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Purgatory : Why Christians Always Left Me Cold

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  • mousethief wrote: »
    @Colin Smith I think you are conflating two things: the evolutionary origin of altruism, and the motivations of a single person doing an altruistic act. The motives may have been put there by an evolutionary process, but that doesn't mean the factors that drove that process are at work in that person at the time of that act. This strikes me as a bit of a mix between the genetic fallacy and the composition fallacy.

    I'm not arguing that they are always in effect when an individual performs an altruistic act.
    Sure as hell looked like it.
  • However, I thought we were looking at morality in a broader sense: as in what are its origins and its purpose in human social groups. How and why individual people might act in specific situations doesn't much interest me.

    IIRC the whole thing came out of my contention that the people I work with appear to act virtuously without having any further grounding for this (the goods they work towards are, so to speak, taken to be innately good), and I was curious that they never seemed interested in questioning this. For me this was always a question about why individuals behave the way they do and make the decisions they make.

    As a more general point, I'd say that any account that leaves the question of individual behaviour, choice, and situated context out of the picture is not an account of morality 'in a broader sense'. I would say it's not really an account of morality at all - or is at least is so thin it's unusable as such.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    @Colin Smith I think you are conflating two things: the evolutionary origin of altruism, and the motivations of a single person doing an altruistic act. The motives may have been put there by an evolutionary process, but that doesn't mean the factors that drove that process are at work in that person at the time of that act. This strikes me as a bit of a mix between the genetic fallacy and the composition fallacy.

    I'm not arguing that they are always in effect when an individual performs an altruistic act.
    Sure as hell looked like it.

    Well, I hadn't even considered individuals and their altruistic acts. I was looking at it in terms of animal (in this case Homo sapiens) behaviour.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    It survives because there are enough members of the group to enable it to do so in spite of the ones who behave in ways that are contrary to the well-being of the majority.

    Again, you have explain why there is both altruism and not-altruism. If we have been selected for altruism for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, then not-altruism would be a rare aberration, if not unknown, when it is not just common, but very common.
    Yes, unfortunately that is all too true, I suppose.
    That you yourself say 'there are enough members of the group' indicates that altruism doesn't have a purely biological/evolutionary explanation. If it did, you would be saying 'the vast majority of the group' or 'all of the group'.
    Hmm, not sure, but I don't think so. I think if one could keep a running total of all major and minor altruistic behaviours in a smaller group, they would very much outweigh the not-altruistic. On a globel, species, scale it wouldn't matter how much they outweighed the not-altruistic, but as long as they did and do, the species survival continues. In the face of a global, natural disaster, this would become crucial to its survival.

  • Timo Pax wrote: »

    IIRC the whole thing came out of my contention that the people I work with appear to act virtuously without having any further grounding for this (the goods they work towards are, so to speak, taken to be innately good), and I was curious that they never seemed interested in questioning this. For me this was always a question about why individuals behave the way they do and make the decisions they make.

    As a more general point, I'd say that any account that leaves the question of individual behaviour, choice, and situated context out of the picture is not an account of morality 'in a broader sense'. I would say it's not really an account of morality at all - or is at least is so thin it's unusable as such.

    Ah. I mistook your post to be an inquiry into where morality comes from and specifically how morality can be grounded in something other than religious belief. I also considered it to be an academic enquiry where utility wasn't an issue.

    Personally, evolution and reciprocal altruism answers my own limited interest in why I want to act in a moral or immoral way. Beyond that it's a matter of judging material and immaterial reward and material risks.
  • Side note: one thing I've always found interesting about the altruism conversation is that we seldom seem to feel the need to explain the exact opposite: wanton and gratuitously destructive acts. More than once I've seen the behaviour of serial killers and the like described as arising from a 'lack of empathy', which I always find strange: there are plenty of people I'm quite apathetic towards, but that doesn't mean I want to torture and kill them. Evil we seem to take as a baseline that needs little explanation. The tricky thing is the good.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Assuming you are disputing my comment that all apparently self-sacrificing acts have their basis in some kind of selfishness, this is my reply.
    There are I think some conceptual problems here even if we accept the premise that all biological aspects of human behaviour are the result of adaptive reproductive pressures.
    Firstly, the desire to benefit one's children is not usually covered under the term 'selfishness' or indeed 'self-interest'. Attempting to further one's own interests at the expense of one's children is usually regarded as selfish.
    Secondly, just because the mechanism of a piece of behaviour evolved because it leads to reproductive success does not mean that the motivation of the behaviour is adaptive reproductive success. In so far as the teleological fallacy is a fallacy that is why it's fallacious. Cats that play with mice may effectively practice hunting skills which leads to reproductive success, but no notion of practicing hunting skills or reproducive success is going through the cat's mind as far as we know. A bird that is feeding a cuckoo chick is not in any way improving its reproductive success. In one Attenborough documentary a bird whose nest has been raided can obviously tell that its eggs have been broken but still broods over the broken eggs. In both cases, the behaviour has evolved because in general circumstances acting in such a way in response to certain cues leads to reproductive success more often than not, but the bird's object is acting in response to the cues, not reproductive success.

    The problem with evolutionary explanations is that if they equally explain Boris Johnson running out on his children and another man dying to save his child's life they don't actually explain anything.
    Likewise, biological evolution cannot explain why the English language has largely abandoned grammatical gender and French hasn't.

    Of course we are not aware of the motivational factors. We like sweet things because they taste nice. That evolution has led humans (and many other animals) to associate sweetness with pleasure because sweet things are usually a convenient source of calories is immaterial to the pleasure we take in cake. Unfortunately, that same liking for sweet things can, in a modern world filled with easily obtained sugary foods, lead to serious health problems and early death.
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    On a global, species, scale it wouldn't matter how much they outweighed the not-altruistic, but as long as they did and do, the species survival continues. In the face of a global, natural disaster, this would become crucial to its survival.
    And how is that working out for everyone? We might care on a "David Attenborough made a telly program about it, let's ban plastic straws" level, but not in a "This will impact the way I live my whole life and how I vote" way.

    I just don't see any evidence that altruism is an inheritable trait, beyond parents and institutions inculcating children into it. Social and cultural, not biological.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    That you yourself say 'there are enough members of the group' indicates that altruism doesn't have a purely biological/evolutionary explanation. If it did, you would be saying 'the vast majority of the group' or 'all of the group'.
    That's really not how evolution works. Many traits are not shared by the whole of a species. In a species that has social cooperation, all that is needed for a trait to be selected is "enough." There are arguments from "group selection" or "survival of the fittest group" for sociopathy and homsexuality, even though these traits are a vast minority (if you will) of the population
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    And how is that working out for everyone? We might care on a "David Attenborough made a telly program about it, let's ban plastic straws" level, but not in a "This will impact the way I live my whole life and how I vote" way.

    I just don't see any evidence that altruism is an inheritable trait, beyond parents and institutions inculcating children into it. Social and cultural, not biological.

    Altruism exists in vampire bats. Did they all learn it at bat school? If it's passed on from bat parents to their little batlings then do we have to credit a bat ancestor figuring out that some form of bat-to-bat altruism was a good idea?

    Evolution applies to behaviour as well as biology.
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    mousethief wrote: »
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    That you yourself say 'there are enough members of the group' indicates that altruism doesn't have a purely biological/evolutionary explanation. If it did, you would be saying 'the vast majority of the group' or 'all of the group'.
    That's really not how evolution works. Many traits are not shared by the whole of a species. In a species that has social cooperation, all that is needed for a trait to be selected is "enough." There are arguments from "group selection" or "survival of the fittest group" for sociopathy and homsexuality, even though these traits are a vast minority (if you will) of the population

    If we are socially cooperative creatures, I would expect - looking at other socially cooperative creatures - most of us to be cooperators. Those individuals who are not are actively gamed against by the cooperators. The whole area is enormously complicated and impossible to simplify, but my contention is that even if there is a biological tendency towards preserving cooperators (something I won't deny, but not sure anyone can prove), then that tendency is weak, and with the advent of industrial capitalism, has broken down almost completely: no one needs to cooperate to survive.

    Consequently, we have to explain the social and religious movements which do emphasise altruism in a way that doesn't break when we consider how wider society behaves.

    Dragging it back to Timo's question, though: why do his co-workers see their altruistic endeavours as worthwhile, if so few of their fellow city commuters seem only interested in their own wealth and well-being?
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    If we are socially cooperative creatures, I would expect - looking at other socially cooperative creatures - most of us to be cooperators. Those individuals who are not are actively gamed against by the cooperators. The whole area is enormously complicated and impossible to simplify, but my contention is that even if there is a biological tendency towards preserving cooperators (something I won't deny, but not sure anyone can prove), then that tendency is weak, and with the advent of industrial capitalism, has broken down almost completely: no one needs to cooperate to survive.

    Consequently, we have to explain the social and religious movements which do emphasise altruism in a way that doesn't break when we consider how wider society behaves.

    Dragging it back to Timo's question, though: why do his co-workers see their altruistic endeavours as worthwhile, if so few of their fellow city commuters seem only interested in their own wealth and well-being?

    There is a good argument that religious morality became much more important in terms of social cohesion once humans began to settle in larger communities than those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Religious morality is itself a product of behavioural evolution.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    snip

    Dragging it back to Timo's question, though: why do his co-workers see their altruistic endeavours as worthwhile, if so few of their fellow city commuters seem only interested in their own wealth and well-being?

    Because they enjoy it?
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    Of course we are not aware of the motivational factors. We like sweet things because they taste nice.
    That's getting it backwards. 'Sweet things taste nice' is the motivational factor, which we are fully aware of. The particular motivational set that we have is the result of selection by reproductive success, but that doesn't of itself make reproductive success a motivation.

    While it would be true in one sense to say that the ultimate explanation of King Lear's plan to retire splitting the kingdom in three is that it makes for a good tragedy, 'making a good tragedy' is not in any sense a motivation of Lear the character.

    One might say similarly that economies that are stable offer incentives such that when people act on their own interests the economy flourishes. But the motivation of the people acting on their own interests pursuing those incentives is not to keep the economy stable.
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    edited September 2019
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    snip

    Dragging it back to Timo's question, though: why do his co-workers see their altruistic endeavours as worthwhile, if so few of their fellow city commuters seem only interested in their own wealth and well-being?

    Because they enjoy it?

    Sorry, I meant to say 'so many of their fellow city commuters'.

    I mean, I'm sure making shed loads of cash and snorting vast amounts of cocaine is highly enjoyable. The question Timo is raising is why don't his altruistic co-workers share that view? What's wrong with them? What's right with them?
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    Timo Pax wrote: »
    IIRC the whole thing came out of my contention that the people I work with appear to act virtuously without having any further grounding for this (the goods they work towards are, so to speak, taken to be innately good), and I was curious that they never seemed interested in questioning this.
    A moral system that one has to be continually interrogated from the ground up is probably unworkable. One only really wants a grounding when you either run into a problem - a moral dilemma - and need to try to solve it, or else you're confronted with another moral system that is a serious option for you.

  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    edited September 2019
    There is a good argument that religious morality became much more important in terms of social cohesion once humans began to settle in larger communities than those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Religious morality is itself a product of behavioural evolution.

    If there is a good argument for that, especially your last sentence, you could attempt to make it.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Of course we are not aware of the motivational factors. We like sweet things because they taste nice.
    That's getting it backwards. 'Sweet things taste nice' is the motivational factor, which we are fully aware of. The particular motivational set that we have is the result of selection by reproductive success, but that doesn't of itself make reproductive success a motivation.

    While it would be true in one sense to say that the ultimate explanation of King Lear's plan to retire splitting the kingdom in three is that it makes for a good tragedy, 'making a good tragedy' is not in any sense a motivation of Lear the character.

    One might say similarly that economies that are stable offer incentives such that when people act on their own interests the economy flourishes. But the motivation of the people acting on their own interests pursuing those incentives is not to keep the economy stable.

    I didn't express that well. We are of course aware that we like sweet things. What we are not so aware of is the purpose our liking of sweet things serves.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    There is a good argument that religious morality became much more important in terms of social cohesion once humans began to settle in larger communities than those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Religious morality is itself a product of behavioural evolution.

    If there is a good argument for that, especially your last sentence, you could attempt make it.

    No thanks. That last sentence is simply my opinion as an atheist. A theist would disagree. I don't think there's much point in having that disagreement.

    My issue was only ever the idea that the morality of an atheist/non-theist was less grounded than the morality of a theist.
  • I didn't express that well. We are of course aware that we like sweet things. What we are not so aware of is the purpose our liking of sweet things serves.
    Right, but surely that is an academic question rather than a practical question. In terms of the riders on the train, which of them cares? We care if we are looking at them as a phenomenon and having fun discussing abstract principles, as we might discuss the purpose bright colors serve in flowers, or "playing possum" does for opossums.
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    edited September 2019
    Given that some atheist ethicists, atheist anthropologists and atheist behavioural psychologists would also disagree with you, I think you should just call your opinion your own.

    I'm not going on to argue with your second point, however. That morality is not necessarily theistic (although for a theist it will inform a variable part of it, from some to most) doesn't make it any less grounded. It potentially makes it more grounded, in certain circumstances.

    (x-posted with mt)
  • mousethiefmousethief Shipmate
    edited September 2019
    My issue was only ever the idea that the morality of an atheist/non-theist was less grounded than the morality of a theist.
    I think that's a decent question, although I'd probably phrase it differently. If, as you said, religion serves the evolutionary purpose of keeping us grounded to our morality, what do we do when people come loose from it? What then will keep us grounded? Surely there is something, because atheists in general are no more likely to murder people on the subway than godbotherers. What is that something?

    Some have said we are merely coasting on the societal memory of religion, and once that memory is gone, all hell will break loose. Is that true? Do we expect that?
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    snip

    Dragging it back to Timo's question, though: why do his co-workers see their altruistic endeavours as worthwhile, if so few of their fellow city commuters seem only interested in their own wealth and well-being?

    Because they enjoy it?

    Sorry, I meant to say 'so many of their fellow city commuters'.

    I mean, I'm sure making shed loads of cash and snorting vast amounts of cocaine is highly enjoyable. The question Timo is raising is why don't his altruistic co-workers share that view? What's wrong with them? What's right with them?

    There's nothing wrong with them. There's nothing right with them. They're just acting in a way they find rewarding and which improves their sense of well-being. Individuals find different things rewarding.

  • mousethief wrote: »
    My issue was only ever the idea that the morality of an atheist/non-theist was less grounded than the morality of a theist.
    I think that's a decent question, although I'd probably phrase it differently. If, as you said, religion serves the evolutionary purpose of keeping us grounded to our morality, what do we do when people come loose from it? What then will keep us grounded? Surely there is something, because atheists in general are no more likely to murder people on the subway than godbotherers. What is that something?

    Some have said we are merely coasting on the societal memory of religion, and once that memory is gone, all hell will break loose. Is that true? Do we expect that?

    I suppose that depends on how far we stretch the definition of 'religion' and whether religion can be synonymous with non-theist philosophy. Religious morality may simply have been a stage in our behavioural evolution.

    Though it has to be said that religious morality has often been extremely immoral.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    I didn't express that well. We are of course aware that we like sweet things. What we are not so aware of is the purpose our liking of sweet things serves.
    Right, but surely that is an academic question rather than a practical question. In terms of the riders on the train, which of them cares? We care if we are looking at them as a phenomenon and having fun discussing abstract principles, as we might discuss the purpose bright colors serve in flowers, or "playing possum" does for opossums.

    I actually thought this was an academic discussion rather than a discussion that was supposed to lead to anything practical. I'm not that interested in becoming a 'better' person.
  • Though it has to be said that religious morality has often been extremely immoral.
    Ain't that the truth.
    I actually thought this was an academic discussion rather than a discussion that was supposed to lead to anything practical. I'm not that interested in becoming a 'better' person.
    But part of the academic discussion can be "what causes these people to do it" not just "what, evolutionarily speaking, has brought our species to a point that these people do it." Both, it seems to me, are relevant, and obviously inextricably interrelated.
  • Colin SmithColin Smith Suspended
    edited September 2019
    mousethief wrote: »
    I actually thought this was an academic discussion rather than a discussion that was supposed to lead to anything practical. I'm not that interested in becoming a 'better' person.
    But part of the academic discussion can be "what causes these people to do it" not just "what, evolutionarily speaking, has brought our species to a point that these people do it." Both, it seems to me, are relevant, and obviously inextricably interrelated.

    For me, that part is obvious. The cause is that they feel pleasure or rewarded from acting in a certain way. Everything I do is based on gaining pleasure and avoiding pain. Sometimes it gets complicated and I will do something I dislike because I know my conscience will give me a bad time if I don't do it, so I will endure a little pain in order to avoid a greater pain.

    The interest for me is why I and others associate certain behaviour with pleasure and other behaviour with pain.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    Everything I do is based on gaining pleasure and avoiding pain.
    If you define 'pleasure' as 'anything you want to gain by acting' and 'pain' as 'anything you want to avoid' then it is a tautology and meaningless. If you define those words in any more substantial way, then I'm pretty sure it's untrue.

  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    edited September 2019
    My issue was only ever the idea that the morality of an atheist/non-theist was less grounded than the morality of a theist.
    The problem I think that Timor Pax is trying to draw attention to is that there are two senses in which we can say morality is grounded, a causal one and a normative one.

    For example, you can certainly say that there are causes, biological and social, why people deny anthropogenic global warming or espouse intelligent design. In that sense, those beliefs are grounded.
    There is another more important sense in which denial of anthropogenic global warming and espousal of intelligent design are not grounded.
    Though it has to be said that religious morality has often been extremely immoral.
    I think this is the point. If evolution is sufficient to ground morality, then it is sufficient to ground any morality, including Aztec blood sacrifice and witch burning.
    Religious morality may simply have been a stage in our behavioural evolution.
    I find it unlikely that the variance in religious belief can be explained by reference to biological evolution or genetics, which is another one of the points at issue. Doc Tor AIUI is arguing that behavioural evolution is in some important ways a separate process from biological evolution.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    If I may. Humans are so far biologically evolved that the behavioural evolution sits on top of that level playing field many tens of thousands of years old at least. Biologically we are no more advanced than Aztecs or Conquistadores, Salem witch hunters or Mennonites. Near contemporaries with varied cultures. Who are our biological contemporaries, separated by mere centuries of the development of ideas. Those ideas have deterministically evolved. The altruism switch is anciently biological but now throwable by ideas. Stories! I see nothing missing. What am I missing?
  • @Dafyd: Just a note to say that, every time you summarise any of my points, you get it exactly right. And on a different social media platform I'd '+1' all of your points.
    Dafyd wrote: »
    A moral system that one has to be continually interrogated from the ground up is probably unworkable. One only really wants a grounding when you either run into a problem - a moral dilemma - and need to try to solve it, or else you're confronted with another moral system that is a serious option for you.

    Well, I agree! But given the nature of the NGO world - well, we're continually confronted with other moral systems presented by rival NGOs, so in many respects it's a more moral/philosophical place than most offices. And we work on emerging tech, so we're running into moral dilemmas (or at least, questions on which no consensus has yet emerged) on a routine basis. But AFAICT (which might not be very far, in fact; it's not as though anyone in the office knows I'm a Christian) the focus is entirely on building on foundations taken for granted, rather than testing them.
  • Rublev wrote: »
    A monk once said to our visiting church group: 'Why do I need to be admired?' It's meant to be a counter cultural lifestyle.

    I think this really goes back to the point of my original post - and I sort of wish I'd formulated it that way to begin with. I feel as though thriving 'counter-cultural' movements are typically those that take a value fundamental to a culture and then really push its implications to the limit: libertarians and freedom; the hippies and love; punks and individualism; various identity-politics groups with egalitarianism. Taken in this sense, 'countercultures' are often really 'deeper cultures' or 'more committed cultures': they're mot so much reacting against mainstream culture, but taking it at its word.

    But the church, in the UK at least, doesn't seem to have a handle on some value that's central to the society as a whole. It often seems dedicated just to reaffirming the culture as a whole at a superficial level, and when it engages with political concerns, it often looks like an also-ran.

  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    On a global, species, scale it wouldn't matter how much they outweighed the not-altruistic, but as long as they did and do, the species survival continues. In the face of a global, natural disaster, this would become crucial to its survival.
    And how is that working out for everyone? We might care on a "David Attenborough made a telly program about it, let's ban plastic straws" level, but not in a "This will impact the way I live my whole life and how I vote" way.
    Definitely agree here. If only, if only, if only … … we had had the global access to information that we have now when plastics were first invented... …
    But we didn't, and I find it is one of the burdens/ worries of my last years that I cannot do more than an infinitely small thing to help. I am sad every time I throw a bit of plastic away.
    I just don't see any evidence that altruism is an inheritable trait, beyond parents and institutions inculcating children into it. Social and cultural, not biological.
    Yes, but if we could remove all the layers of sophistication and human
    ingenuity,we would find that at the basis, there is a survival trait.
  • RublevRublev Shipmate
    edited September 2019
    @Timo Pax

    I see why you like St Francis of Assisi because he was remarkably counter cultural, creative and attractive in living out his faith. So much so that he revived the church in C13th. He founded the Friars Minor, the Order of St Clare for women and the Third Order for lay people so he was radically inclusive. He engaged with those on the margins such as lepers and is the patron saint of animals. His friars were committed to education and went out preaching in the local villages. And they radically lived out what they believed. We owe the Christmas Nativity and the Stations of the Cross to the creativity of the Franciscans.

    Perhaps the church has become too mainstream in the UK. But it wasn't always the case. The church promoted children's education earlier than the state. And the Methodist movement was active in supporting workers unions. It may be that the church was too successful in that many of its humanitarian ministries were taken over by the Welfare State.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    On a global, species, scale it wouldn't matter how much they outweighed the not-altruistic, but as long as they did and do, the species survival continues. In the face of a global, natural disaster, this would become crucial to its survival.
    And how is that working out for everyone? We might care on a "David Attenborough made a telly program about it, let's ban plastic straws" level, but not in a "This will impact the way I live my whole life and how I vote" way.
    Definitely agree here. If only, if only, if only … … we had had the global access to information that we have now when plastics were first invented... …
    But we didn't, and I find it is one of the burdens/ worries of my last years that I cannot do more than an infinitely small thing to help. I am sad every time I throw a bit of plastic away.
    I just don't see any evidence that altruism is an inheritable trait, beyond parents and institutions inculcating children into it. Social and cultural, not biological.
    Yes, but if we could remove all the layers of sophistication and human ingenuity,we would find that at the basis, there is a survival trait.

    Absolutely. Without the wiring there is no potential. Soldiers are trained to throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades. Only humans do that for sure: throw the switch with a story. But I fail to see anything transcendent in that. Anything unnatural.
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Absolutely. Without the wiring there is no potential. Soldiers are trained to throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades. Only humans do that for sure: throw the switch with a story. But I fail to see anything transcendent in that. Anything unnatural.

    Soldiers are trained to bayonet people. They are not trained to throw themselves on grenades. Sorry, that's not what happens at Sandhurst, or anywhere else.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited September 2019
    Martin

    I think tendencies to accept some values may indeed be hard wired. But not the choice to do so.

    Of course you could argue that I only say that because I am not a determinist. But I choose not to be one! Else all discussions of morality, ethics and values seem to me to vanish in a puff of wishful thinking.

    BTW, that was precisely the point that A J Ayer could not resolve for himself. Why did he prefer being scrupulous?
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    edited September 2019
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Absolutely. Without the wiring there is no potential. Soldiers are trained to throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades. Only humans do that for sure: throw the switch with a story. But I fail to see anything transcendent in that. Anything unnatural.

    Soldiers are trained to bayonet people. They are not trained to throw themselves on grenades. Sorry, that's not what happens at Sandhurst, or anywhere else.

    It does and I'll prove it. Limited on phone at the moment. I heard/read of it in US training and I only source from BBC quality. It's a common soldier trope regardless. With a helmet, pack and body armour its more survivable. More Medals of Honour for this than any other cause. Nothing unnatural again.
  • Doc TorDoc Tor Admin Emeritus
    Martin54 wrote: »
    It does and I'll prove it. Limited on phone at the moment. I heard/read of it in US training and I only source from BBC quality. It's a common soldier trope regardless. With a helmet, pack and body armour its more survivable. More Medals of Honour for this than any other cause. Nothing unnatural again.

    It (generally) doesn't, and I can prove it. Whereas all soldiers are trained to kill. With guns, grenades, mortars, rockets and knives. I mean, I don't know where we're going with this, but I'd steer clear of the military when it comes to a wider consideration of altruism, as they're (especially the infantry) trained to be lethally violent to strangers, to order.
  • Yeah, we keep running into these buffers. If you're using warriors and acts of genocide as your moral exemplars, I think it's fair to say something is being left out of the account.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    edited September 2019
    What? Why? They're 2 sides of the dame coin.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Txting while pulled over! At old home now briefly. Moving house. Internet not moved!

    'same' needless to say, dee next to ess on phone keypad. Life is so hard.

    We vastly overstate and aggrandize altruism, especially when we say soldiers have the wrong kind, that only liberal, pacifist altruism is true altruism.
  • Martin54 wrote: »
    What? Why? They're 2 sides of the dame coin.

    No, they're not - at least, not if what we're talking about is 'morality' as it is usually understood. The coin analogy makes sense if the two sides are equivalent. But 'morality' is precisely about how one chooses to prefer one over the other. I feel this should be absolutely clear from the genocide example upthread. It may be the case (desperately trying to avoid Godwin's Law, here ...) that 'the Turks did a great job of advancing the interests of their fellow Turks' and 'the Turks systematically massacred the Armenians' are two sides of the same coin in an abstract and value-neutral sense. It does not, however, do justice to the moral issue involved.

    As for ...
    Martin54 wrote: »
    We vastly overstate and aggrandize altruism, especially when we say soldiers have the wrong kind, that only liberal, pacifist altruism is true altruism.

    That group loyalty and bonds of mutual allegiance involve great nobility but can also lead innately and ultimately to mutual destruction and tragedy is an observation at least as old as The Iliad. Liberalism and pacifism of course have their shortcomings. But to claim on that account that military self-sacrifice is simply morally unproblematic is to ignore ... well, everything about the situation.

    I realise that for those truly committed to reductivism this kind of willful ignoring of reality-as-enountered is a feature, not a bug. But if one of the things you're ignoring is a distinction between genocide and charity, well .... I'll pass on this particular upgrade.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    snip
    I find it unlikely that the variance in religious belief can be explained by reference to biological evolution or genetics, which is another one of the points at issue. Doc Tor AIUI is arguing that behavioural evolution is in some important ways a separate process from biological evolution.

    Well, of course it's nothing to do with genetics. The evolution of behaviour is memes not genes.
  • Martin54 wrote: »
    If I may. Humans are so far biologically evolved that the behavioural evolution sits on top of that level playing field many tens of thousands of years old at least. Biologically we are no more advanced than Aztecs or Conquistadores, Salem witch hunters or Mennonites. Near contemporaries with varied cultures. Who are our biological contemporaries, separated by mere centuries of the development of ideas. Those ideas have deterministically evolved. The altruism switch is anciently biological but now throwable by ideas. Stories! I see nothing missing. What am I missing?

    Yep. That's on the same page as me.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    <snip>
    Yes, but if we could remove all the layers of sophistication and human ingenuity, we would find that at the basis, there is a survival trait.
    The presence of that great big ‘if’, referring as it does to something we can’t do means that the concluding statement is, at best, no more than a statement of belief or faith. In scientific terminology it could be called an untested and possibly untestable hypothesis.
  • BroJames wrote: »
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    <snip>
    Yes, but if we could remove all the layers of sophistication and human ingenuity, we would find that at the basis, there is a survival trait.
    The presence of that great big ‘if’, referring as it does to something we can’t do means that the concluding statement is, at best, no more than a statement of belief or faith. In scientific terminology it could be called an untested and possibly untestable hypothesis.

    Well, we can study the role altruism plays in non-human species and then extrapolate to humans.

    That does rely on an assumption that non-human species are not different in kind from the human species but as we discussed on another thread there does not seem to be a clear distinction between the human spies and all the non-human species.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Timo Pax wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    What? Why? They're 2 sides of the dame coin.

    No, they're not - at least, not if what we're talking about is 'morality' as it is usually understood. The coin analogy makes sense if the two sides are equivalent. But 'morality' is precisely about how one chooses to prefer one over the other. I feel this should be absolutely clear from the genocide example upthread. It may be the case (desperately trying to avoid Godwin's Law, here ...) that 'the Turks did a great job of advancing the interests of their fellow Turks' and 'the Turks systematically massacred the Armenians' are two sides of the same coin in an abstract and value-neutral sense. It does not, however, do justice to the moral issue involved.

    As for ...
    Martin54 wrote: »
    We vastly overstate and aggrandize altruism, especially when we say soldiers have the wrong kind, that only liberal, pacifist altruism is true altruism.

    That group loyalty and bonds of mutual allegiance involve great nobility but can also lead innately and ultimately to mutual destruction and tragedy is an observation at least as old as The Iliad. Liberalism and pacifism of course have their shortcomings. But to claim on that account that military self-sacrifice is simply morally unproblematic is to ignore ... well, everything about the situation.

    I realise that for those truly committed to reductivism this kind of willful ignoring of reality-as-enountered is a feature, not a bug. But if one of the things you're ignoring is a distinction between genocide and charity, well .... I'll pass on this particular upgrade.

    Who said it's unproblematic? Who's ignoring anything? Reductionist from what? Of what?

    I'm liberal, humanist, utilitarian, socialist, peace making blah-di-blah, di-bloody-dah, at least as much as you. You seem to know something I can't about the magic of and behind altruism however.

    Yesterday I befriended the four Derby lads who moved us, along different axes. Two were overtly sexist one of whom was an overt racist. I made them like me. Easily. Not by confronting them at all. But I did throw left field balls whilst stuffing them with food.

    So yeah, there are incremental levels of enlightenment, but they are class based. They are but for fortune.

    Privilege.

    And yes there are working class liberal, humanist, utilitarian, socialist, peace making altruists and there are middle class sexist racists. And everything in between and both.

    Enlightenment is actually on offer at Oxford. Which is hard to come by.

  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    edited September 2019
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    It does and I'll prove it. Limited on phone at the moment. I heard/read of it in US training and I only source from BBC quality. It's a common soldier trope regardless. With a helmet, pack and body armour its more survivable. More Medals of Honour for this than any other cause. Nothing unnatural again.

    It (generally) doesn't, and I can prove it. Whereas all soldiers are trained to kill. With guns, grenades, mortars, rockets and knives. I mean, I don't know where we're going with this, but I'd steer clear of the military when it comes to a wider consideration of altruism, as they're (especially the infantry) trained to be lethally violent to strangers, to order.

    And? What do you know about self sacrifice, inclusion that isn't natural?
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    BroJames wrote: »
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    <snip>
    Yes, but if we could remove all the layers of sophistication and human ingenuity, we would find that at the basis, there is a survival trait.
    The presence of that great big ‘if’, referring as it does to something we can’t do means that the concluding statement is, at best, no more than a statement of belief or faith. In scientific terminology it could be called an untested and possibly untestable hypothesis.

    Like the multiverse, the origin of life and evolution of it to 'moral' agency for three. All perfectly, minimally rational.

    There is emergence at all those borders.

    What am I missing again?
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