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by lisper 1259 days ago
It never ceases to amaze me how people can appear so confident while pontificating from a position of profound and self-professed ignorance. You admit you haven't read the book, and yet somehow you know that its content is unrelated to whether or not behavior is "right" or "good". You are wrong. Evolved behavior has everything to do with it. There is no behavior other than "evolved behavior". Without that, you can't even say what it means for a behavior to be "right or good in an abstract sense" without appeal to authority.
2 comments
NateEag 1259 days ago
Statements like "you are wrong" indicate more confidence to me than statements like "I believe."

I may well be wrong about the book's nature. My assessment was based on the Wiki article you linked and my study of moral philosophy, epistemology, and science as a methodology for the past several years.

Are you familiar with the is-ought problem? If so, what do you make of it? How does that fit with your understanding of evolution as creating moral good?

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lisper 1259 days ago
> Statements like "you are wrong" indicate more confidence to me than statements like "I believe."

Well, yeah, but my confidence is grounded in knowledge because I've actually read the book.

(Also, you made two statements. The one I was criticizing was not qualified by "I believe" but rather simply stated as a bald fact.)

> Are you familiar with the is-ought problem?

Yes.

> If so, what do you make of it? How does that fit with your understanding of evolution as creating moral good?

You are moving the goal posts. The statement that you made which I was criticizing was:

> I believe that book addresses how certain behaviors may have evolved. That is UNRELATED to whether those behaviors are in an abstract sense "right" or "good". [Emphasis added]

So I did not say that evolution "created moral good". What I said was that the claim that "evolution is unrelated to whether behaviors are in an abstract sense 'right' or 'good'" is wrong, i.e. evolution is related to whether behaviors are in an abstract sense 'right' or 'good'. But I did not say how it is related. If you want to know that you will need to read the book.

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mensetmanusman 1259 days ago
Evolutionary arguments allow for any moral behavior that improves your survival chance, which is why it isn’t taken very seriously.
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lisper 1259 days ago
No, that's not true. You need to read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. Evolution produces behavior that improves the reproductive fitness of your genes, not you. And that turns out to be a very significant constraint.
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mensetmanusman 1259 days ago
That’s just the ‘there are no morals, just genes’ type of argument. Which assumes no free will (which is itself a supernatural concept under most definitions).

In the end this kind of comes down to a belief or not in free will, which is a faith based discussion since we can never ethically prove whether we have free will or not being our own observer.

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lisper 1258 days ago
I'm not suggesting you read TSG because of its position on morality but because of its explication of what evolution optimizes for. TSG does address the question of morality, specifically how altruism can evolve, but Axelrod gives a much more complete and up-to-date account.

> In the end this kind of comes down to a belief or not in free will, which is a faith based discussion

No, it doesn't, and no it isn't. The illusion of free will is enough, i.e. it suffices that we lack a complete understanding of our own brains.

You should read this:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...

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