Thursday 1 December 2016

Darwinism

Poul Anderson accepts a Darwinian account of human origins and shows human beings defending civilization. Does natural selection contradict civilized values? I think not.

I suggest that:

naturally selected limbs and organs perform biological functions without having been designed to do so;

we are naturally selected to help others either because they bear the same genes or because they might help us in return;

we experience the latter motivation as moral obligation, not as calculating self-interest, which is what it sounds like when expressed in merely biological terms;

we were unable to understand the biological basis of our psychology and morality until Darwin had identified natural selection as the mechanism of evolution;

also, human beings are essentially social, not solitary;

a species of solitary individuals would have been unable to develop language and thus would not have become human;

thus, our ancestors were social before they were human;

to be social is to have collective interests like, for human beings, speaking a common language and driving on the same side of the road;

such interests transcend a simplistic selfishness-altruism dichotomy;

human beings have survived and thrived by cooperating, not by going it alone;

cooperation is so fundamental to human activity that even the Nazis had to cooperate with each other in order to exterminate other groups;

thus, cooperation is more basic to humanity than conflict;

a society based on conflict without cooperation would not be a society - reductio ad absurdum.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Hmmm, I can see you were interested by John Wright's blog piece "Theology Corner!" I don't think he would disagree with everything you wrote here. But he would argue for a ultimately transcendent origin for things like the moral law and conscience.

And I have read Charles Darwin's ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, the first edition of 1859, which some commentators think was the best. Darwin cluttered up later editions with hesitations, uncertainties, sidelines, etc. If I recall rightly, the biggest problem he wrestled with was trying to figure out how evolution worked over time, concretely. The problem was he had no idea of Abbot Gregor Mendel's pioneering work in genetics.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
I think that, as outlined in my post, natural selection is sufficient to explain human morality.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

If you have no objections, I will send this blog piece to Mr. Wright, to see if he's not too busy to respond to what you said here.

I deleted a similar comment in your "Pharaohnic Fictions" because it was the wrong blog article.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Of course. No objections to forwarding posts elsewhere and maybe getting further discussion.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Thanks! I will send a link to this blog piece to Mr. Wright. And I hope he drops by to comment.

Sean