williams@kirk.DEC (John Williams 223-3402) (08/29/85)
There do not exist any perfect morality. Proper Moralities do two things, first they optimize the probabilities for survival for the members in a certain environment, and second, they change the very same environment. As an example, take honesty. Many hold this moral to be an absolute. It can be fairly well demonstrated that it is a physical impossibility to tell the truth. ( witness these discussions ) A truly honest person keeps their mouth shut. A little impractical, to say the least. OK, it's a logical extreme, I know, but I think it illustrates the point. The fact is is that moralities are based as an optimization for a society's particular phase of evolution. I don't think I have to formally prove that we are our own worst threat. Moralities are then based to help protect us against ourselves, to increase our chances at survival. Not only as individuals, but as a whole. I remember someone stating that society is simply a set of individuals. The fact is, is that alot of the symbolic interaction that occurs in society is similar to the brain. Calling society a collection of individuals is like calling the brain a collection of neurons. As society goes through more and more advanced stages of development, one of the striking features is that less emphasis is placed on the rights of the individual. That is, it goes from a " I can do whatever I want " paradigm to a " Society can do whatever it wants " paradigm. The evolutionary advancement includes specialization which necessitates your membership. In most cases, there exists a definable dependence. ( notice my use of the word definable, it has definite implications concerning complexity ) More often than not, moralities are identified along ideals. These of course can not be taken as truth, for time and evolution will ultimately prove them wrong. ( notice how I used the idealized version of truth ) They should instead be taken as aspects, not that some thing necessarily reveals the truth, but some thing pokes at it, and is easily understood. Because of the dynamic nature of evolution and how it affects moralities, there will never exist a completely refined version. An example is the moralities of marriage and sex. These were founded during a time when there was no birth control, and for that time period, were substantially beneficial. A great deal of influence on the selection of genes was present due to this particular morality, one of the by products being that which is commonly refered to as love. Those who did not have this quality ( or characteristic, if you prefer ) were not accepted by society, and thus we not as capable of survival. This one particular morality has changed dramatically as a result of the development of birth control. There are many examples of moralities that necessarily change due to changes in the environment, artificial or natural. I don't think conformity for the sake of conformity explains an awful lot, except perhaps that society is in a better position to absorb risk. Conformity is not an objective, rather, it is a side effect. It basically demonstrates the singularity of optimization. The variance within society is demonstration that society doesn't change as a homogenious entity. This has surprising ramnifications. This means that the mechanism for change within society is civil disobedience, which can bring about physical pain. This means that in a successful society, the members extract more pleasure from thier minds than their bodies. A person who pays alot of attention to physical pleasure is the one who is more likely to be the conformist. So, in summary, evolution guides morality. Conflicting Memes, or conceptual patterns, compete for resources, and as new ones gain strength, the old ones become extinct. Civil disobedience provides the mutation necessary for natural change. AND, barring anything catastrophic, Moralities experience a shift in emphasis from the individual to society as a whole. Because evolution is progressing relatively quickly, moralities never have enough time to settle into a refined set. This means that the optimization that I mentioned is not a strict singularity, but rather a statistical margin. AND ( here's where I get my two cents in ) this margin is exactly what constitutes free will. John. Williams' first law of resolution: There will never be an end to your problems.