On 08/09/2006, at 7:16 AM, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
Probably you haven't asked the right person. I base my ethical
decisions on my ability to empathize. If I know a given action
would cause me misery, I know that it's an action I shouldn't
perpetrate upon another.
...unless you've asked first. While "do unto others" is a reasonable
first approximation, it can also be arrogance to assume that what we
want is what others want. But it's a starting point.
Hopefully this clarifies things.
If selection of
the species is determined by survival of the fittest, isn't
"might" the
ultimate good, biologically speaking?
This is where we're getting into convolutions. You seem to have the
impression that survival fitness is equal to battle/struggle/
fighting, but that's a very narrowly-applicable view. Fitness has
more to do with propagation than it does with a battle to survive;
a celibate organism will not pass on its genes regardless of how
successful it is in a field of combat. *Any* field of combat,
including not drowning in a pool of water or surviving a drought or
being fortunate enough not to live on the side of an active volcano.
There's a tremendous amount of contingency brought about by
environmental and population factors that profoundly affects
probability of yielding offspring. The "nature red in tooth and
claw" idea is a vast -- and largely inaccurate -- oversimplification.
Certainly is. Anyone who says it, just as anyone who dismisses
selection as "random", needs to go learn what evolution is and how
the processes that drive evolution are thought to work.
Following this line of reasoning, would not killing babies be
one of the "moral" things a person could do? That way only the
babies of
the strongest parents would be able to survive, and that would
improve the
bloodline, isn't that so?
In some species this appears to happen, at least to some extent.
When a lion takes over a pride, for instance, it kills the cubs
that were spawned by its predecessor. This forces the females into
heat, which allows the lion to mate with them and ensure his own
genes' supremacy in the pride.
Better example - cuckoo chicks which eliminate the eggs of the host
species, or sand tiger shark pups which eat each other in the womb,
until only one is left in each horn of the uterus.
(I see The Fool mentioned this as well!)
Of course, there are other species which show strong in-group
altruism; for instance, you won't find that behavior in chimpanzee
society except in cases of extreme aberration (turns out chimps can
suffer from some of the same mental sicknesses that we can). We're
much more genetically aligned with chimps than lions, so from even
a strictly biological viewpoint it shouldn't be too surprising that
we don't put much effort into killing off the weak within our own
groups.
We do find evidence of sneaky infidelity in chimps. Us apes seem to
be a lot similar than many would like to think.
So to answer your subject: By knowing how I would feel were an
infant child of mine killed, I know that it would be grossly
unethical (or "wrong") of me to kill someone else's child.
Could play the "fun with grey areas game" here, but I agree with you
mostly so I think I'll leave it there.
Charlie
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