Hi DMB Is this not what Henri Bergson suggested?
David M ----- Original Message ----- From: "david buchanan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 5:03 PM Subject: Re: [MD] Social Darwinism > Kriminel said to dmb: > So Dave, you think ideas and societies do not evolve? Or do they evolve on > the basis of some supernatural principle? > > dmb says: > Neither. I'm following James and Pirsig in saying that mechanistic > explanations of evolution are empty and the idea that it is all driven by > the desire for mere survival is a ridiculous concept. But denying the fact > of evolution or attributing it to supernatural forces is even more > ridiculous, of course, and I'm certainly not suggesting any such thing. > > Kernal said: > Volitional evolution? Is that like eugenics or Think and Grow Rich? You > know > there was this guy Lamarck and he claimed... > > dmb replies: > Huh? Isn't eugenics based on classic social darwinism, a.k.a. amoral > survival of the fittest? I think so. And think and grow rich? Isn't that > Susie Orman of PBS fame, which I'd never watch by the way? (I follow the > theory that wealth is for the mediocre; one has to be smart enough to know > how to get the money but stupid enough to believe that money is equal to > the > good life.) In any case, neither of those things have anything to do with > my > point about volition vs mechanism. As I understand it, evolution is driven > by the desire for betterness and survival is just one particular species > of > better. Better is a relational concept of course. There is something we > desire beyond the preservation and perpetution of existence. In a million > billion tiny ways everything moves toward bettterness, single celled > organisms and philosophers are going to be dealing with entirely different > kinds of better, but this is what drives evolution in any context. I think > of it as an impulse to transcend any given situation that doesn't seem > quite > good enough, whether that means moving away from physical danger or > inventing a new metaphysics. Betterness is a vague word, but there is a > clear and basic idea in it. It implies a will at work in all these tiny > particular cases, not a blind mechanism. > > A positivist might see volition as some kind of miracle, but I don't. It > seems quite natural and completely ubiquitous. It makes a heck of a lot > more > sense because evolutionary theory has to account for improvement, not just > change and variety. There is an apparent direction that can't be explained > in terms of mechanisms, functional fit or random mutations. > > dmb > > _________________________________________________________________ > More photos, more messages, more storage-get 2GB with Windows Live > Hotmail. > http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_mini_2G_0507 > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > moq_discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
