Quake3World

[xeno]Julios wrote:And it has everything to do with natural selection, especially if you consider a global ethic being conducive to survival.

That's group selection again.

Let's say you had a thousand planets, and one of them managed to attain world peace through a widespread cultural internalization of a global ethic. Surely this planet would be more likely to prosper longer than those that were wasting their resources in perpetual warfare.

1) Without personal incentive, it's unlikely that such a society would be very enlightened (p.s. this is not a political argument. Socialists are just as good at defining their own personal incentives as the overt capitalists)
2) as far as humans are concerned, society is an arms race, both on an interpersonal and a group basis. Why else would our brains have evolved empathy?
3) natural selection does not pick one planet over another. They're too remote from each other to have an influence, and planets do not breed to produce viable offspring

in addition, examples of moral behaviour can be found outside of the human population.

Without self-awareness, it can't be morality

I'm still not clear on what you're getting at Geebs. Are you saying morality is an illusion? That it isn't natural? That it emerged via unnatural means?

Morality can only be defined in terms of human behaviour; and it's not even consistent between societies. I agree that parts of the human brain are sensitive to societal input; but the only intrinsic stuff is a very basic series of drives. It's like imprinting in birds: you could just as easily imprint a series of totally arbitrary moral values on top of that.

Geebs wrote:That's group selection again.

Not sure what you're critique on group selection is. Are you saying you would arbitrarily choose between the survival of your sibling or daugher over a stranger in New Zealand? You are denying that there is a biological basis for your preference for your family members?



Judging by your post, I think you're confusing what I mean by morality. I'm not claiming morality to be some ivory tower notion that removes us from selfishness. Indeed I think selfishness is what drives moral behaviour.

Geebs wrote:I agree that parts of the human brain are sensitive to societal input; but the only intrinsic stuff is a very basic series of drives. It's like imprinting in birds: you could just as easily imprint a series of totally arbitrary moral values on top of that.

Just because morality isn't intrinsic (and i think innate is a better term) doesn't make it unnatural or illusory. And these values are certainly not arbitrary - they are a function of the social/cultural/physical environment along with our fundamental drives.