"Moral truths"...arising out of evolutionary mechanisms?

fresco-

Can you be sure of distinguishing in life between morality and strategies masquerading as morality which, through habit and instruction, may, or may not, become internalised. Resistance analysis is a method sometimes suggested to help clarify that issue. Get people angry and the truth is more exposed.

Take the literary cliche, for example, of the hopeful relatives politely dancing around the elderly asset owner. Latin satire covers it well and Tom Jones is about little else but variations on the theme. Tom and Sophie ( our heroic couple) being the exceptions who decide things impulsively. (No committee). Shakespeare as well.

One might restrict decision making to banalities of the senses although the middle-classes would reject that. Is a coherent self like a blossom that has fallen into a river?

Great literature is the answer as far as I am concerned and the likes of Gurdgieff, Wittgenstein and other fashionable names that one sees used as items of dress are nowhere and will soon pass from view.

I know a lady (about 42) who has worked her way up to be mistress of a country mansion (an average one). She has announced that she is to now to make her latest catch ( of 10 years standing) official and marry. Next year is the set date. 12 months off. I politely enquired as to the reason for the delay and was informed that she was having a double wedding with her best friend who is of a similar status and organising such an event will take that amount of time. When I remarked, as one would, that she was having an event, a starring role in a movie, and there will be a movie, rather than getting married I was greeted by flamethrower looks from the company. She is a long way from restricting desisions to the banalities of the senses and will no doubt embrace an extensive consultation with the "committee of argumentative impulses".

One might imagine a writer of Mr Fielding's stature having a great deal of fun describing the whole process. It will be for the chosen local tradesmen and women what is known as "dip yer bread in " time. The sap is loaded with inheritances. And she's running to fat fast.

In plain English- is the "committee of argumentative impulses" an exercise in narcissism and that has been known for a long time to be a dangerous drug which is easily avoided by confining decisions to the banalities of the senses.

Spendius,

The short answer to your question is no, since narciscissm implies an integrated self.

Forgive me if I have quoted this before.


Ouspensky IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS, p. 59

I think that's rubbish fresco. When I see people reading books with that stuff in them I give them a stern talking to. I try to guide them down more illuminating paths. Usually they are too stubborn but now and again I get rewarded.

It seems designed to flatter the reader into thinking he is a superior person and have hopes of getting a job on The Guardian.

Wouldn't narcissim equate with feral and coherent (integrated) self and be what religion was invented to cure. There is a hierarchy of askesis in devout practices as you probably know which crushes narcissism, deferalizes and creates an incoherent self (a committee of argumentative impulses) in which intelligence, humility and experience settle most issues.

Would atheism return us to the narcissistic, feral, coherent state of affairs?



I and I. Bob Dylan. (Fabulous song really.)

[SATIRE] Sociobiologist Richard Dawkins has abandoned atheism in his new book "An Evolutionary Theory of Religion". In this book Dawkins argues: "In the struggle for existence, natural selection has favored those societies that were unified around a single religious belief system." [END SATIRE]

Spendius,

"It" is of course entitled "its" opinion, and I hope another "it" will remember that view next time "it" "observes an internal argument between other "its"

"It" will do whatever it feels like doing after due process within the committee of argumentative impulses.

Last night even two "Its" were in dispute over the problem of irresistable charm versus unendurable trouble. The latter triumphed.

Again with the Onanism Spendi.

I realise my sentence might be ambiguous. What I meant to make clear was that the thought of the unendurable trouble overcame the thought of the irresistable charm. There are men all around me bowed down under the burden of the unendurable trouble who chose otherwise and continue to do so.

Before you allow yourself the complacency of a cheap and extremely cliched jibe you might consider that I am an Andy Warhol fan and he said that it is most fun not to do it. If one has confidence in one's artistic guides one takes such a statement seriously.

Tell me about your mother.

She was an unavoidable nuisance when I saw her which wasn't all that often. I think she saw me as a vehicle for expressing to the world the superiority of her genetic structure as she hadn't taken the trouble herself.

She even tried arranging a marriage for me with the church organist's toffee-nosed daughter.

Churches are marriage markets as well as job centres. People should try to remember that when they start carping about The Flood.

Again, what sociobiological literature do you base that on?

In all due respect, you appear to be judging sociobiology by second-hand summaries you have read, by authors who dislike sociobiology. Based on what you write here, it would surprise me if you had actually read E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology, or Pinker's Blank Slate, or Wright's Moral Animal, or any other description of sociobiology by an actual sociobiologist.

If I'm mistaken on this, which I may well be, please refer to a specific text, cite a specific claim in it, and tell me what your specific objections against this claim are. That's what joefromchicago asks me to do when I make sweeping generalizations about the law in the "Legal" forum. I hate him every time he does this to me, but in the long run it does clarify issues a lot.

Fair enough. But the hypothesis of Chomsky and others is "there are neurological features supporting language in human beings; maybe there are similar neural features supporting morality in human beings." Linguists don't have to sort out the correct model for language development before they can make this educated guess -- which is all it is at this point.

Thomas,

As far as I know, any propposed LAD (language acquisition device) makes no specific reference to "neurological structures" even though "language areas" of the brain have been identifed. It would be interesting if a "moral area" were also to be identified but recent moves towards "non-local functioning" (see Hameroff) would suggest that there is a lot more to neurological functioning than "area location". Ironically. those scientists of a "spiritual inclination" might take the findings of Hameroff on "non-local quantum consciousness" to be indicative of "holistic consciousness" and "spiritual morality". This would be the complete opposite of "biological reductionsm".

Could be -- I don't follow the scientific work on this issue very closely. I just remember that Oliver Sacks, in one of his popular science books, talks about individuals were specific physical damage to the brain destroyed specific inhibitions against commiting crimes. Off the top of my head, I don't remember which book it was, but the first one I'd look up is The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

Thomas,

I've just done a quick Google scan on "moral areas brain" and come up with this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/science/22brain.html?ex=1332216000&en=f5bb061d194af5fa&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Of course the problem with "area damage" is that you don't know if a processing area has been hit, or a communication pathway.

Thomas,

You are correct. My only experience with sociobiological texts is second-hand. I was a political science graduate student in the 1970's. Most of my fellow students were incredulous about the reports on Wilson and others in popular media. My favorite science writer, Stephen Jay Gould, publicly criticised sociobiology. Later, Gould admitted that some of his rhetoric was over-the-top.

At the same time, there were disagreements among political scientists about methodology in their own field. Traditional political science involved a study of law, history, and philosophy. A new generation of political scientists advocated using the methodology of the physical sciences. My opinion was that the new methodology provided only limited and uninteresting data.

A fairly common problem with Gould. He is very popular among non-biologists. That's presumably because his prose is engaging, and he writes it without biological jargon and mathematical formulas. His reputation is much less impressive among evolutionary biologists, however. It is a reputation for overblowing his own contributions to the field, and -- more discrediting -- for knowingly misleading his readers about the positions he argues against. If Steven Jay Gould is your prime witness on evolutionary biology, you have a problem. Then you probably have a skewed perception of what the field is really like. To set your view straight, you may want to read authorities more widely respected by the field's own practicioners. John Maynard Smith, William Hamilton, and Richard Dawkins are all good starting points.


This may well be -- but your original point was that sociobiology is wrong, not that it is boring.

Thomas,

I also tried to point out that the claims made by sociobiologists about their own discipline were overblown.

One of Gould's criticisms was that sociobiology is "long on theory but short on evidence." This still strikes me as a valid criticism.

Sorry for being a pest -- but how can it strike you as a valid criticism when you haven't read any books by sociobiologists presenting their evidence? As a political science major, you would never accept an approach like this to political claims. Suppose George Bush says his critics are short on evidence that he faked the case for war. Do you look and find out what the war critics' evidence actually is? Or do you just take Bush's word for it, maybe read a few position papers by the Heritage Foundation, and conclude it strikes you as a valid criticism? Your approach to the claims of sociobiologists is equivalent to the latter approach.

It's okay, Thomas, you are not a pest, you are only making me clarify my pronouncements.

Although I have not read the actual texts, I imagine that it must be very difficult to empirically identify which genes are linked to which specific behaviors.