From: Owleye 




"Phil Roberts, Jr." wrote:

>
> > If it is a disadvantage or dysfunctional, how can it be
> > explained from an evolutionary account?
>
> As a maladaptive by-product of some other adaptation (an increase in epistemic
> objectivity which FACILITATES our survival) which is itself sufficiently
> adaptive to warrant a considerable downside.

Is this a new idea in evolutionary theory?  Though I think it misguided, I might suppose
that in your theory this will lead to our extinction.

> This is because being rational
> is not a matter of following rules, as I believe Kant would maintain, but
> rather a matter of TRANSCENDING rulues/algorithms, when and if it is, as we
> say, rational.  IOW, mother nature is running into the same problem Kurt
> Godel ran into in his attempt to reduce mathematical reasoning to an algorithm.
> Eventually, you end up with creatures which are increasingly capable of
> "standing outside the system" (Lucas, 1961), wanting to have rational whys
> for surviving, questioning not only the means to the end, but the end itself.
> Paradoxically this would mean we have become LESS DETERMINED by natural
> selection (valuatively/conatively) as a result of natural selection.

I may side with your conclusions here, but not your naturalistic account of it.  For one
thing it is way too complex, particularly because of the holistic nature of rationality.
It sounds like a huge number of genes have to be involved each of which have to evolve
together to achieve this.  In my theory a single gene with a kind of directional
evolution could serve as the impetus for all the other aspects that makes us human.  This
is the one that is responsible for our freedom -- an account of which in its general form
I take from Whitehead (something I would call a gap between stimulus and response that he
fills by an emotional form).

>
>
> > You mention in a prior post anomolies -- a
> > kind of toleration for the dysfunctional.  Of what significance is this
> > to someone who is feeling unworthy?
> >
>
> The 'toleration' is a metaphor for the assumption that natural selection
> still finds the cost benefit equations coming out on the plus side.
> The loss in the will to survive is offset by the increase in the
> facility of surviving.  After all, what are a few self-incinerating
> Buddhist monks now and then when the pay off is printing, the scientific
> method, and global disaster relief, eh?

I take it is of no significance.  You are merely standing on some scientific platform of
objectivity.  It is not about therapy.

>
> Think of something you have thought or done in the past several years
> which did NOT have self-worth as a significant motivational component.
> My guess is this will be much harder to do than you realize once you
> actually spend some time thinking about it, at least
> it has been for me.   It has everything to do with why I am typing
> on this keyboard right now.

As far as I can tell almost everything I have thought or done in the past several years
had no self-worth component.  Such thoughts do occur from time to time, particularly when
I question the significance of some imporant event in our family life or in my own life.
As far as my dialog with you, this has nothing to do with my self-worth.  I find I enjoy
it and more importantly it helps me unravel concepts I find puzzling.

>
> The INTERSPECIES CORRELATION is what I was referring to.  Your and my
> opinions about our own rationality may not be sufficiently reliable to
> build a scientific theory on, particularly given the likelyhood that
> our ascriptions of rationality are probably almost always comparative
> with respect to the norm.

I have to say, though, that I find faith and spirituality, reason and intellect, our
emotions, our aesthetic sense, our desires and fears, language and communication, our
creativity, all these have a bearing on our adaptiveness and contribute in their own way
to our fitness.  I can see each associated with all the things you find important for
fitness, some emphasizing more of one aspect than others would.  All of them, however,
are responses to the gap I spoke of between stimulus and response.  As our freedom
increases so also are these other facutlies called upon to fill that gap of uncertainty.
Indeed, because of the uncertainty associated with that gap, morality becomes an
essential ingredient that will put all these other faculties in their place.  There is no
requirement for a balance of reliance of these faculties, in my view, since each of them
can be relied on to cover a range of functional areas.  Our social nature, arising out of
our primate past is probably what makes morality so important.  Naturally your account
will want to go one step further and reduce this to individual genes having a
self-interest, something that  makes us no different than cats.

>
> I believe you are sincere here, but I must confess I haven't had this
> degree of difficulty on this point previously.  For most of us, yourself
> included, I would suppose, 'being objective' means getting outside of your
> skin to get at the way things really "are".  Metaphorically, "seeing"
> the way things really "are".   Of course, I don't suppose
> any of us can do this, but I assume that a human has a closer approximation
> than a giraffe.  For example, we still experience the level of "seeing"
> nature employs to get us to procreate.  This is the only level available
> to a giraffe.  Probably humans are the only ones who are aware of the
> purpose this behavior serves, and as such, "see" a great deal more than
> giraffes with regard to sexual behavior.  OUr beliefs about sex are
> more complete and correct, i.e., more objective, we are more aware
> of what it is and what it does, we "see" more.
>

Though this is a response to a question I wasn't asking it is not usefully re-asked since
you are not concerned with what falls out from your theory, but rather that you are
trying to give a rather untestable account of morality.  I guess it's too bad for me that
it is so useless.

owleye