Topic: As atheists know, you can be good without God

[akimori makoto]

Sure, you can say morality is the result of biological processes, which are in turn the result of chemical processes, which are in turn the result of physical processes, but once you do so, you are no longer talking the same language as Socrates or Kant.

I agree that stating that morality ("human behavior") is a result of biological and chemical processes, gives a large context in which to understand Socrates and Kant wrote. I don't see how it would contradict Socrates or Kant, though.

Are we using the word descriptively or prescriptively?

Both, but I'm also placing biological and chemical processes within the larger context of divine wisdom.

Thank you.

Part of my argument is that to use the word descriptively is to deprive it of its force and meaning.

Sure, all people have "morality" (understood descriptively), but do they have morality (understood prescriptively)?

I don't think my argument is at odds with yours, both properly understood.

[Jetavan]

But naturalism lacks a proper explanation for these things, that's what it means that there is no good without God.

Think of it this way - meta-ethically speaking it is necessary to have God in order to justify morality. Without God as the origin of morals then meta-ethically we have no morals. On the more normative side, however, an atheist can certainly act in a moral manner. But such an action is only explainable via theism, stating that the atheist is in the image of God and therefore will seek to act morally due to that image. Under a naturalistic aspect, we are left without a proper explanation as to why people are moral (or immoral).

My morals are moral to me, because i believe they are.

You have just proven my point.  Without God, all a person has is a series of personal preferences.  There is no intrinsic right and wrong, but merely your personal preference of whether or not to engage in murder, much like a personal has a preference of whether or not to mix orange soda and Sprite.  You may find such a concoction to be repulsive, but it is not inherently wrong.

Without God, there is no intrinsic right and wrong - there is no moral and immoral.  There is nothing but preference.

Couldn't one argue that with God, there is no intrinsic right and wrong -- because what is right or wrong depends upon what God decides is right and wrong? I'm thinking of Abraham's attempt to sacrifice Isaac, at God's insistence, for example.

[HabteSelassie]

greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

@theo:
 
Firstly, the idea that Aztecs enjoyed human sacrifice begs all sorts of questions that I raised above, and that Habte Selassie also raised. You don't have to enjoy doing what you feel you have to do. Has it occurred to you that the Aztecs didn't enjoy carrying out these practices, but nevertheless felt compelled by superstition to engage in them? As an analogy, think of all those women in China who for centuries had their daughters' feet bound. Yes, it was the women who did this to each other, just as Somali women mutilate the genitals of their daughters. Do you think a single one of them enjoyed it? And yet as Pindar said "Custom is the ruler of all".

Even if they did enjoy it, it was their enemies they were sacrificing, so there's no question that their customs would detract from their overall fitness as a society. On the contrary, it enhanced it.

And if humanity evolved to be repelled by such behavior, that does not mean certain cultures couldn't develop in contrary directions. After all, our innate ability to feel empathy for others' pain is balanced by our innate ability to feel bloodthirsty rage against our enemies. Or do you think only born sociopaths are capable of killing? In different cultures in different contexts the two tendencies will be developed or suppressed in favor of the competing tendency. There is no "apex" of morality in the Darwinian framework, just as there is no "progress". It just so happens that our current cultural environment, which minimizes competition for resources, encourages the innate empathetic side of our collective psyche to be dominant. In less economically developed societies, people are used to harder struggle and tolerate a higher level of pain and cruelty. Even Orthodox nations tolerated judicial and non-judicial torture, mutilation and execution at times when everyone's pain threshold was considerably higher.

This is like, in fact is is genius, Post of the Month quality for sure

Then, through at least the last 100,000 years of evolution we can add to natural selection artificial selection. If you go back far enough, you will see that rape was largely condemned as a violation of the man's (be it the father's or mate's/husband's) property rights and it threatened his genetic line, so he and others of power and influence in the tribe, acted to protect their survival and procreation by killing the guilty party. Over the years, those born with the strongest sexual inclinations, ones that caused them to go outside the bounds of what came to be regarded as socially acceptable, were killed...of course, those with no desire to reproduce may not have been killed, but they were also much less likely to reproduce. The result was that those who were most inclined to justify rape because of a strong and primitive reproductive desire were artificially removed from the gene pool and now we're at the point that, on average (of course there are outliers), we consider it inherently morally reprehensible without having to resort to property rights or a desire to ensure the integrity of our genetic line; and, of course, this has all run in parallel with the evolution of our brains and our capacity to reason and the cultural evolution that this element of biological evolution has allowed. We weren't always like this, this mindset and our modern reasoning capabilities are a result of thousands of generations of evolutionary selection, both natural and, more recently, artificial.

However this I don't like, you've to heavily idealized the actual process of evolution, which by all accounts, natural selection is really a coincidence of the favoritism of environmental circumstances.  How did camouflage evolve? In the discussions at school with my students we sometimes speak anthropomorphically about natural selection and evolution, almost as if the animals themselves chose consciously to adapt and evolve certain traits.  This is simply nonsensical! Species don't chose to evolve, the environmental circumstances favor certain features over others, and the way in which these features evolve is through a combination of purely RANDOM mutation and further sexual reproduction where even if species mate selectively, none-the-less the combination of genes is randomized.  Both result not necessarily in conscious or strategic evolution, rather purely serendipitous.  Camouflage for example evolves as animals when the environment favors one kind of marking over another as an animal with some markings survives and reproduces more successfully where as the previous versions eventually go extinct.  Kodak bears are genetically identical with brown bears, and even sometimes swim back to shore in Canada and live out as brown bears.  How did the brown bear turn white? It surely didn't consciously decide this change, rather the snow white environment favored the eventual transition as lighter and lighter brown bears reproduced more successfully than darker brown bears until inevitably they turned white! Then in time the white bears out competed the fully brown bears and the brown bears either left or died off and after a certain amount of time the genetic differences get so strong that they become separate species.  At this time Kodak and brown bears can still fully reproduce like Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox are in full communion

Now that we've gotten the science out of the way, lets look at this quoted discussion about the cultural evolution of certain human traits in relation to natural selection. I'm sorry but I just do buy into the influence of reproductive instinct and natural selection on the evolution of human psychology and culture.  Yes, human beings have a fundamental, biological drive to reproduce, as do ALL living things, but just like all other living things, we are not solely defined by this urge just as we are no more defined by our urges to defecate! Animals do not live solely to reproduce, and sometimes scientists in their studies and theories forget that somethings live just to live, and reproducing a facet of this existing.  There is far more to life than just reproduction, and it is not the sole driving force, Freud was also mistaken.  I just think you have oversimplified the process and factors involved.  Culture is precisely what living things, be it humans or flowers, have inherent to their life which defines them beyond reproduction and in fact counters the forces of natural selection and nature.  Culture is beyond instinct and in fact it controls instincts.  Humans are not the only social animals with stratified societies and complex sociocultural patterns, and these are really beyond evolutionary explanation either in humans or animals! Species do many things to counter natural selection and ensure survival of even non-reproductive members counter to the instinctive drives or reproduction because while all universally share them as DNA bearing creatures, surely our lives are more beautifully complicated then that, even if solely defined by our numerous primal urges such as hunger, companionship, reproduction, fear, and pleasure! After all, we are often hungry for different things, seek companionship for different reasons, purposely avoid reproducing, deny fear, and have different definitions of pleasure. 

stay blessed,
habte selassie

[celticfan1888]

If morality comes from evolution and reason, then where did evolution and reason come from? Hmmm....

Well I believe in evolution, but God gave us morality and reason. 

[bogdan]

But naturalism lacks a proper explanation for these things, that's what it means that there is no good without God.

Think of it this way - meta-ethically speaking it is necessary to have God in order to justify morality. Without God as the origin of morals then meta-ethically we have no morals. On the more normative side, however, an atheist can certainly act in a moral manner. But such an action is only explainable via theism, stating that the atheist is in the image of God and therefore will seek to act morally due to that image. Under a naturalistic aspect, we are left without a proper explanation as to why people are moral (or immoral).

My morals are moral to me, because i believe they are.

You have just proven my point.  Without God, all a person has is a series of personal preferences.  There is no intrinsic right and wrong, but merely your personal preference of whether or not to engage in murder, much like a personal has a preference of whether or not to mix orange soda and Sprite.  You may find such a concoction to be repulsive, but it is not inherently wrong.

Without God, there is no intrinsic right and wrong - there is no moral and immoral.  There is nothing but preference.

Couldn't one argue that with God, there is no intrinsic right and wrong -- because what is right or wrong depends upon what God decides is right and wrong? I'm thinking of Abraham's attempt to sacrifice Isaac, at God's insistence, for example.

I would say right and wrong are defined relative to God's will. Since God is good, His will is good, however it is manifest (we cannot judge such things by human standards).

Was it wrong for Joshua to slaughter every living thing in various cities—men, women, children, and animals? It was not, because without slaughtering them, Israel could not be established, and so Israel could not have produced the all-holy Theotokos, and therefore Christ could not be born. I think the divinely-ordained violence of the OT can ultimately be explained as necessary in order for Christ to be born—who then did away with such violence once and for all.

[GiC]

However this I don't like, you've to heavily idealized the actual process of evolution, which by all accounts, natural selection is really a coincidence of the favoritism of environmental circumstances.  How did camouflage evolve? In the discussions at school with my students we sometimes speak anthropomorphically about natural selection and evolution, almost as if the animals themselves chose consciously to adapt and evolve certain traits.  This is simply nonsensical! Species don't chose to evolve, the environmental circumstances favor certain features over others, and the way in which these features evolve is through a combination of purely RANDOM mutation and further sexual reproduction where even if species mate selectively, none-the-less the combination of genes is randomized.  Both result not necessarily in conscious or strategic evolution, rather purely serendipitous.  Camouflage for example evolves as animals when the environment favors one kind of marking over another as an animal with some markings survives and reproduces more successfully where as the previous versions eventually go extinct.  Kodak bears are genetically identical with brown bears, and even sometimes swim back to shore in Canada and live out as brown bears.  How did the brown bear turn white? It surely didn't consciously decide this change, rather the snow white environment favored the eventual transition as lighter and lighter brown bears reproduced more successfully than darker brown bears until inevitably they turned white! Then in time the white bears out competed the fully brown bears and the brown bears either left or died off and after a certain amount of time the genetic differences get so strong that they become separate species.  At this time Kodak and brown bears can still fully reproduce like Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox are in full communion

It may have become confusing but in my post I discussed both natural and artificial selection. The death penalty, castration, and even family extermination have been used throughout human history and these are, in a very real sense, a form of artificial selection: the tribe making a conscience decision to remove an individual, and in some cases even his entire genetic line, from the gene pool. Maybe they didn't think about it in those terms (though in the case of family extermination, they may very well have), though that's exactly what they did.

As for natural selection, it's certainly true that the species does not determine how they evolve, that would be artificial selection, but I don't think it's incorrect to speak of the system as 'choosing' certain traits over others, it may not be a conscience choice, but an algorithmic choice is made: creatures and species that can survive and reproduce get to pass on their genes and influence the future of evolution, those that cannot survive and reproduce do not get to do so. So the system is optimizing all the elements for one characteristic: survivability. Yes, it can often be environment-specific, but since environments change over the ages there are many valuable environment-independent traits that get passed on as well.

Now that we've gotten the science out of the way, lets look at this quoted discussion about the cultural evolution of certain human traits in relation to natural selection. I'm sorry but I just do buy into the influence of reproductive instinct and natural selection on the evolution of human psychology and culture.  Yes, human beings have a fundamental, biological drive to reproduce, as do ALL living things, but just like all other living things, we are not solely defined by this urge just as we are no more defined by our urges to defecate!

The very nature of the system requires optimization for survival and reproduction and survival is only important through reproductive age, of course certain species can have various other characteristics, but these are the two constants across all living things from humans to insects to flora to bacteria. They are very strong and driving forces that must be strongly present for a species to survive. And, yes, there are outliers, but evolution is a game of means.

Animals do not live solely to reproduce, and sometimes scientists in their studies and theories forget that somethings live just to live, and reproducing a facet of this existing.  There is far more to life than just reproduction, and it is not the sole driving force, Freud was also mistaken.  I just think you have oversimplified the process and factors involved.

Of course I've oversimplified it, this is a web forum, I'm making a casual argument, not presenting a scientific dissertation. Humans have evolved a remarkable capacity for logic and reason, which we no doubt evolved to give us a survival advantage, but we have done much, much more with it than that. But still, despite our accomplishments, we have a fundamental desire to survive and to reproduce (or at least engage in the reproductive act, our intellect has allowed us to separate the pleasure of the act from the consequences of the act and make decisions balancing our desire to survive (kids are expensive and don't help personal survival); however none of this has diminished the desire to actually engage in the reproductive act). But we are complex beings and how these things interact with our rational abilities is hardly straightforward, but we can't deny their overwhelming influence on human society, in fact the very existence of human society, of humans as social animals, is the result of a survival tactic that doesn't hurt with reproduction either.

Also, the fact that we survive to reproduce does not imply that these two impulses are in harmony, they can be pulling in opposite directions and one can even be detrimental to the other. But just so long as they are sufficiently optimized to the environment to be able to exist and reproduce in that environment and are more successful at it than competing species, that will be the species that survives. Though these things are likely to be optimized as time progresses.

Culture is precisely what living things, be it humans or flowers, have inherent to their life which defines them beyond reproduction and in fact counters the forces of natural selection and nature.

Flower culture? Really? A little to 1960's for my taste.

Culture is beyond instinct and in fact it controls instincts.

If culture controlled instinct, the western world would have become extinct with the celibacy craze of the Roman Church in the Middle Ages.

Humans are not the only social animals with stratified societies and complex sociocultural patterns, and these are really beyond evolutionary explanation either in humans or animals!

No, we're not not, these characteristics are inherent in all social animals or at least all social mammals. They are traits that are necessary for animals to successfully live in a social context. Humans and horses don't both have stratified societies and complex sociocultural patterns because horses reason similarly to humans, we share these characteristics because they are necessary characteristics to live in a social situation and either followed similar paths of evolution as a result of this strong necessity of these characteristics for survival in a social situation or derive from a common ancestor that had these traits and passed them on due to the ability these traits gave this common ancestor to survive (I honestly don't know enough about the history of the evolution of the Horse to say which is true, I'm not even certain how long ago our common ancestor lived, though I'm sure someone has calculated it from DNA analysis).

Species do many things to counter natural selection and ensure survival of even non-reproductive members counter to the instinctive drives or reproduction because while all universally share them as DNA bearing creatures,

As you reminded me earlier, evolution is not a conscience choice by the species (at least for non-human species), we are likely the only species that has ever figured out this connection between survival and reproduction and its role in the advancement of evolution. Social animals help non-reproductive members survive because they are programmed to seek the survival of the herd. They don't know that evolution programmed them this way to simply be able to survive to reproductive age and reproduce more efficiently. They know what their instinct and impulses tell them to do, they don't know why they have them.

surely our lives are more beautifully complicated then that, even if solely defined by our numerous primal urges such as hunger, companionship, reproduction, fear, and pleasure!

They are because we have developed this remarkable capacity for reason, this doesn't mean that these primal urges and impulses are not central to our lives and existence, they are, but because of reason we are able to expand beyond these primal desires and at times expand on or even influence them.

After all, we are often hungry for different things, seek companionship for different reasons, purposely avoid reproducing, deny fear, and have different definitions of pleasure. 

We are hungry for different things, but we tend to gravitate towards that which is familiar (though I freely confess, I'm an outlier in this regard). Do we seek companionship for different reasons or do we inherently desire companionship and simply come up with different rationals to justify that desire? We may purposely avoid reproduction, but very few of us can shed the reproductive desire while of reproductive age, the writings of the Church Fathers can attest to this much at least. We can deny fear, but so can the the mother in the wild deny fear to protect her young, but we are more sophisticated in that we can also deny fear for rational reasons, not purely instinctive ones; but it is hardly true that reason always conquers fear, more often than not the opposite is true, we try to rationalize and justify our fear and as a result our history is plagued with genocide and great tragedy that results from this attempt to rationalize fear, this merger of fear and reason where fear ultimately wins. We may have some different ideas for leisure, not that evolution spent much time on those characteristics, but the vast majority of people (and social animals in general) share many of the same fundamental pleasures across all cultures, peoples, and species: the pleasure of a drink of water when suffering from thirst, the pleasure of food when truly hungry, the pleasure of success over failure, the pleasure of friends and companionship, and, above all, the pleasure of the reproductive act.

[JamesRottnek]

But naturalism lacks a proper explanation for these things, that's what it means that there is no good without God.

Think of it this way - meta-ethically speaking it is necessary to have God in order to justify morality. Without God as the origin of morals then meta-ethically we have no morals. On the more normative side, however, an atheist can certainly act in a moral manner. But such an action is only explainable via theism, stating that the atheist is in the image of God and therefore will seek to act morally due to that image. Under a naturalistic aspect, we are left without a proper explanation as to why people are moral (or immoral).

My morals are moral to me, because i believe they are.

You have just proven my point.  Without God, all a person has is a series of personal preferences.  There is no intrinsic right and wrong, but merely your personal preference of whether or not to engage in murder, much like a personal has a preference of whether or not to mix orange soda and Sprite.  You may find such a concoction to be repulsive, but it is not inherently wrong.

Without God, there is no intrinsic right and wrong - there is no moral and immoral.  There is nothing but preference.

Couldn't one argue that with God, there is no intrinsic right and wrong -- because what is right or wrong depends upon what God decides is right and wrong? I'm thinking of Abraham's attempt to sacrifice Isaac, at God's insistence, for example.

That is a good question, and I've not thought about it too terribly much.  I would lean somewhat towards Bogdan's position, I suppose.  I might have really meant that without God, there is no constant morality but rather only arbitrary personal preferences.  In that case, as God is unchanging, I would say that right and wrong are quite intrinsic.

[JamesRottnek]

But naturalism lacks a proper explanation for these things, that's what it means that there is no good without God.

Think of it this way - meta-ethically speaking it is necessary to have God in order to justify morality. Without God as the origin of morals then meta-ethically we have no morals. On the more normative side, however, an atheist can certainly act in a moral manner. But such an action is only explainable via theism, stating that the atheist is in the image of God and therefore will seek to act morally due to that image. Under a naturalistic aspect, we are left without a proper explanation as to why people are moral (or immoral).

My morals are moral to me, because i believe they are.

You have just proven my point.  Without God, all a person has is a series of personal preferences.  There is no intrinsic right and wrong, but merely your personal preference of whether or not to engage in murder, much like a personal has a preference of whether or not to mix orange soda and Sprite.  You may find such a concoction to be repulsive, but it is not inherently wrong.

Without God, there is no intrinsic right and wrong - there is no moral and immoral.  There is nothing but preference.

Couldn't one argue that with God, there is no intrinsic right and wrong -- because what is right or wrong depends upon what God decides is right and wrong? I'm thinking of Abraham's attempt to sacrifice Isaac, at God's insistence, for example.

That is a good question, and I've not thought about it too terribly much.  I would lean somewhat towards Bogdan's position, I suppose.  I might have really meant that without God, there is no constant morality but rather only arbitrary personal preferences.  In that case, as God is unchanging, I would say that right and wrong are quite intrinsic.

[Jonathan Gress]

It looks like people are searching for nice, clean answers. Well, biology and evolution is a messy business, there are competing factors to our survival that might never be perfectly balanced (at least, not until the advent of 2-directional mind machine interface and the ability to reprogram the brain ). On one hand, there's a strong desire to reproduced hard-wired in our genetic code by a billion years of evolution, it's absolutely necessary, the species would not have survived without it. On the other hand, we became social animals much more recently and we have evolved to optimize our social situation, but evolution can't just throw out the desire to reproduce, the species would cease to exist. So, on one hand we have a fundamental desire to reproduce at all costs and on the other hand we have the desire to live as a successful social people. It's not unreasonable to suggest that certain individuals in the society will be outliers on one extreme or the other, but on the average evolution has struck a pretty good balance.

Then, through at least the last 100,000 years of evolution we can add to natural selection artificial selection. If you go back far enough, you will see that rape was largely condemned as a violation of the man's (be it the father's or mate's/husband's) property rights and it threatened his genetic line, so he and others of power and influence in the tribe, acted to protect their survival and procreation by killing the guilty party. Over the years, those born with the strongest sexual inclinations, ones that caused them to go outside the bounds of what came to be regarded as socially acceptable, were killed...of course, those with no desire to reproduce may not have been killed, but they were also much less likely to reproduce. The result was that those who were most inclined to justify rape because of a strong and primitive reproductive desire were artificially removed from the gene pool and now we're at the point that, on average (of course there are outliers), we consider it inherently morally reprehensible without having to resort to property rights or a desire to ensure the integrity of our genetic line; and, of course, this has all run in parallel with the evolution of our brains and our capacity to reason and the cultural evolution that this element of biological evolution has allowed. We weren't always like this, this mindset and our modern reasoning capabilities are a result of thousands of generations of evolutionary selection, both natural and, more recently, artificial. But there's nothing wrong with seeing that we are a superior beings compared to our ancestors, that is the direction evolution should take, nor is this 'moral code' (I use the term morality with caution because of the superstitious baggage it carries, but it is the term that most accurately describes this instinct) any less important because of how we gained it, if anything it makes it more important because it has been tested and verified by evolution. We evolved this way for a good, objective reason, it has greatly aided the survival and advancement of our species. To me that seems like a far better reason to conduct our lives according to this 'moral code' than simply because the invisible man in the sky said we should.

Like Coyne you simply take it as self-evident that the way we have evolved is objectively "good". But who are you to say it's "good"? What is your authority for determining what's good and what's bad? If we had evolved to all be rapists, would that be "bad"? If our society as a whole died out because we couldn't adapt socially, would that be "bad"? I think theo is right about the inconsistency of evolutionists when talking about morality: if you are going to say that morality has no objective existence and that our moral sensibilities are no more than instincts that evolved under specific environmental conditions, you should stop using value-laden language like "good" or "bad", at least if you want to be consistent. Of course, if you don't mind being inconsistent then keep using such language, but you can expect people like me to keep pointing out your inconsistencies in an annoying fashion.  

[GiC]

It looks like people are searching for nice, clean answers. Well, biology and evolution is a messy business, there are competing factors to our survival that might never be perfectly balanced (at least, not until the advent of 2-directional mind machine interface and the ability to reprogram the brain ). On one hand, there's a strong desire to reproduced hard-wired in our genetic code by a billion years of evolution, it's absolutely necessary, the species would not have survived without it. On the other hand, we became social animals much more recently and we have evolved to optimize our social situation, but evolution can't just throw out the desire to reproduce, the species would cease to exist. So, on one hand we have a fundamental desire to reproduce at all costs and on the other hand we have the desire to live as a successful social people. It's not unreasonable to suggest that certain individuals in the society will be outliers on one extreme or the other, but on the average evolution has struck a pretty good balance.

Then, through at least the last 100,000 years of evolution we can add to natural selection artificial selection. If you go back far enough, you will see that rape was largely condemned as a violation of the man's (be it the father's or mate's/husband's) property rights and it threatened his genetic line, so he and others of power and influence in the tribe, acted to protect their survival and procreation by killing the guilty party. Over the years, those born with the strongest sexual inclinations, ones that caused them to go outside the bounds of what came to be regarded as socially acceptable, were killed...of course, those with no desire to reproduce may not have been killed, but they were also much less likely to reproduce. The result was that those who were most inclined to justify rape because of a strong and primitive reproductive desire were artificially removed from the gene pool and now we're at the point that, on average (of course there are outliers), we consider it inherently morally reprehensible without having to resort to property rights or a desire to ensure the integrity of our genetic line; and, of course, this has all run in parallel with the evolution of our brains and our capacity to reason and the cultural evolution that this element of biological evolution has allowed. We weren't always like this, this mindset and our modern reasoning capabilities are a result of thousands of generations of evolutionary selection, both natural and, more recently, artificial. But there's nothing wrong with seeing that we are a superior beings compared to our ancestors, that is the direction evolution should take, nor is this 'moral code' (I use the term morality with caution because of the superstitious baggage it carries, but it is the term that most accurately describes this instinct) any less important because of how we gained it, if anything it makes it more important because it has been tested and verified by evolution. We evolved this way for a good, objective reason, it has greatly aided the survival and advancement of our species. To me that seems like a far better reason to conduct our lives according to this 'moral code' than simply because the invisible man in the sky said we should.

Like Coyne you simply take it as self-evident that the way we have evolved is objectively "good". But who are you to say it's "good"?

Success is good, failure is bad. I need no personal authority to state this, it's a basic truth, either you accept that success is good and pursue it or you do not, if the latter is the case the others will and in the end they will triumph over you and your voice will no longer be heard and your opinion will become irrelevant. There can be debate over the best way to achieve success, but in the end it is the only goal and the only good. So, of course, what is 'good' or 'bad' is system dependent, it is directly logical consequence of the fitness algorithm being applied by the system.

What is your authority for determining what's good and what's bad? If we had evolved to all be rapists, would that be "bad"?

If we evolved that way we would have a fundamentally different society and a fundamentally different set of morals, what would be 'good' and 'bad' in that hypothetical world has no necessary parallel to the real world in which we exist.

If our society as a whole died out because we couldn't adapt socially, would that be "bad"?

Of course not, if a species can't adapt it does not deserve to exist.

I think theo is right about the inconsistency of evolutionists when talking about morality: if you are going to say that morality has no objective existence and that our moral sensibilities are no more than instincts that evolved under specific environmental conditions, you should stop using value-laden language like "good" or "bad", at least if you want to be consistent.

It's not inconsistent, these are basic English words with simple correlations to often quantifiable characteristics. You may have loaded them with irrelevant philosophical baggage and nonsensical ramblings of half-sane men, but that would be your problem, not mine; to the typical native speaker of the English language they simply do not have that baggage.

Of course, if you don't mind being inconsistent then keep using such language, but you can expect people like me to keep pointing out your inconsistencies in an annoying fashion.  

And if needs be, we'll pull out the OED and get into a discussion of etymology and linguistics. If we're lucky, perhaps someone has quantified the use of these words in the English language, what do you think is the more common usage? Using the word 'good' in an abstract philosophical sense or more everyday down to earth uses like 'that was a good piece of cake', 'did you have a good vacation', and 'Got got the job? Good for you'. In no way, shape, or form would someone be suggesting that the cake, vacation, or job was somehow a morally uplifting pursuit of the highest metaphysical goals, rather it's simply an indication that it seems to be adequate.

[akimori makoto]

The above exchange is why I think those who talk about morality descriptively and those who talk about it prescriptively are really talking past each other.

We often confuse each other by using the same language when we are not really discussing the same thing.

[GiC]

The above exchange is why I think those who talk about morality descriptively and those who talk about it prescriptively are really talking past each other.

We often confuse each other by using the same language when we are not really discussing the same thing.

You're probably right, but since I reject the very notion and existence of 'prescriptive morality' it's difficult to address it, other than flat out dismissing it. When you don't believe the metaphysical even exists, discussions about the metaphysical concepts, entities, and hierarchies seem rather pointless. It's like when Tolkien fans get together, discuss the history and geography of middle earth and argue about Elven linguistics. It might be fun for those who are into it; but it's fantasy, I could never take it seriously in a debate. Same thing with metaphysical notions, from where I stand it's just as much fantasy as Tolkien's middle earth (and not nearly as interesting, I might add).

So when someone tries to ask me about the metaphysical implications of a physical reality, I have two choices, I can either ignore it and that I am merely dealing with the physical reality and that I believe metaphysics to be an unnecessary variable that adds nothing to the discussion or I can openly call them out and mock them for trying to force their fantasy world on the real world in which we exist. I usually opt for the former, though sometimes the latter is fun

[Jonathan Gress]

GiC, you really don't get it, do you? "Success is good" you say. Why is it "good"? "Because if you don't succeed no one will care what you think." Why is that bad? "Because success is the only goal and the only good." Huh? Sez who? What if I like failure? Maybe I think the species that die out are the good ones, and the ones that survive are bad. How do you intend to persuade me otherwise?

If you said something along the lines of "I like to succeed because I like having a leg up over my fellow human beings" I would have accepted that as a reasonable, if amoral, answer. You are simply stating your feelings about the matter, which are empirical facts. But if you try to persuade me that your pursuit of success is "good" in some transcendental sense, i.e. that I should feel just as good about your success as you, you will fail, since I have no reason to accept your authority and your ability to judge what's good and bad in these matters.

The typical English speaker practically, if not theoretically, believes in an objective morality: that is why he uses words like good and bad. He may not have really thought through why he has an objective morality, but he does, because otherwise these words have no meaning. You, on the other hand, are insisting that there is no objective morality, and therefore your casual usage of moralizing words like good and bad is open to challenge on the grounds of inconsistency with your professed moral relativism. If you don't like the challenge, stop using them. If you don't mind it, by all means keep doing so. It gives me something to do here.

[akimori makoto]

The above exchange is why I think those who talk about morality descriptively and those who talk about it prescriptively are really talking past each other.

We often confuse each other by using the same language when we are not really discussing the same thing.

You're probably right, but since I reject the very notion and existence of 'prescriptive morality' it's difficult to address it, other than flat out dismissing it. When you don't believe the metaphysical even exists, discussions about the metaphysical concepts, entities, and hierarchies seem rather pointless. It's like when Tolkien fans get together, discuss the history and geography of middle earth and argue about Elven linguistics. It might be fun for those who are into it; but it's fantasy, I could never take it seriously in a debate. Same thing with metaphysical notions, from where I stand it's just as much fantasy as Tolkien's middle earth (and not nearly as interesting, I might add).

So when someone tries to ask me about the metaphysical implications of a physical reality, I have two choices, I can either ignore it and that I am merely dealing with the physical reality and that I believe metaphysics to be an unnecessary variable that adds nothing to the discussion or I can openly call them out and mock them for trying to force their fantasy world on the real world in which we exist. I usually opt for the former, though sometimes the latter is fun

You are a materialist and I'm okay with that.

Fundamentally, our worldviews are at odds, but that doesn't get to me so much. What gets to me is the confused and contradictory and generally all-over-the-place notions that many of those on the "other side" to me often hold.

Many people on "your side" like to think they can basically maintain a Christian worldview without the whole God thing or any of the nasty stuff like self-renunciation. They don't have the courage to follow their premises to their natural conclusions, as I have recently said elsewhere. This is nowhere more the case than in the realm of (prescriptive) morality.

I won't object to the atheists and materialists talking about "morality" if, by that word, they mean what you have described, but most of them are so confused as to what they mean, I find it impossible to even begin the discussion without defining the terms. As much as they'd deny it, some of them are basically Christian in worldview.

[Fabio Leite]

The above exchange is why I think those who talk about morality descriptively and those who talk about it prescriptively are really talking past each other.

We often confuse each other by using the same language when we are not really discussing the same thing.

You're probably right, but since I reject the very notion and existence of 'prescriptive morality' it's difficult to address it, other than flat out dismissing it. When you don't believe the metaphysical even exists, discussions about the metaphysical concepts, entities, and hierarchies seem rather pointless. It's like when Tolkien fans get together, discuss the history and geography of middle earth and argue about Elven linguistics. It might be fun for those who are into it; but it's fantasy, I could never take it seriously in a debate. Same thing with metaphysical notions, from where I stand it's just as much fantasy as Tolkien's middle earth (and not nearly as interesting, I might add).

So when someone tries to ask me about the metaphysical implications of a physical reality, I have two choices, I can either ignore it and that I am merely dealing with the physical reality and that I believe metaphysics to be an unnecessary variable that adds nothing to the discussion or I can openly call them out and mock them for trying to force their fantasy world on the real world in which we exist. I usually opt for the former, though sometimes the latter is fun

A "mathematician" who claims to not believe in metaphysics? Now that's sweet. I will ponder about that while I use π to hold the papers on my table. And as for fantasy worlds I will try to imagine one where a person could even reason about something if this something had not been perceived in a non-rational way before, since reasoning is comparing two things and you can't compare if you don't have it first place.

[HabteSelassie]

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Success is good, failure is bad. I need no personal authority to state this, it's a basic truth, either you accept that success is good and pursue it or you do not, if the latter is the case the others will and in the end they will triumph over you and your voice will no longer be heard and your opinion will become irrelevant. There can be debate over the best way to achieve success, but in the end it is the only goal and the only good. So, of course, what is 'good' or 'bad' is system dependent, it is directly logical consequence of the fitness algorithm being applied by the system.

No, he is right, you are not considering, even in evolutionary terms, the variation of circumstance.  Even though Hitler was successful at waging devastating World War, and in mass murdering over 11 million people, can anyone in any way call such "good" or even really "success"?  Even from an evolutionary perspective, say a genetically diseased animal reproduces passing down and potentially even exaggerating the disorder, is this really "success" from an evolutionary standpoint?  Now my brother, this is what I meant by culture, which yes even plants possess, which helps living things define and shape their world of sensory bombardment, confusing interaction with the environment, and the whim of instinct and impulse.  Culture is the patterns, ideas, goals, and tendencies of living things, not just social mammals.  Plants have the same reproductive and eat-to-live goals which we humans have, and perhaps they may even be conscious of them we have no real way of knowing and science only deals with what you can know, not what you can't.  So its better not to make assumptions regarding currently improvable issues with current science.  We can agree still that with this loose definition of culture that other living things have these patterns of behavior, shared meanings and symbols (whether bird songs or bear trails), expressed values, etc etc.  These are used by living things to manage, explain, and even control instinct.  They do not eliminate instinct but rather they shape and form the manifestations of instinct.  Above all, culture may be the result of certain evolutionary advantages over the process of time, but it is not itself a kind of evolved "instinct" or natural impulse, rather it is continually shaped, transformed, and transmitted by the very living beings which use it to articulate their sense of living.  Instinct alone is a silly, naked concept which should best be understood within the full context of living things, not just as a primary drive of life, as I said before, scientific dissertation or casual conversation, that is far to simplistic



stay blessed,
habte selassie

[GiC]

GiC, you really don't get it, do you? "Success is good" you say. Why is it "good"? "Because if you don't succeed no one will care what you think." Why is that bad? "Because success is the only goal and the only good." Huh? Sez who? What if I like failure? Maybe I think the species that die out are the good ones, and the ones that survive are bad. How do you intend to persuade me otherwise?

Because it is common English usage, when a sample of the population is highly correlated to the fitness algorithm we call it a 'good fit', when it is poorly correlated we call it a 'bad fit'. 'Good' and 'Bad' are terms that have no intrinsic value, they're a collection of letters, or sounds, as the case may be. The reason these words have a specific meaning is because our language evolved to give them those meanings. If you were making up a new language, you could say that 'bad' means highly correlated and 'good' means poorly correlated, or you could say that 'foo' means highly correlated and 'bar' means poorly correlated. From an abstract perspective, it really doesn't matter.

I know you're trying to imply these words have some application beyond the current system in which we live (a world governed by the laws of Physics), but they're simply descriptions of fidelity to the fitness algorithm, if the algorithm changes the definition of 'good' and 'bad' must change with it to reflect fidelity to said algorithm. We use the words 'good' and 'bad' as we do because it is the current common usage of these words in the English language. It's really no more complicated than that.

If you said something along the lines of "I like to succeed because I like having a leg up over my fellow human beings" I would have accepted that as a reasonable, if amoral, answer.

Whether I like something or not has no bearing on whether it is highly correlated or poorly correlated.

You are simply stating your feelings about the matter, which are empirical facts. But if you try to persuade me that your pursuit of success is "good" in some transcendental sense, i.e. that I should feel just as good about your success as you, you will fail, since I have no reason to accept your authority and your ability to judge what's good and bad in these matters.

As I reject the very existence all metaphysics and this 'transcendental sense', that would be a rather futile exercise. Nothing is 'good' in 'some transcendental sense', because it doesn't exist and I have no more of a rational reason to accept the existence of this metaphysical concept than I have to accept the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sauce be upon him). Now, if you can deliver a convincing rational argument as to why this extra variable needs to be introduced into the equation, I'll entertain it, though I doubt you can. If not, we can assume that unnecessary variables can be excluded from the model and address the model at hand (the universe) using the remaining, necessary, variables.

The typical English speaker practically, if not theoretically, believes in an objective morality: that is why he uses words like good and bad. He may not have really thought through why he has an objective morality, but he does, because otherwise these words have no meaning.

Seriously, you believe that when the average person talks of having a 'good dinner' that they are implying that the piece of cow carcass they just devoured for sustenance was an objectively morally edifying object? Regardless of what you think most people believe, that is simply not how the language is used.

You, on the other hand, are insisting that there is no objective morality, and therefore your casual usage of moralizing words like good and bad is open to challenge on the grounds of inconsistency with your professed moral relativism. If you don't like the challenge, stop using them. If you don't mind it, by all means keep doing so. It gives me something to do here.

'Good' and 'bad' are, first and foremost, adjectives. Yes, certain philosophers have tried to turn them into concepts, into nouns, but in common usage they are most often adjectives. Often as predicates or describing implied nouns, but they're generally adjectives. Adjectives describe nouns, therefore they are inherently relative to the noun they describe. Generally speaking, 'good' may be 'better' than 'bad', we can say that a 'good idea' is better than a 'bad idea' but that's only because we're using the terms to describe the same thing: an idea. But can we necessarily say that a good bowl of peas is better than bad sex? Not unless you really, really like peas. I do not, so though I may objective realize that a certain bowl of peas is superior to other bowls of peas, that it is a 'good bowl of peas', but I'll still take bad sex over good peas, unless I'm on the verge of starvation. So while 'good' may be better than 'bad' within the same system, when you're talking about two different systems there is no necessary correlation. So when I talk about 'good' in a general sense, it still needs a system to have any meaning, the system is the universe in which we live with the laws of physics and the biological laws of evolution. Once you go outside that system, 'good' and 'bad' may imply completely different things.

Using an example from evolutionary computation, say I evolve a neural network that generates a sine curve, I can run several neural networks through this system and I will hopefully eventually come up with a good fit. But if I then go and change the fitness algorithm, change the system to define the ideal as an exponential curve, this same neural network that used to be a good fit for the sine curve will likely be a very bad fit, in fact it's likely to be worse than a randomly generated neural network and will likely be discarded within the first couple generations because it is such a bad fit. That the neural network was good in the first system has no inherent bearing on whether or not it will been good in a different randomly selected system.

[GiC]

The above exchange is why I think those who talk about morality descriptively and those who talk about it prescriptively are really talking past each other.

We often confuse each other by using the same language when we are not really discussing the same thing.

You're probably right, but since I reject the very notion and existence of 'prescriptive morality' it's difficult to address it, other than flat out dismissing it. When you don't believe the metaphysical even exists, discussions about the metaphysical concepts, entities, and hierarchies seem rather pointless. It's like when Tolkien fans get together, discuss the history and geography of middle earth and argue about Elven linguistics. It might be fun for those who are into it; but it's fantasy, I could never take it seriously in a debate. Same thing with metaphysical notions, from where I stand it's just as much fantasy as Tolkien's middle earth (and not nearly as interesting, I might add).

So when someone tries to ask me about the metaphysical implications of a physical reality, I have two choices, I can either ignore it and that I am merely dealing with the physical reality and that I believe metaphysics to be an unnecessary variable that adds nothing to the discussion or I can openly call them out and mock them for trying to force their fantasy world on the real world in which we exist. I usually opt for the former, though sometimes the latter is fun

You are a materialist and I'm okay with that.

Fundamentally, our worldviews are at odds, but that doesn't get to me so much. What gets to me is the confused and contradictory and generally all-over-the-place notions that many of those on the "other side" to me often hold.

Many people on "your side" like to think they can basically maintain a Christian worldview without the whole God thing or any of the nasty stuff like self-renunciation. They don't have the courage to follow their premises to their natural conclusions, as I have recently said elsewhere. This is nowhere more the case than in the realm of (prescriptive) morality.

I won't object to the atheists and materialists talking about "morality" if, by that word, they mean what you have described, but most of them are so confused as to what they mean, I find it impossible to even begin the discussion without defining the terms. As much as they'd deny it, some of them are basically Christian in worldview.

That's one explanation, if you hold to the presupposition god created man. But if you believe man created god, as I do and as I believe science demonstrates, then we could argue that Christians are basically secular in worldview though they wrap that world view in religious imagery.

It ultimately comes down to questions about the existence of the supernatural/metaphysical and the scientific evidence (our only testable and verifiable means for knowledge about the universe) for or against.

[GiC]

The above exchange is why I think those who talk about morality descriptively and those who talk about it prescriptively are really talking past each other.

We often confuse each other by using the same language when we are not really discussing the same thing.

You're probably right, but since I reject the very notion and existence of 'prescriptive morality' it's difficult to address it, other than flat out dismissing it. When you don't believe the metaphysical even exists, discussions about the metaphysical concepts, entities, and hierarchies seem rather pointless. It's like when Tolkien fans get together, discuss the history and geography of middle earth and argue about Elven linguistics. It might be fun for those who are into it; but it's fantasy, I could never take it seriously in a debate. Same thing with metaphysical notions, from where I stand it's just as much fantasy as Tolkien's middle earth (and not nearly as interesting, I might add).

So when someone tries to ask me about the metaphysical implications of a physical reality, I have two choices, I can either ignore it and that I am merely dealing with the physical reality and that I believe metaphysics to be an unnecessary variable that adds nothing to the discussion or I can openly call them out and mock them for trying to force their fantasy world on the real world in which we exist. I usually opt for the former, though sometimes the latter is fun

A "mathematician" who claims to not believe in metaphysics? Now that's sweet. I will ponder about that while I use π to hold the papers on my table. And as for fantasy worlds I will try to imagine one where a person could even reason about something if this something had not been perceived in a non-rational way before, since reasoning is comparing two things and you can't compare if you don't have it first place.

Mathematics is a field of logical extrapolation of empirically tested presuppositions. It is a very dangerous and tragic thing then mathematicians become too metaphysical about the system they're working in. The flawed attempts to prove Euclid's fifth postulate using the other four is a clear example of this. A century before the development of hyperbolic geometry all the difficult work was done, the contradictions that arose when removing the postulate had long been published. But mathematicians at the time took Euclidean geometry as an article of faith, they were not willing to entertain the truth that it was a very limited system, that other geometries are just as valid. Because of this we unnecessarily sat in darkness and ignorance for decades when parts of the revolution in mathematics that took place in the 19th century could have taken place in the 18th century. Mathematicians cannot afford to have a metaphysical attachment to any particular system, to any set of axioms, they must always be the skeptic, always questioning, always seeking to undermine not only the new and different but also the old and the established. Without this, their work cannot be performed in an honest and productive manner.

[GiC]

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Success is good, failure is bad. I need no personal authority to state this, it's a basic truth, either you accept that success is good and pursue it or you do not, if the latter is the case the others will and in the end they will triumph over you and your voice will no longer be heard and your opinion will become irrelevant. There can be debate over the best way to achieve success, but in the end it is the only goal and the only good. So, of course, what is 'good' or 'bad' is system dependent, it is directly logical consequence of the fitness algorithm being applied by the system.

No, he is right, you are not considering, even in evolutionary terms, the variation of circumstance.  Even though Hitler was successful at waging devastating World War, and in mass murdering over 11 million people, can anyone in any way call such "good" or even really "success"?

Overall, no he was not successful and therefore not good, he was defeated, forced to commit suicide, and a reaction against his regime, rather than the policies of his regime, became the influential power in Europe following his demise. Now, had he been successful and changed the world then we may be able to say he was successful or good. But even in that case, I suspect that the policies of racial purity he advocated would have lead to a restriction of the gene pool, a lack of genetic diversity, and a rise of associated diseases. So even had he been successful at what he attempted does not inherently imply that he would have been successful from an evolutionary perspective, to fully and definitively answer that hypothetical question we would have had to let him win and wait a million years to find out the ultimate results. Though I think that we would have found out that, ultimately, he would not have been successful, even had he conquered the earth and imposed his will upon it.

At the end of the day, we don't get to decide what what is success and failure, what is good and bad, evolution and physics will take care of that. The fact that someone is successful within a paradigm that we have established does not imply that it will ultimately be successful through evolution. The fact that we can explain the fundamental bases for success and failure does not mean that we can always predict the exact effect our actions will have when judged through those lenses. As you keep saying, the system is incredibly complex. We have evolved a sense of 'morality' that guides us in a somewhat optimized direction, but that system of morality is only as good as it has evolved to be, it is in no way perfect. I have no doubt that it can be improved upon, but I am far less certain of the exact effect any specific change to our morality might have. Something that seems like a good idea can end up being incredibly damaging or what seems like a bad idea, might not end up being as bad as we thought.

Even from an evolutionary perspective, say a genetically diseased animal reproduces passing down and potentially even exaggerating the disorder, is this really "success" from an evolutionary standpoint?

That is a far too limited perspective, unless we're talking about something on the scale of an asteroid impact, which fundamentally alters the local, though not the global, system, the changes from one generation to the next is little more than background noise. Now, if that same animal passes on its genes for a thousand generations, there must be some value in the genetic material, even if still diseased that animal would represent a local optimization, it may still not survive over the ages, but at that point it has demonstrated a limited degree of success, it has demonstrated that some optimization has taken place and that it is amongst the best solutions available for the local environment.

Something I've learned from evolutionary computation is that unless you set up a very discrete system (and the universe is anything but discrete) there will always be imperfections, there will always be disease, you will almost never arrive at a perfect solution, even for generally simple problems like creating a neural network to mimic the sine function over a limited domain. Yes, there are abstract perfect mathematical solutions that can be achieved through back propagation, but you're not going to achieve perfection from evolution. You can optimize and minimize these imperfections, but on some level they're always going to exist. In the example I gave about the sine curve, you would certain exact numbers for each specific weight (the exact weights would change with the architecture of the networks and there may be multiple possibilities), there may even be countably infinite possibilities, there usually are. But from probability theory we know that the probability of generating an element of a countably infinite set from an uncountably infinite set that contains it using random or semi-random methods incorporating all the elements of the uncountably infinite set is exactly zero.

Now my brother, this is what I meant by culture, which yes even plants possess, which helps living things define and shape their world of sensory bombardment, confusing interaction with the environment, and the whim of instinct and impulse.  Culture is the patterns, ideas, goals, and tendencies of living things, not just social mammals.  Plants have the same reproductive and eat-to-live goals which we humans have, and perhaps they may even be conscious of them we have no real way of knowing and science only deals with what you can know, not what you can't.  So its better not to make assumptions regarding currently improvable issues with current science.  We can agree still that with this loose definition of culture that other living things have these patterns of behavior, shared meanings and symbols (whether bird songs or bear trails), expressed values, etc etc.  These are used by living things to manage, explain, and even control instinct.  They do not eliminate instinct but rather they shape and form the manifestations of instinct.  Above all, culture may be the result of certain evolutionary advantages over the process of time, but it is not itself a kind of evolved "instinct" or natural impulse, rather it is continually shaped, transformed, and transmitted by the very living beings which use it to articulate their sense of living.  Instinct alone is a silly, naked concept which should best be understood within the full context of living things, not just as a primary drive of life, as I said before, scientific dissertation or casual conversation, that is far to simplistic

Well, I guess we simply different understandings of culture, most of this I would have regarded as phenotypical characteristics. I would define culture as the customs surrounding interaction between different members of a species, I'm not so sure that we can say plants have culture since that would imply that they communicate with each other. The neural circuitry required for communication simply does not seem to be present in plant life. Now many animals do have a culture of sorts, the more complex the animal the more complex the culture but much of this culture amongst the less complex life forms is likely little more than mimicry driven by instinct and the reason this culture evolves and progresses is because those who adopt a more successful culture (which is often merely an accident of birth, like with much of evolution) are more likely to survive and reproduce, so in time the more successful culture will eclipse the less successful one.

[HabteSelassie]

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

As I reject the very existence all metaphysics and this 'transcendental sense', that would be a rather futile exercise. Nothing is 'good' in 'some transcendental sense', because it doesn't exist and I have no more of a rational reason to accept the existence of this metaphysical concept than I have to accept the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sauce be upon him). Now, if you can deliver a convincing rational argument as to why this extra variable needs to be introduced into the equation, I'll entertain it, though I doubt you can. If not, we can assume that unnecessary variables can be excluded from the model and address the model at hand (the universe) using the remaining, necessary, variables.

I'll take you up on this challenge, to interpret somethings that are clearly transcendental and yet not necessarily supernatural or metaphysical.  Somethings are universal, not in a moral sense or even a religious sense, but in a ontological sense.  To "live" is "good" and this in a transcendental reality.  It might not be morally good (for example some folks embrace capital punishment as a moral point, you've even implied such kinds of thinking might have an evolutionary factor in regards to artificial suggestion) in some situations but to the organism involved it is surely a benefit of circumstance of being "living" which is sort of the point of all life right? This might be the closest to a universal "good" which is beyond morality which you have been trying to discuss with us, but the reality is that it would be a transcendental norm.  It is separate from the relative definitions of "good" or "bad" dictated by cultural morality.  It doesn't even have to be religious, simply ontological.  It neither really has to be evolutionary, because while it benefits evolution and natural selection for living beings to live and potentially reproduce, surely each living being is not necessarily conscious nor even concerned with their status within the process of evolution.  Really, evolution may very well be a transcendental process!

Generally speaking, 'good' may be 'better' than 'bad', we can say that a 'good idea' is better than a 'bad idea' but that's only because we're using the terms to describe the same thing: an idea. But can we necessarily say that a good bowl of peas is better than bad sex? Not unless you really, really like peas. I do not, so though I may objective realize that a certain bowl of peas is superior to other bowls of peas, that it is a 'good bowl of peas', but I'll still take bad sex over good peas, unless I'm on the verge of starvation. So while 'good' may be better than 'bad' within the same system, when you're talking about two different systems there is no necessary correlation. So when I talk about 'good' in a general sense, it still needs a system to have any meaning, the system is the universe in which we live with the laws of physics and the biological laws of evolution. Once you go outside that system, 'good' and 'bad' may imply completely different things.

Unfortunately this does not support transcendental "good" or "bad" if anything to reaffirm the cultural relativity of morality and even consciousness.  When we in Orthodox, of our Fasting culture, are in Fasting Season we would definitely prefer a "good bowl of peas" to "bad sex" because we are abstinant to both meat and sex culturally and so peas are quite on the menu, good or bad. In fact, then we do not really even think in moral or value-based terms of "good" or "bad" rather we simply eat the peas.  They are at the same time "good" because of our hunger, and yet could also really be "bad" on their own if poorly cooked or perhaps just thought of as "bad" in compared to a savory meat dish.  See humans have the agency to balance contradictions at the same time , which is also perhaps transcendental isn't it.

Using an example from evolutionary computation, say I evolve a neural network that generates a sine curve, I can run several neural networks through this system and I will hopefully eventually come up with a good fit. But if I then go and change the fitness algorithm, change the system to define the ideal as an exponential curve, this same neural network that used to be a good fit for the sine curve will likely be a very bad fit, in fact it's likely to be worse than a randomly generated neural network and will likely be discarded within the first couple generations because it is such a bad fit. That the neural network was good in the first system has no inherent bearing on whether or not it will been good in a different randomly selected system.

But what if the flaws in the disregarded neural network influence the progression into the better fit?

stay blessed,
habte selassie

[GiC]

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

As I reject the very existence all metaphysics and this 'transcendental sense', that would be a rather futile exercise. Nothing is 'good' in 'some transcendental sense', because it doesn't exist and I have no more of a rational reason to accept the existence of this metaphysical concept than I have to accept the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sauce be upon him). Now, if you can deliver a convincing rational argument as to why this extra variable needs to be introduced into the equation, I'll entertain it, though I doubt you can. If not, we can assume that unnecessary variables can be excluded from the model and address the model at hand (the universe) using the remaining, necessary, variables.

I'll take you up on this challenge, to interpret somethings that are clearly transcendental and yet not necessarily supernatural or metaphysical.  Somethings are universal, not in a moral sense or even a religious sense, but in a ontological sense.  To "live" is "good" and this in a transcendental reality.  It might not be morally good (for example some folks embrace capital punishment as a moral point, you've even implied such kinds of thinking might have an evolutionary factor in regards to artificial suggestion) in some situations but to the organism involved it is surely a benefit of circumstance of being "living" which is sort of the point of all life right? This might be the closest to a universal "good" which is beyond morality which you have been trying to discuss with us, but the reality is that it would be a transcendental norm.  It is separate from the relative definitions of "good" or "bad" dictated by cultural morality.  It doesn't even have to be religious, simply ontological.  It neither really has to be evolutionary, because while it benefits evolution and natural selection for living beings to live and potentially reproduce, surely each living being is not necessarily conscious nor even concerned with their status within the process of evolution.  Really, evolution may very well be a transcendental process!

I would agree that it is good to be alive, but would not agree that this is a first principle or that it implies some form of transcendence. Rather I would argue that it is good to be alive because the fact that you're alive implies that you've undergone a degree of optimization by the system, that you're amongst the best possible fits the system as, thus far, been able to develop. It also gives you the potential to influence the future of that system, which is also good, possibly even more good than simply being alive since those who will influence the future of the system are a subset of those alive and their actions, whether conscious or not, will potentially effect the future of the system.

Generally speaking, 'good' may be 'better' than 'bad', we can say that a 'good idea' is better than a 'bad idea' but that's only because we're using the terms to describe the same thing: an idea. But can we necessarily say that a good bowl of peas is better than bad sex? Not unless you really, really like peas. I do not, so though I may objective realize that a certain bowl of peas is superior to other bowls of peas, that it is a 'good bowl of peas', but I'll still take bad sex over good peas, unless I'm on the verge of starvation. So while 'good' may be better than 'bad' within the same system, when you're talking about two different systems there is no necessary correlation. So when I talk about 'good' in a general sense, it still needs a system to have any meaning, the system is the universe in which we live with the laws of physics and the biological laws of evolution. Once you go outside that system, 'good' and 'bad' may imply completely different things.

Unfortunately this does not support transcendental "good" or "bad" if anything to reaffirm the cultural relativity of morality and even consciousness.  When we in Orthodox, of our Fasting culture, are in Fasting Season we would definitely prefer a "good bowl of peas" to "bad sex" because we are abstinant to both meat and sex culturally and so peas are quite on the menu, good or bad. In fact, then we do not really even think in moral or value-based terms of "good" or "bad" rather we simply eat the peas.  They are at the same time "good" because of our hunger, and yet could also really be "bad" on their own if poorly cooked or perhaps just thought of as "bad" in compared to a savory meat dish.  See humans have the agency to balance contradictions at the same time , which is also perhaps transcendental isn't it.

Well, I was giving an example relevant to me in my non-religious, non-starving state, feel free to change the example to 'bad peas' vs. 'good sex' if it makes more sense to you. But, with that said, I think you're getting at the same thing I am. That the words 'good' and 'bad' are relative to that which they explain. And it is in no way a corruption of the English language to use them accordingly, in fact, it's common usage.

And yes, we have the agency to balance contradictions, sometimes the 'tools' or characteristics we have to survive truly do conflict with each other and choices have to be made. We might really want to have sex, but generally are willing to forego it if we think it will cost us our life; however, someone might very well give their life to preserve the lives of their children. This doesn't mean that in the first case we don't want to have sex nor does it mean that in the second case we want to die, but these would both be considered 'moral' choices. At the same time, there's some sub-conscience probabilistic calculations going on that we probably don't even recognize we're doing. In the first case, it's not worthwhile to throw your life away for the off chance of reproduction that probably won't happen, but in the second case, especially if you're beyond reproductive age, you're looking at sacrificing your life for the possibility of them carrying on your genes since if they died you would have no chance of reproducing, your offspring are no longer a possible chance for continuing your genes like in the first example, they are a highly probable chance, likely the best chance you'll get. These decisions are 'good' in perhaps a greater sense than 'good peas', but it's not an absolute and transcendent good, it's simply good relative to the system as a whole, or at least a larger part of the system, than the very limited part of the system that concerns peas.

Using an example from evolutionary computation, say I evolve a neural network that generates a sine curve, I can run several neural networks through this system and I will hopefully eventually come up with a good fit. But if I then go and change the fitness algorithm, change the system to define the ideal as an exponential curve, this same neural network that used to be a good fit for the sine curve will likely be a very bad fit, in fact it's likely to be worse than a randomly generated neural network and will likely be discarded within the first couple generations because it is such a bad fit. That the neural network was good in the first system has no inherent bearing on whether or not it will been good in a different randomly selected system.

But what if the flaws in the disregarded neural network influence the progression into the better fit?

If the flaws are serious, they might, but if the network has been sufficiently optimized, for a specific task, it's likely they will not have an advantage over random noise. In fact, certain 'characteristics' tend to become locked in, if your training for two different systems, you need to train simultaneously, training in sequence is unlikely to work. Now, if the two systems are similar enough, say sine from 0 to 1 and 1.5^x-1.75 over the same domain (for some reason evolution is a lot better at getting the general form than reaching the local max and min of a curve, whereas a particle swarm optimizer has the oppose problem), then, yes, the original solution might be end up being the progenitor of the optimum in the second system. But if you're using the same equations over the domain of 1000 to 1001, there isn't a chance it will happen. In the end, it's all system dependent.

[celticfan1888]

As an evolutionary biology major, I'm lol'ing at a certain someone talking out of their butt about evolution. 

[Jonathan Gress]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

[celticfan1888]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

In the survival of the fittest mentality, if GiC kills you and takes your things, that's good to him!

[GiC]

As an evolutionary biology major, I'm lol'ing at a certain someone talking out of their butt about evolution. 

By all means, enlighten us.

[GiC]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

[HabteSelassie]

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

Evolutionarily speaking, again that is to simplistic. You've already acknowledged the effect of artificial selection on the process of biological evolution, and so it can hardly be solely attributed to the effects of the interaction between living organisms and the environmental systems which they live.  Living organisms have the remarkable ability to adapt and change not just themselves, but also aspects of the environments, and so you have to equally include the effects of conscious beings on the process of evolution as much as just the reaction to the variables of physics, chemistry, and mechanics which we variously interact with within our environments.  We are both shaped and yet also have the agenc to shape our lives within the parameters of the fundamental laws and rules of the Multiverse. Further, even "success" in evolutionary terms is variable, as again, even those things which may reproduce are not necessarily successful in evolutionary terms if they are diseased or carry potentially dangerous mutations.  What of those living things which are also currently extinct? In the scheme of evolution these are "failures" yet when you shift to scale, perhaps they are also both immediate (in having reproduced) and also long-term (in their influence in the evolution of other living things) impacts on the evolutionary process.


stay blessed,
habte selassie

[orthonorm]

As an evolutionary biology major, I'm lol'ing at a certain someone talking out of their butt about evolution. 

By all means, enlighten us.

English lit. is closer to science than biology.

[celticfan1888]

At the end of the day, we don't get to decide what what is success and failure, what is good and bad, evolution and physics will take care of that. The fact that someone is successful within a paradigm that we have established does not imply that it will ultimately be successful through evolution.

Willing to elaborate? Because success and failure to you may mean that, but not for another, it's perspective. Evolution and physics don't decide what is good and bad. From an evolutionary perspective you can determine what is good or bad for your species or other species, that's all.

We have evolved a sense of 'morality' that guides us in a somewhat optimized direction, but that system of morality is only as good as it has evolved to be, it is in no way perfect.

The idea that premoral sentiments evolved in primate societies as a method of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups is still flawed and relatively untested. As my professor put it "We are trying to hard to come up with the cause of morality that fits our current ideas, what we should be doing is focusing on the evidence."

[Jonathan Gress]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

OK, thanks for defining "success" for us. How do you define "good"?

[celticfan1888]

English lit. is closer to science than biology.

Care to tell us how? That is an ignorant statement, considering biology is a natural science.

[GiC]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

OK, thanks for defining "success" for us. How do you define "good"?

good = success

[GiC]

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

Evolutionarily speaking, again that is to simplistic.

I think I'm speaking generally enough here that it isn't too simplistic, I'm not just talking about biological evolution here but any change that happens in the universe, whether natural, artificial, biological, or physical. For instance, part of the system that is the universe is occasional asteroid impacts, these may be outside the system of biological evolution, but are definitely part of the system that is the universe. So while optimization within biological evolution may not include asteroid impacts (you really need to be a space going species to protect against those), but optimization within the context of the entire universe takes into account the ability to defend against asteroid impacts and black holes that may enter the solar system where you evolved. Ultimately, computational complexity, which we call intelligence, and related artificial selection is very likely going to be required to optimize in the face of these conditions, therefor making the evolving of this computational complexity, which includes reasoning abilities, necessary for a truly successful computational system.

You've already acknowledged the effect of artificial selection on the process of biological evolution, and so it can hardly be solely attributed to the effects of the interaction between living organisms and the environmental systems which they live.

I don't follow, artificial selection is dependent on the natural evolution of computational abilities that allow artificial selection. It may be a different paradigm than natural evolution, but it is still subject to optimization by the universe.

Living organisms have the remarkable ability to adapt and change not just themselves, but also aspects of the environments, and so you have to equally include the effects of conscious beings on the process of evolution as much as just the reaction to the variables of physics, chemistry, and mechanics which we variously interact with within our environments.

'Consciousness' is a direct consequence of evolution as it has been experienced, at the very least, on this planet; it's an extension of physics, chemistry, and mechanics not a competing paradigm.

We are both shaped and yet also have the agenc to shape our lives within the parameters of the fundamental laws and rules of the Multiverse.

But the ability to shape our environments is a consequence of optimization within the system of the Universe/Multiverse (universe vs. multiverse is one issue I'm not yet willing to take a stand on. )

Further, even "success" in evolutionary terms is variable, as again, even those things which may reproduce are not necessarily successful in evolutionary terms if they are diseased or carry potentially dangerous mutations.

It's still success, it may not be perfection, it never will be, but it's success because they are sufficiently optimized to compete for resources, survive, and reproduce within the local system in which they exist. If the diseased species survived and reproduced it implies that, even in their diseased state, they were more optimized than other species that they successfully competed against.

What of those living things which are also currently extinct? In the scheme of evolution these are "failures" yet when you shift to scale, perhaps they are also both immediate (in having reproduced) and also long-term (in their influence in the evolution of other living things) impacts on the evolutionary process.

Those that are extinct because they failed to reproduce and influence the future of evolution are failures in the evolutionary system, they obviously had short-term successes and within the context of certain local systems may have been quite successful, but within the Planetary System, or within the Solar System for those wiped out by asteroid impact, they were failures. As for those that simply evolved into new species, the only reason we call them extinct is because we are still stuck with a system of taxonomy that was developed before our modern understanding of genetics and is based on mutual reproduction. The computational system that is the species, never ceased to be, never truly became extinct, it merely further optimized, defiantly an indication of success.

[Jonathan Gress]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

OK, thanks for defining "success" for us. How do you define "good"?

good = success

So when you say success is the only good, you are simply expressing a tautology?

[HabteSelassie]

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

 As for those that simply evolved into new species, the only reason we call them extinct is because we are still stuck with a system of taxonomy that was developed before our modern understanding of genetics and is based on mutual reproduction. The computational system that is the species, never ceased to be, never truly became extinct, it merely further optimized, defiantly an indication of success.

Now this I can emphatically agree with.  One of the sticklers for religious folks theologically condemning the theories of evolution is that the concept of permanent extinction, in some theological opinions, violates the supremacy and permanence of the Will of God.  From this perspective, God created a perfect system and extinction would violate such perfection, so many folks theologically simply deny extinction even though in our current era we can literally observe many many extinctions of species.  This same mentality is what condemned the Copernacan model of the heliocentric solar system because supposedly God had created the Earth as a fixed position, but in reality this was really just theological posturing.  Even the Scriptures speak of revolving motion of the planets and the movement of celestial bodies, including the shadows they cast, and also considered both the Earth and other bodies spherical!

Of course, scientifically speaking, there is really only a single form of life on Earth, DNA, and so long as living organisms continue to reproduce and transmit their DNA, there is no extinction, merely what we might think of as "phase changing" like water to a gas.  For example, I like to joke and say regarding poultry, "Dinosaur, its whats for dinner" as it is becoming increasingly clear that birds are the direct descendants of the dinosaurs. In fact within 15 years we may no longer portray dinosaurs as looking like scaled reptiles, as more and more fossil evidence is suggesting that all dinosaurs had feathers!  So really, the dinosaurs didn't go extinct at all, they just changed phase into birds!  Their DNA sequences became increasingly diverse and complex over so many generations, but the patterns for dinosaurs more than likely remain the same within the bird sequences, preserving in a sense even the life of those long dead dinosaurs.

Let me ask you a side-bar question since you are our resident atheist and mathematician, what do you think of the influence of fractal geometry in regards to evolutionary patterns? We find fractal patterns at ever level, from the subatomic to the shapes of galaxies and everything in between.  Fractals not only shape the patterns of mechanics and physics but also natural phenomena like waves, weather, and some folks suggest even the stock market!  Now I bring this up because some of the more intelligent "Intelligent Design" folks who are actually practicing scientists (not televangelists) are looking at the potential for fractals being perhaps a mark of a Creator, they being so systematically a part of the observed Multiverse (sorry, I won't argue but I do believe in the Multiverse theory as explained by string theory )?

stay blessed,
habte selassie
stay blessed,
habte selassie

[celticfan1888]

'Consciousness' is a direct consequence of evolution as it has been experienced, at the very least, on this planet; it's an extension of physics, chemistry, and mechanics not a competing paradigm.

Examination of the evolution of consciousness is faced with many difficulties, it's hardly plausible to come out right and say it is a direct consequence of evolution.

Those that are extinct because they failed to reproduce and influence the future of evolution are failures in the evolutionary system, they obviously had short-term successes and within the context of certain local systems may have been quite successful, but within the Planetary System, or within the Solar System for those wiped out by asteroid impact, they were failures.

In grand scale of things, that is incorrect. Would you consider non-avian dinosaurs failures? Dominant as they were for 160 million years. Or let's just pick a perticular species, say a Tyrannosaur, which according to our current estimates survived for 2 million years. Call that a failure? All species will eventually die out or evolve into other species, so are all species "failures"?

As for those that simply evolved into new species, the only reason we call them extinct is because we are still stuck with a system of taxonomy that was developed before our modern understanding of genetics and is based on mutual reproduction. The computational system that is the species, never ceased to be, never truly became extinct, it merely further optimized, defiantly an indication of success.

Species - A group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes.

If a group evolved to the point where there DNA was no longer identical and it was no longer able to exchange genes it, by definition, would become a new species. When the previous species dies out, that species no longer exists.

[GiC]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

OK, thanks for defining "success" for us. How do you define "good"?

good = success

So when you say success is the only good, you are simply expressing a tautology?

Yes.

[GiC]

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

 As for those that simply evolved into new species, the only reason we call them extinct is because we are still stuck with a system of taxonomy that was developed before our modern understanding of genetics and is based on mutual reproduction. The computational system that is the species, never ceased to be, never truly became extinct, it merely further optimized, defiantly an indication of success.

Now this I can emphatically agree with.  One of the sticklers for religious folks theologically condemning the theories of evolution is that the concept of permanent extinction, in some theological opinions, violates the supremacy and permanence of the Will of God.  From this perspective, God created a perfect system and extinction would violate such perfection, so many folks theologically simply deny extinction even though in our current era we can literally observe many many extinctions of species.  This same mentality is what condemned the Copernacan model of the heliocentric solar system because supposedly God had created the Earth as a fixed position, but in reality this was really just theological posturing.  Even the Scriptures speak of revolving motion of the planets and the movement of celestial bodies, including the shadows they cast, and also considered both the Earth and other bodies spherical!

Of course, scientifically speaking, there is really only a single form of life on Earth, DNA, and so long as living organisms continue to reproduce and transmit their DNA, there is no extinction, merely what we might think of as "phase changing" like water to a gas.  For example, I like to joke and say regarding poultry, "Dinosaur, its whats for dinner" as it is becoming increasingly clear that birds are the direct descendants of the dinosaurs. In fact within 15 years we may no longer portray dinosaurs as looking like scaled reptiles, as more and more fossil evidence is suggesting that all dinosaurs had feathers!  So really, the dinosaurs didn't go extinct at all, they just changed phase into birds!  Their DNA sequences became increasingly diverse and complex over so many generations, but the patterns for dinosaurs more than likely remain the same within the bird sequences, preserving in a sense even the life of those long dead dinosaurs.

Our definition of 'species' tends to work well when looking at evolution at any one moment in time, but it does tend to fall apart when looking at the entire history of a computational system.

Let me ask you a side-bar question since you are our resident atheist and mathematician, what do you think of the influence of fractal geometry in regards to evolutionary patterns? We find fractal patterns at ever level, from the subatomic to the shapes of galaxies and everything in between.  Fractals not only shape the patterns of mechanics and physics but also natural phenomena like waves, weather, and some folks suggest even the stock market!  Now I bring this up because some of the more intelligent "Intelligent Design" folks who are actually practicing scientists (not televangelists) are looking at the potential for fractals being perhaps a mark of a Creator, they being so systematically a part of the observed Multiverse (sorry, I won't argue but I do believe in the Multiverse theory as explained by string theory )?

Well, a fractal is a topological representation of a recursive equation. So when looking at a recursive system (tomorrow's weather/dna/stock market depends on today's and today's depended on yesterday's with similar variables, along with the initial boundary conditions, influencing the new results), it's not unexpected that the topological representation will end up being a fractal. No as for this being the mark of the Creator, it is a result of initial boundary conditions that were established by the universe, so maybe in a poetic deistic sense you could say that it's a mark of a creator...it's not that I don't appreciate the poetic value of such language, I only object to it because it is usually misleading in the context of a culture with a long history of theism.

[Jonathan Gress]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

OK, thanks for defining "success" for us. How do you define "good"?

good = success

So when you say success is the only good, you are simply expressing a tautology?

Yes.

All right. In that case I'm not sure what point you were trying to make by saying in effect "success is the only success". I would of course have to agree with you there, but you have not introduced any new or interesting concept thereby. If you are content in simply repeating banalities, however, I cannot object.

[GiC]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

OK, thanks for defining "success" for us. How do you define "good"?

good = success

So when you say success is the only good, you are simply expressing a tautology?

Yes.

All right. In that case I'm not sure what point you were trying to make by saying in effect "success is the only success". I would of course have to agree with you there, but you have not introduced any new or interesting concept thereby. If you are content in simply repeating banalities, however, I cannot object.

1=1 is also a tautology. But if everyone keeps insisting that 1=42 then 1=1, even though a tautology, is still worth reasserting. One would, of course, hope that a tautology is obvious enough that it need not be continuously restated, but, alas, this doesn't always seem to be the case.

[Jonathan Gress]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

OK, thanks for defining "success" for us. How do you define "good"?

good = success

So when you say success is the only good, you are simply expressing a tautology?

Yes.

All right. In that case I'm not sure what point you were trying to make by saying in effect "success is the only success". I would of course have to agree with you there, but you have not introduced any new or interesting concept thereby. If you are content in simply repeating banalities, however, I cannot object.

1=1 is also a tautology. But if everyone keeps insisting that 1=42 then 1=1, even though a tautology, is still worth reasserting. One would, of course, hope that a tautology is obvious enough that it need not be continuously restated, but, alas, this doesn't always seem to be the case.

Who was ever suggesting 1 was anything other than 1? Or who was ever suggesting success, by your or anyone's definition, was not success? What I was challenging was your statement that success was good, when according to your own philosophy there is no such thing "good" to which anything, including success, might be equivalent.

[yeshuaisiam]

The trouble with atheists is not that they can't be good.  Many of these people have done wonders for Science & technological development, education, medicine, architecture, etc....

The problem with atheists is that they follow THEIR will, not God's.

Satanism is a religion of self worship, atheism in its truest form.  When one only follows his/her will or does what he/she wants they are the rulers of their own lives.

Anton Levey (co founder of the church of Satan) and Aleister Crowley said "Do what thy wilt shall be the whole of the law".   SO even if your actions are good, you are doing them for yourself, rather than submitting to the will of God and -
"Thy will be done" - Yeshua in the Lord's prayer.

So yes, good works for submitting your will to God, makes you NOT in charge of your life, but following what God wants.
Good works done for yourself to be nice, or just kind to somebody else, may appear fine and seem good, but it's your will over God's.

It's about submission and throwing out your life & will and following God's.

[Jonathan Gress]

The trouble with atheists is not that they can't be good.  Many of these people have done wonders for Science & technological development, education, medicine, architecture, etc....

The problem with atheists is that they follow THEIR will, not God's.

Satanism is a religion of self worship, atheism in its truest form.  When one only follows his/her will or does what he/she wants they are the rulers of their own lives.

Anton Levey (co founder of the church of Satan) and Aleister Crowley said "Do what thy wilt shall be the whole of the law".   SO even if your actions are good, you are doing them for yourself, rather than submitting to the will of God and -
"Thy will be done" - Yeshua in the Lord's prayer.

So yes, good works for submitting your will to God, makes you NOT in charge of your life, but following what God wants.
Good works done for yourself to be nice, or just kind to somebody else, may appear fine and seem good, but it's your will over God's.

It's about submission and throwing out your life & will and following God's.

That's a good point. Another good point is that atheists' definition of "good", as in "we can be good without God", frequently differs from the Christian definition of good. Obviously it's easier to be good when you get to decide for yourself what counts as good or bad.

[GiC]

Hm so again it's all about defining your terms. I keep getting confused by GiC's use of "good" and "bad" because the context in which he uses it keeps demanding that I interpret them in an ethical, rather than some other sense. But he seems to reject metaphysical ethics, which leaves me wondering what exactly he means when he asserts that e.g. "success is the only good". What is "good" in your system such that I might agree with you that success is the only good? Because if you are relying on us both understanding the same thing by "good", I would simply have to disagree with you that success is the only good, because, for example, I do not think that success bought at the expense of others is good, but rather in my system it's bad.

By 'system' I don't mean my or your personal preferences. I mean, ultimately, the laws of physics and how they apply given the initial state of the Universe following the big bang. Biological evolution is really a direct consequence of this all dependent on the properties of sub-atomic particles and how they interact to create atoms and how they interact to create molecules and how they interact to create computation, which is to say, life and how these computational systems interact with other computational systems and the physical laws that surround them competing for the resources necessary to perform computation where the computational systems that can best find utilize the required resources and use them to create the next iteration of the program, which tends to happen using a selective semi-randomized computational method we have come to call 'evolution'. The system is the universe, 'success' is ultimately defined as the the computational system, regardless of how it comes to be, that can most successfully survive and propagate itself within the rules and boundary conditions established by the universe, that is to say the global system in which all we computational systems (or perhaps more accurately, sub-systems) exist.

OK, thanks for defining "success" for us. How do you define "good"?

good = success

So when you say success is the only good, you are simply expressing a tautology?

Yes.

All right. In that case I'm not sure what point you were trying to make by saying in effect "success is the only success". I would of course have to agree with you there, but you have not introduced any new or interesting concept thereby. If you are content in simply repeating banalities, however, I cannot object.

1=1 is also a tautology. But if everyone keeps insisting that 1=42 then 1=1, even though a tautology, is still worth reasserting. One would, of course, hope that a tautology is obvious enough that it need not be continuously restated, but, alas, this doesn't always seem to be the case.

Who was ever suggesting 1 was anything other than 1? Or who was ever suggesting success, by your or anyone's definition, was not success?

You were the one saying that good meant something other than success. So I reasserted the tautology that good=success.

What I was challenging was your statement that success was good, when according to your own philosophy there is no such thing "good" to which anything, including success, might be equivalent.

I never said there was no such thing as 'good', it's a perfectly good English adjective. I use it all the time, as an adjective and as other parts of speech as they've evolved in common usage since the 17th century. I might say that I had a good lunch, or that a lady is good looking, or I might say 'good' as an acknowledgement of a task adequately performed, or I might even say that an individual is good for nothing, to use it in an adjectival phrase.

But like with most words containing common language connotations, I reject anything more than their common usage. But as for baggage that philosophers and their translators have attempted (rather unsuccessfully, I might add, judging from modern common usage) to add to this perfectly good Anglo-Saxon term of notable lineage, well that too is good for nothing.

Languages are formed by evolving through interaction and isolation alike, words may come to mean different things as time passes and different words can come to be used for the same things, but it is this natural development that creates a language and defines the meaning of a word. Language is not formed through the mindless pontifications of some hare-brained philosopher (or should I say hair-brained, or hairbrained, which seems to be where the language is going, at least in North America, though the original is still common enough it seems like a hares are becoming a less and less common as a cultural reference, probably because they look like rabbits and most the North American species are known as 'Jackrabbits'...languages evolve).