Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
Brent meeker writes:
> Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain
why > good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good
and > bad
That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e.
good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was)
evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as
it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do
that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it,
because that's what "feels good" means, a feeling you want to have.
But it is not an absurd question to ask whether something we have
evolved to think is good really is good. You are focussing on the
descriptive aspect of ethics and ignoring the normative.
Right - because I don't think there is an normative aspect in the objective
sense.
Even if it
could be shown that a certain ethical belief has been hardwired into our
brains this does not make the qustion of whether the belief is one we
ought to have an absurd one. We could decide that evolution sucks and we
have to deliberately flout it in every way we can.
But we could only decide that by showing a conflict with something else we
consider good.
It might not be a
wise policy but it is not *wrong* in the way it would be wrong to claim
that God made the world 6000 years ago.
I agree, because I think there is a objective sense in which the world is more
than 6000yrs old.
>beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis
> argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would
ultimately > produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational
inclusion of certain > groups as inferior, they were right: we could
breed superior humans following > Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps
on other worlds evolution has made such > programs a natural part of
life, regarded by everyone as "good". Yet most of > us would regard
them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits.
Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular
movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded
people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't
trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily
limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced
voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think
anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will).
What about if we tested every child and allowed only the superior ones
to reproduce? The point is, many people would just say this is wrong,
regardless of the potential benefits to society or the species, and the
response to this is not that it is absurd to hold it as wrong (leaving
aside emotional rhetoric).
But people wouldn't *just* say this is wrong. This example is a question of societal policy. It's about what *we* will impose on *them*. It is a question of ethics, not good and bad. So in fact people would give reasons it was wrong: Who's gonna say what "superior" means? Who gets to decide? They might say, "I just think it's bad." - but that would just be an implicit appeal to you to see whether you thought is was bad too. Social policy can only be judged in terms of what the individual members of society think is good or bad.
I think I'm losing the thread of what we're discussing here. Are you holding
that there are absolute norms of good/bad - as in your example of eugenics?
Brent Meeker
Brent Meeker
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