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Introduction |
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Having spent a few weeks primarilly devoted to upgrading this website, it is a relief to come to the end of it. Now, I can return to the books I was reading, and other projects I was working on. Meanwhile, the Presidential election got hot and heavy for TV people - that's the people who spend their time watching the boob tube. I lost interest in that, and the Peterson trial, and most of the rest of the pap they present shortly after they presented it. So, lately, I watched a lot of old movies, really good movies. In between, I had a few random thoughts I wanted to consider further.
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I'm in the midst of Dennett's latest book, Freedom Evolves, which argues a materialist position on "free will," whatever that is. I plan to review and discuss the book in extenso in the near future. It has set me, once again, thinking about evolution, morality, and the other issues I am perenially concerned about.
Once upon a time, I had the temerity to think that human morality was based on some rather permanent features of our existence. Gradually, as I got older, I realized that less and less was permanent. Perhaps this was just an effect of old age, because it became clear I am not permanent. Moreover, as I thought about the evolution of species and human cultures, it became clear to me that morals are relative to the local culture. In my increasing age and relativism, I had to let go any thought of "absolute" morality, and concede it is all a fiction of our very temporary culture.
It seems important to me to reconcile different strands of thought. I am committed to evolution. I also believe there are some ethical guidelines humans should follow. (In fact, I think I hold rather higher than usual standards.) I resolve these strands in the notion that ethics is relative to the species. There might be some ethical generalizations that apply to all species, but I don't think there are a lot of them.
One of the reasons I am a neo-Darwinian is that I am a materialist. I don't believe in gods or demons, except the ones we manufacture ourselves (to our sorrow). Without arguing my materialism, right there any "absolutism" is undermined. If there are no forms, no spirits and no ghosts-in-machines, what you see is what you get. WYSIWYG is especially important once people get to the computer stage of living.
So, in the complex of beliefs that constitute materialism and empiricism, I think we necessarilly throw out the animism - the fears and paranoia - of our ancestors. In my world of experience, deprived of "ultimate" principles and truths, there is an importance to heuristics; i.e. learning through examples. The idea is an old one, that examples are a ladder to heaven (understanding, even wisdom); once one attains heaven, the ladder is dispensible. People had the right idea from the beginning, remembering and telling stories, but some wise guys ran away with them. In the wrong hands, the stories became tools of confusion and oppression, not enlightenment.
Today, I want you to re-consider an example I've made many times. What happens when ET, or a Martian, lands in the middle of Manhattan? What assumptions should we make about this very alien stranger? What assumptions would ET make about us? With respect to morality, anthropologists have told us much about primitive societies in the jungles. But, educated Westerners and Easterners don't believe in the hobgoblins and bugaboos these tribal live by. Would an advanced ET from 100 light years or more away think any more of our mores?
Coming from the other direction, what does an ant think of us, if it thinks at all? Ants have been around for, maybe, 200 million years or more at least; 25 times longer than all humans since our earliest ancestor. In all the time ants (and their cousins, bees, too) have been around, only now have these strange humans arrived on the scene to claim different behaviors than all that went before.
Consider the scaling here: ants:humans:aliens.
WalterB -
20:39:23 - Monday, 10/11/2004
