Richard Dawkins on the evolutionary origins of altruism

[anthony]

Furthermore, in patching together his "hodge-podge of neo-Darwinism and pragmatism," Dawkins commits what Rand called "the fallacy of the frozen abstraction" in that he equates the subject of ethics as such with the issue of how one treats other people.

If not that, then what is ethics?

There are no ethics on a desert island inhabited by one sentient being. There is only survival and non-survival.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Furthermore, in patching together his "hodge-podge of neo-Darwinism and pragmatism," Dawkins commits what Rand called "the fallacy of the frozen abstraction" in that he equates the subject of ethics as such with the issue of how one treats other people.

If not that, then what is ethics?

There are no ethics on a desert island inhabited by one sentient being. There is only survival and non-survival.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You don't believe that each one of us is ~ as fundamentally as it can get ~ alone, on our own desert island?

The pertinent questions begin from there: what defines us? which are our tools? how to use them for survival? what are our needs, to what/whom our responsibility? how to stay sane ('rational')? how to enjoy what we've got, and where we are?

Basically, why bother? Because to live is dependent on finding value and purpose

in one's own life.

Back within society, nothing changes for this ethical system.

Except: The complexity of choices expands exponentially, and the potential for discovery, opportunity, and the enjoyment among other people, along with it.

[BaalChatzaf]

You don't believe that each one of us is ~ as fundamentally as it can get ~ alone, on our own desert island?

I gave up solopsism for Lent.

ba'al chatzaf

[anthony]

You don't believe that each one of us is ~ as fundamentally as it can get ~ alone, on our own desert island?

I gave up solopsism for Lent.

ba'al chatzaf

Oh gawd. Did I ever have that coming!

Shows: Empiricists will not take kindly to conceptualization.

Ba'al - A solipsist believes he alone has consciousness, but nobody else does.

An extreme case of 'primacy of consciousness'.

A rational egoist holds that Man (all men and women) has consciousness: and he's 'primacy of existence'.

(Consciousness = desert island. We each got our own.

Unless you believe in group consciousness or somesuch.)

[anthony]

Hello whYNOT,

Your welcoming tone is appreciated.

Obviously, the next questions are what to do with 'empathy', how to utilize it for best effect - but mainly, is it an involuntary, unconscious response to others pain and hardship? If so, it is immeasurable, unpredictable and essentially, non-objective.

Empathy is as involuntary and unconscious a process as seeing or hearing or perceiving through any of the senses. We are not conscious of any of these processes. We are conscious of the content of our perceptions. Do we say visual perception is immeasurable, unpredictable and non-objective because we are not conscious of the processes? No. Empathy is better understood as a holistic mode of perception rather than an unconscious response. We respond to the perception created through empathic processes and, when we learn to undo the programming from our childhood and our culture, we can generate multiple possibilities from which to choose our responses. This makes our responses to empathy very conscious and very voluntary. Or we can just choose to flow with it.

An example: two young boys in rough and tumble play while I stand with their grandparents talking. One of the boys yells out in pain as the other looks on with panic in his face. Grandpa reacts and runs over to tend to the wound and the tears. Grandma looks on trying to decide if what she is seeing and what her empathic triggers are telling her is real. She's not convinced but she's not certain. She is conflicted and stuck.

I'm watching. I turn to Grandma and say, "It's not real." Just like Grandma has learned, I've learned that words and empathic cues cannot be taken on face value. I've learned to watch the eyes, the facial expressions, the body language, the behaviour across time and to refer to the historical reputation of a person. I connect all these dots, not linearly and consciously, but holistically in the moment and respond in real time to what is happening with all this information feeding my perception of what is going on.

I sense the boy's eyes are looking around to see who is watching and how they are reacting. When he is really in pain he focuses on the pain, not on those around him. I can feel the cries and grimaces are exaggerated. They are intended to get a response. He gets up and walks with a profound limp that does not feel like an attempt to walk against the pull of pain but more like an attempt to exaggerate the signs of pain. I know the boy to be capable of exaggerating injury and illness to escape what he doesn't want or to get what he does want. All this information feeds through my empathic lens, giving me my sense of what is taking place in his inner world, in a split second, so I perceive a boy who is playing a game to get his brother in trouble and get attention for himself. I had a very different response to Grandpa and Grandma.

I tested the objectivity of my view. I confronted the boy in question, pointing to the long term value of trust, which he has learned increases freedom and choices. He has come to trust my fairness and to believe I can see right through him by reading his body language (a powerful tool as a parent) and he admitted to what he was doing and said sorry.

This all suggests the effects of empathy are objective and measurable, and the responses can be conscious and voluntary. This is no different to other types of perception. Their are different levels of development in empathic processing which produce different outcomes. They produce different behaviours, different kids over time and, in the end, different adults. Think what a difference it makes in development if a girl thinks she can consistently get away with manipulating to get what she wants because adults can't trust their sense of her insides versus a girl who feels like she can't get away with manipulating because her parents see inside her.

Objectivism has a virtue that is certainly conscious - observable, and 'learnable' too - which is 'benevolence'.

Is this any more, or any less a virtue for being deliberately and thoughtfully chosen and applied?

Much more, I believe. And the objective virtue is solid and reliable.

But there is no contradiction between them, that I can see; in fact, they work together well.

I fully agree with the value of more linear processes that give us what we typically consider our objective perspective. It is the difference between seeing the world as made up of veneers (to borrow from the Dawkins' video), and seeing the world made up of things from within their dynamic insides. The first sees the universe as a vast model from the outside of everything. The second sees the universe as a hologram made up of all the images from all the different inside perspectives it contains. In my mind these are two perspectives of one universe so each can inform and be integrated with the other.

Also, I think there is a great fallacy (not that you indicated it)in a common misperception that egoism holds that being an end in oneself, automatically negates that anyone else is an end in their own selves. A form of solipsism, I suppose.

Earning and keeping value in oneself, conversely, is the fundamental precursor to value in others, I think.

Exactly as having known pain oneself, one empathizes with it in others.

No argument here. I am a strong proponent of egoism. My life is about integrating and balancing my separateness and my connectedness. It is part of my self-interest to embrace my capacity for empathy, with all the information it offers and the sense of connectedness and benevolence to those I care about that it makes possible. A strong ego is possibly more important in a world perceived through a lens of empathy than it is in a world perceived through a lens of objectivity. In an objective space we might forget others have value in themselves. In empathic space we might forget we do. This is why healthy boundaries defining where self ends and others begin are needed. Without healthy boundaries, a person can fear losing themselves in others and a rigid embracing of objectivity and a suppressing of empathy can be the result.

Hello whYNOT,

Your welcoming tone is appreciated.

Obviously, the next questions are what to do with 'empathy', how to utilize it for best effect - but mainly, is it an involuntary, unconscious response to others pain and hardship? If so, it is immeasurable, unpredictable and essentially, non-objective.

Empathy is as involuntary and unconscious a process as seeing or hearing or perceiving through any of the senses. We are not conscious of any of these processes. We are conscious of the content of our perceptions. Do we say visual perception is immeasurable, unpredictable and non-objective because we are not conscious of the processes? No. Empathy is better understood as a holistic mode of perception rather than an unconscious response. We respond to the perception created through empathic processes and, when we learn to undo the programming from our childhood and our culture, we can generate multiple possibilities from which to choose our responses. This makes our responses to empathy very conscious and very voluntary. Or we can just choose to flow with it.

An example: two young boys in rough and tumble play while I stand with their grandparents talking. One of the boys yells out in pain as the other looks on with panic in his face. Grandpa reacts and runs over to tend to the wound and the tears. Grandma looks on trying to decide if what she is seeing and what her empathic triggers are telling her is real. She's not convinced but she's not certain. She is conflicted and stuck.

I'm watching. I turn to Grandma and say, "It's not real." Just like Grandma has learned, I've learned that words and empathic cues cannot be taken on face value. I've learned to watch the eyes, the facial expressions, the body language, the behaviour across time and to refer to the historical reputation of a person. I connect all these dots, not linearly and consciously, but holistically in the moment and respond in real time to what is happening with all this information feeding my perception of what is going on.

I sense the boy's eyes are looking around to see who is watching and how they are reacting. When he is really in pain he focuses on the pain, not on those around him. I can feel the cries and grimaces are exaggerated. They are intended to get a response. He gets up and walks with a profound limp that does not feel like an attempt to walk against the pull of pain but more like an attempt to exaggerate the signs of pain. I know the boy to be capable of exaggerating injury and illness to escape what he doesn't want or to get what he does want. All this information feeds through my empathic lens, giving me my sense of what is taking place in his inner world, in a split second, so I perceive a boy who is playing a game to get his brother in trouble and get attention for himself. I had a very different response to Grandpa and Grandma.

I tested the objectivity of my view. I confronted the boy in question, pointing to the long term value of trust, which he has learned increases freedom and choices. He has come to trust my fairness and to believe I can see right through him by reading his body language (a powerful tool as a parent) and he admitted to what he was doing and said sorry.

This all suggests the effects of empathy are objective and measurable, and the responses can be conscious and voluntary. This is no different to other types of perception. Their are different levels of development in empathic processing which produce different outcomes. They produce different behaviours, different kids over time and, in the end, different adults. Think what a difference it makes in development if a girl thinks she can consistently get away with manipulating to get what she wants because adults can't trust their sense of her insides versus a girl who feels like she can't get away with manipulating because her parents see inside her.

Objectivism has a virtue that is certainly conscious - observable, and 'learnable' too - which is 'benevolence'.

Is this any more, or any less a virtue for being deliberately and thoughtfully chosen and applied?

Much more, I believe. And the objective virtue is solid and reliable.

But there is no contradiction between them, that I can see; in fact, they work together well.

I fully agree with the value of more linear processes that give us what we typically consider our objective perspective. It is the difference between seeing the world as made up of veneers (to borrow from the Dawkins' video), and seeing the world made up of things from within their dynamic insides. The first sees the universe as a vast model from the outside of everything. The second sees the universe as a hologram made up of all the images from all the different inside perspectives it contains. In my mind these are two perspectives of one universe so each can inform and be integrated with the other.

Also, I think there is a great fallacy (not that you indicated it)in a common misperception that egoism holds that being an end in oneself, automatically negates that anyone else is an end in their own selves. A form of solipsism, I suppose.

Earning and keeping value in oneself, conversely, is the fundamental precursor to value in others, I think.

Exactly as having known pain oneself, one empathizes with it in others.

No argument here. I am a strong proponent of egoism. My life is about integrating and balancing my separateness and my connectedness. It is part of my self-interest to embrace my capacity for empathy, with all the information it offers and the sense of connectedness and benevolence to those I care about that it makes possible. A strong ego is possibly more important in a world perceived through a lens of empathy than it is in a world perceived through a lens of objectivity. In an objective space we might forget others have value in themselves. In empathic space we might forget we do. This is why healthy boundaries defining where self ends and others begin are needed. Without healthy boundaries, a person can fear losing themselves in others and a rigid embracing of objectivity and a suppressing of empathy can be the result.

Paul,

Thank you for taking the time for a comprehensive reply. You've more where that came from, I'll bet.

I'm in agreement with all of it. Only by degree and methodology could I differ, and that only because

I am probably behind your thinking curve.

Two things strike one immediately about empathy: it is a powerful tool (to use your word), for knowledge

and understanding - of others, but also of oneself; and it has the effect of keeping one 'grounded' in

'humaness', so that ideas don't isolate one from their impact on people.

For both capabilities, essentially empathy has value in self-interest, though not exclusively so, obviously.

I do think there's ambiguity about its definition. Empathy, classically (I have an old dictionary) is defined -

'The power of projecting one's personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation.'[Gk]

A fascinating one: "the object", not necessarily "the person". I'm aware of that flight of insight that can take me

into the workings of say, a piece of machinery. Does an architect 'feel' the internal stresses in his building

design? I feel sure many of the great ones do. Intuition and induction, play a part here, I think, all combined

with objective knowledge.

Extend this to people, with observation of expression and body language, together with their response to pain

and pleasure, and there seem infinite possibilities.

Somwhere, empathy came to mean compassion [Pity inclining one to spare or help.] which is why, to be clear,

I call it 'empathy-compassion'. That's fine, but it can be confusing. I guess we could say that empathy per se

may lead one to compassion per se: i.e. the recognition of suffering, may bring one to the action of 'sparing or helping.'

I have some questions to ask, but I've gone on long enough.

Tony

[anthony]

No argument here. I am a strong proponent of egoism. My life is about integrating and balancing my separateness and my connectedness. It is part of my self-interest to embrace my capacity for empathy, with all the information it offers and the sense of connectedness and benevolence to those I care about that it makes possible. A strong ego is possibly more important in a world perceived through a lens of empathy than it is in a world perceived through a lens of objectivity. In an objective space we might forget others have value in themselves. In empathic space we might forget we do. This is why healthy boundaries defining where self ends and others begin are needed. Without healthy boundaries, a person can fear losing themselves in others and a rigid embracing of objectivity and a suppressing of empathy can be the result.

Paul,

This is strikingly insightful. Boiled down, I think you are saying "connectedness" (empathy) and "separateness" (egoism) should co-exist, interdependently, by necessity. Therefore requiring balancing and integration.

My present view of the two is much more inclined to integration - only. Possibly I resist the effort needed of an ongoing balancing, out of laziness! No, really I usually think very hierarchically, and realistically must always give priority to the 'known' entity - one's objective separateness, and that of all others - beneath which (and taking precedence at times) lie first one's 'known' - and hopefully constant - benevolence, as well as a spontaneous, involuntary, so lesser 'known',compassion. I understand your approach as 'side by side', while mine is more up and down. But it's a work in progress.

Your last sentence on boundaries is excellent: fear of losing oneself in others could be a root cause of rigidity and dogmatism for people, Objectivists included. Compare it with its opposite, just as apparent in many: the fear of autonomy and singularity.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Two things strike one immediately about empathy: it is a powerful tool (to use your word), for knowledge and understanding - of others, but also of oneself; and it has the effect of keeping one 'grounded' in 'humaness', so that ideas don't isolate one from their impact on people. For both capabilities, essentially empathy has value in self-interest, though not exclusively so, obviously.

Tony,

I think you've hit on an important insight. Empathy is an important and powerful tool for knowing and understanding oneself, as well as for understanding others, in creating positive relationships with others. NB touched on this with his concept of "psychological visibility."

It is said that 80% of communication is non-verbal. This non-verbal communication comes almost entirely from an unconscious, holistic, flow state within us. Verbal communication is based in conscious, volitional, proactive processes. We have a direct inner way of knowing the roots of our verbal communications but not our non-verbal. We need a means of raising awareness to, and conceptually framing the nature of, what flows undifferentiated inside and through us, and is being expressed in the complexities of our behaviour. We get to know ourselves through empathy because it is the only way we get to see and feel and understand ourselves from the outside as complex, flowing, intuitive beings.

Cut yourself off from empathy and you cut yourself off from knowing the greatest part of yourself. You split yourself into two: the conscious, linear, objective, verbal self; and the unconscious, complex, flowing, intuitive, non-verbal self. Each part will produce conflicting conclusions and impulses. Unable to find integration as we are growing through this, we find an inescapable pressure to choose one and disown the other to maintain the integrity of our being. This creates a conflict and a hierarchically structured psyche within a world divided between thinkers and feelers; one as the dominant self and the other the shadow.

...and it has the effect of keeping one 'grounded' in

'humaness', so that ideas don't isolate one from their impact on people.

This is so true. It adds feeling and colour to the black and white of the objective lens. We see not only the veneer of people’s outsides, we have a sense of who they are, understanding their outward behaviour using our empathically informed intuitive sense of their inner worlds. This can be contrasted with the empathy excluded, more defensive and narcissistic version: our sense of who people are is based on a judgement of their outward behaviour, projecting the ghosts of past others and past relationships onto the present person and situation.

This creates a categorical divide in personality types between understanding (or perceiving) and judging.

For both capabilities, essentially empathy has value in self-interest, though not exclusively so, obviously.

Again, so true. Clearly, maintaining integration of the organism by cutting out huge amounts of it, such as one’s capacity to know the self via empathy, is not ideal. Understanding our environment by cutting out huge amounts of information about our environment, such as one’s capacity to know others via empathy, is not ideal either. Also, approaching others creating a mutually shared space with empathy and understanding tends to have a very different effect on others, and our relationships with them, when compared to approaching them with disconnection, suspicion and judgement. That’s the thing about empathy…it’s either mutual, each meeting halfway, or it’s broken and the basis of an unbalanced power relationship. He who cares the least has the most power.

I do think there's ambiguity about its definition.

I agree there is ambiguity about the definition of empathy. I have learned in my own life to bypass the level of definitional molasses and dive past definitions, and even past language altogether, into the intuitive realm where thinking and understanding happens at the level of images and feelings, and into an intuitive sense of causal and geometric flow in life. Definitions take care of themselves when our intuitive sense of existence becomes more precise. The same is true between people as it is within a person.

The dialogue we are now engaged in could have become bogged down, and even lost, in a battle of definitions. It wasn’t because we bypassed talking about definitions until we engaged in a discussion about the deeper framework from which definitions arise. On this level of discussion we were readily able to find a common ground to work from in order to create the basis of shared definitions for discussion. Moreover, we are not trapped by the limitations of existing understanding and definitions in our explorations and discussions. We can openly explore ideas that go beyond the existing box created by contemporary thought and language.

Quite frankly, I have a sense of existing views and definitions of empathy but my own thinking comes more from the inside-out-- more from my own explorations of personal and empathic experience, rather than from the outside-in—more from the landscape of established academic norms. Both approaches have great value. Neither, at least in my life, is more right. I see the two not as potentially conflicting perspectives needing a hierarchy to establish dominance but as potentially paradoxical perspectives of one reality needing a dialectical resolution, a meta-perspective containing both, to create integration.

I put my perspective out there as a means of sharing my view to ask for peer review, reality test my intuitive view with other people’s experience, and to generate honest feedback of other people’s own personal perspectives that I can appreciate as having value in understanding them and to include as a means to drive the growth of my own thinking. And yes, I am also interested in where these explorations stand relative to more academic norms. I know there are people here much more knowledgeable than me in this area. I just don’t necessarily see academic norms, whether definitions, theories or paradigms, as the standard by which we need to always judge the value of our personal perspectives. However, I do see an understanding of academic norms as needing to be included in an inclusive personal view of existence.

Empathy, classically (I have an old dictionary) is defined -

'The power of projecting one's personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation.'[Gk]

I’m struggling with “projecting one’s personality.” It doesn’t feel right to my experience of it. To be more precise with my own experience I would have to say: empathy is the power of mirroring the object of experience by recreating the inner dynamics and nature of the object inside oneself.

We can recreate the inner dynamics of another person through the principle of reversing causation: we recreate the inner dynamics that causes behaviour (using the entity-to-action model of causation, as it doesn’t work with action-reaction model). We see tears and we experience the hurt that gives rise to tears. We see a boy’s behaviour being out of sync with the context of a situation (in the way described in my earlier post) and we experience his behaviour as being a manipulation for attention and self-elevation. We see the vision an author paints of reality and we experience the principles and inner dynamics of psyche that give rise to this vision.

A fascinating one: "the object", not necessarily "the person". I'm aware of that flight of insight that can take me into the workings of say, a piece of machinery. Does an architect 'feel' the internal stresses in his building design? I feel sure many of the great ones do. Intuition and induction, play a part here, I think, all combined with objective knowledge. Extend this to people, with observation of expression and body language, together with their response to pain

and pleasure, and there seem infinite possibilities.

Great insight! I know, when I used to play soccer, it was like I could feel inside the ball. I was so familiar with it, I could sense how it would react in any situation. I didn’t have to think about velocity, angle and the spin of the ball as it was coming down. I just knew where it was going. I was already thinking about what I was going to do with the ball before it landed. Add rain and my read changed but it was just as intuitive. My ability to read the ball in a way that I could sense its inner nature gave me a definite advantage at reading the bounce, gaining control of the ball and creating a chance on goal. Empathy in the physical realm is intuition inside things. It has definite survival advantage on the soccer field…or for the tribal hunter.

Somwhere, empathy came to mean compassion [Pity inclining one to spare or help.] which is why, to be clear, I call it 'empathy-compassion'. That's fine, but it can be confusing. I guess we could say that empathy per se may lead one to compassion per se: i.e. the recognition of suffering, may bring one to the action of 'sparing or helping.'

We live in a world that discourages the mature development of empathy. If empathy does not grow past the level of mirroring another’s feelings and/or vision, and our response to what we feel and see does not develop past the level of reaction, then empathy will be experienced simply as compassion in someone who has a relatively healthy sense of self.

This is where understanding the inside dynamics of narcissistic behaviour is interesting. A narcissist is very empathic. In fact, he feeds off others’ positive vision of him reflected back to him. This is what makes the narcissist so powerful. His empathy of others’ insides gives him a fountain of information to use to control and manipulate in order to feed his needs. The key fact in a narcissist is he doesn’t care about others beyond their value to feed his needs. He has empathy without compassion.

Paul

[Xray]

Evolution has given us the capacity to view the world from both a self-centric perspective with ourselves at the centre of things-- separate to those around us, and from an empathic perspective with ourselves as one amongst many perspectives-- connected to those around us. The intuitive visions each perspective creates stands at the foundation of morality, and at the foundation of moral conflict and debate. My own view is that conflicts between the two need to be resolved through more of a dialectical process than just taking sides. A not so random mutation can shape a new integrated morality.

This addresses a fundamental point concerning ethics: empathy.

Btw- holding onto our empathic perspective and all the information it provides is in our self-interest. It is an important lens necessary for healthy social dynamics.

Absolutely.

It seems to be largely missing in Objectivist culture and in Rand's work.

Imo there are indicators that Rand had problems with feeling empathy; lack of empathy also a trait her fictional heroes have in common.

[anthony]

Paul,

Your points are well taken, and need further absorption by me.

It is refreshing that from the off, you have not advocated an either-or

approach to egoism-empathy, but embrace both. This is novel, in my experience,

more so coming from a self-identified egoist. Balancing, rather than 'stacking'

them deserves more attention, I think..

And if I read you right you agree the starting place (the Self and its

healthy boundaries) is key.

I recall a period of young life (and I do not think it's uncommon) when it

seemed as if I was privy to everyone's humiliation, or discomfort and pain -

and even their hypocrisy and dishonesty. Empathy overload? How much is too much?

Again, what of experiencing empathy-compassion for suffering outside of one's

own sphere of influence? Would one restrict empathy to those known and valued?

The world is never short of suffering.

Off the scale the other way, I think, is the narcissist. "Empathy without compassion" as you so incisively see it. (Is it possible we have known the same lady?!) If you are

ever the target of a million-watt charm from someone who appears to have

read you inside-out - beware! The intense experience and thrill of the relationship

so closely mimics true, romantic love, that it may be years before you realise it was all an inversion and perversion of love. Narcissists - with their hunger for their "Narcissistic Supply"- are the Great White sharks of humanity, I believe. If you look closely, you note they do it to everybody, and are always seeking fresh blood. (But who notices it at the time...?)

Hah.

Tony

[Paul Mawdsley]

If you carry Dawkin's idea out just a bit further you find that morality has its origins in our biological evolution. There is an underlying impulse toward rectitude even if the definition of rectitude differs somewhat from culture to culture. Even the chimpanzees, nasty creatures that they are have a notion of right and wrong and they act upon it.

I like "impulse toward rectitude" as a generic description.

This points in a valuable direction. I sense the "impulse toward rectitude" has a deeper dynamic. It comes from the same base as our need for self-esteem. More specifically, it's an impulse that comes from our need for self-value in the context of our commitment to accepting personal, physical and social realities. Notice that people who do not have commitment to these realities and who settle for an illusion of self-value tend not to have such an impulse toward rectitude. Instead, these people have an impulse towards deception and manipulation of these realities. They are Rand's "Attila's" and "witch doctors."

I think that's an fair summary of Dawkins' position. To quote him from "The God Delusion":

"We now have four good Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous or 'moral' towards each other.First, there is the special case of genetic kinship. Second, there is reciprocation: the repayment of favours given, and the giving of favours in 'anticipation' of payback. Following on from this there is, third, the Darwinian benefit of acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness. And fourth... there is the particular additional benefit of conspicuous generosity as a way of buying unfakeably authentic advertising."

A pity, since Dawkins is so great in other spheres of God, religion, evolution. His reason for human altruism is biologically derived from organisms or instinctive animals in groups; also, some Trader Principle thrown in; and then there is 'second-hand' virtue to be gained from others; but, ultimately... we should be altruistic because it is self-interested to be so. Huh? Say again? It is necessary to be unselfish, to be selfish.

Why didn't he add also?: altruism just feels good.

A hodge-podge of neo- Darwinism and pragmatism is his morality far as I can see..

Furthermore, in patching together his "hodge-podge of neo-Darwinism and pragmatism," Dawkins commits what Rand called "the fallacy of the frozen abstraction" in that he equates the subject of ethics as such with the issue of how one treats other people. The possibility of an ethics of rational self-interest or more widely the possibility of a eudaimonic ethics doesn't seem to occur to him. At least I'm unaware of his having discussed the idea of an ethics the goal of which is the well-being of the moral agent. Plus he's a determinist. Not, as he's sometimes said to be, a genetic determinist. A determinist nonetheless.

Again, this opens a valuable insight. If Dawkins is not considering the possibility of "a eudaimonic ethics," he is trying to form a global vision of evolution with a lens that is blind to and excludes important information and possible integrations. It's like trying to bake a cake while ignoring the existence of eggs.

I tend to see a eudaimonic ethics as being based on a deeper principle in the organism and in the moral agent: the drive to maximize the integration of the organism. This drive applies equally to physical and neuro-psychological contexts. It subsumes the physical development of the organism, the rational self-interested development of the moral agent and the the development of a eudaimonic ethics.

Stepping outside of the box for a moment: while this drive to maximize the integration of the organism has clear survival advantage, my sense is that it is a principle that preceded natural selection in evolutionary history and operates within the context of natural selection today. Also, if we consider the existence of a drive to integration and to maximize integration as emerging from the physical universe (studies in plasma physics with force free filaments seem very suggestive here), then a potentially non-random element is introduced to random mutation. If we see a force free plasma structure as being a quantum system, around which not only ions but amino acids can come together, then we have a potential mechanism for the feedback of information between the whole system (organism) and the central parts of the system (the genes). This might work by the same principle as the whole system informs the behaviour of an electron in the double slit experiment. It's just a more complex system with more complex parts. In principle, the genes could receive information about the whole organism, via a quantum feedback between the whole and the parts of a system, allowing the phenotype to influence the genotype and individual development to effect evolution.

(This way of seeing things, incidentally, could point the way to a solution of the "mind/body" problem where, as NB suggested, mind and body both come from a common underlying reality, just as the solid structures and plasma structures can come together from an underlying common physical universe.)

Imo there are indicators that Rand had problems with feeling empathy; lack of empathy also a trait her fictional heroes have in common.

I tend to agree. My own breaking free of my randroid phase emerged from a battle inside me to not let go of my empathic self. Taking in Rand's perspective and her philosophy required that I shut down empathy to those I cared about who didn't live by her values. Judgement and exclusion, not understanding and inclusion, became the context in which I came to see all my relationships in that time. I've been working on finding balance between my egoism and my empathic perspective ever since.

Paul,

Your points are well taken, and need further absorption by me.

It is refreshing that from the off, you have not advocated an either-or

approach to egoism-empathy, but embrace both. This is novel, in my experience,

more so coming from a self-identified egoist. Balancing, rather than 'stacking'

them deserves more attention, I think..

And if I read you right you agree the starting place (the Self and its

healthy boundaries) is key.

I recall a period of young life (and I do not think it's uncommon) when it

seemed as if I was privy to everyone's humiliation, or discomfort and pain -

and even their hypocrisy and dishonesty. Empathy overload? How much is too much?

Again, what of experiencing empathy-compassion for suffering outside of one's

own sphere of influence? Would one restrict empathy to those known and valued?

The world is never short of suffering.

Off the scale the other way, I think, is the narcissist. "Empathy without compassion" as you so incisively see it. (Is it possible we have known the same lady?!) If you are

ever the target of a million-watt charm from someone who appears to have

read you inside-out - beware! The intense experience and thrill of the relationship

so closely mimics true, romantic love, that it may be years before you realise it was all an inversion and perversion of love. Narcissists - with their hunger for their "Narcissistic Supply"- are the Great White sharks of humanity, I believe. If you look closely, you note they do it to everybody, and are always seeking fresh blood. (But who notices it at the time...?)

Hah.

Tony

Tony,

The starting point is definitely the self. It is reconnecting with all those parts within us that we have disowned, ironically and mistakenly, in our struggle for integration. this starting point is in seeking integration and balance between the part of us that is more of an unconscious, holistic, organic flow and the part that we see as conscious, focused, objective and chosen. It is also also in seeking integration and balance between our self-centric perspective and our empathic perspective. Within the empathic perspective is the need to establish our boundaries so our ego can be self-assured and occupy independent and autonomous space in the empathic realm.

Twenty years ago I got onto the subject of empathy with a woman. She told me the story of her four year old son sitting in McDonald's. He kept watching this old man who was sitting in the restaurant. She asked the boy not to stare and told him to eat his meal. He listened to neither instruction. When they were done and preparing to leave, his mother told him to put his waste in the garbage. Again, he ignored the instruction. He walked over to the man and gave him his meal. The man simply said, "Thank you." The boy walked over to his mom and said, "That man was hungry."

Empathy is very powerful in us at a young age. It has the power to motivate us as intensely as direct personal experience. Empathic feelings and images are experienced as being as real as direct perceptions. We take other people's feelings and visions inside us and, yes, this can be overwhelming. We can feel powerless in the face of other people's suffering.

There is another side to empathy though that can be even more traumatic. We take in other people's feelings and visions of ourselves. Given the unhealthy, self-serving nature of how so many people feel about and envision others, this can be an excruciatingly painful experience, especially as a child. This is what so many of our psychological defense mechanisms are designed to keep out. Unfortunately, this is exactly what our parenting cultures, and our cultures in general, are design to use and control, manipulate and exploit, creating a vast unhealthy, codependent matrix.

As adults it is definitely a good idea to "restrict empathy to those known and valued." However, by this I don't mean turning empathy on and off. Empathy is a means of perception, of acquiring information about another person's feelings, way of seeing things and their motives. It is wise to know and be confident in your own perspective so it doesn't get swallowed up by someone else's and so you can distinguish between yours and someone else's inside of you. This is the ego occupying space and having well established boundaries in the empathic realm. This is not turning off empathy. What you turn off is the reactive flow from the empathic perspective. Instead, you turn on judgement of the empathic information and turn on chosen responses instead of reactions.

Think of this: how wise would it be to allow an ex-lover, who has come to see you with hatred and to spit venom, to have free access to your open, empathic flow? Basically it would be an open invitation saying, "Please, please fuck me up!" Because they are hurt, and they believe you are the cause of this hurt, they seriously do want to fuck you up. In every interaction you need all the information you can get about how their feelings, their way of seeing things and their motives are going to effect you and those you care about. You seriously need the information your empathy provides, even with the person who hates you most in this world. You just don't have to give their perspective the status of reality inside you.

Btw- Yes, I believe we have known the same lady...LMFAO!

Paul

[Xray]

Xray also has joined discussion of the nexus between operationalizing 'altruism' and Objectivist verities -- offering a broad assertion that 'altruism' does not exist in humans.

The problem with the term 'altruism' that it was orignially coined as an ideological term (by Auguste Comte),

belonging to his code of prescriptive (not descriptive ethics).

Comte's 'altruism' is to be understood as an "ought to": the individual is to submit to the collective.

Interesting that Comte himself called his "Positivism" a religion. Many ideologies have religious characteristics indeed.

But over time, the orignial (purely ideological) term "altruism" has grown legs and is now being used in all kinds of other contexts - to such an extent that one can develop a (philosophical) allergy against it. At least that's how I sometimes feel when watching animal films where some apes groom each other and the commentator calls this "altruistic" behavior.

Due to the confusion the term "altruism" can create, I try to avoid it and replace it by explaining the act in question.

So as for the grooming apes: it is no benevolent act they consciously decide to perform or have had to learn; it is something their brain is dispositioned for, it is biologically hardwired, so to speak. Just as our impulse is biologically hardwired to pet a young puppy dog or other baby mammals.

[Xray]

This is where understanding the inside dynamics of narcissistic behaviour is interesting. A narcissist is very empathic. In fact, he feeds off others’ positive vision of him reflected back to him. This is what makes the narcissist so powerful. His empathy of others’ insides gives him a fountain of information to use to control and manipulate in order to feed his needs. The key fact in a narcissist is he doesn’t care about others beyond their value to feed his needs. He has empathy without compassion.

I connection with manipulative and controlling behavior, I would use the term "intuition" instead of empathy. For intuition (the ability to sense what makes others tick) does not have the positive connotation with 'caring about' that empathy has. It is more 'neutral', so to speak.

I think an empathic person is always also intuitive, but an intuitive person is not necessarily also empathic. Con artists for example are mostly highly intuitive but unempathic toward those they deceive.

Stepping outside of the box for a moment: while this drive to maximize the integration of the organism has clear survival advantage, my sense is that it is a principle that preceded natural selection in evolutionary history and operates within the context of natural selection today. Also, if we consider the existence of a drive to integration and to maximize integration as emerging from the physical universe (studies in plasma physics with force free filaments seem very suggestive here), then a potentially non-random element is introduced to random mutation. If we see a force free plasma structure as being a quantum system, around which not only ions but amino acids can come together, then we have a potential mechanism for the feedback of information between the whole system (organism) and the central parts of the system (the genes). This might work by the same principle as the whole system informs the behaviour of an electron in the double slit experiment. It's just a more complex system with more complex parts. In principle, the genes could receive information about the whole organism, via a quantum feedback between the whole and the parts of a system, allowing the phenotype to influence the genotype and individual development to effect evolution.

Would this mean that matter can intelligently organize itself without a conscious mind (or any other kind of 'programmer') being needed to perform the act?

[Paul Mawdsley]

I connection with manipulative and controlling behavior, I would use the term "intuition" instead of empathy. For intuition (the ability to sense what makes others tick) does not have the positive connotation with 'caring about' that empathy has. It is more 'neutral', so to speak.

I think an empathic person is always also intuitive, but an intuitive person is not necessarily also empathic. Con artists for example are mostly highly intuitive but unempathic toward those they deceive.

Xray,

I have struggled between these two terms myself, so I empathize and sympathize with where you are coming from. With respect to the 'caring about’ issue, I think we need to consider the difference between "empathy" and “sympathy” here. These definitions from Dictionary.com illustrate:

em·pa·thy

   [em-puh-thee] Show IPA

noun

1.

the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

Contrast this with:

sym·pa·thy

   [sim-puh-thee] Show IPA noun, pluralsym·pa·thies, adjective

noun

1.

harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another.

2.

the harmony of feeling naturally existing between persons of like tastes or opinion or of congenial dispositions.

3.

the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, especially in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.

If we read into these definitions a little, we can see that empathy is the taking in of another's perspective while holding onto the possibility that our own self-centric perspective may be quite different. Sympathy is the taking in of another's emotional perspective, that is in harmony with one’s own, and reacting from a place of shared feeling or compassion.

Sympathy is simple and reactive. Empathy opens the door to much greater complexity in processing and responding. It even opens up the door to not caring about the particular perspective a person is projecting, or behaviour they are engaging in (beyond what it says about their insides), while still caring about the person underneath who is more than any particular perspective or behaviour.

I went through a difficult period with my daughter when she was 7 and 8 years old. Her mother and I were both quite blind to emotional deceptions as our daughter was growing up to this point and she developed considerable skills at manipulating our reactions through projecting unauthentic feelings. She was very good at it. She reached a point where she could not only cry as required to get what she wanted, she could escalate this state to the point of throwing up, all to trigger sympathetic responses. I could feel something wasn't true but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I had to learn to dig deeper into my empathic experience with her, and to break my genetic/environmental programming that triggered my reactions, so I could open to see what was happening deeper inside her and inside me. What I saw was a hurt little girl who felt largely invisible in her life, who had a keen ability to feel inside people by watching non-verbal clues and who had discovered how to get her needs met by triggering certain motivating feelings in those around her. From here I learned to take my triggers away and to see her behaviour for what it really was: codependent, controlling and manipulative. It was unhealthy. I never stopped caring for her but I stopped caring for her behaviour-- meaning I stopped seeing it as being a reflection of what she truly felt. I came to recognize the difference between real crying and unauthentic crying; between real hurt and unauthentic hurt. In so doing, I gave her visibility, I validated her true self and I started to break down this unauthentic other self that acted as a shield and a mask, built to unconsciously manipulate her environment.

The caring was constant. In fact, it went deeper...and continues to deepen every day. This caring is separate to my empathy for her perspective and the behaviour that comes from her perspective. I learned that you can care about, esteem and connect to someone's core self without agreeing with their perspective or behaviour in a given context, but it is empathy that still tells me what a person’s perspective is that gives rise to their behaviour. Separating her from her perspective and her behaviour, and separating caring for her from liking her perspective and behaviour, was a powerful step forward in my development and in our relationship. It allowed me to create a level of unconditional love while challenging her unhealthy perspective and behaviours so she could reassess and make different choices.

Using intuition to represent what “empathic perspective” means to me doesn’t work. Intuition is a larger category that contains the empathic perspective. Most broadly, there are three types of intuition from which to view the universe: there is self-centric intuition, objective intuition and there is empathic intuition. Self-centric intuition is our ability to sense what makes things tick, as an inside observer of ourselves and an outside observer of everything else, standing at the centre of our universe. Objective intuition is our ability to sense what makes things tick as an outside observer from any and all points in the universe. Our empathic intuition is our ability to sense what makes people (and things) tick as an inside observer from any and all points in the universe. The first sees things from the perspective of a central part (ourselves) that contributes, with other parts (other people and things), to make up a whole. The second is the “god’s eye” perspective, seeing things from outside of the system. The third sees things as a whole made up of parts, of which we are just one. There is one universe with three unique orientations to view it. No view of the universe can be complete without including all three.

Stepping outside of the box for a moment: while this drive to maximize the integration of the organism has clear survival advantage, my sense is that it is a principle that preceded natural selection in evolutionary history and operates within the context of natural selection today. Also, if we consider the existence of a drive to integration and to maximize integration as emerging from the physical universe (studies in plasma physics with force free filaments seem very suggestive here), then a potentially non-random element is introduced to random mutation. If we see a force free plasma structure as being a quantum system, around which not only ions but amino acids can come together, then we have a potential mechanism for the feedback of information between the whole system (organism) and the central parts of the system (the genes). This might work by the same principle as the whole system informs the behaviour of an electron in the double slit experiment. It's just a more complex system with more complex parts. In principle, the genes could receive information about the whole organism, via a quantum feedback between the whole and the parts of a system, allowing the phenotype to influence the genotype and individual development to effect evolution.

Would this mean that matter can intelligently organize itself without a conscious mind (or any other kind of 'programmer') being needed to perform the act?

I’m struggling with “intelligently organize itself.” As I think you are trying to make clear, there is no intelligent designer. There is no God (God is best seen as a metaphor). There is matter/energy and the forms it can take when it organizes according to the principles we discover through science, and through our personal explorations from an inside perspective as an organism that is part of this universe. From this starting point, I find it hard to consider random mutation to be an engine fit to drive evolution in a way that fits observation and the fossil record, and in a way that fits my sense of causation. There is the missing element of whole to part reciprocal causation missing in many of our theories because it has been excluded by an underdeveloped intuitive causal lens that was proven completely inadequate by QM.

A drive to integration and to maximize integration, arising naturally from the principles of plasma physics combining with stable matter structures and a whole to part reciprocal causation, simply injects a non-random element into mutation and evolution. It means that genetic mutations would be generated and attracted to certain phenotypic possibilities that increase integration, so that the successful striving of the organism can be recorded in the genetic code for future generations. There is this possibility of a feedback loop, between the whole organism and the parts of the organism, involved in shaping the development of the organism within its lifetime and involved in carrying genetic information to the next generation. This can be seen as contributing, along with random mutation and natural selection, to the shaping of evolution.

Can this be considered a means of matter intelligently organizing itself? I suppose from an outside perspective of an intelligent observer. What it does, though, is provide the basic principle for need motivated behaviour, or life, emerging from inanimate matter/energy. Need motivated behaviour with a feedback loop for the success of a given action, combined with a way to record the relative success of new structures and behaviors within the organism, provides the basis of learning, growth and development. Deeply established successful new structures and habits in the organism, themselves being recorded and embedded in the genetic code, would make giant leaps forward in just a few generations possible. From the outside these might appear “intelligent.” In reality it is just a strange attractor in a dynamic system with no intelligent goal directedness.

Now that I’ve gone this far outside of the box, here’s something else I’ve wondered about. If we consider the possibility that selection could be taking place at the level of individuals, and some individuals in a given culture could make advances within their own lifetimes, wouldn’t it make sense that natural selection would provide a mechanism to share our advancements with others around us? This thought strikes me every time I get hit with the flu.

Paul

[Guyau]

. . .

Furthermore, in patching together his "hodge-podge of neo-Darwinism and pragmatism," Dawkins commits what Rand called "the fallacy of the frozen abstraction" in that he equates the subject of ethics as such with the issue of how one treats other people. The possibility of an ethics of rational self-interest or more widely the possibility of a eudaimonic ethics doesn't seem to occur to him. At least I'm unaware of his having discussed the idea of an ethics the goal of which is the well-being of the moral agent. Plus he's a determinist. Not, as he's sometimes said to be, a genetic determinist. A determinist nonetheless.

Ellen

This is somewhat more general than the topic of this thread, but I thought it might be of interest to know of the list under the “Further Reading” tab at Uses and Abuses of Biology.

[Mikee]

This is somewhat more general than the topic of this thread, but I thought it might be of interest to know of the list under the “Further Reading” tab at Uses and Abuses of Biology.

Stephen, I was delighted to find a book I've actually read on the "B" list: Matt Ridley's "The Agile Gene". I have been a fan of Matt Ridley for several years. Because of my own ignorance (I lack the background and inclination to be a scholar) your reading lists are largely impenetrable to me. Nevertheless I always look forward to your contributions and comments and try to glean whatever I can from them. Thank you for all you do and who you are.

[BaalChatzaf]

Shows: Empiricists will not take kindly to conceptualization.

This empiricist (me) deals with facts first and concepts second.

As to knowledge of consciousness, I know mine first hand. l suppose you and others are also conscious too, but I have no first hand knowledge of that. I never know what other people intend or feel. I only know their visible public actions when I see, hear, or smell them. I am the "fair witness" from Heinlein's -Strange in a Strange Land-. That is why I take people at their word, verbatim and literally. I do not read "between the lines" because (a) I can't and (b) even if I could, I do not wish to. I take the trouble to say what I mean and mean what I say. I expect others to do so (if they can).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Paul Mawdsley]

This empiricist (me) deals with facts first and concepts second.

As to knowledge of consciousness, I know mine first hand. l suppose you and others are also conscious too, but I have no first hand knowledge of that. I never know what other people intend or feel. I only know their visible public actions when I see, hear, or smell them. I am the "fair witness" from Heinlein's -Strange in a Strange Land-. That is why I take people at their word, verbatim and literally. I do not read "between the lines" because (a) I can't and (b) even if I could, I do not wish to. I take the trouble to say what I mean and mean what I say. I expect others to do so (if they can).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob,

For most, evolution and individual development have provided us with the capacity for empathy-- ie: automated perspective taking built into our nature on the levels of emotion, perception, intuition and conceptualization. I recall you saying you have Asperger's at some point. A lack of a capacity for empathy is one of the most striking features of Asperger's. I also think I recall you saying you cannot introspect the way others report looking into themselves. It strikes me that you are built to be the ultimate empiricist. You have neither the weaknesses nor the strengths that come with the need to include, integrate and balance an empathic lens. You experience the world from the facts-up, without other people's concepts competing with your own conceptual development inside you.

As you point out, you are a person who "deals with facts first and concepts second." Because empathy works by taking in another's perspective and experiencing it as though it were your own, one of the unhealthy ways it can be used is to replace one's own conceptual development-- starting with the facts and working from the inside-out-- with someone else's ready-made concepts that come from the outside-in. It seems you bypass this issue by not taking in another's perspective and experiencing as your own. I have no doubt you have the ability to evaluate the objectivity of a perspective by looking at the same facts it is pointing to and judging its relationship to the facts but you would not have the ability to see the world from within another's conceptual framework. Am I right about this?

Paul

[BaalChatzaf]

This empiricist (me) deals with facts first and concepts second.

As to knowledge of consciousness, I know mine first hand. l suppose you and others are also conscious too, but I have no first hand knowledge of that. I never know what other people intend or feel. I only know their visible public actions when I see, hear, or smell them. I am the "fair witness" from Heinlein's -Strange in a Strange Land-. That is why I take people at their word, verbatim and literally. I do not read "between the lines" because (a) I can't and (b) even if I could, I do not wish to. I take the trouble to say what I mean and mean what I say. I expect others to do so (if they can).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob,

For most, evolution and individual development have provided us with the capacity for empathy-- ie: automated perspective taking built into our nature on the levels of emotion, perception, intuition and conceptualization. I recall you saying you have Asperger's at some point. A lack of a capacity for empathy is one of the most striking features of Asperger's. I also think I recall you saying you cannot introspect the way others report looking into themselves. It strikes me that you are built to be the ultimate empiricist. You have neither the weaknesses nor the strengths that come with the need to include, integrate and balance an empathic lens. You experience the world from the facts-up, without other people's concepts competing with your own conceptual development inside you.

As you point out, you are a person who "deals with facts first and concepts second." Because empathy works by taking in another's perspective and experiencing it as though it were your own, one of the unhealthy ways it can be used is to replace one's own conceptual development-- starting with the facts and working from the inside-out-- with someone else's ready-made concepts that come from the outside-in. It seems you bypass this issue by not taking in another's perspective and experiencing as your own. I have no doubt you have the ability to evaluate the objectivity of a perspective by looking at the same facts it is pointing to and judging its relationship to the facts but you would not have the ability to see the world from within another's conceptual framework. Am I right about this?

Paul

Aspies learn empathy "by the numbers" in a purely inductive and empirical manner. You normals can do it by the time you are four. I was in my twenties before I got empathy down well enough to pass for human. Aspies are not stupid. They are "mind blind". To this day I am unable to introspect more than trivially. I can remember what I did, what I said, what I saw and even what I thought, but I have little intuitive grasp as to why I feel what I feel. Since I do not have to know why, I pretty well ignore it. And I have no interest in going into the damp cellar of my being (I am not really that interesting). I pay attention mostly to what is going on outside of my skin. The cosmos is more interesting than I will ever be.

As to seeing the world as others see it, I can do geometrical transformations and visualize the world from other points of origin. But that is spatial and temporal. I am at a loss to do it emotionally. I pay as little attention to my "feelings" (other than raw pain and other physical discomforts) as I can. My feelings and $3.69 will by me a plain donut and a medium coffee at the local donut shop. I can conceptualize logically, mathematically and geometrical (I am a champ at it). But emotionally? Forget it. I have not that talent. I should have been born on Vulcan like Spock. Alas I was born on Earth which in some sense is the wrong planet for me. I regard emotions as ka ka and dreck. For me they are noise.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Xray]

I pay as little attention to my "feelings" (other than raw pain and other physical discomforts) as I can. My feelings and $3.69 will by me a plain donut and a medium coffee at the local donut shop. I can conceptualize logically, mathematically and geometrical (I am a champ at it). But emotionally? Forget it. I have not that talent. I should have been born on Vulcan like Spock. Alas I was born on Earth which in some sense is the wrong planet for me. I regard emotions as ka ka and dreck. For me they are noise.

Does this mean you are unable to feel emotional pain?

[BaalChatzaf]

Does this mean you are unable to feel emotional pain?

I feel the loss caused by death as much as you do (that is genetically wired in). I just regard that pain as an intruder, to be passed by, dismissed and forgotten asap.

Anticipating your next question, yes I care about ,my spouse, children and grandchildren. They are an extension of me. I do care about myself, so by extension I care about my flesh and blood. I take family ties very seriously. Love of self and love of my closest flesh and blood merge. I do not have love of abstractions, such as mankind etc. etc. I acknowledge my kinship with my DNA cousins but I do not have a feeling of love for them. I suppose, if we were ever attacked by aliens, I would side with my fellow earthlings. I feel a need to do my share of maintaining my house and household and that means by extension my country. America is my house so I will do my reasonable portion to maintain it, for my own sake.

I am not devoid of emotion, but I do not put much stock in it either. Feelings are more often than not a distraction and a noise source for me.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Theodore]

While I do believe in evolution and I do not disagree with the facts of Darwinism, i do not disagree with the facts. Unfortunately Darwinism is mostly a supposition looking for validation. The hype in biology is genetic determinism, a concept which disgusts me. The idea that we are all organic robots is rather repulsive.

If you ask me Mises explains things better than any Altruist gene.

[BaalChatzaf]

While I do believe in evolution and I do not disagree with the facts of Darwinism, i do not disagree with the facts. Unfortunately Darwinism is mostly a supposition looking for validation. The hype in biology is genetic determinism, a concept which disgusts me. The idea that we are all organic robots is rather repulsive.

If you ask me Mises explains things better than any Altruist gene.

I seriously doubt there is an "altruist gene". There are probably many genes and epi-genetic factors which account for kin selection and altruism. Dawkin's would (most likely) attribute it to a "selfish gene" which is the notion that genes produce whatever action in their carrier which will promote their successful replication.

We are "meat machines". Our operation does not differ markedly from the function of any other complex biological being on this planet. We are all "DNA cousins" and that includes even the plants.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Theodore]

While I do believe in evolution and I do not disagree with the facts of Darwinism, i do not disagree with the facts. Unfortunately Darwinism is mostly a supposition looking for validation. The hype in biology is genetic determinism, a concept which disgusts me. The idea that we are all organic robots is rather repulsive.

If you ask me Mises explains things better than any Altruist gene.

I seriously doubt there is an "altruist gene". There are probably many genes and epi-genetic factors which account for kin selection and altruism. Dawkin's would (most likely) attribute it to a "selfish gene" which is the notion that genes produce whatever action in their carrier which will promote their successful replication.

We are "meat machines". Our operation does not differ markedly from the function of any other complex biological being on this planet. We are all "DNA cousins" and that includes even the plants.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Starting with the "selfish gene" own that book, hate it. Its ideology looking for science.

As far as being meat machines.... This meat machine may have much in common with a dog genetically, however I am not a dog, and my grey matter is much more complex than a dogs. When you get right down to it everything is made up of matter does that mean there is no difference between you and a rock? Genetic deterministic deny mind, and they deny out of hand any research which show the mind influences the body just as much as the body influences the mind. What these "scientists" are looking for is justification for hiving, or justification for actions and thoughts they do not like. Its their way of saying "the devil made me do it." cheap, lazy, and insane.

[BaalChatzaf]

As far as being meat machines.... This meat machine may have much in common with a dog genetically, however I am not a dog, and my grey matter is much more complex than a dogs. When you get right down to it everything is made up of matter does that mean there is no difference between you and a rock? Genetic deterministic deny mind, and they deny out of hand any research which show the mind influences the body just as much as the body influences the mind. What these "scientists" are looking for is justification for hiving, or justification for actions and thoughts they do not like. Its their way of saying "the devil made me do it." cheap, lazy, and insane.

Our difference from Dogs, Deers and Cows is more a matter of degree than a difference in kind.

And humans do have the ability to over ride their built in urges (to a greater degree than other primates) so we are responsible for what we do.

Where the Creationists go really, really wrong is the denial of our kinship with other living beings on this planet. We are all "DNA Cousins".

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Theodore]

Baal

That is not the only place they go wrong but yes I agree. The problem with the orthodox atheist view is they carry evolution too far with many denying thought.

[BaalChatzaf]

Baal

That is not the only place they go wrong but yes I agree. The problem with the orthodox atheist view is they carry evolution too far with many denying thought.

Thought is as physical as rain. One of these days have a PET scan done on you and you can see your brain thinking in real time.

Ba'al Chatzaf