I am including below a paragraph I posted earlier as a way to continue this thread more productively. Possibly the way I wrote it, at the end of my previous post, was agreed to by everyone and my final question was taken to be rhetorical but I am actually interested in an answer to it. I think it allows us to discuss our foundations for morality without getting caught up in a theological debate. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Professor of Psychology John Brown University 2000 W. University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (479) 524-7295 http://www.jbu.edu/academics/hss/faculty/rfroman.asp
"Pete, it's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." - Ulysses Everett McGill ________________________________ It would seem to me that we are limited (and I don't necessarily mean it in a bad way), in an empirical understanding of human behavior to nature, nurture and the interaction between them. We can talk empirically about our inherent nature, external forces acting upon it and the interaction between the two. It seems that when we say that "science and reason should be core to all our beliefs (and ideally our behaviors)", we are saying that people can be criticized for choosing to do otherwise. But freedom of choice is not something for which we have any empirical evidence. So on what basis can we criticize an organism that does nothing but what its evolutionary history and environment have programmed it to do?
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