Re: [asa] prisoner's dilemma

I don't believe morality ultimately comes from ONLY game theory or ONLY
naturalistic explanations either. But I already have faith in God as our
Creator and who gives us meaning and mandate. In order to connect with those
who don't already share that faith basis with us, it helps to "get into" their
way of thinking in order to appreciate their struggle (and yes --maybe even to
share in their doubts). Paul must have spent some time touring and reading
inscriptions on idols in Athens before he started sermonizing. And even then he
 used as his starting point something that they recognized: the statue to the
unknown God.

Well -- what many self-styled "non-faith" friends worship as their "known" god
is the naturalistically understood universe. But they are fascinated by their
relatively unknown god of morals and meanings, and they are working mightily to
bring those into the domain of science. This is our chance -- especially to
reviewers such as the one Iain wrote of -- to reach out to them with "what you
are searching for as 'unknown' is now proclaimed ..." But we'd first better
tour the city and understand what they already are studying about this.

That is why attempts like 'prisoner's dilemma' are important to understand I
think. In order to show how 'selfish, mindless genes' can occassionally forgo
the immediate payoff for the sake of community, they are postulating (and not
altogether unconvincingly) that natural selection could operate at the level of
community or even culture, to benefit cultures that have morals and self-imposed
restrictions may "out-survive" cultures with none -- or different ones.

Of course - this does NOT constitute any basis for ultimate or absolute
morality. It is only an attempt to explain how some societal mores came to be
which is a quite different and lesser task, even if atheists refuse to
acknowledge the distinction.

--merv

Quoting David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>:

> *So is our morality really altruistic? Or just selfish at a higher
> community
> level? A wise pastor of mine once referred to it as "enlightened
> self-interest".*
>
> This is one problem with using game theory to assess "morality." Perhaps
> none of the students are acting "morally." There needs to be a way to
> separate "moral" actions from the "natural" or "typical" exercise of human
> nature, which our Christian faith tells us is depraved. Game theory can't
> supply that.
>

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Received on Tue Aug 15 20:27:24 2006