Innate Knowledge of Right and Wrong

[Rawlings]

I'm not sure this sufficiently answers the point. I suspect that if there is anything transcendent about morality (i.e. that it's not just innate due to how our brains are wired) this is likely it. Evolutionary psychology can explain the behavior of altruism (though it is, perhaps, a stretch--you have to say something to the effect that it's a mechanism that's gone a little haywire). But saying it can explain the behavior, and saying it can explain the whole phenomenon, are two different things.

People who commit altruistic acts, including those that risk their own lives, often report a strange shift in consciousness leading up to their act. It's typical that they become aware of their own relative lack of importance, and feel an inseparable connection with the object of their act, whether that be another human being, another animal, or sometimes, even an ideal.

Now, perhaps the conscious experience of an altruistic impulse is "wired in" to our brains from birth. I don't think such arguments go far enough, however, because we really do not understand experience at all. Experience itself may not be a result of wiring, and if not, then it's obvious the explanation doesn't fare well. Similarly, one might just dismiss the idea of an accompanying conscious experience as anecdotal, but this strikes me as pretty cheap at the end of the day. I find it difficult to seriously doubt that the moments leading up to doing something like diving into a freezing river to save a drowning stranger, or throwing yourself onto barbed wire under heavy machine-gun fire so that the rest of your platoon can cross over your dead body, is accompanied by the same sort of conscious experience one might have while doing laundry or eating a cheeseburger.

From an evolutionary perspective, this shouldn't be necessary. For the person who commits to an act of altruism, especially a life-risking one, new truths about the world and their relationship to others leap into consciousness. Those truths remain to be apprehended and explained by evolutionary psychology.

All of this said, I'm not sure you need to go so far as to say that those truths are innate. Indeed, I suspect they are learned, but they may nevertheless be learned a priori...and obviously not by everyone.

Wow. I'm at your feet. It's the very best answer I've ever read and infinitely better than what I've ever had until now. Nonetheless, it's because of those truths that elude "evolutionary psychology" that I've always believed the latter does not adequately account for altruism, i.e., beyond the behavior and even then only as "a mechanism that's gone a little haywire."

Similarly, as you suspect, I believe they may be learned from self-evident truths; hence, I also believe they're at least accessible to virtually all human beings.

But then I'm one of those backward creationists, albeit, old-earth style, not a literalist after the fashion of pre-scientific fundamentalists, bless their heats. :2razz: I hold the notion of a common ancestry to be an indemonstrable and gratuitous imposition on the paleontological record as premised on a presumptuous naturalism.

I find it difficult to seriously doubt that the moments leading up to doing something like diving into a freezing river to save a drowning stranger, or throwing yourself onto barbed wire under heavy machine-gun fire so that the rest of your platoon can cross over your dead body, is accompanied by the same sort of conscious experience one might have while doing laundry or eating a cheeseburger.

:lol:

 

[Rawlings]

Actually, I'm too new to this board to let you get away with this crap. You deserve to have your pants pulled down around your ankles.

You really don't pay attention much to signature lines do you? If you had you would have noticed that well before you posted this reply I had edited the post you quoted to reflect my actual position which is that prior to eating of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they had free will, but no need to exercise it aside from choosing where to sleep, what to have for dinner, and if they wanted to pet this or that animal today.

Once they ATE the fruit they NOW had to make the hard choices between what was morally good and morally evil. God could have opted to take that knowledge away and start all over, but GOD chose instead kick them out of Eden and let mankind EARN paradise or hell by how he acted from that point on. That's why Christians believe in original sin which taints a baby from birth and remains until whatever serves to remove it from each person before death and judgment. Soooo, take your scriptural knowledge and shove it.

This again?! Seriously?! The ABC's of original sin?! Once again, you nitwit, there's nothing profound about any of this, and there's nothing in my posts that contradict any of this. Your blather's moot, a mindless detour into the Twilight Zone.

I'm skipping your "primate lecture" points . . .

I wouldn't want to revisit that rash of stupidity you spewed again either if I were you.


I wrote: "As for my supposed $20 words, you could have simply asked for an explanation of those terms with which you're unfamiliar in the same spirit in which I introduced them."

WRONG! I am highly educated as you might have known had you simply LOOKED in my profile. One of the things I have learned is that an intellgent person provides information at the level of his general audience, clearly and without pretense at erudition. A person who is merely trying to show how smart he thinks he is, will try to use as many "big words" as possible to give others an impression of intelligence. So I'll just skip your attempts to denegrate MY intellgence and see if I can find any point in the rest of your post…

Oh, the irony. I can usually spot 'em. I wouldn't have addressed you in the first place had I understood what you are. But now I'm gonna make sure you don't marginalize me in the minds of those who might be open to God's way of things.

You pompous, limp-wristed twit. YOU WERE MY AUDIENCE. THE POST WAS ADDRESSED TO YOU!

Should have read your profile? Excuse me, your highness, but I readily surmised from your posts that you were a man of some learning. I granted that you were a person who would readily recognize the referents to complex constructs and were someone who might sharpen my understanding of things accordingly, perhaps even disclose weaknesses in my reasoning that I'm unaware of . . . improve me.

Zoom! Right over your head.

There's no need for me to denigrate your intelligence with you around.

The only pretentious little shrew around here is you!

A sane man uses such referents not to impress, but as short-hand to save time and space.

It's not my shortcomings on display here, though they be aplenty. Yours are the projections of a small-minded prick.

And the funniest thing of all, it's now abundantly clear that you actually don't recognize the terminology as you would have us believe, Mr. Highly Educated.

Nobody knows everything, and nobody would have thought anything about it had you simply asked, especially I.

That's what this is all about. How dare a nose-picking theist challenge you . . . and with terminology beyond your reading!

Every culture in history has NOT agreed that murder is universally wrong…many cultures, including our own, have determined murder is perfectly alright as long as it is not one of our own tribe we are murdering…and there are many which determined it was perfectly fine to murder a member of their own culture if it was done “fairly.” Of course, each culture had its own ideas about what “fairly” could entail.

So murder is murder no matter what rationalization any given people might advance in order to justify their murder, right? You damn fool. Your churlish bleating doesn't refute a universal moral code. It affirms it. Zoom! Right over.

All that learning was wasted on you. You don't fly anyone near the altitude of my intellect, and I'm just self-taught ex-soldier with a two-year degree. LOL! I gave you waaaaay too much credit. I now see that you're strictly a second-rater, a silly ass—"full of high sentence but bit obtuse."

"Good Day sir!" you write. LOL! You're Hulce's Mozart in Amadeus . . . without any of Mozart's brilliance of course. But mostly you're a clueless affectation and a narcissistic little punk . . . if not a sociopath given your pathological dishonesty and nihilism.

Now I'm done with you.

 

[MoSurveyor]

If anything, the opposite is true. Cooperation and teamwork are part of our human makeup. We survived natural selection and evolved as a more cooperative species. Altruism breeds that cooperation. Survival, for most primates and even most mammals, is a team activity.

:thumbs:

 

[MoSurveyor]

My apologies for the misunderstanding. It's my fault. I'm talking about altruism in the higher, spiritual sense of self-sacrifice, not mere cooperation within species.

You'll have to explain what you think the differences are. Examples are OK.

 

[Rawlings]

You'll have to explain what you think the differences are. Examples are OK.

Thanks for the question. Check out posts #74 and #76, especially #74, ashurbanipa's response. Wow!

 

[MoSurveyor]

Thanks for the question. Check out posts #74 and #76, especially #74, ashurbanipa's response. Wow!

Then I have to disagree and side with sociobiology and evolution - plus the environment, of course, especially for humans since we're probably more influenced by it than most animals. Even birds risk their lives by drawing attention to themselves - sometimes drawing predators away, sometimes not - so others can live. I can't, with a straight face, call something "moral" when animals do it, too. I think you'll find the base of your "innate morality" in animal behavior. Humans may expand on that behavior in certain environments (by "teaching") but the seeds are in animal behavior.

 

[CriticalThought]

I'm not sure this sufficiently answers the point. I suspect that if there is anything transcendent about morality (i.e. that it's not just innate due to how our brains are wired) this is likely it. Evolutionary psychology can explain the behavior of altruism (though it is, perhaps, a stretch--you have to say something to the effect that it's a mechanism that's gone a little haywire). But saying it can explain the behavior, and saying it can explain the whole phenomenon, are two different things.

People who commit altruistic acts, including those that risk their own lives, often report a strange shift in consciousness leading up to their act. It's typical that they become aware of their own relative lack of importance, and feel an inseparable connection with the object of their act, whether that be another human being, another animal, or sometimes, even an ideal.

Now, perhaps the conscious experience of an altruistic impulse is "wired in" to our brains from birth. I don't think such arguments go far enough, however, because we really do not understand experience at all. Experience itself may not be a result of wiring, and if not, then it's obvious the explanation doesn't fare well. Similarly, one might just dismiss the idea of an accompanying conscious experience as anecdotal, but this strikes me as pretty cheap at the end of the day. I find it difficult to seriously doubt that the moments leading up to doing something like diving into a freezing river to save a drowning stranger, or throwing yourself onto barbed wire under heavy machine-gun fire so that the rest of your platoon can cross over your dead body, is accompanied by the same sort of conscious experience one might have while doing laundry or eating a cheeseburger.

From an evolutionary perspective, this shouldn't be necessary. For the person who commits to an act of altruism, especially a life-risking one, new truths about the world and their relationship to others leap into consciousness. Those truths remain to be apprehended and explained by evolutionary psychology.

All of this said, I'm not sure you need to go so far as to say that those truths are innate. Indeed, I suspect they are learned, but they may nevertheless be learned a priori...and obviously not by everyone.

Simple social psychology. Humans evolved to be cultural animals because the sharing of values among large groups is advantageous for members of that group to the point that some sacrafice of individual members is far offset by increased reproduction and survival of other group members. Those traits are strongly selected among humans because they work for the culture as a whole. That is why these issues, like homosexuality, are culture wars. But so called altruism is simply self sacrifice for the greater good of the culture and that is likely ingrained in our genes. The more cohesive and organized the group, the more likely it will survive against other groups.

See Baumeister.

 

[CriticalThought]

Wow. I'm at your feet. It's the very best answer I've ever read and infinitely better than what I've ever had until now. Nonetheless, it's because of those truths that elude "evolutionary psychology" that I've always believed the latter does not adequately account for altruism, i.e., beyond the behavior and even then only as "a mechanism that's gone a little haywire."

Similarly, as you suspect, I believe they may be learned from self-evident truths; hence, I also believe they're at least accessible to virtually all human beings.

But then I'm one of those backward creationists, albeit, old-earth style, not a literalist after the fashion of pre-scientific fundamentalists, bless their heats. :2razz: I hold the notion of a common ancestry to be an indemonstrable and gratuitous imposition on the paleontological record as premised on a presumptuous naturalism.



:lol:

Nothing in his post suggests innate truths. Higher consciousness is a studied phenomenon in neuroscience. By simply applying an electrical signal to parts of the brain or taking certain drugs these so called transcendent experiences can be induced. That includes the feelings described by the poster or even being in the presence of God or expanding infinitely beyond the human body. The poster is really arguing he personally does not like the idea that altruistic acts based on the neurological experiences are simply electrical and chemical processes that are the product of evolutionary selection of psychological traits beneficial for living within massive populations. But the poster offers nothing to disprove the notion but awe at how powerful the forces are in dictating our moral behaviors and even concedes they are likely largely learned.

 

[Rawlings]

Nothing in his post suggests innate truths.

That's right. We believe they're not necessarily innate truths, but learned truths, that is, learned from self-evident propositions (learned a priori) which, at least to my mind, presupposes a universally innate structure of human cognitive.

Personally, I believe that all certain human knowledge is acquired a priori, with morality being both intuitively and experientially premised on self-preservation, empathy and logical consistency.

In other words, I don't believe there's any DNA sequences in the human genome that literally codes for thou shall not kill, steal, covet, commit adultery and so on. . . . :lol: Such would not be necessary for a universally innate (genetically hardwired) structure of human cognition and, consequently, a universal code of human morality.

For a fuller explanation of my position, not necessarily Ashurbanipal's, mind you, as mine is that of the Bible, which I believe to be readily self-evident from experience and commonsense, see post #60. In fact, I believe it's now abundantly clear from the very best scientific research, sociological studies and philosophical thought that human morality is universal via a universal, genetically hardwired structure of human cognition.

Caveat: there are a few theological and philosophical terms for key constructs in my post that might require explication for some. If so, let me know. They're not there to impress, but to inform. :lol:

Higher consciousness is a studied phenomenon in neuroscience. By simply applying an electrical signal to parts of the brain or taking certain drugs these so called transcendent experiences can be induced. That includes the feelings described by the poster or even being in the presence of God or expanding infinitely beyond the human body. The poster is really arguing he personally does not like the idea that altruistic acts based on the neurological experiences are simply electrical and chemical processes that are the product of evolutionary selection of psychological traits beneficial for living within massive populations. But the poster offers nothing to disprove the notion but awe at how powerful the forces are in dictating our moral behaviors and even concedes they are likely largely learned.

With all due respect, and please don't take offense, you haven't thought the above through, but I will have to get to you later.

Things to do.

 

[CriticalThought]

In fact, I believe it's now abundantly clear from the very best scientific research, sociological studies and philosophical thought that human morality is universal via a universal, genetically hardwired structure of human cognition.

Moral Foundations Theory as introduced by Jonathon Haidt proposes an evolutionarily selected basis for moral psychology. So in a sense, I would agree that there is a common basis for morality encoded in our genes and subsequently in our cognition. However, your particular bias toward the Bible is irrelevant. These are not "a priori" truths but merely natural selection for traits that allow individuals to live, survive, and reproduce in large groups. Those who lack those traits become isolated and ostracized from the group or are even killed to protect the group as a whole. As such, these traits are strongly selected. These traits have brought humans from mere tribes to great nations.

Evolution serves only one master and that is adaptation over time to the environment. Human population has increased to a size and density that is unprecedented and we will likely face a new challenge because of these traits. What made us great as a species could potentially be our undoing with the technological capabilities we now possess and so many lacking an understanding to the biological basis behind our morality. Clinging to primitive interpretations of our morality, such as those left by ancient desert nomads in books like the Bible will likely become dangerous in the future. We can interpret moral foundations in an infinite number of ways and use them to justify just about any behavior as long as we can build a consensus around it. But I suppose this is a discussion better left for science than philosophy because when we are still using terms like "self evident truths" in a time when it is apparent that very little to nothing is self evident, we are really stuck recycling old and purely subjective opinions.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Simple social psychology. Humans evolved to be cultural animals because the sharing of values among large groups is advantageous for members of that group to the point that some sacrafice of individual members is far offset by increased reproduction and survival of other group members.

This still seems to miss the point. The question which motivated my last response is why it would be the case, from an evolutionary perspective, that altruistic acts are accompanied by changes in consciousness for the individual doing the sacrificing, such that the sacrifice seems to be motivated by the apprehension of some deep truth about the nature of reality and relationships.

This is just a special form of a more general question about what good consciousness is at all from an evolutionary perspective. But it's one with a larger epistemic point to make: our conscious states are what reveal truth to us. Evolutionary psychology, in making the explanation it does, is unaccountably concerned only with the behavioral aspects of self-sacrifice, when the conscious experience is at least as important.

Those traits are strongly selected among humans because they work for the culture as a whole.

They do not necessarily do so. There are plenty of instances where altruistic acts result in a zero-sum effect, or where the population as a whole is actually worse off, as when a particularly gifted or emminent member of the population sacrifices him-or-her self for a mediocre individual, or an individual who is past the age of being able to reproduce. How many young daughters have died protecting their older mothers, for instance? How many physically fit and mentally superior people have sacrificed themselves for someone who is relatively weak or stupid, or both? I'm sure it isn't zero in either case.

I think the explanation you have offered seems reasonable because we naturally tend to think of instances where the conclusion is reasonable--by offering the explanation first, rather than gathering a large number of cases and examining them, we're led to think about cases in which the explanation makes sense.

That said, I do not claim that there is no evolutionary component to acts of altruism. There definitely are cases where the sacrifice of a single individual benefits the whole. But if we take that as the explanation for all cases of self-sacrifice, then we have to say it's a mechanism that's gone haywire, causing people to commit acts which are against the "spirit" of the original purpose.

That is why these issues, like homosexuality, are culture wars.

No, I don't think that's why "these issues," as you call them, are culture wars.

But so called altruism is simply self sacrifice for the greater good of the culture and that is likely ingrained in our genes.

No, altruism is simply sacrifice for another. I think all cases of altruism are for a greater good, but it's not necessarily a greater good from an evolutionary perspective. Often, the greater good is purely moral, and this doesn't seem so very easy to explain from a strictly materialist standpoint.

The more cohesive and organized the group, the more likely it will survive against other groups.

Certainly true.

See Baumeister.

At least provide some titles or something.

Also, while the following was not addressed to me, it's about my posts, so I'm going to respond:

Nothing in his post suggests innate truths.

If you're referring to the post to which I think you're referring, I did not intend to suggest there are any "innate" truths. Indeed, I think I said that while the truths one might have learned in order to prepare for an altruistic act might be a priori, they're probably not innate.

Higher consciousness is a studied phenomenon in neuroscience.

Well, depending on what you mean by "higher consciousness" this is likely true, but careful attention to the relevant research (or even to the claim you just made) reveals that this says rather less than it may initially seem to say.

Sure, neuroscientists have studied the brains of people who are meditating or praying or doing pranayama or etc. There's some consensus about what happens in the brain, generally speaking, when someone is meditating or praying or receiving some kind of vision or something. But there's no consensus on what that implies. Just because the brain "lights up" in some general pattern, that doesn't really tell us anything about the ontology of the situation.

By simply applying an electrical signal to parts of the brain or taking certain drugs these so called transcendent experiences can be induced.

As far as I've ever been able to tell, this is false. Science journalists like to make claims like this; when you go and read the actual papers, and especially attempts to replicate and confirm the experiments in question, the results are rather less than spectacular.

However, suppose that's not the case. How would you construct an account with this evidence that excluded the possibility of a non-materialist explanation? For example, how would you rule out the "brain as filter" theory, in which the brain serves to "ratchet down" or "focus in" a normally "transcendent" consciousness so that it can focus on the affairs of a very tiny chunk of reality--the world which we normally think of as the real world? Stimulating a certain portion of the brain may interrupt this normal functioning, releasing the individual consciousness from its normally inhibited state--a state brought on specifically by the functioning of the brain.

The general problem that confronts proponents of your position seems to be that there is no general theory of how the workings of the brain could lead to having a human mind. Indeed, the situation is even worse: there is an absolutely massive amount of information available about the brain. It's so massive that it led Francis Crick to comment that even most neuroscientists no longer have any accurate notion of the amount of information that's out there. But despite all that information, no one has any clue how to even begin to construct an informative theory about how we go from the firings of neurons and the chemical interactions of glial cells to things like emotions, memories, intentions, perceptions, and so on. Until we actually have such a theory that works, your proposal is mere speculation at best, and more likely, I would argue, simply false.

The poster is really arguing he personally does not like the idea that altruistic acts based on the neurological experiences are simply electrical and chemical processes that are the product of evolutionary selection of psychological traits beneficial for living within massive populations.

I'm curious whether you could pinpoint just where, in any of the posts I've made in this thread (including this one) I've made any argument of this form--i.e. that because I don't like the implications or results, they must be false.

But the poster offers nothing to disprove the notion but awe at how powerful the forces are in dictating our moral behaviors and even concedes they are likely largely learned.

First, this is an oversimplification--that is to say, you have simplified to the point that your statement of my position is no longer accurate.

Second, what notion am I supposed to be disproving?

 

[Rawlings]

Moral Foundations Theory as introduced by Jonathon Haidt proposes an evolutionarily selected basis for moral psychology. So in a sense, I would agree that there is a common basis for morality encoded in our genes and subsequently in our cognition. However, your particular bias toward the Bible is irrelevant. These are not "a priori" truths but merely natural selection for traits that allow individuals to live, survive, and reproduce in large groups.

Actually, it's your particular naturalist bias that's irrelevant. I don't need the conventions of evolutionary theory or the musings of Haidt or Joseph to tell me "that there is a common basis for morality encoded in our genes", as you put it. That's self-evident. In truth, I don't need the Bible to tell me that either. Again, it's self-evident.

However, you have it backwards. It's the genetically hardwired, universal structure of human cognition that constitutes the "common basis" for human morality; subsequently, the universality of human morality prevails.

Nonetheless, the Bible explains the matter just so, centuries ahead of Darwin or Haidt or Joseph or anyone else you care to name; that is to say, the Bible asserts the universality of human morality and that this phenomenon is physiologically and spiritually inherent in terms of apprehension.

You're regurgitating some mysteriously disconnected dogma by rote without any real understanding, for quite obviously the cognitive aspect of the universality of human morality would necessarily be derived a priori from self-evident propositions. Otherwise, there's no pathway from the genetics to the apparent realization of this universality of human morality.

You're actually at odds with Haidt and Joseph.

The five values, natural law, the Golden Rule or whatever. . . .

It amounts to this:

Obviously, every normal human being of maturity knows that he's subject to the lose of life or limb should he violate that which he would have no other human being violate of his (life, liberty, property). Those who violate the fundamental rights of others know they must fight or flee, for such behavior and the imperatives of justice necessarily entail force. Moral renegades don't stand around twiddling their thumbs, expecting peace. Every culture throughout recorded history has held that murder and theft and the like are morally wrong and punishable by the sword of the wronged or that of the state. --Rawlings, Post #60

Hence, the universal code of human morality derived a priori from self-evident propositions, that is, love/treat your neighbor as you would have them love/treat you . . . or else!

And looky here: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are the right to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness."

And that would be the sociopolitical expression of the Golden Rule as extrapolated from the biblical construct of the same by Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Locke, Burke, the Founders and others. . . .

Now I hold that the notion of a common ancestry is merely the gratuitous insertion of a theoretic model on the evidence, but what real difference do you think you're making in your distinction between a priori truths and . . . uh . . . "natural selection for traits"? And shouldn't that read selected traits? A priori truths are not necessarily transcendent. You do understand that, don't you?

Those who lack those traits become isolated and ostracized from the group or are even killed to protect the group as a whole. As such, these traits are strongly selected. These traits have brought humans from mere tribes to great nations.

Once again, sort of like this, right? :2razz:

Obviously, every normal human being of maturity knows that he's subject to the lose of life or limb should he violate that which he would have no other human being violate of his (life, liberty, property). Those who violate the fundamental rights of others know they must fight or flee, for such behavior and the imperatives of justice necessarily entail force. Moral renegades don't stand around twiddling their thumbs, expecting peace. Every culture throughout recorded history has held that murder and theft and the like are morally wrong and punishable by the sword of the wronged or that of the state. --Rawlings, Post #60

______________________________________

Evolution serves only one master and that is adaptation over time to the environment. Human population has increased to a size and density that is unprecedented and we will likely face a new challenge because of these traits. What made us great as a species could potentially be our undoing with the technological capabilities we now possess and so many lacking an understanding to the biological basis behind our morality.

You seem to be arguing that these things are self-evident. Interesting.

Clinging to primitive interpretations of our morality, such as those left by ancient desert nomads in books like the Bible will likely become dangerous in the future.

How so? Are you imagining that some time in the future it will be advantageous for us to murder and rob and rape one another at will?

Interesting.

How would the notion that Jesus Christ is the incarnate God Almighty Who took on the sins of the world in order to redeem it be a threat or a danger to anyone but the murderously tyrannical and oppressive?

We can interpret moral foundations in an infinite number of ways and use them to justify just about any behavior as long as we can build a consensus around it.

Hmm.

But I suppose this is a discussion better left for science than philosophy because when we are still using terms like "self evident truths" in a time when it is apparent that very little to nothing is self evident, we are really stuck recycling old and purely subjective opinions.

Is this assertion of yours a self-evident truth?

I imagine this is going to elude you, but the assertion that science precedes philosophy is inherently contradictory, self-negating.

Philosophy necessarily has primacy over science. That's an inescapable reality of human apprehension, a well-established, centuries-old principle in the cannon of philosophical thought and with regard to the necessities of scientific methodology. Ultimately, what you're unwittingly asserting in the above is that evidence interprets itself. That's absurd. Science does not and cannot even substantiate it's own presupposition, as it rests on one empirically indemonstrable metaphysical construct or another. You would know these things upon reflection, for they‘re self-evident. It's just that you've been sloganeering all your life up until now, not thinking things through.

Further, let's examine your assertion that there are no self-evident truths in the light of the innate (genetically hardwired) rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness, which include the laws of logical contradiction, the fundamental operations of human apprehension (the analogous, the univocal, the metaphoric) and the ontological imperatives of origin (see post #60), i.e., that which entail the "common basis for morality encoded in our genes". :wink:

According to you, there are no absolute truths except, apparently, the absolute truth that there are no absolute truths, and so the supposed absolute truth that there are no absolute truths is necessarily false. This silliness never even gets off the ground.

Your assertion is inherently contradictory, self-negating. In a word, irrational.

And what of those self-evident laws of logical contradiction (the law of identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle), which we just applied, by the way, now more emphatically: we cannot explain how two diametrically opposed/mutually exclusive ideas could both be true at the same time, in the same way, within the same frame of reference. Ultimately, for the sake of argument, let us assume that all is illusion; that is, even if there were no objectively discernible truths about nature and/or inescapable imperatives of human cognition, of which there is a virtually endless supply ("little to nothing is self-evident"?! LOL!), it would make absolutely no difference to us, for the rational forms and logical categories of human apprehension are not relative, but absolute.

Contrary to the imbecilic utterances of multiculturalists and the politically correct space cadets of subjective-relativism, who, by the way, are the most insufferably intolerant, opinioned and obnoxious bipeds around, human beings don't live or think or opine as if truth were relative at all.

 

[CriticalThought]

Actually, it's your particular naturalist bias that's irrelevant. I don't need the conventions of evolutionary theory or the musings of Haidt or Joseph to tell me "that there is a common basis for morality encoded in our genes", as you put it. That's self-evident. In truth, I don't need the Bible to tell me that either. Again, it's self-evident.

However, you have it backwards. It's the genetically hardwired, universal structure of human cognition that constitutes the "common basis" for human morality; subsequently, the universality of human morality prevails.

Nonetheless, the Bible explains the matter just so, centuries ahead of Darwin or Haidt or Joseph or anyone else you care to name; that is to say, the Bible asserts the universality of human morality and that this phenomenon is physiologically and spiritually inherent in terms of apprehension.

You're regurgitating some mysteriously disconnected dogma by rote without any real understanding, for quite obviously the cognitive aspect of the universality of human morality would necessarily be derived a priori from self-evident propositions. Otherwise, there's no pathway from the genetics to the apparent realization of this universality of human morality.

You're actually at odds with Haidt and Joseph.

The five values, natural law, the Golden Rule or whatever. . . .

It amounts to this:



Hence, the universal code of human morality derived a priori from self-evident propositions, that is, love/treat your neighbor as you would have them love/treat you . . . or else!

And looky here: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are the right to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness."

And that would be the sociopolitical expression of the Golden Rule as extrapolated from the biblical construct of the same by Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Locke, Burke, the Founders and others. . . .

Now I hold that the notion of a common ancestry is merely the gratuitous insertion of a theoretic model on the evidence, but what real difference do you think you're making in your distinction between a priori truths and . . . uh . . . "natural selection for traits"? And shouldn't that read selected traits? A priori truths are not necessarily transcendent. You do understand that, don't you?



Once again, sort of like this, right? :2razz:


______________________________________



You seem to be arguing that these things are self-evident. Interesting.



How so? Are you imagining that some time in the future it will be advantageous for us to murder and rob and rape one another at will?

Interesting.

How would the notion that Jesus Christ is the incarnate God Almighty Who took on the sins of the world in order to redeem it be a threat or a danger to anyone but the murderously tyrannical and oppressive?



Hmm.



Is this assertion of yours a self-evident truth?

I imagine this is going to elude you, but the assertion that science precedes philosophy is inherently contradictory, self-negating.

Philosophy necessarily has primacy over science. That's an inescapable reality of human apprehension, a well-established, centuries-old principle in the cannon of philosophical thought and with regard to the necessities of scientific methodology. Ultimately, what you're unwittingly asserting in the above is that evidence interprets itself. That's absurd. Science does not and cannot even substantiate it's own presupposition, as it rests on one empirically indemonstrable metaphysical construct or another. You would know these things upon reflection, for they‘re self-evident. It's just that you've been sloganeering all your life up until now, not thinking things through.

Further, let's examine your assertion that there are no self-evident truths in the light of the innate (genetically hardwired) rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness, which include the laws of logical contradiction, the fundamental operations of human apprehension (the analogous, the univocal, the metaphoric) and the ontological imperatives of origin (see post #60), i.e., that which entail the "common basis for morality encoded in our genes". :wink:

According to you, there are no absolute truths except, apparently, the absolute truth that there are no absolute truths, and so the supposed absolute truth that there are no absolute truths is necessarily false. This silliness never even gets off the ground.

Your assertion is inherently contradictory, self-negating. In a word, irrational.

And what of those self-evident laws of logical contradiction (the law of identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle), which we just applied, by the way, now more emphatically: we cannot explain how two diametrically opposed/mutually exclusive ideas could both be true at the same time, in the same way, within the same frame of reference. Ultimately, for the sake of argument, let us assume that all is illusion; that is, even if there were no objectively discernible truths about nature and/or inescapable imperatives of human cognition, of which there is a virtually endless supply ("little to nothing is self-evident"?! LOL!), it would make absolutely no difference to us, for the rational forms and logical categories of human apprehension are not relative, but absolute.

Contrary to the imbecilic utterances of multiculturalists and the politically correct space cadets of subjective-relativism, who, by the way, are the most insufferably intolerant, opinioned and obnoxious bipeds around, human beings don't live or think or opine as if truth were relative at all.

These are concepts that predate the Bible. Life offers many paradoxes. The ambiguity is unsettling to some. It is easier to play the cognitive miser and argue there are absolutes in morality but there is a beautiful amount of variation within and throughout cultures that is just as evident as the similarities. If there is anything self evident of human nature it is that we seek meaning in everything we experience and do and anything that falls outside the scope of our pursuit of meaning we see as absurd or irrational. I think belief in the Judeo Christian God is irrational and apparently you find my particular evolutionary views to be irrational. I cannot see the meaning in your views anymore than you can see the meaning in mine. And yet we likely possess a similar moral construct that differs purely in interpretation and life experiences. There is nothing more frustrating than understanding something perfectly and yet still being a slave to it by nature.

 

[CriticalThought]

This still seems to miss the point. The question which motivated my last response is why it would be the case, from an evolutionary perspective, that altruistic acts are accompanied by changes in consciousness for the individual doing the sacrificing, such that the sacrifice seems to be motivated by the apprehension of some deep truth about the nature of reality and relationships.

This is just a special form of a more general question about what good consciousness is at all from an evolutionary perspective. But it's one with a larger epistemic point to make: our conscious states are what reveal truth to us. Evolutionary psychology, in making the explanation it does, is unaccountably concerned only with the behavioral aspects of self-sacrifice, when the conscious experience is at least as important.



They do not necessarily do so. There are plenty of instances where altruistic acts result in a zero-sum effect, or where the population as a whole is actually worse off, as when a particularly gifted or emminent member of the population sacrifices him-or-her self for a mediocre individual, or an individual who is past the age of being able to reproduce. How many young daughters have died protecting their older mothers, for instance? How many physically fit and mentally superior people have sacrificed themselves for someone who is relatively weak or stupid, or both? I'm sure it isn't zero in either case.

I think the explanation you have offered seems reasonable because we naturally tend to think of instances where the conclusion is reasonable--by offering the explanation first, rather than gathering a large number of cases and examining them, we're led to think about cases in which the explanation makes sense.

That said, I do not claim that there is no evolutionary component to acts of altruism. There definitely are cases where the sacrifice of a single individual benefits the whole. But if we take that as the explanation for all cases of self-sacrifice, then we have to say it's a mechanism that's gone haywire, causing people to commit acts which are against the "spirit" of the original purpose.



No, I don't think that's why "these issues," as you call them, are culture wars.



No, altruism is simply sacrifice for another. I think all cases of altruism are for a greater good, but it's not necessarily a greater good from an evolutionary perspective. Often, the greater good is purely moral, and this doesn't seem so very easy to explain from a strictly materialist standpoint.



Certainly true.



At least provide some titles or something.

Also, while the following was not addressed to me, it's about my posts, so I'm going to respond:



If you're referring to the post to which I think you're referring, I did not intend to suggest there are any "innate" truths. Indeed, I think I said that while the truths one might have learned in order to prepare for an altruistic act might be a priori, they're probably not innate.



Well, depending on what you mean by "higher consciousness" this is likely true, but careful attention to the relevant research (or even to the claim you just made) reveals that this says rather less than it may initially seem to say.

Sure, neuroscientists have studied the brains of people who are meditating or praying or doing pranayama or etc. There's some consensus about what happens in the brain, generally speaking, when someone is meditating or praying or receiving some kind of vision or something. But there's no consensus on what that implies. Just because the brain "lights up" in some general pattern, that doesn't really tell us anything about the ontology of the situation.



As far as I've ever been able to tell, this is false. Science journalists like to make claims like this; when you go and read the actual papers, and especially attempts to replicate and confirm the experiments in question, the results are rather less than spectacular.

However, suppose that's not the case. How would you construct an account with this evidence that excluded the possibility of a non-materialist explanation? For example, how would you rule out the "brain as filter" theory, in which the brain serves to "ratchet down" or "focus in" a normally "transcendent" consciousness so that it can focus on the affairs of a very tiny chunk of reality--the world which we normally think of as the real world? Stimulating a certain portion of the brain may interrupt this normal functioning, releasing the individual consciousness from its normally inhibited state--a state brought on specifically by the functioning of the brain.

The general problem that confronts proponents of your position seems to be that there is no general theory of how the workings of the brain could lead to having a human mind. Indeed, the situation is even worse: there is an absolutely massive amount of information available about the brain. It's so massive that it led Francis Crick to comment that even most neuroscientists no longer have any accurate notion of the amount of information that's out there. But despite all that information, no one has any clue how to even begin to construct an informative theory about how we go from the firings of neurons and the chemical interactions of glial cells to things like emotions, memories, intentions, perceptions, and so on. Until we actually have such a theory that works, your proposal is mere speculation at best, and more likely, I would argue, simply false.



I'm curious whether you could pinpoint just where, in any of the posts I've made in this thread (including this one) I've made any argument of this form--i.e. that because I don't like the implications or results, they must be false.



First, this is an oversimplification--that is to say, you have simplified to the point that your statement of my position is no longer accurate.

Second, what notion am I supposed to be disproving?

I tend to be interested only in a testable hypothesis. I do apologize if I misrepresented your views as my statements were merely my interpretations of your statements. You self proclaim to be better read in the neuroscience literature so I will defer to your expertise in that matter. As per how the brain works...well that is easy. Information technology is an extention of our mental faculties. We are likely creating an external representation of our minds to the point that even the web itself and subsequent links are beautifully similar to the synaptic pathways of our own brains. But that is my own little untestable pet theory.

 

[Rawlings]

These are concepts that predate the Bible. Life offers many paradoxes. The ambiguity is unsettling to some. It is easier to play the cognitive miser and argue there are absolutes in morality but there is a beautiful amount of variation within and throughout cultures that is just as evident as the similarities. If there is anything self evident of human nature it is that we seek meaning in everything we experience and do and anything that falls outside the scope of our pursuit of meaning we see as absurd or irrational. I think belief in the Judeo Christian God is irrational and apparently you find my particular evolutionary views to be irrational. I cannot see the meaning in your views anymore than you can see the meaning in mine. And yet we likely possess a similar moral construct that differs purely in interpretation and life experiences. There is nothing more frustrating than understanding something perfectly and yet still being a slave to it by nature.

Seriously? Cognitive miser? Ambiguity anxiety? More slogans? :lol:

These are concepts that predate the Bible.

(Keep in mind that most of the oral religious traditions of nomadic peoples, including the monotheistic tradition of Jehovah, predate the written religious traditions of city dwellers. It's all very difficult to sort out, but from archeological discoveries of recent decades, the notion that polytheism necessarily predates monotheism was falsified.)

So you're saying that philosophical relativism/irrationalism predates the written record of the monotheistic religious tradition of Jehovah?

*Shrugs*

So does philosophical absolutism.

So does every extant form of life.

So does the Earth.

The Big Bang predates the written record of the monotheistic religious tradition of Jehovah!

Your observation is mundane . . . essentially pointless.

Life offers many paradoxes.

Indeed, there are many times more the paradoxes in life than will ever occur to the relativist who, for example, disregards the imperatives of the classic laws of logic.

The ambiguity is unsettling to some.

You mean to the philosophical absolutist? How long have you been walking around with that fallacy in your head?

On the contrary, appreciating just how nuanced and infinitely complex reality is begins with the recognition of the absolute, rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness.

You have to use reason to get at reality. Relativism is the antithesis of reason. It's the mind as closed as a slammed shut door—sheer emotionalism that never gets beyond the latest slogan. There's nothing insightful or imaginative about it at all.

Because you've mostly been sloganeering all your life, it was I who had to explain to you how small and simpleminded your understanding of the nature and parameters of science is, that philosophy necessarily precedes science, that science, as a matter necessity is premised on one metaphysical presupposition or another, that science cannot even affirm or falsify its own presupposition.

The surest things we own are the internal calculi of human consciousness, not our musings about that which lies beyond. There's a yawing gap of uncertainty between the two, a problem grappled with by the likes of Descartes, Hume, Kant and others.

Complexity. Nuance. Paradox. Ambiguity. Doubt. Dilemma.

Zoom! Right over your head all these many years?

As casually as a dog licks it genitals, you rattle off that science precedes philosophy—ultimately, empirical data interprets itself! Indeed, you state it like an absolute, beyond all dispute.

And looky here. . . .

It is easier to play the cognitive miser and argue there are absolutes in morality but there is a beautiful amount of variation within and throughout cultures that is just as evident as the similarities.

Nonsense. Once again, it's readily self-evident that the imperatives of the Golden Rule (or natural law) are universal and absolute, and that's why the universality of human morality is not at all surprising. The variations in mores from culture to culture are subtle and few; it's the differences in values that are more evident.

Further, there's a vitally important distinction here that tends to elude you: objectively speaking, I know I can't prove to another that this universal code of human morality is a binding, absolute standard beyond human consciousness.

You, on the other hand, mistakenly believe via some mysterious mental contortion, that philosophical relativism, in and of itself, is the very essence of open-mindedness, while you simultaneously insist there's no absolutes whatsoever, at either an immanent or a transcendent level of being.

And what is the rationale behind your empirically indemonstrable estimation of things, you know, the one with which only the benighted would disagree?

Some paradoxical and clearly indefinable evolutionary dynamic asserted, mind you, as an absolute, self-evident truth. . . .

From my blog:

. . . Darwinian naturalism . . . assumes without proof that the entire history of terrestrial life is an unbroken chain of natural cause-and-effect. Make no mistake about it, Darwinism is a religious system of thought, one that is diametrically opposed to the ontology of the great scientists that preceded Darwin and his cohorts, which include some Christians, who have inexplicably embraced a theory that spurns the testimony of God regarding the exact nature of the origin and succession of life, and, consequently, the essence of original sin. The matter is predominantly historical, and God was the only One there.

Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Pasteur—all understood that the teachings of reveled religion and the inferences of scientific observation were not mutually exclusive, but mutually affirming sources of information about the same indivisible reality of human consciousness and about the spiritual imperatives of the world beyond. They rightly held that divinity constituted the only guarantee that the rational forms and logical categories of the human mind were reliably synchronized with the apparent substances and mechanics of empirical phenomena. Indeed, what are we to make of the Darwinist's absolute affirmation of a construct that by it's very nature would confine its constituents' experience of reality to the processes of a random and cognition-altering speciation?

By what process of "angelization" could men have become cognizant of their random origins and spectators of all time and existence, as though from some superior and independent vantage-point? Do the Neo-Darwinians, like so many other system-builders, desert the system of which they are the authors, claiming special cognitive principles that cannot be justified within the system? —Richard Spilsbury, Providence Lost: A Critique of Darwinism, Oxford University Press (1974, pg. 116)​

 

[CriticalThought]

Seriously? Cognitive miser? Ambiguity anxiety? More slogans? :lol:



(Keep in mind that most of the oral religious traditions of nomadic peoples, including the monotheistic tradition of Jehovah, predate the written religious traditions of city dwellers. It's all very difficult to sort out, but from archeological discoveries of recent decades, the notion that polytheism necessarily predates monotheism was falsified.)

So you're saying that philosophical relativism/irrationalism predates the written record of the monotheistic religious tradition of Jehovah?

*Shrugs*

So does philosophical absolutism.

So does every extant form of life.

So does the Earth.

The Big Bang predates the written record of the monotheistic religious tradition of Jehovah!

Your observation is mundane . . . essentially pointless.




Indeed, there are many times more the paradoxes in life than will ever occur to the relativist who, for example, disregards the imperatives of the classic laws of logic.



You mean to the philosophical absolutist? How long have you been walking around with that fallacy in your head?

On the contrary, appreciating just how nuanced and infinitely complex reality is begins with the recognition of the absolute, rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness.

You have to use reason to get at reality. Relativism is the antithesis of reason. It's the mind as closed as a slammed shut door—sheer emotionalism that never gets beyond the latest slogan. There's nothing insightful or imaginative about it at all.

Because you've mostly been sloganeering all your life, it was I who had to explain to you how small and simpleminded your understanding of the nature and parameters of science is, that philosophy necessarily precedes science, that science, as a matter necessity is premised on one metaphysical presupposition or another, that science cannot even affirm or falsify its own presupposition.

The surest things we own are the internal calculi of human consciousness, not our musings about that which lies beyond. There's a yawing gap of uncertainty between the two, a problem grappled with by the likes of Descartes, Hume, Kant and others.

Complexity. Nuance. Paradox. Ambiguity. Doubt. Dilemma.

Zoom! Right over your head all these many years?

As casually as a dog licks it genitals, you rattle off that science precedes philosophy—ultimately, empirical data interprets itself! Indeed, you state it like an absolute, beyond all dispute.

And looky here. . . .



Nonsense. Once again, it's readily self-evident that the imperatives of the Golden Rule (or natural law) are universal and absolute, and that's why the universality of human morality is not at all surprising. The variations in mores from culture to culture are subtle and few; it's the differences in values that are more evident.

Further, there's a vitally important distinction here that tends to elude you: objectively speaking, I know I can't prove to another that this universal code of human morality is a binding, absolute standard beyond human consciousness.

You, on the other hand, mistakenly believe via some mysterious mental contortion, that philosophical relativism, in and of itself, is the very essence of open-mindedness, while you simultaneously insist there's no absolutes whatsoever, at either an immanent or a transcendent level of being.

And what is the rationale behind your empirically indemonstrable estimation of things, you know, the one with which only the benighted would disagree?

Some paradoxical and clearly indefinable evolutionary dynamic asserted, mind you, as an absolute, self-evident truth. . . .

From my blog:

Um...it is called the "theory" of evolution not the "absolute" of evolution. Science works differently than philosophy. Science is based on empirical evidence and so the theory of evolution could easily be proven incorrect through evidence. It just has not been done yet because there is a ridiculous amount of evidence to support it. Evolution can even be seen and guided in the lab through successive generations of bacteria cultures.

As far as all those religious thinkers...they did not know any better. They had no other explanations.

 

[_Markum_]

Nature impels behavior. The peculiar, innate, capacity of human beings for self-aware conscious reflection enables resistance to Nature; the ability to conceive alternative behaviors, and to act accordingly. To the animal, every action is right action, for Nature has dictated it. But the human being, having animal nature, not only recognizes the dictates of Nature, but is aware of his capacity of choosing between it and alternatives to it. So, the moral sense is a development of the innate capacity for self-aware conscious reflection, applied in the social context.

However, Nature may exact a toll for disobedience to Its dictates. As fortune would have it, though, this innate capacity for self-aware conscious reflection is at the root of the creation of all manner of mechanisms by which human beings avoid such consequences. In the social context, such avoidance may be considered "wrong"; but, within the greater context of Nature, there is only "right". Nature obligates us to be self-directed, learning Her inner secrets by the results incurred thereby. Self-aware conscious reflection is Nature's dictate to human beings--and we are no more able to refuse it than is the animal able to refuse the impulsion of instinct. I think of self-aware conscious reflection as the distinctly human instinct.

 

[Rawlings]

If there is anything self evident of human nature it is that we seek meaning in everything we experience and do and anything that falls outside the scope of our pursuit of meaning we see as absurd or irrational.

That which is absurd or irrational goes to reason. Some notions are absurd or irrational because they're inherently self-negating or devoid of logic.

I think belief in the Judeo Christian God is irrational and apparently you find my particular evolutionary views to be irrational.

You haven't shown anything I've written to be logically untenable or factually wrong, and I'd be willing to bet that your understanding of Judeo-Christianity gets no further beyond slogan and cliché than does your thinking about the dauntingly complex reality in which we actually live.

As for your "particular evolutionary views", see the excerpt from my article on my blog in the above. Oh, I understand evolutionary theory, alright, as well as it's particular wrinkles relative to the absolutes of the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness. And philosophical relativism is inherently contradictory, self-negating. I don't merely find the latter to be irrational. It is irrational.

Ultimately, the pertinent difference between you and me in this instance is that without proof you assume—like a cognitive miser, utterly unaware of the alternative—a metaphysical naturalism for reality, and I don't.

I cannot see the meaning in your views anymore than you can see the meaning in mine.

First, you understand me perfectly fine when I point out that you can't explain to anyone, let alone to yourself, how two mutually exclusive ideas could possibly be true at the same time, in the same way, within the same frame of reference. You understand me perfectly fine when I point out that philosophical relativism is inherently contradictory, self-negating: there are no absolutes, except the absolute that there are no absolutes; therefore, the assertion that there are no absolutes is necessarily false . . . logically.

Second, I understand you. It's not rocket science. Contrary to the very best scientific research, sociological studies and philosophical thought, you argue there's no universality of human morality even though you "agree that there is a common basis for morality encoded in our genes" . . . in some sense.

As for an absolute standard of morality beyond human consciousness, well, you reject the existence of the transcendent, right?

Finally, you hold that while your particular evolutionary brand of philosophical relativism may be paradoxical or irrational relative to the classic laws of logic, which it is, there may be, notwithstanding, no transcendent realm of being and, therefore, no absolute standard of morality beyond human consciousness.

Objectively speaking, I agree. Two plus two is four. Pretty simple really.

But let's get something straight here: I'm standing on the very best scientific research, sociological studies and philosophical thought with regard to the immanent level of being, and the classic laws of logic and the ontological imperatives of origin with regard to the transcendent . . . not ambiguity anxiety.

:roll:

You, on the other hand, are standing on nothing but anecdote and an inherently contradictory, self-negating assertion . . . once again, in the face of the very best scientific research, sociological studies and philosophical thought.

Are you kidding me? The only person to whom the cognitive miser theory applies is YOU!

And yet we likely possess a similar moral construct that differs purely in interpretation and life experiences.

We obviously do not share the same moral construct. I'm a moral absolutist. A Christian. A proponent of natural law. A classical liberal. I have nothing but utter contempt for the statist sociopolitical theory that invariably arises from philosophical relativism. Every tyranny, every atrocity that has ever been is rooted in it.

Confused? That's what becomes of anecdotal thinking.

The universality of humanity's moral code does not hinge on our mutual acquiescence to the same; it hinges on our mutual apprehension of the same. And once again, every normal human being of maturity on the planet knows:

. . . that he's subject to the lose of life or limb should he violate that which he would have no other human being violate of his (life, liberty, property). Those who violate the fundamental rights of others know they must fight or flee, for such behavior and the imperatives of justice necessarily entail force. Moral renegades don't stand around twiddling their thumbs, expecting peace. Every culture throughout recorded history has held that murder and theft and the like are morally wrong and punishable by the sword of the wronged or that of the state.

You know the above is true. Do you want to be murdered or robbed? Of course not. If you were to murder or rob someone, would you expect peace? Of course not. Regardless of your "particular evolutionary views", for you to wonder whether it would be advantageous for humans to murder and rob one another at will in the future is absurd, even monstrous, isn't it?

That there be a universal moral code of humanity that is pretty much fixed against any contingency we could reasonably or even possibly imagine is indisputably self-evident, isn‘t that right?

What did you think the theorists of natural law as extrapolated from Judeo-Christianity since had been talking about for centuries?

Look. My observations are neither irrational nor mysterious to you. Stop it.

There is nothing more frustrating than understanding something perfectly and yet still being a slave to it by nature.

Perhaps there's nothing more absurd than a philosophical relativist claiming to know or understand anything, let alone perfectly.

 

[Rawlings]

Um...it is called the "theory" of evolution not the "absolute" of evolution. Science works differently than philosophy. Science is based on empirical evidence and so the theory of evolution could easily be proven incorrect through evidence. It just has not been done yet because there is a ridiculous amount of evidence to support it. Evolution can even be seen and guided in the lab through successive generations of bacteria cultures.

As far as all those religious thinkers...they did not know any better. They had no other explanations.

LOL! I might as well be writing Chinese. You're not following me at all.

I know how science works. I know how philosophy works. I know how speciation according to evolutionary theory is supposed to have worked/occurred. In addition to all that, I'm an expert on abiogentic research. Accomplished philosophical and theological thinkers like myself are going to be competent students of science as a matter of interest and necessity, and as for your bacterial cultures, you're not describing macro-speciation.

No. There's a ridiculous amount of presupposing a metaphysical naturalism. There's not a ridiculous amount of evidence for a common ancestry. You're mistaken. Hocus Pocus. You're seeing what you want to see.

It's you who doesn't know better. It's you who hasn't thought any of this stuff through.
__________________________________

But in any event, your post is a distraction. This thread is not about evolutionary theory in and of itself. It's about the impetus of human morality, and the fact remains, the best scientific research in genetics, the best sociological studies and the best philosophical/theological thought for centuries all point to a universality of human morality. Indeed commonsense and necessity point to it. The imperatives of natural law are self-evident. Clearly, it's based in genetics, which accounts for the universal structure of human cognition and which in turn accounts for the universal apprehension of moral necessity.

As I said before, your standing on nothing but anecdote and an inherently contradictory, self-negating philosophical proposition, not science or sound reasoning at all!

While I believe that biological history on Earth is not a series of mutative branchings of species from a common ancestry, but a series of creative events and extinctions, the notion that the structure and, therefore, the apprehension of human morality is genetically and universally hardwired it not incompatible with either system of metaphysics.

 

[CriticalThought]

LOL! I might as well be writing Chinese. You're not following me at all.

I know how science works. I know how philosophy works. I know how speciation according to evolutionary theory is supposed to have worked/occurred. In addition to all that, I'm an expert on abiogentic research. Accomplished philosophical and theological thinkers like myself are going to be competent students of science as a matter of interest and necessity, and as for your bacterial cultures, you're not describing macro-speciation.

No. There's a ridiculous amount of presupposing a metaphysical naturalism. There's not a ridiculous amount of evidence for a common ancestry. You're mistaken. Hocus Pocus. You're seeing what you want to see.

It's you who doesn't know better. It's you who hasn't thought any of this stuff through.
__________________________________

But in any event, your post is a distraction. This thread is not about evolutionary theory in and of itself. It's about the impetus of human morality, and the fact remains, the best scientific research in genetics, the best sociological studies and the best philosophical/theological thought for centuries all point to a universality of human morality. Indeed commonsense and necessity point to it. The imperatives of natural law are self-evident. Clearly, it's based in genetics, which accounts for the universal structure of human cognition and which in turn accounts for the universal apprehension of moral necessity.

As I said before, your standing on nothing but anecdote and an inherently contradictory, self-negating philosophical proposition, not science or sound reasoning at all!

While I believe that biological history on Earth is not a series of mutative branchings of species from a common ancestry, but a series of creative events and extinctions, the notion that the structure and, therefore, the apprehension of human morality is genetically and universally hardwired it not incompatible with either system of metaphysics.

For all that bombast, you lost complete track of the argument. My view is that human morality is a product of evolution. It is an adaptive advantage to the species because it allows the species to work together with shared intent and to punish those who take advantage of cooperation and trust. Those who had the particular traits that allowed for such morality were more likely to survive and reproduce, and those who did not were likely ostracized from the group or killed. Has it not occurred to you that despite there being billions of people on this planet, many of whom have never heard of your particular religion, that they all possess similar moral views and yet often fundamentally interpret them in different ways?

Since you are such an exceptional, well rounded, and humble thinker I propose you read the following text.

Amazon.com: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Vintage) (9780307455772): Jonathan Haidt: Books

 

[the_recruit]

Accomplished philosophical and theological thinkers like myself are going to be competent students of science as a matter of interest and necessity, and as for your bacterial cultures, you're not describing macro-speciation.

Such humility!

 

[Rawlings]

For all that bombast, you lost complete track of the argument. My view is that human morality is a product of evolution. It is an adaptive advantage to the species because it allows the species to work together with shared intent and to punish those who take advantage of cooperation and trust. Those who had the particular traits that allowed for such morality were more likely to survive and reproduce, and those who did not were likely ostracized from the group or killed.

First it was cognitive miser and ambiguity anxiety. Now bombast? :lol:

Once again, you haven't shown anything I've written to be logically untenable or factually wrong.

What. Is. Wrong. With. You?

Everybody reading this thread knows what your view is, i.e., that "human morality is a product of evolution."

I've directly quoted and engaged in every post. I've not lost track of anything.

You're spouting formulaic blurbs like the above without any real understanding.

You expressed essentially the very same thing before. So what? It's a pile of bones. Put some flesh on it. What does it mean in scientific terms? There's nothing definitive here. This evolutionary philosophizing of yours tells us next to nothing and explains even less.

"[A]daptive advantage"? "[P]articular traits"? "[L]ikely to survive and reproduce"?

Essentially, what survives survives?

What is this morality of "cooperation and trust" exactly?

Blah, blah, blah.

You act as if all of this clear and meaningful and informative, as if you were spouting absolute, self-evident truths, which according you barely exist, as if you were doing something more than regurgitating standard evolutionary rhetoric and loosely hanging morality on it. In practical, definitive, scientific, empirical terms what in the world are you talking about?

Let me help you. . . .

Aside from the behavioral and attitudinal traits that are conducive to the immediate demands of the environment, you're necessarily talking about the imperatives of natural law universally recognized by all, and the universality of human morality is ultimately bottomed on genetics, specifically, expressed in the universal cerebral structure of human cognition whereby we universally apprehend the very same fundamentals of self-preservation, empathy and logical consistency.

Has it not occurred to you that despite there being billions of people on this planet, many of whom have never heard of your particular religion. . . .

You're asking me if it’s ever occurred to me that some have never heard of the unique theological principles and articles of faith of Judeo-Christianity?! :doh

Let me think about that for a moment. . . .

Yes. I'm sure that’s true, an absolute, self-evident truth.

But what do the unique theological principles and articles of faith of Judeo-Christianity have to do with the universal apprehension of the imperatives of natural law, i.e., with the universal apprehension of the following?

Obviously, every normal human being of maturity knows that he's subject to the lose of life or limb should he violate that which he would have no other human being violate of his (life, liberty, property). Those who violate the fundamental rights of others know they must fight or flee, for such behavior and the imperatives of justice necessarily entail force. Moral renegades don't stand around twiddling their thumbs, expecting peace. Every culture throughout recorded history has held that murder and theft and the like are morally wrong and punishable by the sword of the wronged or by that of the state. —Rawlings

Answer: Nothing.

. . . that they all possess similar moral views and yet often fundamentally interpret them in different ways?

Yes. I'm sure that's true, an absolute, self-evident truth, essentially what I told you in the above. :doh Once again:

We obviously do not share the same moral construct. I'm a moral absolutist. A Christian. A proponent of natural law. A classical liberal. I have nothing but utter contempt for the statist sociopolitical theory that invariably arises from philosophical relativism. Every tyranny, every atrocity that has ever been is rooted in it.

Confused? That's what becomes of anecdotal thinking.

The universality of humanity's moral code does not hinge on our mutual acquiescence to the same; it hinges on our mutual apprehension of the same. And once again, every normal human being of maturity on the planet knows:

. . . that he's subject to the lose of life or limb should he violate that which he would have no other human being violate of his (life, liberty, property). Those who violate the fundamental rights of others know they must fight or flee, for such behavior and the imperatives of justice necessarily entail force. Moral renegades don't stand around twiddling their thumbs, expecting peace. Every culture throughout recorded history has held that murder and theft and the like are morally wrong and punishable by the sword of the wronged or by that of the state. —Rawlings​

You know the above is true. Do you want to be murdered or robbed? Of course not. If you were to murder or rob someone, would you expect peace? Of course not. Regardless of your "particular evolutionary views", for you to wonder whether it would be advantageous for humans to murder and rob one another at will in the future is absurd, even monstrous, isn't it?

That there be a universal moral code of humanity that is pretty much fixed against any contingency we could reasonably or even possibly imagine is indisputably self-evident, isn‘t that right?

What did you think the theorists of natural law as extrapolated from Judeo-Christianity since had been talking about for centuries?

Look. My observations are neither irrational nor mysterious to you. Stop it.

Since you are such an exceptional, well rounded, and humble thinker I propose you read the following text.

Amazon.com: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Vintage) (9780307455772): Jonathan Haidt: Books

Finally, something closer to the truth about me than your trash talk ambiguity anxiety, cognitive miser, bombast and the like.

I know that people are ideologically divided and why. I've been reading and thinking and writing about these things for years.

Did you have something specific in mind regarding my view relative to Haidt's work?

 

[CriticalThought]

First it was cognitive miser and ambiguity anxiety. Now bombast? :lol:

Once again, you haven't shown anything I've written to be logically untenable or factually wrong.

What. Is. Wrong. With. You?

Everybody reading this thread knows what your view is, i.e., that "human morality is a product of evolution."

I've directly quoted and engaged in every post. I've not lost track of anything.

You're spouting formulaic blurbs like the above without any real understanding.

You expressed essentially the very same thing before. So what? It's a pile of bones. Put some flesh on it. What does it mean in scientific terms? There's nothing definitive here. This evolutionary philosophizing of yours tells us next to nothing and explains even less.

"[A]daptive advantage"? "[P]articular traits"? "[L]ikely to survive and reproduce"?

Essentially, what survives survives?

What is this morality of "cooperation and trust" exactly?

Blah, blah, blah.

You act as if all of this clear and meaningful and informative, as if you were spouting absolute, self-evident truths, which according you barely exist, as if you were doing something more than regurgitating standard evolutionary rhetoric and loosely hanging morality on it. In practical, definitive, scientific, empirical terms what in the world are you talking about?

Let me help you. . . .

Aside from the behavioral and attitudinal traits that are conducive to the immediate demands of the environment, you're necessarily talking about the imperatives of natural law universally recognized by all, and the universality of human morality is ultimately bottomed on genetics, specifically, expressed in the universal cerebral structure of human cognition whereby we universally apprehend the very same fundamentals of self-preservation, empathy and logical consistency.




You're asking me if it’s ever occurred to me that some have never heard of the unique theological principles and articles of faith of Judeo-Christianity?! :doh

Let me think about that for a moment. . . .

Yes. I'm sure that’s true, an absolute, self-evident truth.

But what do the unique theological principles and articles of faith of Judeo-Christianity have to do with the universal apprehension of the imperatives of natural law, i.e., with the universal apprehension of the following?



Answer: Nothing.




Yes. I'm sure that's true, an absolute, self-evident truth, essentially what I told you in the above. :doh Once again:






Finally, something closer to the truth about me than your trash talk ambiguity anxiety, cognitive miser, bombast and the like.

I know that people are ideologically divided and why. I've been reading and thinking and writing about these things for years.

Did you have something specific in mind regarding my view relative to Haidt's work?

Apparently evolution and its role in the formation of human moral psychology is more "self evident" to you than even you seem aware. Why then the leap into fancy and divinity? If you can see that nature alone in its forces can shape morality, why assume it comes from any other source? If the environment called on the strongest and most militaristic to survive then human morality would over time take on a very different form because those who did not or could not adapt would die or at least be less likely to reproduce. The environment shapes human moral psychology, not just in evolutionary terms but through rapid changes in culture. That seems rather "self evident" to me.

 

[Rawlings]

Such humility!

And that of a bombastic cognitive miser suffering from ambiguity anxiety no less. :2razz:

 

[Rawlings]

Apparently evolution and its role in the formation of human moral psychology is more "self evident" to you than even you seem aware.

Nonsense. You're imagining things.

Why then the leap into fancy and divinity?

Are you rehashing the impotency of the atheist's bland assertions in the face of the reductio ad absurdum of the irreducible mind or of the infinite regression of origin?

If you can see that nature alone in its forces can shape morality, why assume it comes from any other source?

What are you talking about? There's nothing in my posts that asserts any such thing. Natural law of the Anglo-American tradition does not hold that nature shapes human morality. God preordained human morality, and He is the Source and Guarantor of human rights, not the State.

Are you an American?

You don't know or understand the sociopolitical philosophy of America's founding?

Were you educated by the public education system?

If the environment called on the strongest and most militaristic to survive then human morality would over time take on a very different form because those who did not or could not adapt would die or at least be less likely to reproduce. The environment shapes human moral psychology, not just in evolutionary terms but through rapid changes in culture. That seems rather "self evident" to me.

Ah! The mysterious predictive power of evolution, which never actually predicts anything, just pronounces, 20/20 like, that whatever survives survives.


Look, Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. All else is vanity and illusion.