Hey, Atheists...

[stevevw]

And you were wrong. Evolution has a huge amount of supporting evidence and I explained how it can account for moral behaviours.

As Hume said "you can't get an ought from an is". Evolution takes us so far and then it has to bow out while other non physical aspects of life take over.

That's not what I meant and you know it.

No I honestly don't know what you mean. You keep saying morality can be explained by the material process like genetics, biology and evolution. This does not explain morality because its incapable of doing so. But you keep repeating the same claim.

Its not because there are no influences from evolution. Its because these only go so far. They can perhaps show how humans coperated for survival in certain situations but they cannot say we "ought to coperate". One is descriptive and the other prescriptive. You can't use descrtive terms to explain prescriptive morality.

Can you admit this gap in the explanation of material sciences.

I honestly don't care if you find my arguments compelling, because your opinion means very little to me.

Maybe thats the problem, you dismiss alternative opinions out of hand because you don't care. To make any fair and factual determination you have to care about alternative opinions. Otherwise you have not investigated all possible alternatives.

One of those arguements you dimiss that I am using is Hume's idea that "you can't get an ought from an is". Science and evolution describe 'what might be morality' but they cannot prescribe 'what should be morality'.

Evolution can explain certain behaviour was beneficial for survival as moral but they are overstating things. People can choose not to follow such ideas and they have in the past. In fact we often live in conflict with each other because people choose not to cooperate. This shows they can choose either way morally and are not programmed to behave that way.

As to whether people are morally accountable, it's a lot more complicated than you want it to be. Listen to this: What should happen when someone with a brain tumor breaks the law?

I understand about abnormalities. That is different. I am asking you should people be held accountable if there is no brain damage or mental illness. Even then we still acknowledge a wrong was done and the perpetrator is made to get therapy or be hospitalised in an institution to be assessed before being allow free in society.

I am asking you a simple question as per human liveds experience/ Should we be held accountable for our actions if they are wrong either socially or legally.

A SPECIFIC example.

They were specific. Any change in belief, dietry behavior, staring an exercise regime to get healthier. A Christ or Christains converting from behaving badly to gopod behaviour within weeks or months.

Entire populations of people changing diets. Look at the 70,a and 80,s before fast food really took hold. From around the 90's we have had an obesity crisis with children and young people which is causing diabetes and heart disease. Thats within a generation. THis is a social influence and not genetics.

I could go on as there are as many specific examples as there are the different individuals and groups within the same populations who have varying degrees of behaviour from bad to good. There is too much variation between individuals, within families, and groups for it to be purely genetic or evolution.

Oh look at you, claiming that "the nature of morality is spiritual and transcendent of materialism" as though you've actually provided even a single shred of actual evidence to support that claim.

Ah its self evident. Please explain to me in physical objective terms what say kindness is without referring to the subjective descriptions of how it looks to you in society. After that explain why we should follow this without once again referring to subjective ideas of why.

No, they can not.

No matter what my conscious thoughts are, I can not evolve wings.

You are conflation the evolution of physical body parts with moral values. What about cultural evolution or religious belief. Surely these change the direct of evolution as to whether groups benefit and live.

We have a suicide and mental illness epidemic so this along, whats in the mind is causing our species to die. That cannot be conducive to survival. The replacement rate for humans is going down not due to biological evolution but because of social and cultural factors. We are destroying the environment due to social and cultural factors. Are these not choices.

Individuals don't evolve. Populations evolve as the genome changes over many generations.

Population genetics is outdated now. Its been proven wrong. There may be a small influence but the main driver of evolution is development and non genetic influences like nich construction, developmental plasticity and bias and inheritence beyond genes..

You literally do not know enough about evolution to have any kind of discussion about it. You are like someone who takes a car mechanics class and keeps asking where the hole in the floor is because you think cars operate on Flintstone's rules.

Hum ok then you will have to explain this if you know so much about evolution.

Developmental processes, operating through developmental bias, inclusive inheritance and niche construction, share responsibility for the direction and rate of evolution, the origin of character variation and organism–environment complementarity. Thus, the burden of creativity in evolution (i.e. the generation of adaptation) does not rest on selection alone [12,19,25,27,60,64,73,99–101].

Constructive development refers to the ability of an organism to shape its own developmental trajectory by constantly responding to, and altering, internal and external states [34,71,102–105]. As a consequence, the developing organism cannot be reduced to separable components, one of which (e.g. the genome) exerts exclusive control over the other (e.g. the phenotype). Rather, causation also flows back from ‘higher’ (i.e. more complex) levels of organismal organization to the genes (e.g. tissue-specific regulation of gene expression) (figure 1).

‘Reciprocal causation’ captures the idea that developing organisms are not solely products, but are also causes, of evolution [90,110,111]. Developmental bias and niche construction are, in turn, recognized as evolutionary processes that can initiate and impose direction on selection.

The EES is thus characterized by the central role of the organism in the evolutionary process, and by the view that the direction of evolution does not depend on selection alone and need not start with mutation.

Like other exploratory behaviour within the organism, learning allows organisms to generate and refine novel behavioural variants that are coherent and adaptive [73,118].
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1813/20151019

A significant amount of explanatory weight is shifted from external conditions to the internal properties of evolving populations. In addition, natural selection may be ‘bypassed’ by environmental induction, causing potentially adaptive developmental variation in many individuals of a population at once and long before natural selection may become effective.

Instead of chance variation in DNA composition, evolving developmental interactions account for the specificities of phenotypic construction. This interpretation is also based on a fundamentally different account of the role of genes in development and evolution. In the EES, genes are not causally privileged as programs or blueprints that control and dictate phenotypic outcomes, but are rather parts of the systemic dynamics of interactions that mobilize self-organizing processes in the evolution of development and entire life cycles. This represents a shift from a programmed to a constructive role of developmental processes in evolution.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566817/

As the above says the evolution of change is not caused solely by natural selection, genetic drift and random mutations in populations. Random mutations and NS can often be bypassed. There are a number of ways including multiple lines of selection including selection by the organism itself through niche construction rather than having to be adapted to enviroments.

As well as self organising development which biases mutations to particular adaptive changes, plasticity which changes phenotypes through tissue and cells without genes and non genetic factors like epigenetics, nesting environments, and culture.

The simple mappen of genotype to phenotype is well outdated let alone the overly simple mapping of the geneotype onto the less physical aspects like morality and culture.

Basically this makes the organism itself play a more central role in evolution, being able to influence it and direct it according to self organising developmental processes or through intelligent changes to the environment that are adpative. Rather than the organism being a passive entity that is acted upon by environments and changed through genes alone. From a programmed view to a constructive one.

I will cut this one off here as I think this is something to be discussed on its own.

 

[stevevw]

I assume that your 'more sense' is 'moral sense' (for heaven's sake, please proof read your posts before hitting send).

Yeah sorry. I often do spell check. You ought to see it before that lol.

So OK, we both agree that we have some innate moral sense. That's the nature.

Yes.

Yes again. Some of the moral sense was there to start with (we just agreed with that). And that is built on by how and where and when we grow up. Via the culture in which we live. And that is the nurture part of the explanation.

What do you mean by nature though. This is where the metaphysics is slipped in. You obviously believe that what ever that moral sense is it has to be some naturalistic cause.

But I don't mean natural or innate as being something naturalistically caused. Whatever it is like consciousness its another aspect of reality that cannot be reduced to naturalistic causes.

So we are left with a dispute over our beliefs about the nature of reality. This relates back to the OP and how atheists will naturally believe in material naturalism while people of religion or other non material metaphysics will believe in something beyond.

But pragmatically morality cannot be reduced to an 'is' and science, evolution or genetics cannot explain morality. That much we know. Which naturally opens the door for altnative ideas. For which have been around for millenia.

Everything else you said was just repeating yourself. So there is no problem. The only fly in the moral ointment is that you'd believe that the innate aspect of it is God given and obviously I wouldn't agree. But hey, each to his own.

Actually as I said earlier there are two parts to the arguement. The first and main one I am focusing on is more or less what I said above re the metaphysical or perhaps paradigm difference between atheists and spiritualists or those believeing in some metaphysics beyond the material world. This does not have to be God or any specific god or idea. Only that reality is more than the material or physical world.

I don't think its necessary to bring the Christain God in at this stage on this. On metaphysics. Only that we can show arguements that the material metaphysics cannot explain the immaterial nature of morality. Which opens the door for non material ideas.

So...we have nature and nurture. What exactly are you arguing about?

Ah nature and nurture, the age old debate. A bit like duality. Or the problem of consciousness. What is nature and what is nurture. How powerful is each on influencing behaviour and reality.

There was a time with behaviouralists who seen the world as physical reactions though the mind was dictated by the body. Then a whole new world opened up when we dicovered the mind can actually control the body as well and infact was really in the drivers seat.

Now we have discovered another dimension that goes beyond the physical brain which may be the true driver of reality. The Mind itself, consciousness and conscious agents who are behind this.

 

[Bradskii]

What do you mean by nature though. This is where the metaphysics is slipped in. You obviously believe that what ever that moral sense is it has to be some naturalistic cause.

Yes. And you believe it's God. No big deal. He either zapped us during conception (or however you want to consider it) or He set things up so that it happened naturally. Big deal. The point is, it's innate. If you want to argue God v evolution then set up a thread.

But pragmatically morality cannot be reduced to an 'is' and science, evolution or genetics cannot explain morality.

Morality isn't an 'is'. I don't think anyone's argued that. It's not objective. It's a personal view. IF we do this THEN that might happen. So you're arguing against something that nobody has argued for. So we can drop that.

Actually as I said earlier there are two parts to the arguement. The first and main one I am focusing on is more or less what I said above re the metaphysical or perhaps paradigm difference between atheists...or those believeing in some metaphysics beyond the material world.

You believe in God. Some of us don't. Big deal. No need to pursue that either.

Ah nature and nurture. What is nature and what is nurture. How powerful is each on influencing behaviour and reality.

That's been explained in brief. It's about 50:50. Some innate. Some culturally determined. No need to debate it. It's an open question.

Now we have discovered another dimension that goes beyond the physical brain...

No, we haven't. The mind or consciousness is simply the processes that the brain goes through. Neither the mind or consciousness are 'things'. It's like a car and driving. The car and the parts that make up the car are physical. But 'driving' isn't. It's a process that the parts go through.

 

[stevil]

How about we talk about a non religious source of morality? Religious people have their scripture that they can claim as foundational (even though they will disagree on how to interpret). But what golden rule do you use? something like categorical imperative? utilitarianism? How do you decide what laws are needed?

Moral language is a very vague way to discuss things. It tries make things black and white, it tries to imply that one's own beliefs and ethics apply to others.

When you mention "laws" are you meaning the laws of society that are decided by politicians and forced on us with the police force and judicial system?
Or are you merely talking about oughts and shoulds? and maybe which of those oughts and shoulds apply to ourselves, or friends, others in society. Kinda like unwritten rules???

Personally I don't think moral beliefs are a very solid or robust foundation for laws governing society. If you think society should be forced to be moral, then you must realise everyone has their own moral beliefs which differ from everyone else. So you are going to end up having the moral beliefs of your president or prime minister forced onto you, and this will change as leaders change. But in my view this gives too much power to government. They aren't our parents, we don't want government telling us how we should live.

Do we have an innate moral compass?

No.
I think much of the embarrassment, shame or guilt or whatever that people get is because they have been conditioned to think that way.

Babies and young children have no idea of right or wrong, they get this drummed in by their parents, their friends and others around them.
When they hit teenage years, they start learning to think for themselves, they push boundaries, they form opinions, still somewhat influenced by those around them.

Because we are human we are mortal, we can die, and be hurt, we are also social animals and so we make emotional connections and our friends and loved ones can also be hurt and can die. We also live in groups, in societies, so for practical reasons we make laws against being hurt or killed. Our intelligence has allowed us to value stuff, to value ownership, and so again, for practical reasons we make laws to protect our ownership rights.

 

[stevevw]

And that's why humans *NEED* a morality, just like many other creatures.

I think your overstating morality with some basic instincts or factors that are just there because of physical reality but not anything beyond like morality.

I think the spacial and temporal comes with certain instincts like the literal space between people, predators and objects. That in itself has an influence on working together to stablise things. So different creatures will respond differently, some herding together for safety and others having more complex setups.

But morality is on another level and we only see humans at this level. As though we have evolved beyond time and space. At least in our minds and conscious experiences.

They were trained to perform a task for a reward. Then the experiment could be conducted on how they dealt with various scenarios. The experiments were carefully designed to isolate the behaviors being studied.

Yeah but I still think most of it is limited. The focus is fixed on basic needs like food and reward. The opposition behaviour is all geared towards getting the food. You can see the reactions are limited to these basic instincts.

I would also question if these monkeys didn't mimick some of the human behaviour they seen everyday in labs and this was also reflected. But that is what I think it mostly is when it comes to morality. It seems conditioned and mimicked and not due to any moral understanding.

I find some human "morals" to be lower that those of many other animals.

Yes but thats the point. Humans display a different kind of morality. The evil can be just as extreme as the good. We have a capacity for both. But we don't see animals that way. When an animal does just as bad like a lion or shark viciously rips apart a child we don't think its evil. Its just they instincts.

But when a human does this to a child we see the evil side of humans.

Not a moral question.

I thought the idea was to link human morality to animals. If animals have basics of morals then it proves morals evolved.

So showing what humans would consider brutal and vicious abuse in tearing a human to pieces for lunch is relevant to whether animals have morals or not like humans. Or are we just projecting morality onto animals and making them more moral than they really are.

For killing/butchering/eating a prey creature of different species? I think not. The hunter would be lauded for providing food and the butcher compensated for performing a task.

I don't think that is the same. In fact I think the celebration of getting the food instead of just savagely ripping into it on the spot and even attacking members of their own species who dare push in. THis is another moral aspect of how we even treat food that is different.

We see a history of animal sacrifice, blessing food, thanking the gods for food and the ritualistic treatment of preparing food. The humane treatment (most of the time) or the protests in the inhumane treatment of animals.

 

[stevevw]

Yes. And you believe it's God. No big deal. He either zapped us during conception (or however you want to consider it) or He set things up so that it happened naturally. Big deal. The point is, it's innate. If you want to argue God v evolution then set up a thread.

No I don't want to argue God V evolution or for God regarding morality. I don't have to use God as my arguement is also from reasoning. Reasoning that the nature of morality and of being moral beings transcends naturalistic materialism.

There are plenty of arguements besides God for metaphysics beyond the material. I mean even science acknowledges that it cannot explain everything. Cannot explain abstract and transcedent aspects like belief and morality or conscious experiences. So that in itself is evidence that there are aspects to reality that are immaterial and not caused by naturalistic processes. This is well acknowledged by all the great philosophers.

Morality isn't an 'is'. I don't think anyone's argued that. It's not objective. It's a personal view. IF we do this THEN that might happen. So you're arguing against something that nobody has argued for. So we can drop that.

Your creating a strawman. Who said that morality is just a personal view. What does "IF we do this THEN that might happen". This is not how morality works. It sounds more like instrumental goals. If I want to get healthy then I should exercise. But these are not moral normative. You don't have to do it. You can choose not to get healthy.

Your trying to create some misrepresentation of what I am arguing based on how you see thing. How you think I am seeing things. Lets work out exactly what Human meant first instead of assuming it meant morality was a personal view.

It was actually more about metaphysics. Morality cannot be reduced to an 'is' an object or quantity that is measured by objective sciences. Something that can occupy space and time. So this actually means we are left with some immaterial aspect of reality that is beyond the material world.

You believe in God. Some of us don't. Big deal. No need to pursue that either.

I'm not. You are the one taking it there by assuming my mention of the immaterial nature of reality means I am arguing God.

That's been explained in brief. It's about 50:50. Some innate. Some culturally determined. No need to debate it. It's an open question.

I agree its a big topic and thats why I think absolute claims like its 50/50 don't even understand the topic. Nevertheless I have enough on my hands to go down that rabbit hole.

No, we haven't. The mind or consciousness is simply the processes that the brain goes through. Neither the mind or consciousness are 'things'. It's like a car and driving. The car and the parts that make up the car are physical. But 'driving' isn't. It's a process that the parts go through.

Another absolute claim. The correlations of consciousness do not explain conscious experience. THis is known as the 'Hard problem of consciousness'. A bit like Humes 'is and ought problem'.

There is no way science can prove consciousness is limited to the brain. Its impossible methologically. All you can do is make leaps in explanations and can never explain the nature of consciousness. Because your trying to explain a qualititative experience with mechanical science.

Most of the best philosophers agree that science has not and probably cannot explain consciousness by correlations.

But the fact is consciousness reveals aspects of reality that naturalistic material science cannot ever explain. Take the experience of colors like red. Science can tell us all the correlations like the behaviour of the optic nerve and nurons and how the eye reacts to the light color spectrum.

But it cannot explain the actual experience of red. What its like to experience red. A blind person could know all the material processes of sight and light but never experience red. The day they can see the color red and experience it they will have learnt something new about reality that the material processes could not ever tell them.

It is this aspect of reality that morality works within. Morality is something we sense and take notice of. Probably one of the more focused and conscious aspects of human interactions. So it exists deep in this immaterial aspect of reality that gives us knowledge and truths that the material world cannot do.

 

[Bradskii]

No I don't want to argue God V evolution or for God regarding morality. I don't have to use God as my arguement is also from reasoning. Reasoning that the nature of morality and of being moral beings transcends naturalistic materialism.

That's God. Or it isn't (spoiler alert: It isn't).

Your creating a strawman. Who said that morality is just a personal view?

I did. Because it's relative.

...object or quantity that is measured by objective sciences. Something that can occupy space and time. So this actually means we are left with some immaterial aspect of reality that is beyond the material world.

You can't measure driving. It doesn't exist physically. But the car does.

There is no way science can prove consciousness is limited to the brain.

I'll destroy your car. You won't be driving. I'll destroy your brain. You won't be conscious. QED

...that gives us knowledge and truths that the material world cannot do.

It's not objective. So it can't.

 

[stevevw]

The reason that what you wrote in this post is largely incoherent is, I think, that you haven't come to grips with the mind/body problem. You seem to be taking the position of a substance dualist, but as if it was axiomatic.

Axiomatic in what way. I see both the the physical and the non physical as axiomatic depending on what it is your looking at. Even materialistist use metaphysical assumptions about reality being matter.

I think everyone has some metaphysical belief about reality. Its just some believe its all material while others there is also a non material aspect. At least I can say I believe in both the material and non material aspects. Whereas atheists can only be open to the material.

The other thing that makes your posts confusing is that you appear to be confusing the concepts of objective morality and a divine command ethic. I think you are beginning to realize that yourself.

No I just see that theres more to reality that the material world and that morality is by nature normative. Its actually how we live morality. I don't think divine command theory is enough. What if other gods also demand obedience. We still have a free will with God.

Its a number of things that binds us to morality and sure we can reject these truths but we do so knowingly and theres a price to pay.

 

[stevevw]

That's God. Or it isn't (spoiler alert: It isn't).

Are you claiming a truth here. Are you God lol. There are many different ideas people propose for what is beyond this world metaphysically ie fairies, witches, warlocks, crystal and rock spirits, mother nature even the universe is said to be the place justice is done.. Whatever that means.

What about consciousness. There are many ideas based on consciousness being a force itself that reveals these non material truths and realities.

Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?

Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?

A theory called panpsychism proposes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality

www.scientificamerican.com

I did. Because it's relative.

You mean relative to culture. Thats more or less the same thing. Who says its subjective or relative. Has there been a scientific test that has verified this. I must have missed it. What did they find, perhaps sub atomic justice particles.

You can't measure driving. It doesn't exist physically. But the car does.

You can measure driving. We can measure the eye movement, hand eye cordination, heart rate, concentration levels, posture, reaction time, against the movement of the car and in relation to road rules and safety. We can advise of best driving posture and setup ect.

As a concept driving is a task and not a conscious experience. If we seen something immoral happening while driving we would lose concentration and if not veer off the road.

I'll destroy your car. You won't be driving. I'll destroy your brain. You won't be conscious. QED

Well obviously you need to be awake and have a working brain. But driving itself is not a conscious experience but more a mechanical process even the subconscious comes in. We spot more than we realise when driving but we would be hard pressed to recall it.

A person paralysewd from the next down who cannot do anything can have conscious experiences. Someone with half their brain missing can have conscious experiences.

It's not objective. So it can't.

Another absolute claim. Are you saying that anything that is not object this cannot reveal any truths about reality. About humans and life. THis is exactly what I was referring to by the two different worldviews. The materialist and the immaterialist. I would say there are more people who believe in an immaterial reality of one sort or another.

I think some sort of theism is the norm for humans so I wouldn't be making absolute claims like that.

Can science tell us that rape is wrong. If not then thats a truth that science cannot tell us about. Can science tell us what the experience of awe is like when viewing the night sky which may brings an experience of something greater than self. Thats another truth science cannot reveal. When you think about it theres plenty science cannot reveal about reality.

Of course under the materialist view that only physical objective reality is the only reality all this would be seen as delusion and imagination.

 

[BCP1928]

Axiomatic in what way. I see both the the physical and the non physical as axiomatic depending on what it is your looking at. Even materialistist use metaphysical assumptions about reality being matter.

I think everyone has some metaphysical belief about reality. Its just some believe its all material while others there is also a non material aspect. At least I can say I believe in both the material and non material aspects. Whereas atheists can only be open to the material.

No I just see that theres more to reality that the material world and that morality is by nature normative. Its actually how we live morality. I don't think divine command theory is enough. What if other gods also demand obedience. We still have a free will with God.

Its a number of things that binds us to morality and sure we can reject these truths but we do so knowingly and theres a price to pay.

Axiomatic in the way that you assume that mind and brain are two different things, rather than minds being an emergent property of brains.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Population genetics is outdated now. Its been proven wrong. There may be a small influence but the main driver of evolution is development and non genetic influences like nich construction, developmental plasticity and bias and inheritence beyond genes..

Population genetics is a sub-field genetics. Say it is outdated and "proven wrong" is like say ornithology i "outdated and proven wrong". It is a nonsensical statement.

Hum ok then you will have to explain this if you know so much about evolution.

Hum, EES, we've seen that before...

Developmental processes, operating through developmental bias, inclusive inheritance and niche construction, share responsibility for the direction and rate of evolution, the origin of character variation and organism–environment complementarity. Thus, the burden of creativity in evolution (i.e. the generation of adaptation) does not rest on selection alone [12,19,25,27,60,64,73,99–101].

Constructive development refers to the ability of an organism to shape its own developmental trajectory by constantly responding to, and altering, internal and external states [34,71,102–105]. As a consequence, the developing organism cannot be reduced to separable components, one of which (e.g. the genome) exerts exclusive control over the other (e.g. the phenotype). Rather, causation also flows back from ‘higher’ (i.e. more complex) levels of organismal organization to the genes (e.g. tissue-specific regulation of gene expression) (figure 1).

‘Reciprocal causation’ captures the idea that developing organisms are not solely products, but are also causes, of evolution [90,110,111]. Developmental bias and niche construction are, in turn, recognized as evolutionary processes that can initiate and impose direction on selection.

The EES is thus characterized by the central role of the organism in the evolutionary process, and by the view that the direction of evolution does not depend on selection alone and need not start with mutation.

Like other exploratory behaviour within the organism, learning allows organisms to generate and refine novel behavioural variants that are coherent and adaptive [73,118].
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1813/20151019

A significant amount of explanatory weight is shifted from external conditions to the internal properties of evolving populations. In addition, natural selection may be ‘bypassed’ by environmental induction, causing potentially adaptive developmental variation in many individuals of a population at once and long before natural selection may become effective.

Instead of chance variation in DNA composition, evolving developmental interactions account for the specificities of phenotypic construction. This interpretation is also based on a fundamentally different account of the role of genes in development and evolution. In the EES, genes are not causally privileged as programs or blueprints that control and dictate phenotypic outcomes, but are rather parts of the systemic dynamics of interactions that mobilize self-organizing processes in the evolution of development and entire life cycles. This represents a shift from a programmed to a constructive role of developmental processes in evolution.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566817/

As the above says the evolution of change is not caused solely by natural selection, genetic drift and random mutations in populations. Random mutations and NS can often be bypassed. There are a number of ways including multiple lines of selection including selection by the organism itself through niche construction rather than having to be adapted to enviroments.

As well as self organising development which biases mutations to particular adaptive changes, plasticity which changes phenotypes through tissue and cells without genes and non genetic factors like epigenetics, nesting environments, and culture.

The simple mappen of genotype to phenotype is well outdated let alone the overly simple mapping of the geneotype onto the less physical aspects like morality and culture.

Basically this makes the organism itself play a more central role in evolution, being able to influence it and direct it according to self organising developmental processes or through intelligent changes to the environment that are adpative. Rather than the organism being a passive entity that is acted upon by environments and changed through genes alone. From a programmed view to a constructive one.

You get this inverted again. Adding non-gene things to evolutionary theory is not the same as replacing genetics.

I will cut this one off here as I think this is something to be discussed on its own.

On the proper board, not in "ethics".

 

[BCP1928]

Can science tell us that rape is wrong. If not then thats a truth that science cannot tell us about. Can science tell us what the experience of awe is like when viewing the night sky which may brings an experience of something greater than self. Thats another truth science cannot reveal. When you think about it theres plenty science cannot reveal about reality.

Of course under the materialist view that only physical objective reality is the only reality all this would be seen as delusion and imagination.

Science can only tell us that rape is harmful. If a component of your morality is not to harm others then you won't rape.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Science can only tell us that rape is harmful. If a component of your morality is not to harm others then you won't rape. Unless, of course, you believe your morality comes from God, in which case rape is sometimes allowed.

..... let's not go there, brother. Seriously.

 

[BCP1928]

..... let's not go there, brother. Seriously.

Your're right. It's too much of a political issue currently. You can edit it out of your quote of my post as well if you would like.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Your're right. It's too much of a political issue currently. You can edit it out of your quote of my post as well if you would like.

While I'm not going to insist that anyone has to agree with Steve, I think that when these issues come us, everyone ends up begging the question. Yet, everyone speaks as if their position is somehow utterly self-evident.

 

[BCP1928]

While I'm not going to insist that anyone has to agree with Steve, I think that when these issues come us, everyone ends up begging the question. Yet, everyone speaks as if their position is somehow utterly self-evident.

No, it's that what our position actually is that should be taken as self evident. When I state an opinion, I expect people to accept it as what my opinion is, whether they think it's right or wrong.. If I say "I think it will rain tomorrow," "No, you don't" can hardly be considered a usefull response.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

No, it's that what our position actually is that should be taken as self evident. When I state an opinion, I expect people to accept it as what my opinion is, whether they think it's right or wrong.. If I say "I think it will rain tomorrow," "No, you don't" can hardly be considered a use full response.

Would Marx agree with that proposition?

 

[RamiC]

If we all aquire the preferences for our morals over time through encultration then this implies a culture can change the whole idea of true justice and fairness to suit their cultural beliefs.

Yes, like Australia did when they booted the British out and ended up creating a highly respectable criminal justice system for themselves.

Yes but under subjective and relative morality people and cultures get to declare their morals which contradict your morals and they are just as valid and cannot be denied as immoral.

12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 7:12

Atheists can read this, and live by the first part, by reckoning it makes logical sense. If I am wrong, could an atheist please say so, because I am not one of you, but I met one who said that once...

We could take it all the way back to the beginning and how something came from nothing.

What has this got to do with morality?

The point is such creation or as Dawkins says such appearence of design doesn't come from Neo Darwinism and more and more cracks are appearing as a result.

As I understand it a person can be an atheist without agreeing with Richard Dawkins about anything except for lacking a belief in any kind of god.

Just like the later Kings of England thought it moral to subjugate the people.

Excuse me, I live in England, we have a King, and if you accept majority opinion, we like it. It is not subjugation.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I think your overstating morality with some basic instincts or factors that are just there because of physical reality but not anything beyond like morality.

I think the spacial and temporal comes with certain instincts like the literal space between people, predators and objects. That in itself has an influence on working together to stablise things. So different creatures will respond differently, some herding together for safety and others having more complex setups.

Most of this makes no sense.

But morality is on another level and we only see humans at this level. As though we have evolved beyond time and space. At least in our minds and conscious experiences.

That is just "human exceptionalism".

Yeah but I still think most of it is limited. The focus is fixed on basic needs like food and reward. The opposition behaviour is all geared towards getting the food. You can see the reactions are limited to these basic instincts.

I would also question if these monkeys didn't mimick some of the human behaviour they seen everyday in labs and this was also reflected. But that is what I think it mostly is when it comes to morality. It seems conditioned and mimicked and not due to any moral understanding.

What behavior are they mimicing? The trained task? So what, that is the point. The responses. You don't think that the monkey that threw the reward learned that from watching the experimenters, do you?

There are also field studies watching troops of chimps and other primates in the wild that show the same thing.

Yes but thats the point. Humans display a different kind of morality. The evil can be just as extreme as the good. We have a capacity for both. But we don't see animals that way. When an animal does just as bad like a lion or shark viciously rips apart a child we don't think its evil. Its just they instincts.

But when a human does this to a child we see the evil side of humans.

I thought the idea was to link human morality to animals. If animals have basics of morals then it proves morals evolved.

At this point I was talking about other primates and we hadn't even gotten to your irrelevant shark example.

So showing what humans would consider brutal and vicious abuse in tearing a human to pieces for lunch is relevant to whether animals have morals or not like humans. Or are we just projecting morality onto animals and making them more moral than they really are.

You were talking about sharks. Sharks don't kill sharks for food.

I don't think that is the same. In fact I think the celebration of getting the food instead of just savagely ripping into it on the spot and even attacking members of their own species who dare push in. THis is another moral aspect of how we even treat food that is different.

We see a history of animal sacrifice, blessing food, thanking the gods for food and the ritualistic treatment of preparing food. The humane treatment (most of the time) or the protests in the inhumane treatment of animals.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

You were talking about sharks. Sharks don't kill sharks for food.

Neither do Sperm Whales, but the sharks die just the same.

edit: ..... oh, I stand corrected..........by myself !