Professor Kleiner for some time now has presented us student atheists a challenge to explain morality in non theological bases. In the video by Sam that was just posted by Jon it talks about how some things are more morally acceptable than others and that there does exist a basic moral right. The problem I have with the video is that it doesn’t explain how humans have come to the conclusion that there are some things that are wrong and that there are some that are right.
To deal with these challenges and issues I turned towards evolution. The reason I did so is because if any state of mind exist it first (as shown by a plethora of evidence) must have evolved that way.
Darwin himself tried to tackle this issue by explaining it in two stages. The first stage is derived from the evolutionary benefit of caring for young and community as displayed by birds. Baby birds are defenseless for the early part of their lives and the mothers have evolved over time to care for their young. I assume that the reader understands evolution and understands how that process occurs and how a mother would evolve to care for her offspring. If you have any questions regarding this process please contact any SHAFT council member or myself. This care of infants as explained by Darwin developed an us and them mentality. With the onset of mammalian life even more complex communities formed. In these communities creatures evolved in some cases to put the good of the group in front of the good of the individual such as in the example of meerkats.
Darwin then argues the second phase after the development of community is the development of the conscience. Here is where the debate becomes sticky and please rather than focus on semantics of how the idea is conveyed, try and see the general direction of the argument. The development of the conscience wasn’t an event that happened all at once. Rather it evolved over time. When creatures of the Homo genius began living in groups, a form of social Darwinism took place.
Now I know that the term Social Darwinism throws up big red flags screaming Nazi and robber barren. This is not what I am referring to, what I am referring to is that groups who had tendencies, through random mutations that were then spread throughout the communities which were beneficial, allowed said communities to thrive in their environment.
Early communities were relatively isolated and so tendencies (not ideas) spread throughout the community. These thriving communities then started competing with other communities and those communities that had tendencies to build a stronger and safer community out-competed those who did not have those abilities (whether in war or just out breeding). As the cognitive power of human ancestors increased so did their capacity to develop complex ideas based on and around already present tendencies. Once again these things are going on simultaneously and over millions and millions of years.
To put the whole idea into a nutshell, tribes or familial groups that had certain stronger traits such as don’t murder family members, flourished in comparison to familial groups that weren’t nearly as strong. Some scientist has even argued this as one of the basic advantages the homo sapiens had against homo erectus.
Notice that the evolutionary views of morality existed only towards members of the family or community. Even the Israelite rules of moral law only applied to conduct towards other Israelites. I contend that as time moves and as we become more connected with the rest of the world then the scope of what humans choose to include in their families grows.
This is evident throughout history and even religious text. So where before in early society it was only bad to kill people in their immediate family it later became bad to kill others in the same nation and now it has developed over much of the world (excluding the middle east who are behind) to include the entire human race. This view also helps explain why there exist war. This explains also why humans for a long time in the worlds history justified slavery. Some are further along in this viewing transition than others, but I contend the evolutionary morals were only directed towards “family.”
This brings us to the realm of debatable moral rights and problems. Moral issues such as abortion and assisted suicide, have no obvious evolutionary background and/or benefits. I call these issues useful evolutionary byproducts, as compared to the non-useful byproducts such as the human tailbone. I use the example of murder because it is most easily identified as wrong.
Now that people in the civilized world have come to the point where we see all humans as family, we have conflicting interest invested in both sides of the assisted suicide and abortion debate. On one side our now well developed trait of not killing other members of family says, “No we mustn’t kill any other human because they are all a part of our families.” On the other side of the coin people have also developed the trait of not wanting family members to suffer and or go through an avoidable ordeal. Thus these two communal beneficiary traits come into conflict with one another causing an indirect evolutionary byproduct.
In conclusion, I admit that science doesn’t know everything, but as in Zeno’s paradox it does get closer and closer without ever reaching the absolute (this is what I love about science, it’s open to the new). I contend that for every question in the universe if we but look there is a scientific and logical process through which it comes about. So instead of filling every gap of knowledge with theos, take that gap as an opportunity to find out the why.
Thanks, great post. The reasonable conclusion is that evolution has provided for us the “telos,” design and purpose that get philosophers in such a twitter. I think the social Darwinism you speak of is better thought of in terms of sexual selection? Because, as you say,” Social Darwinism” is hopelessly inured with the legacy of people like Francis Galton, and so on. For us primates, sexual selection has sculpted every aspect of instinctual relation to society, including moral inclination, which probably grew most directly out of child rearing and care-giving. It has also given us social hierarchy and other less beneficent aspects to our moral instinct: the tendency to distinguish in/out groups, group and intergroup conflict, prejudice, war, rape, etc. Without a complete understanding of what evolution has gifted and cursed us with, we cannot hope to craft a better society.
What Neal is referring to as “Social Darwinism” isn’t really sexual selection either. Sexual selection still only acts on individuals.
What I understand Neal to be saying is a non-Darwinian type of competition between societies instead of individuals–on the basis of memes, not genes. These societies of cooperating hominids (small family groups of 100 or fewer) would have had genetic and developmentally based tendencies toward certain types of behavior, and through their interaction this leads to emergent properties of the whole group. A “meta” form of selection would then act on the groups as they compete with each other. This is strictly not “Darwinian” (although it’s become a part of modern evolutionary theory) because Darwin was, for the most part, concerned with individuals.
Once these these tendencies to cooperate in family groups exist, that’s all you need. Because evolution doesn’t produce structures or behaviors “for” specific things (there’s no teleology in evolution!) it often repurposes existing structures or behaviors for new uses. (Notice how I can’t avoid using words like “purpose” and “use”–our language smuggles these ideas into places where they don’t actually exist). As you get to historical times, the mental structures that produce the tendency toward familial cooperation get applied to larger and larger groups with the formation of clans, tribes, cities, and nations. Quick Aside: notice how often nationalist propaganda, for example from WWII, uses family-based symbology and word choice, calling their nation “Fatherland”, “Homeland”, etc. and trying to tie countrymen into one large family. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me; Shall be my brother . . .” There’s a very real reason this sort of language is so evocative and powerful. Of course, as Hunt says, these evolutionary tendencies are also the source of the worst excesses of nationalism, patriarchy and xenophobia.
In modern times, more and more people are coming to think of their family as including all humans, and perhaps a wider circle still (thinking here of various movements around the world to have other primates declared something along the lines of “non-human persons”)
James I think you hit my meaning right on the nail and you stated it more eloquently than i have the vocabulary to do so. Thank you. Your comment about non person humans I think is probably accurate. Scientist are getting closer and closer to being able to read our thoughts, (already they can determine vague images) It won’t be long until we too are reading animals thoughts (such as dolphin, chimp, and elephant) and thus communicating with them. As humans communicate and come into constant contact with others those they view as “family” then expands, it’s not inconceivable that the non human person movement will then gain allot of ground after communication barriers are broken.
@ James:
By “memes” you mean nuggets of cultural learning, right? It sounds like you’re talking about a sort of selection based on nurture, not nature; on the other hand, you say the groups would have “genetic and developmentally based tendencies toward certain types of behavior.” Does the “developmentally-based” behavior mean that these moral feelings arose out of a combination of genetic and cultural learning, or is your explanation entirely genetic?
I mean to say that moral behavior is a combination of memes and genes (culture and biology). The genes (plus development and epigenetics and other layers that aren’t strictly genetic) lay the framework for which modes of thought can exist in the brain, and which ideas are more or less likely to take root. This framework is then manipulated, emphasized, de-emphasized, or modified by culture.
This can explain why pretty much every culture has rules against murdering, stealing, etc., but enormous variation on what other behaviors are acceptable or not (don’t show the bottoms of your feet to anyone in the Arab world.)
I agree with James that evolution does not admit to teleology in the strict sense, even though I used the term. The perfected structures of biology can show the illusion of design and I think one can speak of the “purpose” of, say, an elongated neck. I think you can stretch the definition enough to say that there is a kind of meta-level telos in biology. Purpose and means to and end are discussed informally in biology.
Neal, understand the limits of your argument. All evolution can do is explain why we occasionally exhibit “moral” behaviors. It doesn’t, however, explain how these behaviors are moral. You’ve failed to bridge what David Hume called the “is/ought” distinction.
So if this was a response to Dr. Kleiner’s challenge to articulate a secular basis for morality, I think it failed. But if that was not the intent of this post, then thanks for the helpful explanation of how evolution endowed us with a basic sense of right and wrong.
So if i understand you correctly your asking me to define morality. In reality I don’t think an absolute morality does exist, and that the ideas surrounding it are varied across cultures. Rather I think that all humans have a well developed tendency towards familial beneficiary acts as reiterated by James. As these basic family based instincts were expanded upon by the inclusion of larger groups into the family structure social necessities dictated what you term as morality. As an example a society based on inheritance of property would deem in necessary to know whom the parents of a future inheritor are. Naturally laws would be decided upon to ban sex outside of recognized contracts to prevent confusion in the inheritance process. The tool that is often used to promote these rules is often religion (such as Hammurabi’s code and later the 10 commandments) but these religious ideas are simply derived by the social needs of the time.
The is/ought distinction is encompassed by what the individual has come to fit into his/her “family” and the naturally evolved traits made in the familial structure. So the is/ought question comes down to the individuals inclusion of family structures . There is no basis for the morality only a root of the morality which is derived through said evolution.
Thanks for clarifying. We more or less agree.
It may not satisfy theists but I think it is incorrect to consider morality as some special trait rather than considering various moral behaviors as just part of a broader category of social behaviors – the distinction of a social behavior as a moral behavior is almost entirely arbitrary and certainly relative among societies. People may *like* the idea of absolute morality but I think they would be hard pressed to provide evidence of the existance of such a thing.
Take a concept such as Adultry – the evolutionary benefit of enforcing such a concept is entirely obvious. Female humans have (mostly) concealed ovulation (there are subtle clues that a woman is ovulating but they are not anywhere near as obvious as most other species, most primates included) which means that a male can never be certain when a female is receptive to impregnation and thus selective mate guarding is not practical if the male wishes to be certain they are the father of the offspring (and considering the investment in raising offspring it is obvious why it would be advantageous in an evolutionary sense for a male to be certain they are expending resources on their own genetics). Since selective mate guarding is not practical it makes sense to develop broader social constructs where essentially society as a whole can enforce mate guarding, for the males. Given that hypothesis it is interesting to note that patriarchal or patrifocal tend to be strictest about adultry, and the more patriarchal the more severe the punishment on female adulterers and the less severe the punishment for males (since it is also, evolutionarily speaking, advantageous for males to reproduce with as many females as possible). Matriarchal of matrifocal societies tend to be more liberal about such morality (since a female always knows the kid is hers so doesn’t have the same evolutionary benefit of such a concept), as are societies that are tribe raised rather than family raised. Tied into that is the concept of monogomy, which is also not universal to humanity. Even in the short evolutionary time of humanity monogomous behavior (the various degress of it – it is a spectrum of behavior rather than a binary yes/no sort of thing) has developed or remained absent in various human populations in exactly the same pattern it has with other animal species. Tropical and sub-tropical populations where resources are plenty tended to have much less strict (or completely absent) monogomy, while populations in much more resource scarce environments tended to have much more strict monogomy. The same trend holds true for a variety of other species – penguins exemplify it best (only a handful of penguin species are truly monogomous and they tend to be polar, the tropical species are significantly more gregarious).
The spreading and mixing of cultures confuses this quite a bit, since the conditions that might have generated a social behavior may not reflect current conditions. The various tribes in the Philippines had at one point been mostly polygamist but the spaniards brought Catholicism and enforced an entirely different set of social behaviours on the islands (except Mindanao which is Muslim). Thus you have to consider the conditions of development of imported behaviors as well as indigenous ones when presenting evolutionary explinations.
Evolutionary behaviorists have made inroads with many social behaviors, providing explinations, and the above is just a small, small chunk in a much larger work. Unfortunately the field is filled with a bunch of drek, since many of the contributors are not from a biological background and are not contributing the most robust science.
That said, I think there will be a fundementally unreconcilable gulf between those who believe empericism has arbitrary walls that cannot be scrutinized (which, btw, there isn’t actually emperical evidence for, most of the time) and those who feel unemperical assertions cannot be verified and thus cannot be assumed correct. If the assumption is that there exists both “is/ought” (the term used above, pick whatever dual nature you want) then a person will recieve no satisfaction from people who don’t accept such a dual nature exists. Similarly, those who feel there is no need to address a dual nature until such time that emperical evidence of it is established (most of the examples used to demonstrate it so far on this site seem to point in the weakness of human consciousness to actually conceptualize things rather than an actual existance of such a dual nature) aren’t going to waste time trying to create explinations for people who do.
I have a counter challenge – show me strong emperical evidence for the non-secular origins of morality. Show evidence that it is neither of evolutionary origins or human construction. The “Problem of Induction” gets thrown out here occassionally, but no one ever addresses the counter problem of deduction. If you can’t verify the correctness of a deductive premise your deductive assertion is worthless.
Very interesting Josh. Your post got me wondering about this: can you make an evolutionary morality argument in favor of gay marriage?
Kleiner, there has been a recent study that supports the idea that homosexuality is somewhat evolutionarily advantageous. Those that have homosexual relatives have a higher chance of survival because the homosexual in the group can assist in the child rearing or food gathering. This person would be a valuable resource within the group.
Gay marriage: I haven’t really thought about it from an evolutionary perspective, but I suppose that the happiness of the homosexual is directly related to how much he/she is able to aid others in child rearing. If marriage makes them content, they are more likely to aid others. Also, in our modern day, they could very well take in a child on their own through adoption and help society overall.
But, if there are holes in that argument, point them out.
Actually one of the theories for why homosexuality has remained prevalent is that gay kin would serve as childless care-giver and increase total kin gene survival — selfish gene selection. Presumably the “gay gene” constellation, if it actually exists, would survive as an unexpressed trait in the rest of the (heterosexual) family. This doesn’t speak directly to the “marriage” aspect, or even say much about how homosexual relations were tolerated in our distant past. If I were to guess, however, I’d say that nobody much cared.
In prehistoric times, what Hunt and Ben indicate seems to be supported by evolutionary studies. A homosexual member of a group is able to supply just as many calories to the group without creating more mouths to feed. Therefore groups with gay members performed better through kin selection and selfish gene theory. Before the advent of cities caused a rise in patriarchal societies (which are positively correlated with homophobia) hunter-gatherer societies likely viewed any gay members as equal contributors. Plenty of societies even gave gay and transgendered people elevated status (see Navajo shaman).
There is nothing “unnatural” about homosexuality (the same argument above applies to many social animals who exhibit homosexuality) despite whatever natural law arguments seem to support, and gay people are in fact equally valuable members of any society. I agree with what Ben says, and would add to it that if they are equal members, they ought to be able to access the same services and achieve the same happiness in life that any other citizen is able to. The ability to marry the person you love in a way formally recognized by society is a large source of happiness. They could also, as Ben points out, adopt children. Studies demonstrate that gay couples tend to perform perfectly admirably as parents.
Very good, but all of this is not at all what Kleiner wants to hear. That sexual union can plausibly be reinterpreted as a general mechanism for social binding, and that procreation might be but one natural end-product of it goes against the kind of restricted natural law he supports. The Catholics have created a cloistered “just so” version of natural law fitting their doctrine. That isn’t natural or law, it’s fiction.
“can you make an evolutionary morality argument in favor of gay marriage?”
This is somewhat complex, and by no means answered. For starters, with people it is very difficult to understand how much of homosexual, or bisexual, (or even hetersexual) behavior is biological and how much of it is the result of social stress (for example, would Larry Craig be homosexual if there wasn’t social pressure to be heterosexual, or would he still have a wife and have occassional homosexual daliances). It is also difficult to understand to what extent specific conditions affect orientation, since captivity will often lead certain otherwise heterosexual individuals into homosexual acts for lack of other options (see US prisons). Were the warriors of ancient Sparta, or pre-western-contact Japan, geneticially truly bisexual, or did social pressures cause individuals more inclined for heterosexual acts willing to participate in homosexual ones? Japan isn’t genetically much different, so it would seem social pressure has some component.
At the same time there are some interesting results from various studies. For starters, homosexuality is by no means unique to humans, it has been observed in both captivity and in the wild in a number of avian and mammalian species (note – with species with simpler behavior sets it is possible to engineer a situation where they engage in homosexuality, but that is because their sexual queues are very simple and easy to fool – they don’t seem to be inclined for homosexuality, but can be fooled into it). Interestingly, the species homosexuality is most common in are ones that form strong pair bonds, polar penguins being the best example. So to that end, the hypothesis is that homosexuality is a maladaptive mutation building off of the adaptation for pair bonding. What complicates that is that when said organisms with strong pair bonding instincts are put in captivity segregated from the other gender have a much higher likelihood of homosexuality, for at least as long as the captivity lasts (agains, see US prisons, but also zoos with a gender imbalance among their animals), so that would suggest that even if the maladaptive mutation isn’t present, the need to pair bond trumps the need to be gender choosy.
To further complicate that, in human men, at least, a couple different studies have shown that the later you are in male birth order, the higher the chance you will be homosexual. That is, second sons are more likely to be homosexual than first sons, third sons more than second, and so forth. The hypothesis there is that the maladaptive mutation is actually developmentally expressed prenatally by the mother (which is entirely possible – andogenous hormone levels of the mother have all sorts of impact on developing children, and greatly influence certain gene expression), and may be a tactic favorable for her, if not for some of her sons (see various proposals by James and Hunt for why that would be advantageous). Thus even only or first sons that are homosexual may not be because of their specific allele combination, but because of the specific hormone levels of their mother while she was pregnant (which may be a maladaptive mutation on her part, or could have environmental trigger). Developmental conditions make a certain amount of sense over later social conditions, since adopted children of homosexual couples haven’t shown a statistically significant proclivity towards homosexuality themselves which suggests that the behavior is not learned (however I don’t think that is entirely accurate – while the children themselve may be more accepting of homosexuality they perhaps saw the social toll of it first hand and thus feel the social pressure against it just as much as children not raised in that environment, and thus it is the greater social pressure and not just familial environment that influences it).
Biologically homosexuality certainly seems to have some component, there is too much evidence really to doubt that (though which component(s) is hard to nail down). As for why it is considered amoral by some, there are also several hypothesis, ranging from a conscious effort to villianize the lifestyle of Rome and Greece to a conscious effort to try an encourage a society to outbreed a competing society (and a misunderstanding of how sperm is produced, so that sperm “wasted” in non-reproductive acts means less for reproductive acts). I admit ignorance for the historical conditions that Leveticus was authored in, and that is typically the most commonly cited part of the bible that the vocal opponents recite (I think most opponents and proponents could agree that Fred Phelps is an evil, evil man) – though it is interesting to note similar damnation for those who shave, eat shellfish, or eat cloven hoved animals, so I find the selective quoting as rationale for the morality of the position to be suspect.
So I guess all of that is a verbose way of saying we have made in roads into answering your question, but aren’t there yet. I think a broader question isn’t on an individual basis but rather if broad social acceptance of homosexuality will increase the proportion of the population that identifies as such. I think the answer to that is probably yes given past historical examples, but I also think that is a good thing. We live on an increasingly resource scarce world, and if folks want to participate in non-reproductive relationships that just eases the resource burden for future generations. Nutjob ideas such as eugenics or social control of reproduction are not ideas I support, but if people willingly don’t participate in reproduction I have no problem with that.
Many political theories suggest that in a state of nature, there is no morality. Ends justify means, and survival instinct is the driving force unaided by conscience or an idea of right or wrong.
When men join together in a social contract, instinct is counteracted by consequence. You can still murder a competitor over a food source; however, the collective body of men in the contract will respond with a punishment harsh enough to discourage others from making the same choice. Thus, the instinct now evolves to include these other forces.
Is not morality then simply the label applied to these adapted instincts? We do not call animals immoral when they commit acts that we view as wrong; the practice of some female insects eating their mates after conception, for instance, is horribly, terribly immoral to us but is considered part of the natural order for that species. The practices which are conducive to our collective, contracted “family” are called moral, while those that can create a threat to it are immoral.
In the example above, for instance, abortion is being called immoral because it is not conducive to the propagation of the species on one side, and called moral on the other because it is keeping a potential drain on unavailable resources (with the idea that people wanting an abortion typically do not have the resources, whether physical or psychological, to raise it). Thus our debate on its morality exists; we almost universally agree, regardless of religious beliefs, that other acts are more straightforward and clear as to their results helping or hindering our collective. Does this agreement prove an absolute morality, or is it simply that certain acts are absolutely negative to a collective body (which by definition includes every society, everywhere)?
I almost feel obligated to post my remarks:
This might be a surprise to SHAFTers, but I don’t have that much to say about this evolutionary account of morality. Three thoughts:
1. We should we wary of straw men and oversimplifications. Sometimes I get the sense that atheists think that the only theist position there is to argue against is fundamentalist evangelical Christianity or other religions of that type. Hence the constant push against “filling every gap of knowledge with theos”. But this forgets that that the largest religion in the world (Catholicism, though Islam may have just passed it) rejects divine command theory and does not at all attempt to do a “god of the gaps” (in morality or anywhere else). In the case of morality their view is humanistic and the immediate ground of morality is human nature, not something supernatural. Bottom line: when I hear these remarks about morality that caution against invoking God, I end up wondering to myself, ‘who does that anyway?’. I guess there are divine command theorists out there, and I admit that I don’t hang out with many Mormons or evangelicals who might say these things. Point is, most atheist arguments pick off the low lying fruit, but not the much healthier and robust fruit higher up the tree.
2. Since I think morality is rooted in human nature (not divine commands), I must admit that I find myself pretty agnostic about genealogical accounts of human nature. I don’t know what the proximate causes of human nature are. I find it somewhat interesting but not all that important from the point of view of working out morality (since we work out morality from our nature, wherever its origins). In other words, I don’t see that demonstrating (if this were possible) that the story of human nature can be entirely told from the point of view of materialism/evolution changes much about natural law claims. My recent post about Harris suggested that he apparently does not think so either (religious or non-religious, he said, we all agree on these basic precepts because they are rooted in human nature).
SHAFTers may not take this well, but I am pretty agnostic about evolution. I think some version of the evolutionary story is probably true (to borrow from John Paul II, it is “more than just theory”). But I don’t think it is born from the thigh of Zeus either. Most of my skepticism about evolution comes from discussions I have had with Huenemann (a skeptical atheist), who knows far more about it than I, and not from religious skeptics (who I admit tend to be kooky). There is quite a bit more uncertainty and disagreement about evolutionary theory than ever gets expressed on this blog. I am not an expert on evolution, so I let the experts battle that out. As I theist I am simply committed to the claim that God is behind the intelligibility of the world in some manner or another. I don’t see that I am committed to anything more or less than that. What the proximate story is concerning how the natural objects that now exist came to exist as they exist, I don’t know and I have to admit I don’t think it matters that much from the point of view of moral philosophy.
3. I do have a few standard doubts about Neal’s story, though. I am going to presume that Neal is promoting a scientific materialism (correct me if I am wrong). If so, I think you have two serious problems right out of the gate.
a) I don’t think you can get an adequate anthropology out of materialism because materialism cannot explain intentionality. I would again refer students to Machuga’s book ‘In Defense of the Soul’ (and in particular the chapter ‘Why Aristotelians are not afraid of Darwin’). Darwin refutes “watchmaker” arguments but not Aristotelianism. Natural selection is not intelligible without an appeal to genetic codes, and like all codes (and words) this cannot be understood in wholly materialist terms. Materialists bark about how teleology is just inserted by our language but not real, but they can’t really explain anything without using that language. And use it they must. The front pair of lobster claws are pincers and blue whales migrate to warmer waters in order to breed. To refuse to say things like that is frankly a refusal to say anything of much interest at all. I conclude that either (i) there really are purposes and our language is apprehending them or (ii) if there is no real purposiveness but our explanations invariably speak as if there is, then our explanations are not really explanations and we should stop pretending that they are.
(b) An even more fatal flaw is that if materialism is true then determinism is true. But if there is no freedom, I don’t much see the point of talking about moral responsibility. If my actions are determined by hereditary or even a mix of heredity and environment, well then there is no such thing as morality. I really don’t think most SHAFTer materialists take this problem nearly as seriously as they should. Nor do they take Nietzsche’s account of morality – and his ultimate objection to it – seriously enough. Hopefully Huenemann will present on one or both of these issues sometime for SHAFT.
In response to Kleiner’s numeric points.
1. I will confirm that are tons of Divine Commanders out there; most non-Catholic fundamentalists are of exactly that stripe. And they are quite infuriating to debate on any moral topic. They are completely immune to things like Euthyphro’s dilemma since they are very happy inhabiting one horn or the dilemma. They have no problem with arbitrary morality so long as it comes from God. By the way, being a Catholic you will be uncomfortable one both horns, but I’ll save that for another time.
2. Your conclusions on morality are based in human nature, but what happens when/if you have human nature wrong or have overlooked something? Are you, and the CC, willing to alter your views on morality to accord with our updated nature? Take as an example the possibility mentioned earlier that homosexuality may be confirmed as a genetically encoded element to family structure and child rearing and support. If this is ever confirmed beyond a doubt, do you think the CC will reverse itself on this?
(Not to be construed as an endorsement of “natural law.” I’m still of the opinion that our morals should be demarked by our nature is bunk.)
3a. and teleology: At the beginning of the comments I mentioned teleology in an offhand manner to describe certain aspects of biology. I was using it in reference to the appearance of purpose and design in nature, though of all people I’m not a teleologist, and James corrected me. If one is going to understand the radical claim of evolution, one must realize that language of purpose and design are shorthand denotations and are ultimately incorrect. Teleology wasn’t just a casualty of evolution, it was the sole target of it, and I’m afraid it was destroyed utterly. You can speak of the giraffe’s neck being long “in order to eat high leaves” so long as you realize you have engaged in conceptual shorthand. A formal language description would be cumbersome. “In order to” would need to be expanded into the historical account of why elongated necks allowed ancestors access to better food source, the statistical fixation of that trait in the gene pool and the final establishment of long necks. I think it’s wrong to say that we couldn’t express meaningful things without the language of teleology; I think we could, and that it without teleological adulteration many added insights might be derived — and many errors in thinking would be avoided. But teleological language is here and it is used; it’s how many seem to think most easily about biology, and basically, we’re stuck with it.
On your second point:
First I should say that I reject the implicit premise of the comment. I reject materialism and so deny that human nature can be reduced to genetics.
That said, I would assent to this claim: since morality is rooted in human nature, if human nature were different we would likely have different moral laws. And you are quite right that my view puts a high priority on getting human nature right (having an “adequate anthropology”). (But doesn’t this go for pretty much every view?)
Second, I don’t think we should equate ‘the natural’ with ‘what we are born with’. The vast majority of homosexuals are “born gay”. I think it is just absurd to deny that. One of my good friends (who is gay) once remarked: “Why would I choose to be gay, being gay has caused me considerable social distress!” But proving that we are ‘born gay’ does not prove that homosexuality is morally permissible. Even gay rights advocates like John Corvino make this point (that not all desires we are born with are natural and not all desires that we choose are unnatural).
I can think of all sorts of disorders/unnatural states that people are born with or are genetic (autism, downs, perhaps bipolar) and that does not help establish proper normativity and health (physical or psychological). Here is how Aristotle puts it in his Politics: “We ought to think about what is natural not in things which are corrupt but in things which are well-ordered by nature.” I don’t think a reasonable person would say that persons with Downs or bi-polar disorder represent good models for understanding healthy human affectivity. Someone with Downs is human and so perfectly deserving of dignity, but is also not someone who is a model of “well-ordered nature”. Something has, so to speak, gone wrong there. Nature makes both straight and crooked trees and both healthy and diseased limbs. I think it is prudent to follow Aristotle’s principle – to sort out “well-ordered” we shouldn’t look at the crooked trees, so to speak, but by look at the straight ones.
I’ve chopped out the redundant part of your comment, and hopefully I didn’t mangle it or change what you meant.
” I don’t think a reasonable person would say that persons with Downs or bi-polar disorder represent good models for understanding healthy human affectivity”
A handful of comments on this tangent. Foremost, sometimes the easiest way to understand how something works is to compare it to when it isn’t working “correctly” (a phrase I hate and will explain why shortly). Down Syndrome specifically lead to a much better understanding of chomosomal trisomy (it is trisomy in chromosome 21) and all of the implications of that, as well as a more thorough understanding of the transcription and replication process. It also lead to better understanding of brain, skull, and muscle development. Having a comparitive point between malfunction and proper function is enormously valuable emperically.
As for my note about “correctly”, in the case of down syndrome we can clearly see a fundemental chemical flaw that causes all sorts of abnormalities, most of which seem maladaptive. However much of the Autism spectrum (save low functioning autists, which might be an evolutionarily likely but undesirable side effect similar to why sickle cell is selected for) and disorders such as BP, which many people see as negative, may have many beneficial selective qualities. Looking at BP, what people tend to focus on is the mood swings, the emotional expression, and feel it is entirely determental, and for our current society that *may* be true, but that isn’t the only implication of BP. In the manic state the person is significantly more alert and energetic than the average person (the advantages of that are numerous), in the depressive state they hyper focus on singular problems which is hypothesized to normally increase the rate such problems can be addressed (now if the problem is something outside of the person’s control there are issues, since it can’t be solved, and the person is stuck in an unsolvable mode), and in the mixed state they are significantly more aggressive than the average person (which again, in many circumstances, could actually be beneficial). Similarly, with Autism, it is interesting to note the much higher representation of high order autism and aspengers (which is now the same thing) among various engineering and scientific professions then elsewhere in society (Microsoft actually has a specific benefits program in partnership with UW medical because so many MS employees were having autistic children). There is a lot to suggest that such rules based thinking is incredibly beneficial in many circumstances, even if it often comes with some degree of social impairment
I know this wasn’t your intent – I think your intent could be more described as “study the baseline rather than the edge cases”, though as first noted I think the edge cases can be immensely informative. I also think that determining what is an edge case and what is not is much, much harder than most people think. What we see as abnormal is often represented in a multitude of degrees (or spectrum, as autism is) and we aren’t calibrated to be sensitive to the lesser degrees (for example, someone high up on the autism spectrum might simply seem smart and a bit quirky, but otherwise completely normal). Also, biology is about tradeoffs and we are more inclined to see the negative trade rather than the advantageous (sometimes advantageous trade offs are only evident 1% of the time and disadvantageous the other 99%, but that 1% is much more crucial) – I think we do ourselves a disservice if we only see things as disadvantageous, since that is rarely the case (and even Down Syndrome shows how amazingly error tolerant our genome can sometimes be – I would normally be inclined to think trisomy as being unviable, but at least with chromosome 21 that isn’t the case).
Thanks. I’ll try not to do that again.
(I see that I must have pasted my last comment into the entry field twice. Maybe an admin can delete one or the other…)
Kleiner, I don’t think you appreciated the scope of the argument. The claim isn’t simply that people are born gay, although I think that is true also. The proposition is that homosexuality might be a natural part of our heritage as a species and perhaps even integral to its development. If care-giving by childless kin members is found to be important survival of the tribe then that’s the kind of status it would be shown to have.
As James mentioned, it’s possible that the only reason this strikes anyone as odd is due to the ensconced notion of heterosexual family that has been imposed by patriarchal religion.
Knowing you as I do, this is probably where the conservative Kleiner is going to start snickering and need to go watch a Monty Python Youtube, but you shouldn’t. You’d be self deceitful and cheating yourself if you do.
To be honest, I have no idea whether there’s a grain of truth to the gay caveman theory, but the point is that it’s a plausible idea. It could be true, and if it was it would upend the standards by which you judge sexual morality. It would have to, unless you and the CC are ready to reject the foundation of how you judge things to be moral. The next step is to realize that we don’t fully understand human nature, all of the facts are not yet in. Not only do we have yet to complete the anthropology of our species, but we have yet to finish even thinking about and philosophizing on our position. I think even you will have to admit this. Finally, what is the conclusion? I think its clear and inescapable. If you are to base morality in human nature, then you must admit that our moral conception is incomplete. How then do you or an institution make moral pronouncements? If it is your wont to make moral statements based on natural order (and it isn’t mine, so I don’t even have a dog in this race) I think you should stick to the basics. This is why Harris was hesitant to refine his argument, but insisted that we can make elementary judgments about good and evil. Poison bad, healthy food good. Burqa bad, soft porn bad, but notice he didn’t dogmatically designate how a woman should choose to appear. Harris’s are extremely hesitant judgments, while the CC’s are maddeningly specific and frankly dogmatic, polished with a veneer of respectability provided by Natural Law theory. But as I just described, the complete nature of Man is an a- yet unfinished story. I’m hoping you can see the problem. To borrow one of your phrases, “This should bother you.”
I didn’t underestimate the argument, I just don’t think origins questions regarding human nature are all that important to moral philosophy. Let us suppose that the ‘gay caveman theory’ is so – that at some point in our species homosexuality was genetically selected for an extra hand with kids. What does this prove now? Capital punishment might have some social benefits (deterrence, satisfaction of retributive justice). We might even have a genetic story to tell about selecting people with a aggressive sense of retribution for such social benefits. Does everything that once had (or even still has) some social benefit necessarily just? I don’t think so because I am not a utilitarian. I say capital punishment is wrong even if it deters and even if it satisfies some retributive instinct.
I did not say that I (or anyone else) has a “complete” anthropology of man. I’ve never used that term. I’ve always used the term an “adequate anthropology”. Harris says the same thing. Just because we don’t have a completely clear and total account of human nature , just because our view is “indeterminate” does not mean that the concept is vacuous. It does not mean that we can’t say something. As he said, ‘Who are we to say that we don’t know enough about human nature to not judge cruelty as cruel?’ In other words, Harris thinks we can have (and perhaps already have) an “adequate anthropology”.
Hunt wants me to lay off until we have understood the “complete nature of man”. I don’t think so. I don’t think this is all that controversial of a claim: male and female genitalia have as a very basic natural purpose reproduction. Here is how wikipedia puts it: the genitalia are “any of the anatomical parts of the body which are involved in sexual reproduction and constitute the reproductive system in a complex organism”. Does it require clear, certain and total knowledge of human nature to know that a basic natural end of genitalia is reproduction? I think kids learn that in 5th grade or so, don’t they? In other words, I just don’t think I am going that far out on a limb here. (Note: I am not saying this is the ONLY function of sex, but that it is a BASIC function of sex).
Let’s just stop with the “dogmatic” slur. I have made arguments, I have not leaned on papal authority or unquestioned beliefs. The new atheist talking points don’t add anything to the discussion. Frankly, regarding the question of the morality of homosexuality isn’t it the secular humanists on this blog that are being more “dogmatic”? As best I can tell people will resort to just about anything just so long as the dogmas of “liberated sexuality” are preserved.
“male and female genitalia have as a very basic natural purpose reproduction”
That’s true, but genitalia only partially define gender biologically, not sexual identity or orientation. Sexual dimorphism is reasonably complex, biologically, and not just a product of an xy or xx pair determining which set of genitalia an individual has (and can further be complicated by people who only have an x, but no corresponding x or y, or are xxy. Both are viable, but cause some gender issues). Females are differentiated from males in everything from brain structure (this is not a biological excuse of cognitive bias) to skeletal structure to muscle development to hormone levels. Many of these things are partially affected by andogenous hormone levels in the mother based on the gender of the child, but this can go astray based in the mother (for example, with fraternal twins, one male and one female, it is common for the male to be slightly femanized and the female to be slightly masculinized because of this).
The net result is that gender identity is not 100% (or even close to that) determined by the genitalia. For example, with many transgendered people they may have the genitalia of one gender (or most of the genitalia of and some of the other – developmentally we don’t start out 100% distinct in the womb, and sometimes that distinction is not completely realized in development) but the brain structure of the other gender, which can lead to a great deal of personal confusion I suspect (I think gender change operations are the result of deep personal unsettlement rather than wimsy).
The net result is that even something that seems as basic as gender identity (you are what your plumbing is) has a lot of potential variation, and when you introduce orientation you get even further from simply “using the plumbing as it is meant to be used”
Interesting post, Josh. Though I admit that I really don’t want to get into a huge sex – gender debate here. But point taken. I am not intending to reduce sex (or “gender”) to “plumbing”. My point was really pretty plain – human plumbing has something to do with reproduction and this is just a basic (but not sole) purpose of it. There are, to use Aristotle’s language, some “crooked trees” there too, though.
“My point was really pretty plain – human plumbing has something to do with reproduction and this is just a basic (but not sole) purpose of it”
Ok, understood – it would probably have been quicker for me to simply point out that most of the time none of us use it for this purpose but (as I am no doubt certain everyone has noticed) I have a penchant for the overly verbose.
I think you’ve pretty much conceded the point. ONE function of genitalia is reproductive union. Another one easily identified is they are instrument for social coupling. Coitus doesn’t always result in pregnancy; women are not fertile 100% of the time. Genitalia are not only about procreation. So who are you or the CC to say that homosexuality is unnatural?, particularly given the possibility that it factored in our natural origin? You’re simply cherry picking to suit your particular bias.
One thing to clarify: arguing about the moral permissibility of homosexuality is not anywhere near the list of my top moral interests. I am making an argument that I am persuaded by, but I have frankly harped on it for longer than I would have cared to. I keep making the argument because otherwise there would be no actual discussion since no one else ever disagrees (which is odd, given all the “non-dogmatic” “free thinking” that is supposedly going on around here).
I wonder if Hunt is actually reading what I am saying or if the “dogma” filter is preventing him from seeing the words. On the ‘atheist make more babies’ post that is tied in with this discussion, I said: “The sexual act has two natural purposes – the unitive and the procreative.”
So we agree, Hunt, sexuality has two basic functions: reproduction and social coupling (what I called a “unitive” function”). That is what I have said from the very beginning. And from the very beginning I have then pressed the view that you cannot have one without having the other. Recall my immediate and further intention argument. Just because the act does not always achieve its end does not mean that is not that KIND of an act. This argument responds to the point about fertility cycles. It is one thing for a reproductive act to not actually result in new life (I called that “non-procreative sex”). It is quite another to intentionally make a reproductive act the sort of act that is not reproductive (I called this “anti-reproductive sex”). To do so is to turn the act into an altogether different kind of an act. This is why I argued that homosexuality and contraception are wrong for the very same reason. In other words, I am actually being very even in my application of the principle, Hunt. I am not “cherry picking” to my “bias”.
Here is where I think the phenomenological/personalist/gift argument actually has the most force. Why are the two meanings of sex necessarily bound together? Because of what it means to love. To love is to love the other as gift and as given. To love is not to force the other into your own category of what is loveable. We are called to “love the one we see”. When a couple uses contraception, they introduce a “yeah but”. They essentially say “I do not accept you as you are made/given”. When a couple has non-procreative sex during an infertile cycle, they are still able to say “I love you as you are made/given”.
But I could make the argument in other ways. In fact, I invited readers to arrive at the conclusion themselves when I asked about sex with a corpse or sex with a stepfather, …
To the rather defensive point, “Who are you or the CC to say?? Well, no one special, that’s for sure. I am someone who has tried to think a lot about it. The Catholic Church has a very long and impressive intellectual history of people thinking about it. I/we have a view that I/we think is pretty well worked out. I must say that it seems considerably more worked out than any of the other views on sex I have read during these discussions here. But I am not “imposing” my view on anyone. In a dialogue, we propose rather than impose.
Hunt says, “You’re simply cherry picking to suit your particular bias.” It does not require much reading between the lines to see what Hunt is meaning to say here: ‘You are just a homophobe looking for an argument.’
I am not going to let that slide. First of all, that remark is insulting, Hunt. It is insulting to me and it is insulting to rational discourse. Is it Hunt’s view that it is a priori impossible to make an argument against contraception/homosexuality that is not just a front for homophobia? How is that not a dogma? Odd, given Hunt’s habit of littering many of his posts with snarky remarks about my “dogmatism” and my having excused myself from “free thinking”.
What I have done is made an argument entirely from natural reason regarding the moral permissibility of contraception and homosexuality. I don’t insist that people be persuaded by the argument. But the argument is reasonable and it is not an argument of faith. Be the free thinker you claim to be, Hunt. Set aside the insults and the new atheist talking points. Until you do, I think I will disengage.
I should have known better, since I’ve already dealt with Catholic intransigence. It’s like the night of the living dead. Even if you blow their arguments apart with a shotgun they keep on coming. Or Brave Sir Knight from Monty Python. “It’s just a flesh wound.” Okay, Kleiner, if you’re still clinging to the wreckage, you’re not a bigot. You’re just wrong.
On Kleiners point (b):
How can you deny that our actions are determined by heredity and environmental stimulus? My father has a temper, I have a temper. The fact that we are coded a certain way means that we will react to stimuli according to our programming. Of course you can’t take that, apply it to a baby, and say that the child will definitely grow up to be a lawyer with three children and a parrot as a pet. It would be impossible to know the outcome. Actually, the process of evolution would not be possible if we weren’t extremely coded. Sure we may not have “free agency” but it is not useful, or even possible, to conduct our lives as if we do not. There are infinite possibilities, variables, and interactions in the world to conduct ourselves in any other way.
On the issue of morals, I don’t feel there is an objective moral code to live by. It is entirely up to our genetics, and the interactions in society. If I were to live my life as if there are no morals, and act as if I can do whatever I wanted, I would be barred from society. This is probably why it has taken anyone so long to brink up the matter. It simply doesn’t bother us. Also, what is acceptable within society is a constantly changing beast. Individuals have various personal views on morality as well, based upon their own personal experiences in life.
What bothers me is your casual and offhand treatment of evolution. Sure, the MASSIVE field of evolutionary theory may have pieces that are heavily debated, but the general process of evolution itself is regarded as fact. I don’t know how it is possible treat the field of philosophy separate from evolution. Everything that humans are came from the process, to be ignorant of this and try learn about humanity separately is appalling to me. Evolution is so tied into so many various fields, but the majority of people never take this into account. David Wilson talks about this in ‘Evolution for Everyone’. It should matter, because it in an integral part of humanity.
To say that it is “determined” by heredity would mean that you MUST NECESSARILY have a temper because your father does. But is that really so, Ben? I think you are perhaps “prone to” a temper, heredity might “condition” your character. But one can choose to control themselves.
Aristotle thinks moral virtues are habits. But he makes room for a bit of “heredity” – some people might be born, so to speak, with intemperate dispositions or others might be born with patient dispositions. It is difficult to re-habituate oneself, but it is possible, isn’t it? My Dad had a ferocious temper, and for some time I did to. But for 10 years now I have been really working on it and am proud to now say that I have largely contained that disordered inclination.
I just flatly disagree with your moral relativism. But I don’t know that I want to get into that debate right now.
I didn’t mean to be offhand about evolution, and I am not denying that it is important and that it has a very important story to tell. But Ben only thinks it is all important (you can’t treat philosophy without it) because he thinks that “everything that humans are came from the process”. But I reject that claim since I reject materialism. Materialism cannot explain intentionality (language). I am guessing, Ben, that you would agree that someone who is not a materialist would have good reasons for thinking that evolution is only part of the story (and perhaps not even the most important part). Right? The question then is: is materialism true. My offer to read Machuga’s book this summer with students in order to take up this question of materialism and intentionality still stands.
“On the issue of morals, I don’t feel there is an objective moral code to live by. It is entirely up to our genetics, and the interactions in society”
I disagree with this, for a number of reasons. To begin with, despite the asthetic appeal it might have to my programmer sensibilities, biologically genetics does not code everything, at least directly (a case for indirectly might be made, but the indirect interactions are complex enough that going that approach complicates, rather than simplifies the system). Loosely, gene expression also has a huge effect, hence the entire field of evo-devo, but with humans especially, we are capable of learning and adaptation. Genetics outlines the loose structure of our brain (and can be impacted by a number of other factors) but the fine details develop LONG after initial organization, and continue for our whole life. Behaviors can be learned, and they can be unlearned. We have predisposition for many of them encoded, and often reinforced throughout life, but once you get outside of the brainstem you get into incredibly plastic organization (now this plasticity, and some of the rules that govern it are encoded, but it is the environmental input that really shapes it).
Nitpick about an over-reliance on genetics aside, genetically I would say we do have certain moral predisposition encoded in a non-relative way. We feel guilt and that, more than fear of societal repercusions, often informs what we consider right and wrong. We have compassion for others (not just humans either, for many organisms often) and empathy, which also informs what we consider right or wrong. These may not lead to some universal absolutes, and humans are certainly great at disregarding them, but we are given some basic tools to instinctively understand if an action is socially right or wrong without knowing the rules of the society, and without cultural bias.
I think as a society we build on these innate aspects of our psyche, appeal to them to build a larger set of morality (I’ve often caught myself asking my daughter how she would feel if a position was reversed – I am not simply saying something is wrong, but instead appealing to her own feelings to arrive at the same conclusion). We can build some long and complex rules, but ultimately I don’t think of those rules as morality. If you had to ask me to define morality I would say it is “the act of caring about how something impacts another” (and I don’t define another as simply another human) and I think we are born with the tools to do that, regardless of which culture we are born in (except for sociopaths).
Josh: that is what I was trying to say, without so many words.
Environment plays a huge factor. Hard coded ways of looking at things I consider genetics. However, I also consider the ability of learning from society and environment genetics. We are predisposed to learn, and to be shaped by society, there is a genetic component to that.
Kleiner: Sure, I don’t have to have a temper because of my father, but I am also my mother’s son. The two genetic lines intermingle inside of me to produce something that is completely unpredictable. I was merely using the temper as an illustration of heredity. This is an extremely complex process, and you cannot predict the results reliably, there are far too many variables, but it is clear that I am a result of two genetic lines intermingling. Not only that, but part of being human is adapting to change. I am a product of my environment as well. I am unconvinced by your argument.
Let’s say we breed one strain of humans for 1000 years, and select for temper. Would you not agree that these people would be extremely predisposed to anger? It might even be beyond their control to “condition” themselves out of it. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRQbSdMXBk0
I’m unfamiliar with the language problem that materialists apparently have. I guess I will have to read up before I respond. However, is this language problem restricted to humans only, or does it also extend to animal language? I’d be more than happy to read Machuga’s book. Summer should afford me the time necessary to take that route.
Thanks Ben, that’s a really interesting video
Kleiner “renders unto evolution” what is the material aspect of our origin while reserving a non-material agency (i.e. God) for our “spiritual” component. It is virtually the same story with all theists who believe, or at least don’t outright oppose, evolution. Francis Collins regards things more or less the same way.
Hunt is always in such a rush to insist that my position is the fruit of some nasty dogmatic theism. Yawn. I never used the word “God” in my post, and Aristotle would not use the word “God”. A denial of materialism (say, the claim that there is an immaterial aspect to human nature) does not necessarily entail theism as we understand it. Aristotle, in fact, would have rejected Aquinas’ theism and view of creation. My argument is that you can’t even make sense of genetic codes unless you presume an immaterial agent intellect. I did not invoke God to make this argument.
What is it about a “code” in nature that imposes the requirement of an immaterial agent intellect? I can very easily refute this statement simply by positing a material designer. Aliens may have bio-engineered humans a billion years ago using CAD software. The result could easily contain the coded basis we see today. Perhaps what troubles you is you can’t imagine things like coded structures resulting from a material process? It’s really not terribly hard to imagine the establishment of a coded process if you don’t prematurely jump to higher level structures that seem “irreducibly complex.” The DNA/RNA coding process was probably all there was initially. It wasn’t a coding process initially, but the structure of the actual replicators, themselves. Refer back to the post a few weeks ago about the RNA World hypothesis.
I am not going to spend much time on this argument. I’ve rehearsed it on this blog and the usu philosophy blog a number of times. I have offered to read a very accessible and good book on this (the Machuga book) this summer if anyone is interested.
But here is Aristotle and Aquinas’ argument:
1. All relations are either physical or non-physical (i.e., intentional).
2. The relation between a word (code) and its meaning is not a physical relation
3. The person who understands the meaning of a word is active, while the word
itself is passive.
4. That which is capable of action must subsist.
5. Therefore, the agent intellect that understands words must be immaterial and
subsistent.
It’s really amazing to me how many people actually do believe that an unwitnessed falling true makes no sound. The point is, there is no requirement for an immaterial intellect to appreciate a genetic code in order for it to work. The birds will continue to fly and bees continue to buzz and the planets will go on orbiting whether you or I are here to appreciate them.
tree, that is
Hunt, your final remark here makes clear that you really do not understand the argument or even what the argument is about. That is okay. But understand it before you dismiss it. I am selling a lot of books for Machuga – go read his “In Defense of the Soul”. Free thinkers should willingly engage all rational points of view before deciding on what is true, right?
One point of clarification. The genome and its downstream products (mRNA, proteins) are not strictly a “code”. A gene is not analogous to a word in the sense that it is not a symbol with arbitrarily attached meaning. One again, Kleiner, you seem to be arguing from a conceptual shorthand that’s really a “lie to children”. Like all such lies, they hide a deeper complexity.
A gene sequence on an mRNA segment is not “read and interpreted” by a ribosome as if it were a word on a page. Yeah, it’s called translation, but that’s not what’s really happening.
An mRNA sequence has a specific shape due to its electrical properties, which in turn are due to the molecules it is made up of. The same is true of the ribosome, and the same is true of the amino acids floating around in the cell. An mRNA is “read” and a protein is assembled from amino acids based entirely on electrical interactions and random Brownian motion. The “encoding scheme” for the “code” of the genes are simply the rules of physics and electrochemistry, and the “decoding” is simply an emergent result of those rules. It’s all electric fields and chemistry. These same electrical properties (ultimately coming from valence electrons) determine the shape of the final protein, and therefore its function. This video will hopefully make that clear.
These points:
“2. The relation between a word (code) and its meaning is not a physical relation
3. The person who understands the meaning of a word is active, while the word itself is passive”
do not apply to genes, because genes aren’t strictly a code, and there is no person “understanding the meaning”. And in this case, the “words” are not passive, they are physical molecules interacting electrically. Genes are not symbols.
If I misunderstand you it’s because you’ve failed or not even bothered to lay out your argument with any clarity. Until you stop being just a provocative gadfly and start presenting complete and considered arguments, I’m ignoring you.
I’m asking James or anyone else here because I’d really like to know. Whether you think you agree with him or not, so far as that can be determined, what percent of the time does Kleiner appear to be making sense?
I think the issue here is that Kleiner is speaking as a philosopher (his training). Many of us don’t have any background in philosophy. Because of this, much of his vocabulary is lost on us, or is interpreted differently. I know I personally have to dissect everything he puts forth, and it takes me some time to figure out exactly what he is saying.
I don’t know if Kleiner intentionally does this, or if it is just habit. I would prefer if he could simplify his arguments down to something someone unfamiliar with philosophy could grasp readily, purely for the sake of dialogue. However, I understand how that could be a very cumbersome task. Kleiner would probably prefer having dialogue with people who can already understand what he is talking about anyway. It’s much more interesting that way for him. But then again, I can’t speak for Kleiner.
I would prefer if we kept this as civil as possible. It seems to have been going well for a while, but recently it seems that a bit of bickering has started up. Please refrain from personal attacks and writing someone off. That’s my humble opinion anyway.
Point taken. Perhaps it’s because I myself have been a pain in the ass ‘concern troll’ on other sites that I too easily see my own reflection. If so, I guess it’s poetic justice. Since by his own admission Kleiner views himself undertaking some kind of moralist project in “enemy territory” it’s very easy for me to construe nearly everything he says as passive aggressive. I’m just waiting for him to start ending sentences with “this we must not do.” The world really doesn’t need another C.S. Lewis. Let him RIP.
But Kleiner, from here on out I’m going to just let you do your thing, and I’ll just control myself and not comment on your comments. It’s obvious that you’re getting under my skin more than others here. And so, I’m mum from right now.
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I maintain that theistic evolutionists are really just a skip and a jump away from fundamentalist creationists.
I’ve just read an article that I think is relevant to the discussion but not sure how to post it. Here’s the Abstract
It has often been suggested that people’s ordinary capacities for understanding the world make use of much the same methods one might find in a formal scientific investigation. A series of recent experimental results offer a challenge to this widely-held view, suggesting that people’s moral judgments can actually influence the intuitions they hold both in folk psychology and in causal cognition. The present target article distinguishes two basic approaches to explaining such effects. One approach would be to say that the relevant competencies are entirely non-moral but that some additional factor (conversational pragmatics, performance error, etc.) then interferes and allows people’s moral judgments to affect their intuitions. Another approach would be to say that moral considerations truly do figure in workings of the competencies themselves. It is argued that the data available now favor the second of these approaches over the first.