|
ANNOTATION:
naturalist fallacies
As an aspiring darwinian ethicist (and a big fan of Micheal Ruse) i am no foe to evolutionary ethics. However, i can't help but think that much of what is said here is simply repeating the earlier mistakes of evolutionary ethics which were so soundly rejected.
Unless one adopts the process of evolution as a guiding mythology (something no one has a particular eason to do), there is no reason why the "continuation of the process of evolution" per se, is the interest of anyone. There would be two grounds for such a claim:
(1) that evolution somehow places us in a conditon where its perpetration is an objective goal we must follow/identify with/affirm. This is quite far fetched and Nietzsche and Spencer's claims on the subject aren't taken seriously for a reason.
(2) that the fact that the process of evolution (or natural selection, which is what you point to is the key to it) exists, should motivate us to live our lives in one way or another. But to say that we must live in such a way so that we would survive tells us neither how to live or why, nor does it tell us when and why mere survival is not enough. No one would consider living worthwhile for the sake of the survival and perpetration of tehir genetic mateirals.
Evolutionary facts should be definetly be taken into moral and ethical consideration, but not in such a way which fails to appeal to teh acutal interests of the individual who asks them.
...well, as i get to know the site maybe i'll post some of my positive thoughts on the matter.
shlomo sher
graduate student
philosophy
USC
Copyright© 2002 Principia Cybernetica -
Referencing this page
|
|
|
