True enough- survival of the fittest has a tendency to define those who survive as being particularily fit. Pretty close to a tautology, no?
Also, unlike what the creationists and atheists would tell you, Darwin's ideas have become quite acceptable within the Roman Catholic Church- the last two Popes have refered to them quite often, and the idea of evolution of culture is behind the current push towards Benedict XVI's "rational religion" (see link in sig line). Well, yeah. There is so much similarity between evolutionists and Christian in their dogmatism, it's not even funny.
The Tao that can be named (known) is not the true Tao. Indeed. This is why I am objecting to the use of "Tao (moral principles)" instead of "Tao".
There is a big difference between "Is there then Tao (moral principles) among thieves?"
and "Is there then Tao among thieves?". The second question does not attach, insert or imply
some morality to Tao, it is instead the question about Tao and thieves, posed by a thieve apprentice
to the thieve master.
What is the relation between Tao and thieves? Is it maybe that Tao avoid thieves, condemns them,
or maybe has nothing to say about about them? Can Tao be that-which-avoids-thieves?
"Tell me if there is anything in which there is not Tao," Cheh [the master thieve] replied.
I think the point that thieves have virutes too is the main thing. Let's read a bit more:
[Cheh says]"There is the sage character of thieves by which booty is located, the courage to go in first, and the chivalry of coming out last. There is the wisdom of calculating success, and kindness in the equal division of the spoil. There has never yet been a great robber who was not possessed of these five qualities." It is seen therefore that without the teachings of the Sages, good men could not keep their position, and without the teachings of the Sages, Robber Cheh could not accomplish his ends. The passage talks why the teaching of Sages is important if one is to become a great robber.
Without the teaching, Chech could not have accomplish his ends, but not only that: he would not have
had the notion what a great robber is. Notice that he is talking about Tao only through the
teaching of the Sages.
Since good men are scarce and bad men are the majority, the good the Sages do to the world is little and the evil great. Therefore it has been said "If the lips are turned up, the teeth will be cold.[...]" This also means: great robbers are scarce, it is not easy to become a great robber. There are
many robbers, but most of them are, well, no good, they also cause great evil in the world.
Great robber is great only insofar as he is "in touch" with Tao, thus Sages who teach Tao are
important.
Bad robbers are like teeth without lips: they bite and devour and are sharp, but cold--they don't
feel their coldness and therefore their Chi is off balance. But a great robber knows about this
warmth, that this warmth comes from soft lips, he knows why only both lips and teeth can center
Chi, and why Sages are important to him to become a great robber.
Yes, it's hard to tell which one is more bizarre, the NYT article from your
link or the Nature article it links to (probably because I've no access to the
Nature article to read it). Few quotes:
The researchers emphasize that the study was small
and that the moral decisions were hypothetical; the results cannot
predict how people with or without brain injuries will act in real
life-or-death situations. Maybe this is fair enough? Or maybe, like in some old tale, these six souls
have something to do with the core of the morality of the whole Western world?
The next sentence:
Yet the findings, published online by the
journal Nature, confirm the central role of the damaged region -- the
ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is thought to generate social emotions,
like compassion. [emphasize mine].
I'm glad that they "confirmed the central role", whatever confirmation of the
central role might mean. What does it mean?
Let's check out the abstract of the Nature article:
Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement,
and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral
judgement. Here they are more interested in something like "Of central interest", although
they didn't skip the role playing either.
There is also this little "Yet"... Do we have here the classic formula:
It's small alright, yet mighty? If they are to tell me
something of importance for real life-or-death situations, do I realy want to
hear arguments based on "it is small, yet mighty"? What if mine is bigger?
Of course, I am talking about life experience, that which different people
might have dealing with different people in different times of their lives that
influences their decision-making. And then add to that what is generally
known as culture. All these considered, it seems to me that anybody's
is bigger than theirs, especially if, in the name of objectivity of
science, they neglect their own accumulated life experience.
But let's read a bit more, we are entitled to it since after all we do pay
indirectly for such research, if not because of our
intellectual curiosity in the issues of the moral. What were hypothetical
moral dilemmas that they studied?
[...]moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare
against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to
sacrifice one person's life to save a number of other lives) I don't know when in the so-called real life such dilemmas arise. But then, scientists
often consider rather contrived examples in order to make some "solid points", right?
Then check
this out:
Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial
prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of
emotions and, in particular, social emotions, produce an abnormally
'utilitarian' pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas. These findings indicate
that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC
is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. So, based on which philosophy of "'utilitarian'", whatever that might mean,
they had based their morality tests and decisions on what is "normal" and
"abnormal", what are "normal judgements of right and wrong", "the normal
generation of emotions", etc? Aren't these
also related to philosophy, religion, social sciences, literature, etc?
And, I want refund. I mean, read this part of the
NYT article about their research:
[In one of tests, persons] would not send a daughter to work in the pornography
industry to fend off crushing poverty, or kill an infant they felt they could
not care for. or
[...]push someone in front of the train (if that was the only option), or to
poison someone with AIDS who was bent on infecting others, or suffocate a baby
whose crying would reveal to enemy soldiers where the subject and family and
friends were hiding. Is this some bizarre shit or what? What are they, both New York Times
and Nature, talking about, really?
[...]for microevolution, Darwin had a very powerfull idea that goes far beyond mere biology. It's also a useful way of thinking about anthropology in various guises; and it explains the reason why Taker cultures have historically out-competed Leaver cultures DESPITE the fact that the Leaver cultures fit better into their ecological niches. This explanation is definitely beneficial for the Taker culture and thus a bit suspicious to me, particularly being formulated after the fact: Taker takes all, then explains it why that was only natural.
Perhaps a more accurate way to say it is that the tendency towards morality is passed via our genes, therefore people tend to act in a moral way by default. Which then implies that morality can also vanish in the process of natural selection, no?
Not entirely sure what you're getting at, but you need to understand the difference between ultimate and proximal causes of our actions. The ultimate cause of us having sex is the need to pass our genes on, but this is expressed in the proximal cause of attraction and a sex drive. Morality arises through various proximal causes - anger at being cheated, liking towards those who are nice to us and so on. There is a difference, so to say a huge difference, between sex and procreation: sexual behavior may or may not be motivated by procreation, and various moralities prohibit numerous sexual practices that are in other moralities deemed harmless, morally acceptable etc.
Even if the morality is hard-wired, in genes for example, it is not passed only by procreation. For example, great moralists can be and often are people who have no children whatsoever: they however still pass on the moral beliefs onto some "offsprings", for example younger generations, without ever passing any genetic material. Morality then can be in an arbitrary way related to evolution, exactly because hard-wires (genes or whatever) are not necessary for morality to survive in the first place.
There are some species of birds where the offspring comes back to the nest to help out its parents rear their new siblings. From a glance, this could be seen as altruism however, this is a "cheap" way for the older siblings to pass on their genes. I thought that genes are passed through the sexual reproduction, no? Short of genetic engineering, that's about the only way.
Even with religion brought into it, the why is usually a pretty straightforward "it protects the continuation and procreation of the culture". "Bad" moral decisions are simply anti-survival, and there's enough competition between religions and cultures for evolution to do the rest. But aren't you then taking off from the Darwinism when you talk about evolution and culture/religion? What is then evolution suppose to be, since it is after all a part of the Western culture?
Since I can tell you know a lot about physics, constructivism, morality, bombs and stuff, here is one for you: The Cold War. As you probably know, there was a lot of research during the Cold war on nuclear energy, no? Is this research good or bad in your religious scheme?
I think you've missed the point. Evolution hard-wires us with certain innate drives[...]Evolution hard-wires instincts and tendencies, not actions. I think that you think that "hard"-"wire" and "Evolution" somehow work together.
Can you tell me where are those "hard-wires" of evolution in us that do so many things?
Evolution doesn't favor altruism. It favors kin-selection, in which people closely related to you are important to you. A mother will sacrifice for her children, and a brother will sacrifice for a large enough group of other brothers, but when it comes to "your fellow man", evolution favors no such thing. What about sisters and women? Are they out of evolution/humanity/whatever you're talking about?
"Bad" moral decisions are simply anti-survival Well, I'm not sure I agree that they are always anti-your-own-survival. Giving your life to save someone unrelated to you is generally bad in Darwinian terms, but "good" morally. I think you haven't read the post to which you're replying, where it's written
"'it protects the continuation and procreation of the culture'". Noticing that little word "culture"?
Culture disappears in your reply.
... but also means the body can be free to roam without knowledge and constraints of consciousness and conscience, so in effect, it does kinda disconnect "morality" from the body... Then I presume you would agree that there is nothing moral or immoral about bodily functions once they are disconnected from some constraints of consciousness and conscience?
I've always thought that Chuang Tze caught the gist of the biomoralist argument: An apprentice to Robber Cheh asked him saying, "Is there then Tao (moral principles) among thieves?"
Dude, just because you inserted "(moral principles)" after word "Tao" does not make Tao acquire meaning of moral principles, does it?
I think that this is a misuse of the word "paradigm." Paradigm is, if nothing else, one word that is hard to misuse. Let me give you an example from your own text:
A paradigm change is something that happens within a single area of study, such as geology or linguistics. To look at connectedness among "paradigms", you'd have to look at the history of single fields, not the current interconnectedness among different fields. [I'm using italics instead of the bold text because it is kind of too much emphasize on "a single area of study". Just look at names of some fields in the chart, like "physical chemistry".]
No, it's a million lines because the team writing it couldn't figure out what features they didn't want. The fact that they somehow managed to use OO-type abstractions while continuing to code in strict f77 was the source of amazement. Yes, sometimes it's hard to see what amazes people about FORTRAN, but here you're already giving me some ideas: how about a LISP virtual machine in F77? That's, if not amazing, at least interesting.
My gut feeling is history is often written by the winners, and it's not very accurate. Is that what makes you so sad?
Merging [literature] with history, why does Alexander Pushkin write in a different language than Shakespeare? Seems obvious, but that could be because of our, or just my, ignorance. Do you mean: maybe Pushkin did not write in Russian because he lived in Russia, or something?
I'll leave you with a poem that Wilson may or may not enjoy[...] And what if he would not enjoy it?
Now, you say "can't go back in time to see how Genghis Khan would have reacted to any change we might introduce." That is true, and Wilson agrees. But, I think he believes it's because the history was written poorly. That is why he's pushing for a unity of knowledge. He wants us to write the history in a more scientific and dispassionate way, so we can study these changes. Instead we rely on the corporate media in most cases. So I gather that you think that Wilson thinks that history is written in a less scientific and more passionate way or something?
Cheers! You too dude!
There are lots of links. For example, there are lots of connections between the development of syntax and grammers in linguistics and the work on syntax and grammer in computer languages. which also makes sense.
Geek porn I found only parts of the chart that interesting, which made it really bizarre during circular references and cross linking, causing rapid fire repetitive redundant priapismic episodes. And it's pretty hairy too!
What's really surprising here is not the strength of the connection between computer science and the social sciences; it's the scarcity of connections elsewhere. Where are the connections between ecology and social science, ecology and computer science? I see infectious diseases - where are the links to network theory? What about the social and communication basis for physics and the other hard sciences? well dude, I think in your case the time has come to fix these things a bit: you can probably do it in an image editor...
Perhaps he says they should all be published under the same paradigm, and not in clear groups as shown by the graph. If there's a concilience of the language that we use, this could happen. Like just one big pale circle!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad that they "confirmed the central role", whatever confirmation of the central role might mean. What does it mean?
Let's check out the abstract of the Nature article: Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here they are more interested in something like "Of central interest", although they didn't skip the role playing either.
There is also this little "Yet"... Do we have here the classic formula: It's small alright, yet mighty? If they are to tell me something of importance for real life-or-death situations, do I realy want to hear arguments based on "it is small, yet mighty"? What if mine is bigger? Of course, I am talking about life experience, that which different people might have dealing with different people in different times of their lives that influences their decision-making. And then add to that what is generally known as culture. All these considered, it seems to me that anybody's is bigger than theirs, especially if, in the name of objectivity of science, they neglect their own accumulated life experience.
But let's read a bit more, we are entitled to it since after all we do pay indirectly for such research, if not because of our intellectual curiosity in the issues of the moral. What were hypothetical moral dilemmas that they studied? [...]moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person's life to save a number of other lives) I don't know when in the so-called real life such dilemmas arise. But then, scientists often consider rather contrived examples in order to make some "solid points", right? Then check this out: Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions, produce an abnormally 'utilitarian' pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. So, based on which philosophy of "'utilitarian'", whatever that might mean, they had based their morality tests and decisions on what is "normal" and "abnormal", what are "normal judgements of right and wrong", "the normal generation of emotions", etc? Aren't these also related to philosophy, religion, social sciences, literature, etc? And, I want refund. I mean, read this part of the NYT article about their research: [In one of tests, persons] would not send a daughter to work in the pornography industry to fend off crushing poverty, or kill an infant they felt they could not care for. or [...]push someone in front of the train (if that was the only option), or to poison someone with AIDS who was bent on infecting others, or suffocate a baby whose crying would reveal to enemy soldiers where the subject and family and friends were hiding. Is this some bizarre shit or what? What are they, both New York Times and Nature, talking about, really?
Since I can tell you know a lot about physics, constructivism, morality, bombs and stuff, here is one for you: The Cold War. As you probably know, there was a lot of research during the Cold war on nuclear energy, no? Is this research good or bad in your religious scheme?
So, there is no women in your world?
... but also means the body can be free to roam without knowledge and constraints of consciousness and conscience, so in effect, it does kinda disconnect "morality" from the body... Then I presume you would agree that there is nothing moral or immoral about bodily functions once they are disconnected from some constraints of consciousness and conscience?Dude, just because you inserted "(moral principles)" after word "Tao" does not make Tao acquire meaning of moral principles, does it?