Originally posted by Leonhard
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Racism: A Completely Natural Trait?
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Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s
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Originally posted by Leonhard View PostWrong. I don't think any evolutionary biologist would say anything like that. You're assuming that if something exists in a current population, then it had survival value and was selected for.
Second, other than this trait being prevalent, there's nothing to suggest that its hardwired into us.
Much more likely xenophobia builds on more fundamental traits and preferences of the familiar. If these are the ones that have survival value, and xenophobia just piggybacking on it as an abnormal development then you haven't shown that a potential naive evolutionary moralist should take accept these behaviours as good and normative.
Thirdly, I don't think anyone who advocates for evolutionary explanations of our sense of morality argues anything like this. So you're building up a strawman."As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12
There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.
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Originally posted by seasanctuary View PostYou could have started a thread to ask that question rather than say something provocative based on an answer no one around here would give."As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12
There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.
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Originally posted by seasanctuary View PostYou could have started a thread to ask that question rather than say something provocative based on an answer no one around here would give.Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s
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Originally posted by Darth Executor View PostWhen it's present in virtually every animal on the planet, yes.
youtube
Sure there is: it shows up in babies who haven't had social indoctrination yet as shown earlier.
They pick up an odd behaviour, later it ought to be unlearned, which is the only right thing to do. Just as they have to learn not to pick their noses, even though that might have figured into learning hand coordination and body mapping at one point.
Xenophobic, tribalistic populations are awesome
There are plenty of right wing atheists who argue exactly like that.
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Originally posted by Leonhard View PostI have no idea what this statement even means in the context of racism. I have never heard of a racist canary bird.
This isn't interesting, and I can't watch it for various reasons.
It shows up in babies who are starting to learn how to recognise faces. If they've been exposed to primarily white faces all their life, is it then odd that they find a coloured face odd? And vice versa. This doesn't tell me anything about white babies being hardwired to recognise white parents, this tells me more about what kind of environment they're exposed to.
They pick up an odd behaviour, later it ought to be unlearned, which is the only right thing to do. Just as they have to learn not to pick their noses, even though that might have figured into learning hand coordination and body mapping at one point.
ZZzzzz... wake me up when you have a point, or can explain why their xenophobia is the cause of that, and not extreme religiosity (which can be a good thing if they're catholics), poverty, etc...
Do you even live on this planet?
You're right, I tend to ignore stupid people."As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12
There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.
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Originally posted by Teallaura View PostRacism isn't morality. Young children don't show the discrimination that accompanies racism (they also eat things off the floor so 'discrimination' of any sort may not be in their make up).
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/babies-h...s-of-morality/
Skip to about 7 minutes in."As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12
There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.
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Originally posted by Psychic Missile View PostThen why do they carry that stance?
Originally posted by Psychic Missile View PostPlenty of Christians have appealed to God's moral law for the opposite reason. How do you know that Christian behavior is informed by Biblical law rather than the moral zeitgeist and individual traits?
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Originally posted by Leonhard View PostSecond, other than this trait being prevalent, there's nothing to suggest that its hardwired into us. Much more likely xenophobia builds on more fundamental traits and preferences of the familiar. If these are the ones that have survival value, and xenophobia just piggybacking on it as an abnormal development then you haven't shown that a potential naive evolutionary moralist should take accept these behaviours as good and normative.Originally posted by Leonhard View PostI was puzzled by that as well, but Carrikature isn't prevented from making mistakes like that. It would be up to him to defend that it had survival value in the past rather than postulate it. In the name of gracious interpretation, I think he might just have been defending that even if the basic premise of what you said was true, no morality could be drawn from in the naive way you're proposing.
Looked at in this way, it's not quite the stretch to say that racism may have had survival benefits. I don't know that it's possible to defend a claim that it absolutely did (though I realize that I said as much initially). Of course, most explanations of this nature don't require one to establish that it did happen, only that it's plausible and consistent. I think I can defend that rather easily, but I'm not sure it's necessary at this point. Suffice to say that if preference for the familiar has survival advantages (seems a given), so too would racism/tribalism albeit with potentially less benefit. I'd also say that there are probably sustainable levels of something like racism or xenophobia beyond which ostracization turns inward and becomes detrimental. Too much of any extreme seems to spell death for a species. That's life.
Of course, I might be dead wrong. It's happened before. It will happen again.
Originally posted by Leonhard View PostI know that Carrikature does not support the idea that if something exists in nature, then its morally good and should be imitated. Even if it had survival value. I think he sees evolution ultimately as giving us a unified and well defended account of how we got to have our current nature. It explains why humans work in certain ways, and fail to work in other ways.
Originally posted by Leonhard View PostIt might not be 'evolutionary wrong'. Most naturalistic ethicists I know base things on preference. Humans have preferences for various things, and we want to live in a world where we have the greatest chance of living out our preferences. They identify this state as the happy life, and then they ask what kind of world fulfills that.I'm not here anymore.
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Originally posted by Darth Executor View PostIt means that all animals are hard-wired to support genetically similar animals (usually the same species, though it can narrow down to the same tribe) at the expense of less genetically similar animals (and other life-forms). It's why so many animals travel in packs of similar individuals and hunt animals from packs of other not so similar individuals, or in the case of herbivores, travel together for protection. The difference between lions and gazelles are bigger than that between white people and black people, or english and irish, but it's the same phenomenon. As I explained earlier, genes that do not favor themselves at the expense of others are at a disadvantage.I'm not here anymore.
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Originally posted by seer View PostCarrikature in the past you have made it clear that you don't believe in human freedom, free will. And if that is the case biology drives everything, there is nothing else. How we think, our response to stimuli, the cultures and relationships we develop are all dictated by biology.Originally posted by seer View PostI understand the claim Carrikature, but you have yet to show how anything, behavior, ethics, etc... can rise above biology. If biology doesn't dictate our moral sense then what does?
Take lightning for example. When we see lightning, we see a flash of brilliant light moving from the clouds to the ground (usually). We can, and do, come up with all kinds of names for this lightning depending on the form we see. There's ball lightning, heat lightning, forked lightning...just to name a few. We can talk about and compare these kinds of lightning. That's one level of discussion. Another level of discussion would be in terms of electrostatic discharge. We could discuss how voltage differentials build up, we can discuss conditions that lead to these differentials, how discharges happen in steps, and so on. However, when we discuss electrostatic discharge, we're not limited to just lightning. We could be talking about capacitors or an electrical short. We talk in terms of dielectric strength, electrical fields, and dielectric breakdowns. The specific instance of a discharge is less important than the more fundamental mechanism of the discharge itself. The difference here is one of scope. The more fundamental a description, the broader the scope. In addition, some behaviors become noticeable at different scales. It's impossible to see lightning at the discharge scale, primarily because lightning is a series of discharges.
Now, when we mention that lightning is a series of electrostatic discharges, have we eliminated lightning as a phenomenon? Of course not. Lightning as a term applies to one scale, electrostatic discharge applies to another. Even though we've defined lightning in terms of electrostatic discharge (reductionism), we do not discard lightning. I have mentioned before the difference between eliminative and preservative reductionism. One could say that lightning is nothing more than electrostatic discharge (eliminative), or one could say that lightning is a specific manifestation of electrostatic discharge (preservative). This is an extremely important difference. It's quite often a subtle distinction, but I don't think I can stress enough its importance. I really can't.
The only form of reductionism I have ever seen you express is eliminative. I do NOT hold to eliminative reductionism.
Now, language is really messy. We have words, but the meaning of those words are partially internal and partially external in nature. That is, you have something you mean by a word. I have something I mean by the same word. We communicate most successfully when you and I have the same meaning in mind for a word. There are degrees of success, and it's possible to communicate without having exactly the same meaning in mind in most cases. This is where the subtlety of reductionism comes in. When you say "X is nothing more than Y", it's eliminative. When I say "X is nothing more than Y", it's preservative. When you say it, you're actually claiming that X does not exist. This is not true for me. When I say it, I'm actually claiming that Y completely accounts for X. (FWIW, I actually try to refrain from using "nothing more than" specifically to avoid confusion, with limited success).
Regrettably, I think that's enough for now. It's almost midnight, and I'm getting up at 5:30am again tomorrow. Before I go, I'll pose a few challenges for you in response to other things you've said.
Originally posted by seer View PostWell the bottom line, in my view, is that all ethics (good or bad in a godless universe) are driven by biology. Carrikature, Tass and others have made it clear in the past that free will does not exist, therefore it follows that our moral sense is driven by biology - and there is no right or wrong in biology - only what works. If being a bastard helps one to survive, then being a bastard is good.
Originally posted by seer View PostThen we are back to what decides good or evil. If we are not basing ethics on survival value then on what? Here is an example - the Europeans come to North America. They are technologically more advanced, more aggressive, and possibly more intelligent, and eventually more numerous. They pretty much wipe out the native population and take over the land - and prosper. How, in the evolutionary sense, is that morally wrong? It would be no more unethical than one species of bacteria taking over or destroying another species of bacteria.I'm not here anymore.
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Originally posted by seasanctuary View PostYou could have started a thread to ask that question rather than say something provocative based on an answer no one around here would give.I'm not here anymore.
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