Re: Challenges for Evolutionary Ethics

From: Michael Ragland (ragland37_at_webtv.net)
Date: 10/04/04 

Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 16:34:46 +0000 (UTC)

ragland37@webtv.net (Michael Ragland) wrote in message
news:<cjk7g5$hlj$1@darwin.ediacara.org>...

Challenges for Evolutionary Ethics
How can a trait that was developed under the pressure of natural
selection explain moral actions that go far beyond reciprocal altruism
or enlightened self-interest? How can, for instance, the action of
Maximilian Kolbe be explained from a biological point of view? (Kolbe
was a German priest who starved himself to death in a concentration camp
to rescue a fellow prisoner.)

Could not human beings have moved beyond their biological roots and
transcended their evolutionary origins, in which case they would be able
to formulate goals in the pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth that
"have nothing to do directly with survival, and which may at times
militate against survival?" (O'Hear, 1997: 203).

This is the theme of my article Alive and Human. Evolution and Reason
are two decoupled survival systems. Reason provides analogies to
Evolution in a different level, like superseding biological adaptation
with technological adaptation. Other examples can be found in the
aforementioned article (google groups). For all practical considerations
evolution is stopped and that is the main difference between Rational
Living Beings (Man) and Irrational Living Beings.

Is English your second language? I ask because alot of what you write
while written correctly in english doesn't make much sense. If that is
the case perhaps in your native language you would have better
success..or perhaps not. I think "reason" or "intelligence" is a part of
our Darwinian evolution and all our scientific, medical and
technological advances wouldn't have been possible without it. This
doesn't detract from the reality there is a huge lag between our
biological evolution and cultural evolution e.g. scientific and
technological developments but just to highlight all these scientific
and technological developments are based on our DNA which in turn was
most likely based on RNA and so on. All the great advances thus far in
physics, technology, science, medicine and other fields have been made
possible by the minds of humans (recently in our evolutionary history
as a species) not by nanotechnological machines which build upon
themselves and constitute life forms which possesses certain forms of
"consciousness" which can self repair and self duplicate themselves.
Perhaps in the future such nanotechnological machine life forms will
replace DNA based life being more stable in space. But at the present
moment I don't see how there can be technological adaptation without
biological adaptation. Some have argued if we don't "biologically
improve" ourselves and at least in some ways try to keep pace with
advances in computers, science and technology that we will subsequently
fall far behind and that eventually there would be the possibility
computers could advance to the point of developing superior intelligence
and becoming the dominant life form on earth.

You write, "Reason provides analogies to Evolution in a different level,
like superseding biological adaptation with technological adaptation." I
could be mistaken but currently an earthworm is more intelligent than a
computer. I personally don't think future technological adaptation will
occur (and that includes the possibility of ultimately replacing DNA
based life) without biological adaptation of our species. For whether we
like it or not it will be our ability to biologically adapt to the
current and ongoing scientific and technological developments in our
present day environment which will in all liklihood determine whether we
survive as a species.

A part of our evolutionary history is we have demonstrated we are a
highly intelligent species (as evidenced by our discoveries in science
and applications of technology as well as other areas) but at the same
time we are products of Darwinian evolution which has also imbued us
with aggressive and very primitive instincts which were adaptive in the
ancestral environment but are no longer adaptive today.

Freud is considered outdated by many. At least some of his theories but
he was a great man. He was best recognized for his "Interpretation of
Dreams" but I always like the thesis behind "Civilization and its
Discontents". Man is an animal whose primitive aggressive instincts are
in constant conflict with the requirements of civilization. Now it is
true, as the recent article "Evolution of Despair" noted that it seems
like civilization itself is destroying or suppressing the more "gentle"
side of human beings. But this isn't the fault of civilization but
rather that man's primitive aggressive instincts are "stratified" within
civilization. Not meaning to joke but in a sense there is no
"civilization" on earth, at least not by my definition. There are moral
codes which seek to keep in check these animal instincts but they have
failed over and over again throughout human history. Police, courts,
religion, etc. It also depends on your definition of civilization. A
nation can be technologically and scientifically advanced and have a
rich cultural history and a highly educated public and yet such a nation
can turn out like Nazi Germany. It's not the science and technology or
level of education of a nation by itself which constitutes whether it is
"civilized" but how effectively it controls the base and primitive
instincts of its citizens. In that respect, Nazi Germany receives the
lowest grade possible.

Darwinian evolution hasn't stopped but I agree for all practical
purposes it has. But this does not mean biological adaptation to our
current environment is necessarily impossible. It may be true the
relatively new science of genomics, proteomics, biotechnology and gene
therapy and genetic engineering promise more than they can deliver but
they nevertheless offer the hope of biologically altering our primitive
aggressive instincts. Not anytime soon but maybe within a couple hundred
years. As Hawking stated, "We won't change much in the next hundred
years." I think he is right and that is depressing when you consider
what the last one hundred years was like.

You state, "For all practical considerations evolution is stopped and
that is the main difference between Rational Living Beings (Man) and
Irrational Living Beings." What are Rational Living Beings (Man) and
irrational Living beings in the context of "evolution has stopped"? Only
Darwinian evolution has "stopped" or can't be waited on to effect
biologically adaptive changes to our environment. Modern science and
technology has opened up a whole new frontier which offers the hope of
some kind of directed evolution.

Michael Ragland

"It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term survival value.
Bacteria do quite well without it."
 Stephen Hawking

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