Re: [asa] An Evolutionary Theory of Right and Wrong

Gregory Arago wrote

> It seems to be much more difficult to actually take a stand on some moral
> principles that are 'objectively' defined, e.g. according to a sacred text or
> religious tradition, than it is to take no stand at all and to argue for
> moral relativity. Those who suggest morality is based in/on language or some form
> of 'innate behaviour,' and yet who won't include the spiritual dimension (or
> if they do, materializing it), seem obliged to include the realms of
> philosophy (ethics), law and theology, rather than positing a simple physicalistic
> basis for morality. PvM's views sometimes seem to verge on excluding knowledge
> only to physical, calculable, scientific things, as with Hauser's theory.
>

It seems like we all keep hitting around this point from different
angles. It does seem like most objections would come from the
ranks of philosophy.

To look at it from the extreme angle for a moment;
the cause and effect (C*E) part of the issue was long ago
recognized by the Greeks. There are some surviving works from
hedonist philosophers. They recognized that even a hedonist would
still have to restrain his selfish desires for the mere sake of
C*E. Consequently, it should not even be too surprising that a
hedonist model could be used to explain much of what we define
as ethics. I don't think the modern age can add much except to the
range of possibilities open to the hedonist: the C*E weights
are easily "calculated" (at least in the figurative sense).

The model surrounding these concepts is in principle calculable.
For example, one of the ways to find a drug is to use selection.
In this process, you have strictly defined the target, for example,
suppressing the activity of some viral protein by attaching
something to it. These are well defined targets that are
established by the person looking for a very specific
effect, and doing so by selectively changing to a specific part of
a sequence. Indeed, your immunity system does exactly this every
time you catch a cold. So well specified targets with a real
goal in mind can be very well explained by some kind of selection
model. Billions of years would easily fine tune anything like
that, and indeed, some ribozymes have incredible selectivity
for one (and basically only one) molecule.

However, unlike something as clear as obtaining a protein or
a ribozyme with a particular function that is required to
complete a very necessary task, I don't think there is any way
to obtain objective parameters for models of ethics. Indeed,
the parameters themselves should be dynamic (depending on
environmental, circumstantial and individual conditions), and,
given the time frame is long enough and the change gradual enough,
it seems like they can be easily skewed in almost any direction.
Perhaps there are some things that really would optimize, but
even that is not completely clear to me. I think there is far
too much vagueness and subjectiveness in the targets to be
all that meaningful compared to targets used in drug selection
(or even species selection).

So perhaps this comes down to a difference in views: that we
Christians perceive the law of God as eternal and binding
regardless of conditions. On the other hand, these models
cannot claim that for the most part. Perhaps they are "realist"
but a realist can also believe that the laws were true long
before he came into the world, and will remain so long after
he has left. He can accept them as written by God, immutable
and different from the laws of man. I don't think we can answer
these questions with science. The best we can do is show that we
have what we have, and leave the "why?" to philosophy. You
can chose your pill, but there will be side effects with whichever
one you select and it may not even be the right pill: for that, there
is only faith I think.

By Grace we proceed,
Wayne

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Received on Fri Nov 10 20:51:58 2006