The implications of Evolution

"I think that on one portrayal of evolution it makes us victims of intentionless coercive drives in the service of mindlessly propagating our genes." The difference is that the theories of behaviour in evolution attempt to reduce behaviour to this. Such as in the case of altruism and the selfish gene that I have mentioned. The universe, in terms of the interactions of particles, microwaves, and asteroids etc does not need to be described in terms such as "altruism" or "meaning"However in the human sphere it is completely different, because for example, humans are altruistic and will help other people in need (whereas planets don't) and then this altruism is claimed to be solely in the service of our genes. It is a case reducing a lot of what humans due and making in service of a crude reductionist evolutionary paradigm. Now if these claims were actually true it would have negative ramifications but people are promoting these theories and denying the ramifications.*I am a firm antinatalist and I don't believe anyone should have children what ever world view you hold.* I think having children is cruel and unnecessary and pointless. But I think it is particularly bad to have a derogatory world view and have children, this includes religion and evolution. For example Christians often believe Billions of people are going to hell and still have children.If you believe the "reducible to survival and genes" idea of evolution then you can easily undermine all human attributes as in service of mindless reproduction (whether it is true or not) (The ease with which you can do it is suspicious)So for example someone could interrupt a romantic session between you and your girlfriend/boyfriend and cynically state that it is just your genes and Oxytocin making you do this to encourage you to reproduce. But if you really believe it is all just a ploy to make us reproduce why follow this relentless futility and promote it. Cognitive dissonance?For example Richard Dawkins says"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. "And later in his career"We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?What? We are supposed to be privileged and grateful to end up in a world full of suffering beyond decent contemplation? I child dying of starvation, a slave or someone been gassed in a concentration camp isn't supposed to whine?Hmm

I have clarified my position in my response to another poster.I can see no bar to anything evolving and persisting in a large population. The idea that everything has to service evolution is bizarre. However this a problem for deciding what has an evolutionary "function" and what doesn't, Leading to rampant speculation.There was an article talking about what the evolutionary benefits of being a good dancer might be. It had a photo of John Travolta on it. Ironically Travolta is frequently speculated to be gay and at the time of the article his son had just died. So they used a picture of a potentially gay man with only two children one of who had died from a likely inherited condition to highlight the evolutionary benefits of dancing.

I am (hopefully) going to spell at what I mean to discuss as clearly as possible. (I thought the first post was fairly clear but I suppose it wasn't)There is an overriding theory or paradigm called evolution. This is said to have accounted for biodiversity. What implications or ramifications for, our reality as a species and individuals, does the theory have? I am surprised if people on here can say they have never heard any scientist or others thinkers say that evolution implies something beyond explaining biology.Evolution has been evoked many times in theories throughout its theoretical beginnings (Eugenics/Race/IQ/Economics). Now it can be discussed in terms of genetics and labs experiments etc but it has always been linked to broader theories about it's implications. So for comparison. A doctor might tell me that lab results say I have cancer. The diagnosis of cancer is made scientifically but has other ramifications that aren't described in scientific terms.So I want to know what people think are valid (inferences?) of ramifications of evolution and on what ground these are valid. Or what they think are the limitations of the paradigm.I think there is a big difference in whether you explain homosexuality or altruism via evolution or as things that arise without and "evolutionary purpose"I think making evolution entail atheism and nihilism and or reductionism is going to be a cause of rejection of the theory. I don't believe science exists in a vacuum and has no biases or values (or philosophical/metaphysical assumptions.)

"The other presumption being made is that we should carry on having children (I am a strong antinatalist) and that because humans have reached this era we must keep on propagating ourselves and we must propagate ourselves based on evolutionary principles." Very few people are writing anything without coming from the position that having children is inevitable.I will have to try and find you papers that openly assert this stance. But you just find it through out discussions in academia and elsewhere. I have seen articles which unfortunately I can't find right now, but have definitely seen them, asking how we can improve our species by understanding our evolutionary past.Trying to improve our species implies that we are either inevitably going to carry on or endorse the continuation of the species.I think there is lots of evidence that should make intelligent people and anyone else draw the conclusion that we shouldn't have children. (Natural famine/cancer/war/ depression/death).I can't think what about reality would make people think having children was a good thing.The problem is with this and other values stances is that science can't referee on value claims. Buy value claims sneak in everywhere. As I say elsewhere in this thread people have negative theories and outlooks that they then contradict with other values. I think if we think scientific paradigms or methodologies are the only source of truth then any value claim is unsupported including whether we should behave a certain way.If you are going to demand people look at the evidence and be rational in terms of science and evolution then it would be hypocritical not to give all your other beliefs the same scrutiny, but people don't. Existentialist philosophers realised that science undermined values which is probably the source of nihilism. Even valuing science itself is a subjective value.

I don't see why altruism has to evolve. Just like the case of piano playing I mentioned earlier. Why can't altruism like piano playing be something that is made possible by preexisting traits and biology etc and not something that we are doing for the sake of mindless reproduction?This is the problem with theories that are quite pernicious and or containing hidden premises.Das Erbe was one of a few films the Nazi produced to promote Eugenics.Das Erbe - WikipediaLaw for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring - Wikipedia So the idea of hierarchies, a struggle for survival and fitness was very pernicious initially.That is why I think we should be careful about what speculation we make and what hidden assumptions we are using and what impact and idea might have.Trying to "explain" homosexuality has amounted to pathologising it. Explaining something that is clearly produced by something that causally explains it is one thing explaining it as something as in service of something else is another thing.

Dennet is famous for denying qualia. However sweetness is qualia and I like chocolate because of the conscious sensation it gives me. It seems problematic to have to create or invoke a subjective/private conscious state to cause a behaviour. (Especially when it is a conscious state Dennet doesn't believe in.)I and other people can judge whether a food is sweet or salty regardless of whether it tastes good.His idea is deflationary for all perceptions. If our perceptions had to be motivated like this then there is a lot of things that would bypass us. Scientists ,like James Chadwick, have discovered phenomena which they have claimed have no discernible value. He apparently told the New York Times that he could see no use for the neutron (he'd discovered).So we can have a lot of thoughts sensations and perceptions that are useful or simply informative not just in service of brute survival and which are not simply representing reality so that we can survive in it.Freud had a more persuasive theory about healthy defense mechanisms allowing us not to be traumatised by reality. This doesn't require that we have faulty perceptions but that we have biases that protect us from reflecting too directly on the threat's we face. However there are a wide range of explanations as to why we perceive things as we do.It is unlikely that I find men attractive because they would make a suitable mating partner. I also can recognise a beautiful woman I have no intention of mating with.

I don't see why you are trying to pin me down to one argument here when I am having *a general discussion about (possible) implications of evolution.*The case I recently highlighted of the Nazi's is not the case that the ramifications of evolution are frightening rather the theory itself was utilised in a frightening and deadly way.There is the issue of whether the implications of evolution are negative and then there is the case of whether theories of the implications evolution are pernicious and destructive.The theories of a hierachies of races and the idea the mentally ill disabled were useless etc are theories under the banner of evolution that were destructive and pernicious.There is a difference between observing forms of evolution and using various ideas about how evolution happens to make a social theory.I personally think that evolution as it it is widely disseminated is negative. It is portrayed as meaning human life is essentially in service of mindless reproduction so that behaviours are subservient to this goal. It is portrayed as doing away with gods and meaning and downgrading humans to "just another animal". Claims about evolution are more relevant to humans than claims in physics.A theory in physics is unlikely to have an immediate effect on peoples behaviours and attitudes. Newtonian physics raised some issues like that of Freewill but didn't have a huge impact on social values.I don't see what the relevance is of the idea we evolved to our present day life anyway. Theorists are trying to make evolution change the way we think and act and view reality. However I don't know who most of my ancestors were. If I found out one of my ancestors was Jack the Ripper it would be a fascinating fact but not alter my behaviour. There is one thing to deny a fact that will have an immediate consequence if ignored and being skeptical aboput speculations about what happened over millions of years. Science can postulate theories and facts but it can't say we must belive them that is a value judgement. As I mentioned I am an antinatalist I think having children is unnecessary, unjustified and harmful and is the only thing with negative ramifications. I think it is cruel to have children in the first place and then it is an extra layer of bad to degrade their life more by using evolution to downgrade their status and add an extra layer of futility to their life.

How is that a tautology? I don't know what you mean here. I was pointing out that Dennet doesn't belive in qualia so it is incoherent for him to give an explanation of sweetness which is a quale.There are lots of things that are good for us that do not give us a pleasent sensation equivalent to sweetness. A spoonful of sugar tastes horrible to me. I am on medication that has a horrible bitter taste. There is no lawful or coherent reason why if something that is good for us would become transformed into pleasent experience. Dennet is trying to explain things to support evolution as opposed to explaining the phenomena in itself.This is a strange explanation of evolution.This implies that because we need energy our consciousness will helpfully conjur up pleasent experinces to make food taste nice. However natural selection *has to select things that already exist by chance.*
It can't create things that don't exist, coherently. So what would happen is that someone would find cyanide delicious but quickly die off with his genes. Explanations of evolution often seem to say how something is useful as if this can causally explain its origin but the origin has to be explained by biochemistry etc. You can't just grow wings because they'd be useful.So it is a coincidence that high energy foods taste nice (sometimes) Dawkins says in The Selfish Gene"We are survival machines — robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment."Freuds theories dealt with populations as well as individuals and were generalised. Defense mechanisms are supposed to be universal (and I see ample evidence for them. How can brain matter have any knowledge or desires? Do you think tree matter has beliefs and desires? It is quite easy to mechanise a lot of behaviours without positing beliefs and desires, however, because humans have lots of conscious states and conscious motives , beliefs and desires we can invoke humans conscious states causally but there is a problem with anthropomorphising nature and brain matter.

Except we aren't speaking Latin.Good like most words has more than one meaning and applicationThe idea that altruism is moral is a *genuine* tautology. I am a moral nihilist and it is questionable whether "moral" or "good" and "bad" mean anything concrete, but you can attach them to behaviours you approve or disapprove of.I think having children undermines morality because it causes harm and is corecive among other things. What religious people are saying is that morality doesn't make sense from an atheist/scientific worldview not that atheists can't perform the same acts as theists.Life appears pointless unfortunately that makes any action irrelevant and just something we occupy ourselves with until death.I think if religion had been true it could have been a source of meaning and morality for various reasons so the problem with atheism and a solely scientific world view is for recreating purpose and values objectively.However I don't think it is possible to prove whether or not reality has a purpose or morality etc so I am agnostic to some extent on these issues. But people have tried to push on us an aggressive form of evolutionary based reductionism and evolutionary deflation of values as subservient to survival (see Dawkins Selfish Gene) At the same time as people want to spread this view they don't live the consequences. This is similar to my religious upbringing, they said lots of dramatic things but never acted as you would if you believed these things.

That would have been relevant if that was my point. My point was that Dennet's analysis relies on conscious states he doesn't believe in.What causes conscious states is not known. Correlation is not causation and most mental states either have no specific correlation or several. (leading to the binding problem)Brains are not trees but there is nothing in the biochemistry of the brain or structure of neurons and action of neuron transmitters that would lead us to believe the brain itself had desires or knowledge. We have knowledge which we attribute as emerging from our brain.We tend to transmit knowledge by language and symbols. As I said I can recognise attractive men and women and I don't intend to have children with either. I have no idea whether or not they are fertile. There is no reason why attractive perceptions should be subservient to survival value considering there are beautiful things that are poisonous and ugly things that are beneficial.It's all pretty naive.The problem with attributing mental states or using mental state metaphors to things is that you are imbuing them with properties that they don't have and unless you can explain the metaphor in other terms it is just a case of falsely evoking mental attributes to things.The metaphors easily become problematic and either exaggerated or pernicious.

Science has gone beyond saying how things work. It has to speculate and make assumptions first as well. Science is part of technology which has radically changed the world. So a lot of science has implications or is done with goals and unspoken metaphysical or philosophical frameworks in mind .I think what is classed as science is just a facet of the human mind. Someone tries to understand reality or theorises about it and then designs experiments. Science then contains symbols which do not denote actual reality. For example the concept of an atom changed several times but the word stayed the same so the word Atom has denoted different theories about a phenomenon from indivisibility to sub atomic particles through to quantum effects.I don't see anyway that knowledge can exist outside of the mind. Knowledge in a book only exists when we interpret the symbols. A Chinese textbook conveys no information to me. You said science describes how things work and now you are trying to cross the is-ought gap. There is no reason why peoples behaviour *ought* to change in the light of scientific findings and another issue is whether the theory is actually correct. It would be unwise to change ones beliefs and behaviours based on blind face in the infallibility of a scientific claim.I smoke whilst I know it can have bad effects on my health but I need to smoke for other reasons etc. The notion of rationality is problematic as I suggested above because it crosses the is-ought gap. And what is rational is controversial. It might be rational to believe the earth is flat from one perspective. Rationality is also a value judgement about implications such as saying based on this evidence you ought to believe and do something else..People can believe a scientific claim without understanding it which amounts to faith not rationality. To claim ones beliefs are rational or irrational you would have to work out whether there beliefs where consistent or contradictory etc which would be a mammoth task.A lack of belief seems less problematic than a belief because beliefs especially dogmatic ones are usually at the root of extreme actions.

You are conflating correlation with causation. When has anyone seen knowledge in the brain? Knowledge is semantic and symbolic.Your claim is that my brain somehow knows whether a man is fertile or not. I don't see how anything can know anything is fertile. The biology of what is fertile is highly complex microbiology which it is implausible to claim anyone has an innate knowledge of. We don't know what causes sexual attraction. And ironically most of the literature has focused on homosexuality and ignored what might cause someone to become attracted to the opposite sex.For me I am attracted to a man because I am in a male body and I know what my erogenous zones are. I can know what having someone touching my penis is like. I don't know what having someone touching a clitoris is like. It is a bigger feat to get someone attracted to a body unlike there's just like A sexual sex is easier than sexual reproduction.Once again you are conflating the evolutionary usefulness of something with its causal account.It is also ironic that some of the least attractive humans have lots of children. The most attractive humans are not the many producers of offspring.

Altruism is only a problem because of assumptions made in theories of Evolution. Dawkins say in TSG Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are all born selfish. Which implies he doesn't see it as innate.The idea is that things can only survive by being "self" centred. Which is strange considering sexual reproduction combines two sets of genes so an individual is far from being a replication of someone else. What constitutes a things is problematic as well. Humans are made of trillions of differentiated cells and foreign organism. What is the thing that is trying to survive?If I had children with an outer Mongolian sheep farmer lady the amount of diversity in our genes would mean our offspring would a have a wide range of genetic relatives to consider when being altruistic. (In my own case I am mixed race with parents born thousands of miles apart.)Altruism is irrelevant in one sense considering we are condemned to die. There is no behaviour we can exhibit that will ensure the continuation of ourselves. I am actively trying to ensure my genes don't continue here after me.I think helping others is praiseworthy on the grounds that it reduces harm and not on the grounds that it inadvertently in some cases aids our own genes survival. *I think rationality is the biggest threat to reproduction as it offers us no reason to continue reproducing.* I don't see how altruism is a threat to reproduction.
It is not really possible in my opinion to know why organisms try to survive. Postulating metaphorical selfishness in their genes is imposing a framework or lens through which to analyse things that are not happening in the realm of the origin of said terminology.You seem to have missed this: That is plainly reductionism it is not equivalent to explaining how a computer emerges from its parts but rather how behaviour we value is actually based on amoral selfish behaviour.

You can't derive morality from altruism you can simply attach the label "moral" to altruism arbitrarily. There are also a lot of moral standpoints that aren't altruistic.Including my own antinatalism and things such as the idea that it is wrong to lie.There is a difference between disapproving of people being harmed and actively helping people.Helping people create more children and creating a big business etc is not entirely (if at all ) altruistic, it is just keeping the mindless merry go round going. Also Nazis were altruistic when they gave their lives for the Fuehrer.Selfishness is clearly not the only way genes can survive because having two children and spending a lot of time caring for them is better than having twenty children that you can't look after. Also destroying your own environment isn't selfish because it just ruins your own lifestyle and the future for your genes.I actually advocate selfishness in the sophisticated sense. In the sense of realising that it is in your own interest to do X,Y and Z. This depends on whether you think selfishness can be reduced to mechanism. I don't think it can.So If I want to be selfish, just rampaging through society will lead to my quick demise. I couldn't create the internet on my own etc so massive cooperation is more likely to fulfil my desires. I can't think of a situation in which the cliched notion of Selfishness is beneficial except to an egotist.Having a billion pounds and no children isn't going to spread your genes. There actually seems to be no way to ensure your genes survive because we don't know what the future holds)

I said it might be rational to believe that the earth is flat from one perspective. The kind of perspective I am referring to is people who prior to space travel and modern science had little direct evidence that the earth was a sphere.The problem is that dependent on your evidence base different beliefs become more rational and every one has a large unique set of evidence points. So it is problematic that someone living in a flat country like an Australian Aborigine would be irrational to believe the earth is a sphere based on immediate evidence.I was thinking recently that some crazy beliefs are not irrational as long as two contradictory beliefs don't meet. For instance you could believe that Reginald Dwight was born in Pinner but believe Elton John was born somewhere else if you didn't know they were the same person.I think a problem with deciding implications of knowledge is whether or not the knowledge is complete and whether or not it any of it challenges other parts of it.
I think one area which is on very shaky ground is most of societal norms like laws, banks, education, morality, societal structures, goals etc. People say we ought to believe science to have more rational beliefs but our societies are invented on unjustified constructs. People don't demand the same level of justification in general life and society as is demanded in science. So apparently it is okay to completely arbitrarily invent societies and have goals not based on sound reason whilst paying lip service to science.This can be an argument for the massive disregard for life by several regimes in the twentieth century. They weren't presented with an argument for the sacredness of life. They didn't feel compelled to follow any of the supposedly instinctual moral systems that implied killing was wrong.