all of which seemed to have something to say about what is good or bad, and what makes the sky go boom, etc, you must admit.
I think you're confusing genetic traits and plain old ideas. Simply put, ideas are not inherited genetically. My point about uncivilized tribes found by 19th-20th century scientists is that these did not have any religion. Now I suppose when you define what you mean by primitive people having a philosophy, then we can go from there. I'm not sure why you tie this to biology, though, other than the fact that the modern human brain obviously has a capacity for acculturation, plus, we evidently have the capacity to estimate the cost-to-benefit ratio of living cooperatively. That cooperation appears to be the source of the moral sense you are addressing. Strip away all moral codes by reducing them to customs, and all you will have left is your genetically-endowed empathy. Empathy is a good bootstrap loader. When we notice that local people have a standing rule, we tend to empathize, wishing not to come across as jerks, or to unwittingly raise their hackles. So empathy will encourage us to download the standing rules and then to start operating under those principles perhaps even in place of our own.
I think we are using different definitions of philosophy here. You seem to be using the definition -the study of thinking, while i am classifying the primitive's philosophy as those constructs which are studied by philosophy.
It's up to you, I was left to assume you meant primitive people are by nature religious. That comes from tying in what you said with the thread title.
it is a mistake to anthropomorphize animals.
I would be the last one here to do that. You're saying this in response to my remark that mammals innovated on intraspecies behavior by evolving the trait for empathy. What I mean by this is that empathy is not a strictly human trait, although it's probable you won't find it outside of the mammalian class. Behaviors in animals are very ancient - certainly fish exhibit a variety of learned behaviors. But certain mammals do sometimes exhibit empathy.
We are human because we can say so collectively as a species. Being human is also a construct.
That would go to definitions as well. There's a genetic definition, which ties in to the thread topic. That is, evolution is NOT wack, belief in God is. Corollary: ethics is the result of acculturation and empathy, both of which are generated out of inherited traits that evolved in
H. sapiens sapiens.
Well, you can have animals performing actions in service of the genetic propagation of the species.
You mean breeding? That would be the extent of their service. The rest, like defending the herd (or running, to defend their stake in the gene pool) speaks to instinct.
You seem to like to call that empathy.
No, but the instincts you mention would seem to be a proximal cause, if not a DNA-coded platform upon which mammalian empathy evolved.
I am still reticent to use a moral term for the biological imperative.
That's correct thinking, since morality is necessarily an artifact of acculturation.
no they just growl remember? no legal system. no art. You certainly wouldn't call every breathy whispered, "hi there", that occurs in every bar, art.
Since deaf-mute people can express themselves in the visual arts, I didn't consider that a limitation.
Not to say that art can't be sexy noises to entice a mate, but we just don't call everything art, at least not in intellectual traditions.
There's no tradition that we know of that explains this:
Art is a human concept, like philosophy.
I wasn't referring to the fine arts, but to the renderings, in some neolithic medium, of ideas.
Calling a spider an artist is considered a metaphor, not a concrete description as far as I know.
I was referring to a hypothetical human that, if it had evolved without the trait to socialize, would have gone forward without any morality as you speak of it.
So just to zoom back out here, you are also saying biology is amoral, or rather that morality is just another aspect of biology which has the final word?
I am distinguishing biological traits, which are genetically conferred, from just about everything else, which is culturally conferred (including through acculturation of the child within the family). Morality, or whether you prefer Haydn over Hendrix, are not genetic outcomes. They are merely ideas. Ideas freelance on the platfom, but the platform itself is tied to a contract.
And I think biology is amoral, and meta-analysis, which can include biology if it has something to add in a particular case, is necessary for morality. i feel we may be using different definitions of biology. i call it the study of living organisms, you seem to be calling biology the study of that, PLUS the life and all parts of the organism itself.
By now you should understand that I am addressing the thread topic, namely that evolution is real and God is not. Or, if you prefer, human intellect, and behaviors that exhibit socialization and empathy are genetically conferred traits whereas ideas like religion and morality are socially conferred.
straw detector going off, beep beep beep
this is in reference to my remark
I think it's not only irony to the point of paradox, but it's highly illogical, to assume that the base instincts that make a mob want to put up a scaffold or throw a rope around a tree justify the same instincts at work in the committees that write criminal justice bills,
Maybe if you catch up with what I'm saying about empathy, you'll understand the connection.
(regarding misbehavior as diordered thinking.) i can dig that i guess. very buddhist. when we get to anything resembling that, we will have to start this conversation again from the top.
Are you Buddhist?
The difficulty in your idea arises from the decision process for what counts as disordered.
I wasn't crossing into those murky waters. My point has to do with the paradox of glorifying morality as some absolute consequence of the biological trait (empathy), or superseding it (as fundies will do) whereas the reality of the thing most people call morality is justice (as in courts and law enforcement) which necessarily introduces some serious head bashing, which runs counter to empathy. Thus the paradox mentioned above. I'm not really interested in the problematics since I'm only trying to distinguish biological causes (products of evolution) from those that aren't (God).
So, if you mean a totalitarian state, i have an american bias against calling that utopia, (although i have to admit that if i were to be the one in charge I would be willing to take responsibility if necessary to avoid what appears to be a human propensity for disregarding each other's human rights. )We would have to define totalitarian better here first I guess, before saying anything serious about that, but that is just an aside anyway.)
Dang. I was about to throw that straw you tossed in my yard back over the fence.
yes, like i said, there are personality traits that are affected by DNA.
You will need to cross over to biology to relate this to evolution. The evolution of the human species --away from our proto-human ancestor--ended when
H. sapiens sapiens first emerged. There is no basis in fact for relating the step change in the new genome with something we call personality. To test your hypothesis, consider the hypothetical kid raised by wolves. Now try to fit this unacculturated human, this round peg, into the square hole of personality assessment. Personality has no context, no reference point, without socialization and the arrival of societal norms.
Evolution in certain types of species clearly favors diversity.
I think you have it backwards. Random mutation, genetic drift and selective pressures force species to diverge. Isolation and confinement to two different habitats forces the maladapted species to diverge. On the other hand, the evolution of sexual reproduction (on or about the onset of the pre-Cambrian explosion) introduced a lottery system in which 1 out of N fertilizations would create monstrous (literally) genetic errors and rapid diversity.
It would be quite difficult to say that diverse personalities are not a result of other genetic diversity and are merely a byproduct, although your discussion of other purposes for depression, lowering heart rate blah etc., would actually give more credit to the idea that there may be purposefully selected traits that relate to personality.
Regardless, it can have no bearing on evolution. That is, we would have to be carrying some uniquely human personality which the proto-human ancestors lacked.
- this whole "personality" via DNA thing is not something i am hinging my points on BTW, it was brought into the conversation by QQ's idea that the ego delusion is not a necessary "selectable trait" for evolution, and i responded as i thought it was interesting, but it isn't a part of my idea that Biology (the study) would have a problem with claiming the final word on human issues. -
I know. But for the benefit of folks who may also be mistaking genetic traits for the pickled ones (acculturation), I've offered my counterpoint.
EDIT - i think it would be a good idea for people who don't deny the science of evolution, but who think that there is some metaphysical actor in the process, to be clear on that and not just say they have a problem with the science. Rather say, the science may be adequate, but there are other non-scientific aspects to be added to a complete description of it.
They would certainly be off their collective rocker. The problem with all such ideation is that it hinges on superstition. The obsessive reluctance to read and understand how evolution works is (talk about personality disorders) a pretty bleak position, in that it requires denial of so much learning and progress since the bronze-age people who started this nutty thing we call religion. But the other folks who still cling to it would need to have a lot of resolve, not to let their guard down and yield to any doubts that evolution is a process, on par with a law of nature, but which occurs thousand of times more slowly than the orbit if the earth around the sun* and is therefore relegated to the status of a theory, since it's only had 150+ years to prove itself true (in the nutty sense the fundies insist on).
*a process even fundies don't usually bother to question
