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice -- all of these things, the things that hold society together, the things that allow our species to think so highly of itself, can now confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis. That's the good news. The bad news is that, although these things are in some ways blessings for humanity as a whole, they didn't evolve for the 'good of the species' and aren't reliably employed to that end. Quite the contrary: it is now clearer than ever (and precisely why) the moral sentiments are used with brutal flexibility, switched on and off in keeping with self interest; and how naturally oblivious we often are to this switching. In the new view, human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 287 by GDR, posted 11-30-2012 2:44 PM GDR has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 306 of 1221 (682521)
12-03-2012 12:16 PM
Reply to: Message 291 by GDR
11-30-2012 3:06 PM


Can Jesus Do Evil? Does Jesus Possess Freewill?
GDR writes:
Indifference and evil go hand in hand.
I would say that Hitler was more than indifferent with regard to his persecution of the Jews. He actively sought to eliminate them!!!!!
Anyway - Call it what you will - The point is that God could have created us without the ability to actively wish harm upon each other (i.e. do "evil" on my aforementioned scale) without particularly compromising free-will. He could have made us so that we can either be compassionate or (at worst) uncaring rather than actively hateful. Yet he chose not to.
Thus we can only conclude that he wants us to have the capacity for hatred and evilness.
Can Jesus be hateful or do evil? Does Jesus possess freewill?
GDR writes:
I believe that there is existence in other dimensions that we with our 5 senses are unable to perceive but are in some way interconnected. I know we’ve gone through this before but our own thoughts are non-material and yet real. It is my belief that somehow out of this greater reality we have been infused with an understanding of good and evil.
I also believe that our sense of morality is infectious and as a result it does evolve over time. As a result I think that we have today cultures that are more aware of others and the environment, and that these traits have evolved.
This is incredibly confused.
On one hand you reject the scientifically accepted (and evidenced) conclusion that morality, compassion etc. etc. evolved as a result of naturally selecting genes. Yet you also claim that morality is still evolving.
If it isn't ultimately genetics - How do you think morality originated and how is it still evolving?
What are you proposing in place of the scientifically accepted and evidenced explanation?
Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 291 by GDR, posted 11-30-2012 3:06 PM GDR has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


(1)
Message 307 of 1221 (682534)
12-03-2012 1:28 PM
Reply to: Message 303 by Dawn Bertot
12-01-2012 1:27 PM


Re: Law of Non-contradiction
The best you have done thus far is to suggest that you have a relative morality. Well by simply rules of logic a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time, that is it would violate the law of Non-contradiction.
Baloney. If one person does not like chocolate and the other does, does this mean that people do not actually have a preference for chocolate since they contradict each other?
Since it is not absolute, it must be relative. If it is relative, that is, it doesnt apply across the board to all species, then it is contradictory as any kind of actual right or wrong.
It isn't contradictory. It is relative.
Since however, you do not bellieve in God, it only remains for your to set out in a rational logical way, how right and wrong are actually right and wrong
That applies to people who believe in God as well. You have to show how God's commands are moral in addition to God existing. Otherwise, you are just talking about obedience, not morality.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 303 by Dawn Bertot, posted 12-01-2012 1:27 PM Dawn Bertot has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(2)
Message 308 of 1221 (682556)
12-03-2012 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 299 by GDR
11-30-2012 8:17 PM


Re: Selflessness Test
It might be an explanation for how it works but it isn't an explanation for where it came from. Just because it gives an explanation for how societies benefit from selflessness tells us nothing about the first cause for selfless behaviour or altruism.
How it works is where it came from. Just like, when an astrophysicist tells you how solar systems form, he is also telling you why Earth is rocky and Jupiter is a gas giant and why planets exist at all.
A "first cause" in a biological context can be as simple as a fluke mutation...as with the formation of all other biological structures.
You're arguing entirely from a perspective of personal incredulity here, GDR. "I don;t buy it" is your whole argument...and it's a logical fallacy. What you prefer to believe has nothing to do with what is provably so.
The evidence for the evolution of altruism and morality is frankly overwhelming. It's demonstrated in a wide variety of social animals, not only humans. They may not have such clean-cut examples as soldiers and live grenades...
...but consider the lowly worker bee. She is infertile; nothing she can do will preserve her genes...except by preserving her hive, and thereby her mother, the queen, who continues to reproduce. She has a stinger...one which, when used, ensures her death. Bees have literally no other option than self-sacrifice when defending the hive - every successful attack results in the death of the bee. Every single sting is like a soldier leaping onto a grenade to preserve others.
The evolutionary explanation for how and why this is so is beautifully elegant. The bee sacrifices herself because doing so ensures the survival of her hive. By ensuring the survival of her hive, she ensures that her altruistic traits will be preserved in future generations. Bees that do not sacrifice themselves in the defense of their hives will be killed by predators, and the "selfish" bees will die out.
Altruism, self-sacrifice, and morality are all social constructs. Versions of each exist within groups of social animals...because those traits will increase the likelihood that societies that include them will survive and reproduce, even if the individuals die.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 299 by GDR, posted 11-30-2012 8:17 PM GDR has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 311 by foreveryoung, posted 12-03-2012 7:14 PM Rahvin has replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 309 of 1221 (682557)
12-03-2012 4:41 PM
Reply to: Message 296 by GDR
11-30-2012 7:18 PM


Re: Selflessness Test
It makes sense although I’m not convinced that there is an altruistic gene. I think it is more likely something like one of Dawkin’s memes. I think that cultural, and particularly parental pressures, spread the altruistic meme so that it has evolved and over the centuries become stronger.
I doubt that because altruism was already evolving before we developed enough culture to spread memes. The evidence suggests a genetic component.
I also believe that there is at its root an intelligent and moral first cause. My own personal subjective belief is that that divine first cause continues to be subtly involved through our hearts and minds in the spreading of that altruistic meme.
But that root still must have gradually emerged through our evolution, which evidence suggests is a result of selfish genes. Don't get me wrong, a genetic component doesn't eliminate any other causal factors, of which there are probably many given the complexity of the phenomenon. But I see no reason to doubt the role of the genetic factors.
What you are saying though does not negate the point that sacrificing his/her life and future genes is a selfless act.
Sure thing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 296 by GDR, posted 11-30-2012 7:18 PM GDR has not replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 310 of 1221 (682558)
12-03-2012 4:52 PM
Reply to: Message 303 by Dawn Bertot
12-01-2012 1:27 PM


Re: Law of Non-contradiction
Dont you find it ironic, that in the first place you require of me to evidence both logically and physically, the actual existence of God, but when i require the same of you concerning the actual existence, of right and wrong and morality actually, you cannot provide this in the least.
The best you have done thus far is to suggest that you have a relative morality. Well by simply rules of logic a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time, that is it would violate the law of Non-contradiction.
So from your position, you cannot even establish the existence of actual right and wrong, muchless define how it can be actual, valid or absolute.
Since it is not absolute, it must be relative. If it is relative, that is, it doesnt apply across the board to all species, then it is contradictory as any kind of actual right or wrong.
Now since it is not actually right or wrong, it cannot actually exist and not exist at the same time
To maintain that it both exists and doesnt exist at the same time, as you do, is a violation of simple logic
Have you ever gotten around to explaining why a morality has to be absolute and based on real actual right and wrongs in order for it to be considered a morality?
I see you keep asserting that a "relative morality" is a logical contradiction but I haven't seen you explain why that's the case.
You never replied to my Message 209, so my points still stand:
quote:
Fifthly i demonstrated that there not actually anything such as right and wrong, without God
I don't have a problem accepting that one because a relative morality doesn't depend on actualizing right and wrong. All we have to do is come up with a consensus on what we want to decide is called right and what is called wrong, and then we impliment that as our morality. People are free to disagree with it and it still sits there as our morality.
Sixthly, i demonstrated that, morality cannot be established from a persons, or persons perspective, but that it had to be established from the perspective of reality
No, I haven't seen where you've demonstrated that.
And its plainly wrong. Morality is a human construct. It requires humans to exist. It can only be established from a persons perspective. Even with your position of it having to stem from God, it still takes a man to write it down and say that it came from god and that's going to be coming from his perspective.
But I'm beginning to think that you're not speakin' my language.... According to the World English Dictionary:
quote:
morality
1. the quality of being moral
2. conformity, or degree of conformity, to conventional standards of moral conduct
3. a system of moral principles

4. an instruction or lesson in morals
5. short for morality play
Emphasis added
A morality is a convention developed by people, and they can be relative.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 303 by Dawn Bertot, posted 12-01-2012 1:27 PM Dawn Bertot has not replied

  
foreveryoung
Member (Idle past 582 days)
Posts: 921
Joined: 12-26-2011


(1)
Message 311 of 1221 (682569)
12-03-2012 7:14 PM
Reply to: Message 308 by Rahvin
12-03-2012 4:38 PM


Re: Selflessness Test
...but consider the lowly worker bee. She is infertile; nothing she can do will preserve her genes...except by preserving her hive, and thereby her mother, the queen, who continues to reproduce. She has a stinger...one which, when used, ensures her death. Bees have literally no other option than self-sacrifice when defending the hive - every successful attack results in the death of the bee. Every single sting is like a soldier leaping onto a grenade to preserve others.
This is not altruism. This is genetically driven instinctual behavior. The worker bee makes no choice to be altruistic; he simply follows his instincts. On the other hand, humans choose to be altruistic based on a set of beliefs. Those set of beliefs determine who they are as an individual. When a person fails to act in accordance with those beliefs, he loses a little bit of his sense of identity. This leads to psychological problems. People largely follow a set of rules that were established by authority figures they respected when they were younger. Most of those authority figures set up rules that included altruism. In short, people act altruistically because they have been trained to think of themselves as decent human beings when they do so. No one wants to think of themselves as a "bad person" or "anti-social" or whatever image they conjure up that they deem as intolerable for a self image.
Edited by foreveryoung, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 308 by Rahvin, posted 12-03-2012 4:38 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 312 by Rahvin, posted 12-03-2012 7:44 PM foreveryoung has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 312 of 1221 (682573)
12-03-2012 7:44 PM
Reply to: Message 311 by foreveryoung
12-03-2012 7:14 PM


Re: Selflessness Test
This is not altruism. This is genetically driven instinctual behavior.
So is a portion of human altruism. This is how evolution works - features are built upon. Humans have more complex social interaction than bees, and so have concerns like "self-image." So do some other animals.
But the observation here is the same - a worker bee sacrificing its own life for the survival of the hive is not substantially different from a human soldier throwing himself on a grenade. The same principles of group over individual survival are consistent, and the selective pressure favoring altruistic behavior is the same.
The worker bee makes no choice to be altruistic; he simply follows his instincts. On the other hand, humans choose to be altruistic based on a set of beliefs.
Humans can override instinct, but our behaviors are far more heritable than you might think. The human brain is a constant feedback loop...and from birth, we have an instinctual desire to be accepted by our family group and to please them. You'll notice that babies react to the emotions of their parents - they smile when happiness is expressed, they get upset when others are upset. While we build upon this instinct with additional social constructs, a very significant part is built in. Empathy is biological - you don't decide to feel empathy, it's just a normal function of a working human brain.
Human morality is an extremely convoluted subject, but at its root we tend to try to rationalize our base instincts and add additional complexity to them.
For further evidence, take a look at the tribalistic behavior of humans - not unlike any set of social animals you can name. When we identify an "other," a tribe that is not our tribe (your favorites, FEY, appear to be "liberals" vs "conservatives" and "Christians" vs "Atheists," but we all have this base instinct), we tend to dehumanize them and react negatively to them regardless of what they're actually saying. Have you ever heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment? Look it up - you'll see a bit more about how human altruism works, or rather how it stops completely when confronted with a different tribe, even one completely made up for an experiment.
Those set of beliefs determine who they are as an individual. When a person fails to act in accordance with those beliefs, he loses a little bit of his sense of identity. This leads to psychological problems. People largely follow a set of rules that were established by authority figures they respected when they were younger.
Which themselves build on instinct. There are lots of similarities within a given culture, where "nurture" would be an effective explanation for this, but the desire of newborns to be pleasing to others, the feedback loop in the brain that helps them learn social skills like talking, is universal across all cultures and happens before "morality" is a concept.
Most of those authority figures set up rules that included altruism. In short, people act altruistically because they have been trained to think of themselves as decent human beings when they do so. No one wants to think of themselves as a "bad person" or "anti-social" or whatever image they conjure up they deem as intolerable for a self image.
Indeed - and a great deal of that comes from human social structures and, like language, have biological backgrounds but learned complexity.
Your basic argument is that, since the bee does not "choose," since the bee is not sentient and its behavior is fully instinct driven, its behavior cannot be an example of altruism.
But the evolutionary model predicts that we should find primitive, instinctual precursors to what we would identify as "morality" and "altruism."
The basic claim of evolution is that no feature is ever completely new, that all features of all organisms are slightly modified versions of pre-existing features from an ancestor, inherited with small cumulative changes over multiple generations guided by natural selection.
The self-sacrifice of the worker bee is exactly that - it's an example of another branch of the evolution of altruism. The bee is sacrificing itself for the survival of the group, which is exactly the very definition of altruistic behavior. The bee is not aware of its choice...but so what? The mechanism is identical, and it demonstrates elegantly the way that altruistic behavior (including instinct and purely social constructs) will tend to be selected for.
It's one of many possible examples that can be used to prove that altruism and moral actions are not exclusive to human beings.
If you'd like, I can go on with some examples of apes and monkeys that have more complex social behavior...including self-image, social posturing, and other humanlike behaviors relevant to morality.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 311 by foreveryoung, posted 12-03-2012 7:14 PM foreveryoung has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 313 by foreveryoung, posted 12-03-2012 7:53 PM Rahvin has replied

  
foreveryoung
Member (Idle past 582 days)
Posts: 921
Joined: 12-26-2011


Message 313 of 1221 (682577)
12-03-2012 7:53 PM
Reply to: Message 312 by Rahvin
12-03-2012 7:44 PM


Re: Selflessness Test
So is a portion of human altruism. This is how evolution works - features are built upon. Humans have more complex social interaction than bees, and so have concerns like "self-image." So do some other animals.
But the observation here is the same - a worker bee sacrificing its own life for the survival of the hive is not substantially different from a human soldier throwing himself on a grenade. The same principles of group over individual survival are consistent, and the selective pressure favoring altruistic behavior is the same.
You are assuming that altruism is at least partially instinctual in humans. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. A worker bee sacrificing his life for the survival of the hive is instinctual. A human soldier throwing himself on a grenade is acting on behavior modification bred into him at an early age. That is a very significant difference. There is no selective pressure favoring altruistic behavior in bees. There is selective pressure on the genes of the queen bee to produce selfless worker bees. There is no selective pressure on the human genome to be altruistic. There is a selective pressure on the human genome to be psychologically sound. That psychological motivation is what drives altruism. The only other motivation possilbe is religious and that too is psychologicall driven. So, in short, peace of mind is genetically selected for whether that peace of mind is found in societal acceptance or acceptance from a deity.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 312 by Rahvin, posted 12-03-2012 7:44 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 314 by Rahvin, posted 12-03-2012 8:10 PM foreveryoung has replied
 Message 316 by kofh2u, posted 12-03-2012 8:46 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 314 of 1221 (682581)
12-03-2012 8:10 PM
Reply to: Message 313 by foreveryoung
12-03-2012 7:53 PM


Re: Selflessness Test
You are assuming that altruism is at least partially instinctual in humans. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.
It's really not an assumption. It's a well-observed fact. We build on it, but it's already there. Empathy is not learned behavior, it's built in to your brain. Human beings separated from social interaction suffer severe psychological issues - because our instinct drives us to be social, to seek feedback from others of our own group, to be accepted, etc. The specifics are learned, but the general drive is instinctual.
That's why it's universal across cultures, and why it starts at birth before any behavior can be learned.
A worker bee sacrificing his life for the survival of the hive is instinctual. A human soldier throwing himself on a grenade is acting on behavior modification bred into him at an early age. That is a very significant difference.
You're drawing a distinction without a difference. The selective pressure is identical regardless of whether there is a conscious choice - the altruistic behavior, sacrificing the self for the survival of the group, unarguably improves the chances of survival for the group, and therefor improves the chances that group-related genes (and social constructs) will be preserved. The soldier preserves his squad, who preserve his ideals (and in the ancestral environment when combatants would have been members of the same reproductive group, his genes as well; just substitute the grenade for another form of self-sacrifice for the betterment of the group). The bee preserves its hive, which preserves the queen and therefore the worker's genes.
The observation is the same - self-sacrifice to preserve the group. The selective pressure is the same - the survival of the group allows the altruistic behaviors to survive. The honor of a human able to make that choice rationally rather than it being a pure mindless instinct is worthy of note but irrelevant to the argument.
There is no selective pressure favoring altruistic behavior in bees. There is selective pressure on the genes of the queen bee to produce selfless worker bees.
...those sentences are mutually exclusive. The queen bee's genes are the genes of the workers, after all - she is their mother.
There is no selective pressure on the human genome to be altruistic.
The human species would not have survived to be the dominant life form on the planet were it not for altruism within the tribe, and arguably the continued success of our species in the recent past and on into the future depends on our ability to expand our "tribes" to be more and more encompassing. We help each other, we sacrifice some personal benefit for the greater benefit of the group, and so we all have a greater chance for survival.
There is a selective pressure on the human genome to be psychologically sound. That psychological motivation is what drives altruism. The only other motivation possilbe is religious and that too is psychologicall driven. So, in short, peace of mind is genetically selected for whether that peace of mind is found in societal acceptance or acceptance from a deity.
And the human brain, the seat of all psychiatric function, is inherited.
The human brain has little variation between individuals, FEY. The learned information differs, but the basic structure is essentially identical. There is a reason that a smile is universally recognized across the species as an indication of happiness. There is a reason that we all have the same cognitive biases, a reason we all have the amazing ability to identify patterns (better than computers, still!), etc.
There is a reason we would all suffer psychiatric damage (or at least immense emotional anguish) if put into solitary confinement for a year.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 313 by foreveryoung, posted 12-03-2012 7:53 PM foreveryoung has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 315 by foreveryoung, posted 12-03-2012 8:13 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
foreveryoung
Member (Idle past 582 days)
Posts: 921
Joined: 12-26-2011


Message 315 of 1221 (682583)
12-03-2012 8:13 PM
Reply to: Message 314 by Rahvin
12-03-2012 8:10 PM


Re: Selflessness Test
It's really not an assumption. It's a well-observed fact.
i'm sorry but stating something is a fact does not make it a fact.
Edited by foreveryoung, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 314 by Rahvin, posted 12-03-2012 8:10 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
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