On Apr 21, 2005, at 4:24 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated 4/19/2005 9:33:01 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Umm, I can think of a lot of historical precedent that might indicate
otherwise. Ethics (I prefer not to use "morality") is very much an
artifact of culture, society, weltanschauung. To my mind ethics is all
about opinion polls -- the opinion of an entire society, in some cases.
Ethics is at its base more than the result of opinion polls. Human ethics are
based on evolutionary adaptations of one particular social animal - us. All
animals have rules for dealing with other members of there species unless they
have no contact with other. The more extensivve these interactions the more
comlex will be the adaptations that control these interactions. The way we
share, the way we respond to others when they cheat or share, are all built into
us.
I'm not so certain of that. TTBOMK the jury is still quite out on the nature/nurture front.
Looking at our two closest cousin species, I think there's *some* validity to the assertion that social interactions are, to some extent, innate. Chimpanzees have very different social structures from bonobos. If you put chimps on one end of a behavior line and bonobos on the other, humans appear to fall somewhere in between.
This suggests that there's a biological component controlling at least some basic social rules, though it could just as easily have to do with population isolation -- since our species don't immingle deeply, we don't tend to acquire behaviors from each other.
One example of how our behaviors appear to echo those of both our cousins is the way we (humans) use sex. In some cases, sex is used to enforce hierarchy and social structure, as it is with chimps (specific example: Prison societies and rape); in other cases it is used to promote social accord and bonding, as it is with bonobos (specific example: Marriage and our various taboos about extramarital sex).
But there is a very big difference in play with us, and that's the extra couple kilos of matter in our crania. There are many, many behaviors we evince that are at their root innate, but that are heavily colored by social conditioning.
Language is one such behavior. We appear to be hardwired to invent and use language (deaf and mute children who are not taught a sign language will *invent* one on their own, and it has all the basics of any other language, including nouns, verbs and tenses), but obviously there is no innate tendency to speak a *specific* language.
I suspect that ethics is similar. We have an innate tendency -- as social animals -- to carry some kind of scorecard, something that needs ethics to be resolved; however, a specific ethical structure, no matter how sensible it may seem, is not necessarily itself hardwired.
Suggesting otherwise implies -- to me at least -- that (for instance) genes in the world population have changed so drastically in just the last two centuries that the gene for slave-owning has been all but eradicated from the human species. That strikes me as being extremely unlikely. Seven to ten generations in a species that reproduces as slowly and parsimoniously (relatively) as ours is nowhere near enough for any single genetic tendency to be bred in or out of a worldwide population.
This suggests that something else changed in order for proximally all of us, in 2005, to view slavery as detestable. Since ideas are clearly more mutable than genes, I think it's safe to conclude it was thought, not meat, that changed.
I think that sheds an instructive light on the suggestion that complex ethical systems are innate rather than acquired; the tendency to be ethical might be born into us, but the ethics we employ is, to my mind, all about opinion.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
_______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
