esk@wucs.UUCP (Walter Wego) (02/11/85)
[] From: mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) > Torek is right-on-the-money when it comes to attempts to derive > Libertarianism from ethical Relativism. Thanks Dan, I needed that. I suppose I should return the favor and admit you're right-on-the-money when it comes to the causes of inflation. (Whether your cure would be better than the disease, I'm not sure.) From: faustus@ucbcad.UUCP > Since trying to logically derive ethics from objective truths has been > proven useless (see Hume), From: mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) > Oh no no no, Wayne; neither Hume nor anyone else has proven such attempts > useless. Hume indicated the magnitude of the problem. Right on Dan. Not only hasn't anyone proven it useless, but it can be proven that "Hume's Law" ("no ought from is" -- whether Hume meant to say that is debatable, but it is often attributed to him) cannot be proven. From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) > relativism: a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups > holding them [definition] > ... > If I start with assumptions derived from sociobiology, that there is > evolution of and natural selection upon behavior, beliefs, and customs, > then relativism is the natural conclusion. Whaaaa? Wanna run that (cough) "logic" by me again? You seem to try to explain your "conclusion" below, but it doesn't help much: > Ethical truths are not god-given absolutes, but strategies and heuristics > for coping with the (extremely complicated) game-theoretic task of > reproductive success. ... Thus, while values and beliefs are not founded > in a god, they are founded in our evolution. The truth they have is the > same approximate truth that any other model has. Dan already explained how one can be a nonrelativist without invoking God. What makes ethics depend on evolution? (Hint: nothing!) Why even one of the leading sociobiologists recognized (or claimed to recognize -- I'm suspicious of whether he took it to heart) that: We [humans], alone among earth's creatures, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators. [Rough paraphrase. I think it was Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_; I found it quoted in Dennett, _Elbow Room_.] In other words: the "goals" of the evolutionary process need not be *our* goals -- we can critically reevaluate them. We can rebel. From: mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) ["Reply to Huybensz"] > To reject Absolutism ... you must deny either that your > system exists except to itself (like a book which only exists as a fiction > in its own pages) or that your system is subject to an objective process > like logic. Why do you say that? (Please don't say I quoted you out of context. I'm including the context below; but I don't see an adequate explanation there.) You'd be right if we were discussing "cognitive relativism", but we're discussing "ethical relativism". (I'm not denying that one might imply the other. That needs to be argued, however.) > Absolutism holds that ethical rules can be derived from objective > reality according to objective process; rational Absolutism holds that > such process must be logical. > Now, the various elements of your paradigm may not be an accurate > representation of objective reality, but they themselves possess objective > existence (just as a book may contain falsehood yet nevertheless exist). > And you can deal logically with these elements; in other words, there is > an objective, logical standard of how to deal with imperfect information. > Absolutely, > Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan Nonrelativistically, Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047 Don't hit that 'r' key! Send mail directly to this address, not the sender's.
mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) (02/13/85)
In article <744@wucs.UUCP> esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul Torek) writes: > From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) > > relativism: a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups > > holding them [definition] > > ... > > If I start with assumptions derived from sociobiology, that there is > > evolution of and natural selection upon behavior, beliefs, and customs, > > then relativism is the natural conclusion. > > Whaaaa? Wanna run that (cough) "logic" by me again? You seem to try to > explain your "conclusion" below, but it doesn't help much: Because different groups live in different environments, the selective forces upon their behaviors, beliefs and customs will differ. Thus, we wouldn't expect their beliefs (etc.) to remain the same any more than we would expect a desert population to remain the same as a woodland population. > > Ethical truths are not god-given absolutes, but strategies and heuristics > > for coping with the (extremely complicated) game-theoretic task of > > reproductive success. ... Thus, while values and beliefs are not founded > > in a god, they are founded in our evolution. The truth they have is the > > same approximate truth that any other model has. > > What makes ethics depend on evolution? (Hint: nothing!) Why even one of See above. It's pretty obvious that different ethics have different survival values in different environments. > the leading sociobiologists recognized (or claimed to recognize -- I'm > suspicious of whether he took it to heart) that: > We [humans], alone among earth's creatures, can rebel against > the tyranny of the selfish replicators. > [Rough paraphrase. I think it was Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_; I found > it quoted in Dennett, _Elbow Room_.] > > In other words: the "goals" of the evolutionary process need not be *our* > goals -- we can critically reevaluate them. We can rebel. Evolutionary processes have no goals, though selfish replicators may be said to. Yes, we can now (perhaps) rebel against our genes. However, most ethical systems today are products of natural selection. That is how they came to be prevalent in our populations, by differential survival and propagation. Instead of random biochemical mutation, we have an intellectual (or inspirational, or "wise" or whatever) process for forming the variation upon which natural selection acts. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh