Even in the message where I asked you just to state anything positive you could suggest about ID, you started with ID is negative... - This I call ranting! Everybody's here has heard your position as anti-anti-ID.
No, concepts do not evolve into existence. That is non-sensical!! Please give me some evidence that a concept is a biological entity. I will rest my point if you admit that concepts are not reducible to outgrowths biological existence.
When you support your beliefs about altruism with arguments made by naturalists and physical scientists (e.g. Wilson, Trivers, Dawkins) who don't actually study the relationships between human beings (a.k.a. human agents), you are likely to get wrong conlusions.
I suggest you aquaint yourself with the social scientific uses of 'evolutionary theory,' which are rarely discussed in natural science classrooms and literature (please someone correct me with counter-examples if they exist). Why not get outside of the Third Culture paradigm and put forth Christian meanings of altruism on this ASA site?
g.a.
p.s. this message DID NOT evolve into existence!!
PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/6/07, Gregory Arago wrote:
> Let's get the obvious off the table first: concepts do not 'evolve' into
> existence!! Just the fact that the sentence reads "A. Comte COINED the
> word..." is an indication that evolutionary theory is unsuitable to discuss
> its origins. We can speak of human intervention, invention, discovery,
> creativity, articulation, signification, etc. but we simply CANNOT use the
> word 'evolution.' It simply doesn't make sense!
Concepts indeed evolve into existence. Is evolutionary theory
unsuitable to discuss its origins? I have no idea what you are trying
to argue here. What origin?
The closest thing I said which seems to have any relevance to your
comments seems to be
Contrary to early expectations, concepts like altruism and
reciprocal altruism may very well have evolved.
> Even if you say, as I understand your argument, that the concept/percept of
> 'altruism' has changed-over-time, this does not change the FACT of its
> origins.
Your point being? What I am simply arguing is that evolutionary theory
is quite capable of addressing concepts like altruism.
> Can this be agreed before any rant about how ID is or isn't applied Pim?
Rant? Hard to refute I assume?
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Received on Thu Jun 7 16:28:54 2007
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Jun 07 2007 - 16:28:54 EDT