Gravity vs. survival of the fittest

[DNAunion]

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 7pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">DNAunion:&nbsp; Didn't work the first time - came out all funky.&nbsp; Tried deleting eveything in this post and then manually typing it all back in.&nbsp; Didn't work.&nbsp; So I started a new post below.</SPAN>

 

[DNAunion]

seebs: ... and "survival of the fittest" is an observation about how animals live, not a moral ideal.

DNAunion: Humans are animals. So survival of the fittest - the underlying law of all biology - applies to us. Why should we not leverage that law of nature to its utmost, as long as we don't break any laws? Survival of the fitttest then becomes directly tied to a moral issue.

seebs: This is one of those "silly" things. Reproductive fitness determines whose genes are passed on, but that's not a law in the sense of a normal law; it's a description, not a prescription.

DNAunion: I didn't say it was a moral law. Look at the above exchange again. You said survival of the fittest was not a moral ideal, and nothing I stated said otherwise. I said it could be tied to a moral issue; that one could try to leverage the idea to his/her advantage.

The distinction between pure science and applied science comes into play here. Pure science is aimed at extending our knowledge: learning more about how nature works. Applied science is the taking of scientific knowledge and applying it to a given problem in order to solve it. For example, that the acceleration of an object is proportional to net force applied to it is an observation about how objects respond to forces: it's also half of Newton's second law of motion. Now, when we take that preexisting scientific knowledge and apply it to solving a given problem -- such as lauching a rocket -- we are "leveraging" our understanding of nature/science for our own advantage. We have applied Newton's second law&nbsp;to rockets, but that does not mean we are saying that Newton's second law of motion is a rocket.

A form of "applied science" is what I am talking about. Survival of the fittest is a "law" of biology. One could try taking it and applying it to solve a problem involving things that fall under its domain. That would not make survival of the fittest a moral ideal, any more than applying Newton's second law of motion to rockets makes Newton's second law of motion a rocket.

Seeb: The law of gravity doesn't mean we *SHOULD* go to lower places; it means that, in the absence of supports, we tend to fall.

DNAunion: Actually, we have a tendency to "fall" even when their are supports present. And when there are no supports, you should not only tend to "fall", you should actually "fall". The tendency and the behavior of an object do not have to be the same.

seebs: The "law" of biology (which is hardly as simple as your portray it as boing) doesn't mean we *SHOULD* compete like that.

DNAunion: You are comparing apples and oranges.

Of course the law of gravity doesn't tell us how we should live our lives. Why should it? The law of gravity is not what is responsible for our being, or our becoming, humans (I've never heard a scientist say, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of gravity").

It is evolution -- not gravity -- that is responsible for our being what we are. If one is going to try to apply knowledge from some area of science to the issue, then the correct one is evolution/biology.

Also, note that I am not saying that evolution is immoral or that survival of the fittest is a moral ideal. Nor am I saying that survival of the fittest tells us we *SHOULD* act in a "self-promoting at the expense of others" way. I am playing Devil's advocate.

 

[DNAunion]

seebs: It's like saying that, since the law of gravity dictates a stronger attractive force between more massive objects, humans, whose bodies have mass, should be more attracted to fat people than [to] skinny people. It's not even coherent.

DNAunion: Actually, it is very coherent, if one refrains -- unlike you did -- from equivocating on terms like "attraction".

According to Newton's theory of universal gravitation, there is an attractive force between you and every other person on the face of the Earth, and that force of attraction between you and any one of those other people is proportional to the his/her mass (and inversely proportional to the square of the distance from your center of mass to his/hers). So actually, according to Newton's law of universal gravitation, it is TRUE that one feels a stronger attraction towards fat people than towards skinny people (assuming they are equidistant, of course).

As far as your equivocating on terms like "attraction", sure, then what YOU said does becomes incoherent. But of course, that was part of your plan. Make a silly, extravagant, and non-analogous distortion of your opponent's position, then show that the distortion is silly, all in the hopes of convincing some people that you have shown the original to be silly.

 

[seebs]

The point was that you were equivocating on the concept of "law".

 

[DNAunion]

seebs: The point was that you were equivocating on the concept of "law".

DNAunion: No I wasn't -- you wrongly inferred that.

I never said that that law of nature is a moral law. As far as I can remember, I never used the term "moral law" and "law of biology" in the same sentence, paragraph, or post (unless I was repeating something that YOU said about "moral laws"). In fact, as far as I can remember, I never used the term "moral law" myself at all (again, unless I was repeating something YOU said).

As I have now tried to explain several times (and will point out less precisely this time), the point was to look to nature and its laws to see if one might be able to "borrow" any idea(s) and apply them to our lives. Wondering if one could take the law of gravity and use it to solve a problem -- like making a piledriver -- does not mean we are saying the law of gravity is a piledriver, nor does it mean that the law of gravity says we SHOULD make piledrivers.

 

[BigEd]

moving this thread to science, evolution and creation.
it really belongs there.

 

[Sky]

OK

 

[humanimal]

"survival of the fittest" is an observation about how animals live, not a moral ideal.

why not?

"moral ideals" should be based on reality...&nbsp;not imaginations or inventions&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by humanimal
why not?

"moral ideals" should be based on reality...&nbsp;not imaginations or inventions&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

For the same reason that "exerting a force proportional to your mass" is an observation, not a moral law.

Moral ideals are either themselves an underlying structure of the universe, or a pure invention. They do not result from observation. No observation can ever tell you *what* you should want - only, given a goal, how to go about achieving it.

In short, you've just declared, arbitrarily, that it is morally right that people should act in a way that somehow reflects an observation about how life forms change in nature. This is not quite as rational as declaring that it is morally right that people should behave as directed by an invisible and powerful entity; after all, at least the latter theory offers some explanation for why, if the premises are correct, this behavior would be "moral".

The key here is that descriptive, and prescriptive, laws are not even particularly related, let alone interchangeable. Observations about reality tell us only what is, not what should be.

 

[TheBear]

DNA,

Look at your first post in this thread. Does it look like there is an error in your font codes, or is this just my computer. Are You using Apple? I have seen this type of HTML problems with one or two other's.

Sorry to be off topic.


John

 

[humanimal]

&nbsp;

&nbsp;
&nbsp;Originally posted by humanimal
why not?

moral ideals" should be based on reality... not imaginations or inventions&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

For the same reason that "exerting a force proportional to your mass" is an observation, not a moral law.

Perhaps we are talking about different things. I do not see nature to be moral or immoral... it just is. A lion does not ponder the moral ramifications of devouring a lamb... he just does it.&nbsp; It may be a stupid thing to do.... if the lion could rationalize it he might think it stupid to devour the young just because it is easy. Logic would dictate that the old sheep who is beyond breeding age is the best target. Leave the lamb to make more food for the future. If lions developed a religion tomorrow, it might include some such maxum based soley on logic and survival.

If we were to be logical and develop such a survival based religion, what would it be? I do not think seclular humanism would serve that purpose.

&nbsp;HU

 

[Sky]

I hate lions and all other vicious killing machines, but that's beside the point.

Survival of the fittest is a harsh, cruel reality of nature.