Secular Morality?

[seer]

I'm not claiming that animals can't survive.

Human beings in general are as strong or as tough as we've been for the past two hundred thousand years, what kept us alive back then wasn't claws, sharp teeth, strong jaws and a powerful nose, it was the ability to make and craft tools.

The question is, what gives us a survival challenge, over the creatures around us back then.



Even the combined efforts of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot, barely put a dent in the population growth, and most of that was not directly caused by the wars and work/death camps themselves (accounting only for a tenth of the deaths), most died due to the secondary effects of destroyed infrastructure, hunger and disease. The same is true for the Thirty Year war. The Black Death and the Spanish Flue were bigger existential threats.

Be that as it may, you can't use the argument "our intelligence might finish us off in the future" to conclude "therefore our intelligence gives us no inherent survival advantage."

One does not follow from the other, you're arguing fallaciously here. Which means your arguments are in vain, and you're going to lose. I know you're very persistent in contradicting an opponent for hundreds of posts seer, but here I think you need to step back and look at the argument. Trust me on this, what you're saying doesn't make sense.

Perhaps Leonhard we need to back up. First, let me repeat, intelligence is a two edged sword and it may be in fact, the thing that we use to destroy ourselves, that is a very real possibility. But this discussion was about why/how consciousness came into being. That was what Tass and I were discussing. My claim is that there was no evolutionary necessity for consciousness. Or the rationality that springs from that. We could have just as well survived without either. And this goes back to a quote I linked by Sam Harris. Now Harris is an atheist so he believes that human consciousness is a naturally occurring trait - I see no reason to accept that. But this is what he said:

Such numinous influences eventually subsided. And once physicists got down to the serious business of building bombs, we were apparently returned to a universe of objects—and to a style of discourse, across all branches of science and philosophy, that made the mind seem ripe for reduction to the “physical” world.

The problem, however, is that no evidence for consciousness exists in the physical world.[6] Physical events are simply mute as to whether it is “like something” to be what they are. The only thing in this universe that attests to the existence of consciousness is consciousness itself; the only clue to subjectivity, as such, is subjectivity. Absolutely nothing about a brain, when surveyed as a physical system, suggests that it is a locus of experience. Were we not already brimming with consciousness ourselves, we would find no evidence of it in the physical universe—nor would we have any notion of the many experiential states that it gives rise to. The painfulness of pain, for instance, puts in an appearance only in consciousness. And no description of C-fibers or pain-avoiding behavior will bring the subjective reality into view.

If we look for consciousness in the physical world, all we find are increasingly complex systems giving rise to increasingly complex behavior—which may or may not be attended by consciousness. The fact that the behavior of our fellow human beings persuades us that they are (more or less) conscious does not get us any closer to linking consciousness to physical events. Is a starfish conscious? A scientific account of the emergence of consciousness would answer this question. And it seems clear that we will not make any progress by drawing analogies between starfish behavior and our own. It is only in the presence of animals sufficiently like ourselves that our intuitions about (and attributions of) consciousness begin to crystallize. Is there “something that it is like” to be a cocker spaniel? Does it feel its pains and pleasures? Surely it must. How do we know? Behavior, analogy, parsimony.[7]

Most scientists are confident that consciousness emerges from unconscious complexity. We have compelling reasons for believing this, because the only signs of consciousness we see in the universe are found in evolved organisms like ourselves. Nevertheless, this notion of emergence strikes me as nothing more than a restatement of a miracle. To say that consciousness emerged at some point in the evolution of life doesn’t give us an inkling of how it could emerge from unconscious processes, even in principle.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/t...-consciousness

[Pytharchimedes]

Sheesh Len, goats, lions and bacteria survive just fine. And there must have been a time where our ancestors were neither rational or conscious and I assume that they survived fine.

Do not insult the intelligence of Bacteria.

Intelligence is more than man, it goes wherever it pleases. You see it's effects, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it has been.

[Leonhard]

What? How do the millions of species survive without it? It may be that we have become to weak or soft to presently survive without it.

I'm not claiming that animals can't survive.

Human beings in general are as strong or as tough as we've been for the past two hundred thousand years, what kept us alive back then wasn't claws, sharp teeth, strong jaws and a powerful nose, it was the ability to make and craft tools.

The question is, what gives us a survival challenge, over the creatures around us back then.

Yes, a question of history - that our intelligence gave us the ability to slaughter tens of millions in the last century. And this century is starting off no better. Intelligence is a two edged sword, and at this point we have no clue what edge will dominate.

Even the combined efforts of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot, barely put a dent in the population growth, and most of that was not directly caused by the wars and work/death camps themselves (accounting only for a tenth of the deaths). Most of those people died due to the secondary effects of destroyed infrastructure, hunger and disease. The same is true for the Thirty Year war. The Black Death and the Spanish Flue were bigger existential threats.

Can we today potentially kill off ourselves accidentally using our technology. Yes.

Be that as it may, you can't use the argument "our intelligence might finish us off in the future" to conclude "therefore our intelligence gives us no inherent survival advantage."

One does not follow from the other, you're arguing fallaciously here. Which means your arguments are in vain, and you're going to lose. I know you're very persistent in contradicting an opponent for hundreds of posts seer, but here I think you need to step back and look at the argument. Trust me on this, what you're saying doesn't make sense.

[seer]

That's true, but its irrelevant to the point he's making. Clearly if our rationality would be taken away from us we'd die, and clearly apes are no threat to us, but only because of our rationality.

What? How do the millions of species survive without it? It may be that we have become to weak or soft to presently survive without it.

Whether there is one in the long run is irrelevant. You're dealing with the question of history, not of the future. You're not arguing logically here.

Yes, a question of history - that our intelligence gave us the ability to slaughter tens of millions in the last century. And this century is starting off no better. Intelligence is a two edged sword, and at this point we have no clue what edge will dominate.

[Leonhard]

No Homer, I said that neither rationality or consciousness are necessary for survival.

That's true, but its irrelevant to the point he's making. Clearly if our rationality would be taken away from us we'd die, and clearly apes are no threat to us, but only because of our rationality.

As to whether these are a benefit to human survival in the long run is an open ended question that can not be answered.

Whether there is one in the long run is irrelevant. You're dealing with the question of history, not of the future. You're not arguing logically here.