----- Original Message ----- From: "Marvin Long, Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "BRIN-L Mailing list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 9:47 AM Subject: Re: Wittgenstein vs Popper
> On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Dan Minette wrote: > > > > As far as the Nazi's being evil, you can say it from a philosophical camp, > > but not without admitting to some sort of faith statements. > > I think this is what W. was trying to get at when he said (and I > paraphrase) "Whereof philosophy cannot speak, philosophy must remain > silent." From his perspective this kind of problem just isn't the sort of > thing an academic discipline called philosophy can effectively address > without corrupting itself. > > Lets look at > > one popular attempt to ground morality in biology: considering things as > > evolutionarily favored or disfavored. Isn't it an evolutionarily favored > > behavior to wipe out groups that have the maximum variation from one's own > > genes and taking over their slots in the ecosystem. Isn't it also genocide > > and evil? > > Yeah, and I imagine it would lead to prodigious inbreeding and a tendency > to show up in movies with "Deliverance" in the title. ;-) Taken to extremes, sure. But, the size of the gene pool for the "Master Race" in the '30s and '40s was much larger than needed to avoid this. Indeed, I'd guess that the mixing of genes through much of history was smaller than one might imagine. Yes, one often married from the next village, especially if one's village was very small. But, my memory is that there are many cases were there were practically isolated gene pools in the thousands or lower for much of human history. Does anyone have better data on that? Dan M.
