----- Original Message ----- From: "Marvin Long, Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 10:50 AM Subject: Re: Wittgenstein vs Popper
> > Ok, so much for humor. Marvin, if you want me just to laugh at a joke, don't hide a good question in your joke. :-) You got me to thinking about when a gene pool becomes so small that its members are evolutionarily disfavored. IIRC, some major evolutionary changes often come when most species are wiped out and a relatively small gene pool is the source for repopulation. I think that, many times, those species taht >On the other hand, it probably isn't to one's evolutionary advantage to >aggressively seek to eliminate other gene lines within one's own species. There's > bound to be a point of diminishing returns for this kind of aggression for > the species as a whole because the environment is not static, and > adaptatability is enhanced by variety. You are probably right about that, in the sense that there is a limit to how much fighting makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. It is also likely, as I think Zimmy has suggested, that keeping the men of a conquered tribe from mating and raping all the women is more evolutionarily favored than killing them all. I'm not sure how that translates to an industrial economy. But, having said that, I do not wish to sound like I'm arguing that evil is inherently evolutionarily favored. I don't think it is. But, by the same token, I think that it would be near impossible to derive generally agreed upon views of good from considering that which is evolutionarily favored. You can see my underlying theme here, I bet: one does not have morality without some sort of "self evident truth." (Yes, its a list oldie but a goodie.) >In most mammals, for instance, we rarely see families going out of their way > to try to extinguish other families unless resources are pretty scarce, > AFAIK. They fight for food and mates but rarely embark on campaigns of > extermination. That's mostly a human trait and owes more to ideology than > biology. Well, I've thought of some tests of ideology being the groundwork for killing, and it doesn't appear to me to pass the test. If true, then one will be able to look at the foundation documents for the ideology and see the clear call for massive killing. If you look at the New Testament and look at the horrors done in the name of Christianity, you would have a very hard time explaining why those horrors are the inevitable outcome of the ideology. Or, when we saw the horrors of Bosnia continue after the religious leaders proclaimed that they were in opposition, not support of the religions the people were allegedly fighting in the name of. Let me suggest that ideology can be a tool that is used to unify a people behind a cause, but that it is usually not the prime source of the evil that is done. The vast amount of evil done in the name of good causes indicates to me that the ideology is a neat cover for another agenda: power/wealth for the leaders and sometimes followers of the cause. Second, if this were true, one would go back to prehistory, before ideologies and find a gentler simpler age. But, from the hints of prehistory that we get from archeology and very ancient writings, we see that era as a very violent time. I think what separates us from the animals is the ability to see into the future. The leader of a strong tribe which is fighting with another tribe for control of a hunting area can think "wow if we wipe them out, then this is all ours." Animals don't see that. So, I'm guessing that warfare dates back to reason, not civilization. Dan M.
