Every day axioms

Eudaimonist said:

Why? It may promote reproduction, but not necessarily life as such. It's all about the DNA, not its protein and lipid containers.

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granted, but in tintelligent species like humans there are signs of adaptation. I think we are designed to find value in adaptation, reward in life from fitting into the 'ecology of society' in a functional manner. And that is what we look for in one another, those who find value in life because of their adaptation to the social landscape between adaptation and "happiness" or value in life. And they are the better partners I would assume, as a rule. So there is a direct statistical correlation between life value and adaptation and fitness, probablistic not deductive ie as a statistical rule.

Indeed, if there is anything like evolutionary morality, it may be something we are obligated to ignore at times. What is "good" for your genes isn't necessarily good for you as a living being. Evolution doesn't necessarily determine correct behavior, even if at times it may reward it. For example, rape exists among animals, but that doesn't mean that we should rape, no matter how "life" promoting that may seem from some purely evolutionary perspective.

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I am going one step away from genes to phenomenology which is the basis of experience and which we respond to functionally. Phenomenology and its axiologies have survival value but are the primary landscape of our concern. That is our genetically determined predicament, not to want to pass on our genes come what may.

Whatever urges we may feel that come from evolution require judgment to act upon with intelligence and wisdom. Urges aren't moral commandments from on high. They are simply motivations for comprehending beings to use as they judge best. We could simply act unthinkingly on our urges, and pregnancy rates would go up, and yet human beings are capable of forming judgments about how and when to have sex.

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Yes - judgement - in and as a resonse to the evolved existential predicament of man as consciouse value-aware intelligence. Are you saying evolution got it wrong if soemone doesnt want to replicate? There are value forces acting on people, axiological pressures designed in the forge of evolutionary history. It is not always "good" (of life value to someone) to reproduce, I think that evolution may have sorted that one out for us. Simplified: life finds value in those who find value in life. Therefore selection selects life not death.

Anyway, I'll just say that I understand now why you regard evolution as a proximate cause of morality, though I see it as someway less than proximate. It is somewhat more distant than that, like your God, but not quite as God-like, since evolution does not actually determine morality, and only "cares" about genes, not living beings.

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I think that our evolved state is one of "care" towards the value of life. That is our predicamant, not as carers about gene frequencies. We are still Dawkinsian survival machines, but the results are unexpected. What we calculate on the white board and what we are "thrown" into (to be Heideggarian) are two different things. There are modulatory pressures of pleasure, pain, fulfillment, empathy intelligence, conformity, prestige etc acting on replication rates, its not so much of a free for all in the face of reflections population genetic as people might imagine in a classroom. In fact reflecting on population size is actually causing people to replicate less. This is about a care for life (an evolved concern as being in the world of value, instrumentally facing the value of life), not a mere will to the maximal proliferation of biological human lifeforms.

I'm curious though how you explain Christian vows of chastity. Are those immoral? How do they even occur?


eudaimonia,

Mark

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Not immoral because not all replication has value for the replicator. There may be socially developed roles that enhance replication and life value, life chances, fulfillment and also replication chances of the group but not the role player. Christianity and the celibate 'sacrificial' priest could be a prime example. But the role is socially produced rather than genetically produced (a biologist might say afaik tiirc hat priests are not a 'deme' or there is no priest gene causing priesthood) so the role players need not die out as a type.

Amen?

GrowingSmaller said:

SO is we are looking for an increase in complexity over time *(can an effect transcend it's cause?) then can computational depth of a system (and Wolfram says the universe is a computational system) increase over time?

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If the meaning of "greater" is redefined at will, we can't have a discussion about whether or not effects can be greater than their causes. It's moving goalposts.

As I see it, effects can have properties that the causes never did have (i.e., emergentism), and that invalidates any notion that effects can never be "greater" than their causes. We see this frequently in science.


eudaimonia,

Mark

bricklayer said:

Well put.

Maco-evolution is based on such error as is exposed by the above.
It is based on the supposition of spontaneous increases in complexity, available information and available energy.
At the very heart of this is the supposition of spontaneity, more commonly known as "chance".

Chance well fits the bill for the "spirit of anti-Christ".
Even Satan has in common with God actualized existence, or being.
Chance, although existing as an idea, has no actualized existence; it has no being.
"Chance" is the exact opposite of God, and it is at the core of this world's belief system.

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So microevolution does not depend on chance mutations? I dont seee the categorical difference. Idf one can occur then why not the other? There are simulations that model speciation e.g. EvoTutor: Allopatric Speciation

GrowingSmaller said:

Ok are you familiar with the concept of computational depth, which is an attempt at defining complexity of a system? IIRC the idea of CD is that depth is the number of lines of code that would be needed to describe or model that process, organism etc. SO is we are looking for an increase in complexity over time *(can an effect transcend it's cause?) then can computational depth of a system (and Wolfram says the universe is a computational system) increase over time? Perhaps locally but the depth is still a function of the program's initial conditions, and so any realised potential has its roots in prior capacity to cause. Thus if true consciousness and intellection, life, galaxies, planetary systems etc were somehow present "in" the initial conditions as an structural amalgamation of efficient and material causes, gathered in a pinpoint of space-time, and therefore they (the developments) do not and cannot transcend them (being a funciton of the firstnesses primacy).
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I am no expert in programming theory, but I don't think computational complexity is really applicable as such to actual complex systems. The theory was developed to determine the difficulty of solving computation problems, not for "systems" in a general sense.
For example the computational complexity of a Mandelbrot set is very small - you only need a few lines of code for the algorithm building the set. However the result displaysa rather amazing complexity of form.

Maybe the whole "computational complexity" of the universe (if it possible to define it) lies within one simple "world equation", which spawns all the complex behaviours we experience in this very same universe.

Beechwell said:

I am no expert in programming theory, but I don't think computational complexity is really applicable as such to actual complex systems. The theory was developed to determine the difficulty of solving computation problems, not for "systems" in a general sense.
For example the computational complexity of a Mandelbrot set is very small - you only need a few lines of code for the algorithm building the set. However the result displaysa rather amazing complexity of form.

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Thats interesting mandelbrot sets are very complex AFAIK according to another measure of complexity - fractal dimension (the number of zooms to self similar states one can do). In fact isnt a Mandelbrot set infinite in fractal dimension because you can zoom in on and on ad nauseum?

GrowingSmaller said:

In fact isnt a Mandelbrot set infinite in fractal dimension because you can zoom in on and on ad nauseum?

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Yes, provided you do an infinite amount of iterations through the algorithm.

I like the idea "chance" comes form the devil. Sine est nihil rationale. But maybe that's just us projecting? Or our scientism and philosophy being too hopeful in the face of the absurd? A flight from ultimate meaninglessness through dogmatics. But perhaps that's the devil again, helping us to forget salvation history and become dislocated to our eternal detriment....