Prisoner’s dilemma.
Tab you passed over my logical point, but no matter. Here are two different ways of responding;
(1) No you’re wrong (but how would you know?)
(2) Is it still compassion when you just ‘feel it’, and don’t act on it? Or rather, at what point does compassion become empty sentiment?
This leads straightforwardly, in my opinion, to the conclusion that some people have compassion and others don’t. Do you see what I am getting at?
Regards,
James
free love = choice
promiscuity: multiple, simultaneous sexual relationships = choice
homosexuality = condition
smoking = choice
Is being left handed moral? You know ‘Hand of the devil’.
Can a condition be immoral?
If you suggest that a condition can be immoral, you are immoral!
Hey James, I’ll take option two, as incomprehension of the statement “Tab you are wrong” is as you rightly say, part of my essence.
Compassion is a ‘penalty’ if you wish, the price of being to empathize with, and semi-accurately predict the behavior of another being through observation and comparison with past experiences of (a) simular being(s) either individual and displaying most/all of the traits of the newly observed, or ‘borrowings’ from a group of previously observed beings, displaying in sum the traits of the newly observed.
My point with ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ was that co-operation and mutual trust, overall (through many itterations if the opposition holds grudges) pays off both the trustees, better than a back-stab. You cannot really allow yourself to trust what you have no comprehension of, you cannot trust what you cannot empathize with.
ie: the (actively gene-led, or possibly just passive side effect of memory) ability to empathize is an advantage, and is therefore conserved, and spread on a species wide level. (Sorry - Dawkins raises his head once more). Sociopaths are the exception perhaps.
Empathy facillitates subjective judgemental results of Trust/distrust+compassion/envy etc… ie: Comes pre-packed and ready to wear with every genetic purchase of the human form.
Compassion is really an internal “Oh shit - glad I ain’t that guy” with accompanying degrees of involuntary (?projected/reciprocated?) sadness. Wether alleviation of that ghostly-sadness is the chief and selfish motivator of altruistic action in response, or something more noble, I would hesitate to guess.
Compassion as empty sentiment, or compassion suspended because of lack of expendable resource…? It is no real wonder that pop-stars are more altrusitic than Joe Blogs, they can afford to be, and at a certain level of wealth and accustoment to phsyical/psychological well being, even the small discomfort of a jogged conscience becomes a pin-prick too much to bear.
The decision to act upon compassion then becomes a personal weighing of “How much do I need to maintain my well-being, and how much can I expend without compromizing this…?” Some people need less, so give more.
Tab.
I didn’t know Luddites spoke Dawkinese… 
…
Have you heard the great news? Professor Dawkins is about to release a stunning new book, inaugurating the cutting edge science of Socio-Physics. Yeah. Did you know light was selfish? Man I sure didn’t. Well thank God I now have an exclusive pre-release copy of ‘The Selfish Beam’ to provide me with the raw, cold truth.
(whispering[size=75] I’ve heard that if you listen weeeaallly closely to a beam of light, you can here it say “Gimmegimmegimmegimmegimmegimme” continuously… [/size]hushed awe)
…
Oooooooooooook. So thanks for your response. It gives me some idea of the direction you’re moving in. In any case, I do not share your enthusiasm for Dawkins and his croni… err, compatriots. 
I am interested though in what you find fascinating about his work; if not that he merely tells you what you want to hear, and gives you some scientific jargon to play with?
…
(CUTS TO SCENE OF TAB, READING DAWKINS)
The room is empty, except for Tabula. He is seated in a large, brown leather chair, silently enjoying his copy of The Selfish Gene. On the polished wooden desk is a glass of brandy. From across the room, a small fire is brewing, and it dances with a soft ochre flourish across his expressionless face.
[Begin monologue: Tab’s inner voice is whispering into his ear as he reads. It sounds like Kim Jong Il from Team America. Read it as slowly as possible.]
with a sinister lisp "Yeeessss… Tab… you know it’s true. No more hiding Taaaaaaaaa…bula. Human beings are dirty, dirty…dirty creatures. Everyting Tab… everyting is…
…so veeeerry, veeeerry…
…Dirrrrrrty.
raises pitch 2 octaves, voice shrill and imploring 'Life is Will to Power, Tab… Don’t you see…? It’s all pletense, Tab… They’re all pletennnding. Do you see the darkling show, the illuuuusory shadow dance, the smoke and mirrors? Yesss…
Give yourself to the Daaarrrrrrrrrr…kkk Side, Tab."
…
Ahem.
In any case, it sounds like so much silliness to me. I think in this sense I am the one who is more of a Luddite. In a way at least.
Peace,
James
Careful James, you came close to creativity there, don’t want to comprimize your stance on the absence of true invention… 
I’ve a Human-Biology degree, The selfish gene, Blind-Watchmaker was read on the suggestion of my tutor… Aptly named Mr. Rimmer. What can I say, I was a choir just waiting to be preached to. Saint Dawk spoke to me.
Ah well, you put down the Spinoza, or whatever other useless doorstop you’re currently reading, and I’ll toss the Dawkins on the pyre with the rest. It’s cold, I need some heat, selfish of me I know, so many memes up in smoke.
Anyway, good post, refreshing lack of tortured prose, reasonably high marks on the funny-scale, and a sinister laugh. What more could a poor Luddite ask for…?
Tab.
Cheers on the response. Just one more thing.
Actually I’m claiming this position for me. You are the one who does not believe in ‘true invention’. You just don’t know it. Dusts off copy of Ethics, and closes the door in Tab’s face 
I quite forgot that you had a biology degree, though. That explains it some.
Regards,
James
Hi James. You wrote (in reply to GCT)
I’ve said that compassion works as well as it does because we’re all constructed according to the same generic blueprint. But suppose I’d written, instead, that logs burn as well as they do because trees are constructed according to the same generic blueprint. Would you read that to say that as long as trees are constructed according the same generic blueprint that I deny oxygen is required in order for logs to burn? To do so would confuse necessary conditions for necessary and sufficient conditions. As J.S. Mill pointed out, rarely, if ever, do an empirical facts presented in the form, “because of,” imply “only because of”.
“In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” Carl Sagen
And please note that nothing in the above statement about logs burning even speaks to the fact that grass or dried seaweed might also burn. Which is to say, nothing in my orginal statement speaks to, or depends upon the fact that jellyfish, the Vulcan race, or thermostats, either are, or could possibly be, compassionate.
When I feel like discussing philosophy or poetry I don’t go out to the garden and find a toad to bounce my ideas off of. No, I generally look for another person. That is, I generally keep searching until I find something built around the human genome. And yes, their having human DNA is only one critically important prerequisite. An infant or a brain-dead human on life-support both have the proper DNA structure, and yet they’ll invariably fail to hold-up their end of the discussion on other accounts.
And so it is with compassion. If another person were holding the detonator of a bomb strapped to my chest, there’s always a chance that I might appeal to their sense of compassion to let me live. But if it were a chimpanzee holding the detonator…well, I think you take my point. I’ve spoken several times in this forum about the child-soldiers of Africa. I once heard an African woman interviewed on the radio say that when the villager’s heard that government troops were coming, they’d gather up their things and run for their lives. But when they heard that eight and nine year old boys carrying AK-47’s were coming, they’d drop everything and run, screaming, for their lives. The reason, she said, was that it is impossible to appeal to the compassion of an eight year old; one might as well appeal to the compassion of a locust swarm not to devour their crops.
Speaking to your “confusion,” James. The possibility that a being could develop a sense of compassion, write poetry, or learn to sing arias, critically depends on its DNA structure. I’m confident that no being with the DNA structure of a pond frog will ever have a leading role in Mozart’s, The Magic Flute.
You wrote
No, pick up the Dawkins and please read what this fascinating man is actually saying. As early as the first chaper of The Selfish Gene he writes
“I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave. … If you wish to extract a moral from it, read it as a warning. Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”
And speaking of Whitelotus, he once posted a list of books (what he characterized as “the most comprehensible”) on the subject of social Darwinism. Notice the second book on his list.
But when I pointed out (in fact, the last time I pointed anything out to him) the above quote of Dawkins, taken directly from The Selfish Gene, Whitelotus replied
It reminds me of something Hannah Arendt once said
“There is nothing so entertaining as the discussion of a book nobody has read.”
He tells me to learn to read after I quote from a book that he’s just told us to read; the same quote that then has him (in the very same thread) characterize Dawkins as writing crap.
But the thing I most remember about about Whitelotus was his horrid, corrosive outlook on life. I used to wonder if he resembled the guy in, Edvard Munch’s, The Scream. I very much doubt he’d want my pity, and yet I can’t stop myself from having pity for the persona he presented in this forum. Wittgenstein remarked (Culture and Value)
“The raisons may be the best part of the cake, but that doesn’t mean that a bag full of raisons is better than a cake.”
The finding of interesting truths are, at least for a philosopher, the raisons of this world. The love we bring into this world is the cake.
“I remember a train journey with Levinas during which, over the period of some hours, he told me about his sense of wonder before the miracle of kindness. From his point of view kindness is infinitely more wonderful than the fact that there is something rather than nothing.”
Jean Greisch, Ethics and Lifeworlds
Regards,
Michael
Yes I agree. I guess I am less interested in the genetic component, in the same way that I am less interested in the fact that the colour blue is composed of such and such a wavelength frequency. I sometimes think of an example, like sitting around a fire and sharing stories, and then ask what is the spatial location of the fire, causaully speaking? The kind of causation behind the reality of the fire might be thought of as a series of lines intersecting at right angles. The reality of the fire exists as a social construct or as a historically mediated reality; it has a categorial reality which cannot be reduced to pure sense perception, etc etc.
In a similar vein, Plato said that to be is to be a kind of thing.
Well what trees have in common with grass and dried seaweed is their flammability, under relatively similar conditions. However, even air will burst into flames under the right conditions. Now aside from the fact that thermostats don’t have genes, would you argue that compassion is the equivalent of the dispositional property of flammability in these other cases? Notice that flammability is defined by ‘family resemblances’ under normal conditions, but can also be defined by physical resemblances over varying conditions. Which is to say that we can describe flammability as something which bark, grass etc have under condition X, or else we can describe it as something which substances A and B have, under conditions X and Y, but never A at Y or B at X, if you are following my reasoning. I would say that in your examples, you are talking about compassion of the second variety. However, even this kind of variance falls within the horizon of our foreconception of just what ‘compassion’ is, if you will. We recognize it in behaviour, and we imbibe its meaning as inherited from tradition. But we can only ever recognize what we are able to look for.
Well I would simply say that the more critically it does depend on this structure, the less conceptually confused it becomes to look for the behaviour in question in other species. Let’s forget about altruism for a minute, and talk about selfishness. No self-respecting Dawk (;))would deny that selfishness is present in other species. In fact they even go as far as to posit the silly hypothesis that genes themselves are ‘selfish’, which from a common sense point of view looks ridiculous. The usage though is meant to denote a characteristic which is supposed to transcend the narrow bounds of ‘human nature’. (I still think it is silly though…) In any case, you are assuming that it is more silly to call a frog compassionate than to call a gene selfish, or to give a less contentious example, to call normal animal behaviour selfish. So whilst it is true that nothing in your example seems to require that animals can be compassionate, something in your argument does seem to imply that it is our DNA composition which is predominantly responsible for our being compassionate. I am saying that this is like analysing ‘air’ as a kind of tree bark or grass, instead of analyzing it according to air pressure or whatever. Or at least that seems like a telling conclusion to my rant. Which brings me to Master Dawkins.
Now how you are able to argue that DNA is primary responsible for compassion, whilst at the same time supporting arguments like this;
Now I don’t know too much about the work of this fascinating man, but surely people recognize that this is the same thing Augusting said 1600 years ago, and God knows how many others before him. But seeing as you went to the trouble of copying a quote, the least I could do, short of a properly critical response, would be to offer a quote in return, also from Richard Dawkins;
“…it is, after all, to [a woman’s] advantage that her child should be adopted.”
I thought you might like that one. It is, as you say, fascinating. Here is something else for your reading pleasure;
"There are some beliefs which, though we have found them to be false over and over again, never entirely lose their hold on us, because they appeal to something permanent in human nature. An example is, the belief that ‘the grass is greener on the other side’. Everyone of mature years knows this to be false, and yet it always retains some degree of influence on our behaviour. Indeed, this particular delusion is so deep rooted that it is not even confined to human beings. I have actually seen a cow escape from the well grazed paddock in which she had long been kept, and promptly put her head back through the wire fence and begin grazing inside her former prison.
There are other beliefs which, through disproved countless times, never die out, because they appeal, not to something in everyone, but to a certain perennial type of person. An example is, the belief that everyone is at bottom selfish, or that no one ever acts intentionally except from motives of self-interest.
…This ‘selfish theory or human nature’ has a long history, but not, on the whole, an impressive or even a respectable one…
…The belief in evolution was itself peculiarly a product of the 18th century Enlightenment, and from that circumstance alone would have had some affinity with the selfish theory of human nature. But the Darwinian theory of evolution has an especially strong affinity of its own with the belief in universal selfishness. For Darwinism says, after all, that in every species the individual organisms are always engaged in a struggle for life with one another. And what could that struggle be, except a school in which the scholars do well in proportion as they are ruthlessly selfish? An organism or a lineage of organisms which was unselfish or altruistic - which ate less or mated later (for example), in order that some conspecifics could eat more or mate sooner - would hardly be going the right way about becoming a ‘[i[favoured[/i] race in the struggle for life’. It would, on the contrary, by taking the shortest possible path to being eliminated by natural selection, which can never sleep, and can never forgive inferior performers iin the game of survival and reproduction.
Logically, therefore, Darwinians ought always to have accepted the selfish theory of human (and all animal) nature: accepted it from the very start, and openly. But nothing at all like that happened in fact. No doubt part of the reason was that Darwin, (as we have seen), had quite enough to do in 1859 as it was, in the way of prizing evolutionism loose from its accustomed setting of republicanism and anti-religious zeal. If he had openly embraced the selfish theory in The Origin of Species, it would have sunk the book like a stone, and Darwin would have been very well aware of this fact.
But he was probably never tempted to do so. The selfish theory requires, in those who believe it, an appetite for insolence and absurdity far stronger than most people posses or even approach. It is a doctrine tenable only by Hard Men, or (as the French say) esprit forts. Insolence held no charms whatever for his emollient temperament, and anyway he had too much common sense to believe the selfish theory.
In this respect Darwinians, both in the 19th and in the 20th century, have nearly always stayed withint the lines laid down by Darwin’s personal common sense and caution. They have admitted, very often indeed, that altruism, and especially altruism on the scale that human beings go in for it, is a ‘problem’ for their theory of evolution: that is, is inconsistent, prima facie at least, with that theory. Which is fair enough, as far as it goes. But some of us well remember Hume’s reasonable protest against the ‘custom of calling a difficulty what pretends to be a demonstration, and endeavoring by that means to elude its force and evidence.’ And in fact Darwinians have, beyond all doubt, cruelly overworked this trick, of calling altruism a ‘problem’ for their theory, and then proceeding to think and write as though there were really no such problem at all.
Darwin himself never even conceded that altruism is a problem for this theory of evolution. He was not in the habit of drawing attention to problems for that theory, unless they were ones which he believed he could solve. He appears never to have been worried by the obvious disadvantages unver which altruistic individuals would lie in ‘the struggle for life’. Instead of that, and characteristically, he explains to his readers at considerable length that altruism would actually be an advantage to a tribe of humans, if it had to compete with another tribe which, though otherwise equal, was less given to altruism among its members. This is true, obviously enough; indeed, a good deal more than obviously enough. But it does nothing at all to explain how, in a constant competition among conspecifics to survive and reproduce, altruistic individuals could possibly avoid being demographically ‘swamped’ by non-altruistic ones.
Most Darwinians, then, since ever there have been Darwinians, have resisted the strong ‘gravitational pull’ exerted on their minds by the theory that humans and all other animals are selfish. In the last 25 years, however, this situation has radically changed. The selfish theory has been openly, and in many cases aggressively, embraced by a large and influential group of neo-Darwinians; the ones who have come to be called ‘sociobiologists’.
These people are nothing if not esprit forts. ‘Scratch an “altruist” and watch a hypocrite bleed’, wrote one of them. ‘Nice Guys Finish Last’ was the expressive title of a representative article by another. A third writes that ‘altruism [is] something which has no place in nature’, or in human nature either; ‘we are born selfish’. All transactions between organisms, no matter how altruistic some of them may appear, are in reality (according to these thinkers) cases of one organism manipulating another for its own advantage; even the transactions between parents and their children. Sociobiologists all agree that ‘[natural] selection would favour parents who succeeded in manipulating their offpring, over those who did not.’ In fact these authors think, and say, that you will be on the right track in biology, if you expect to find ‘dirty tricks’ and ‘dog eat dog’ everywhere.
Sociobiology is like garlic: a little goes a long way. So the above quotations, few and short though they are, will probably be enough to convey the essential flavour of sociobiology, to any reader previously ignorant of it. Even in these glimpses, you can see the tell-tale gold tooth sparkling a mile off. But it will be helpful to mention some less summary expressions of the selfish theory as it has been revived by these thinkers.
There are physiological or behavioural signals of submission which in our species, in dogs, and in many other animals, terminate fights between conspecifics, or prevent them from starting, or at the least usually prevent them from ending in a death. The existence of these signals, according to E.O. Wilson, the leader of the sociobiological school, is profoundly puzzling. They constitute, he says, ‘a considerable theoretical difficulty: Why not always try to kill or maim the enemy outright?’ This scholarly enquiry might cause you, if you are a mere normal man, and can remember being in a school playground fight or two, a sharp intake of breath. But if, of course, you are a Darwinian, and believe that all organisms, including yourself, are engaged in a struggle for life, or if you take for granted that humans and all other animals are selfish - why not, indeed, ‘always try to kill or maim the enemy outright’?
As a second example, consider communication. Everyone knows that organisms sometimes communicate with one another as part of an attempt at manipulation of the ‘signal-received’ by the ‘signal-sender’. An unscrupulous second hand car salesman, talking to a potential buyer, is a stock example of such self-interested communication. So is Brer Rabbit, when he pleads with Brer Fox not to throw him into the briar patch, (where he in fact lives and thrives). But according to the sociobiologists R. Dawkins and J. Krebs, all communication whatever is ‘manipulation of signal-receiver by signal-sender’.
As a third example, consider the phenomenon of ‘baby snatching’. Among certain species of monkeys, as well as among ourselves, it sometimes happens that a bereaved mother will steal another mother’s baby, ‘adopt’ it, and care for it. Most people have heard of this phenomenon, and nearly all those who have - certainly not just the bereaved mothers themselves - feel in a dim way, and with a dull pain, that they understand it too. Not so the sociobiologist Dr. R. Dawkins. He finds the fact of baby snatching deeply and importantly puzzling; as well he might, given his Darwinian assumptions. As Dawkins sees the matter, ‘the adopter not only wastes her own time: she also releases a rival female from the burden of child-rearing, and frees her to have another child more quickly. It seems to me a critical example which deserves thorough research. We need to know how often it happens; what the average relatedness between the adopter and child is likely to be; and what the attitude of the real mother of the child is - it is, after all, to her advantage that her child should be adopted; do mothers deliberately try to deceive naive yound females into adopting their children?’ If they don’t, why don’t they? A question, I need hardly say, even more breath-taking than Wilson’s question about ignoring submission signals in a fight.
I hasten to add, in order to be fair to Wilson and Dawkins, that they, in marked contrast to some other sociobiologists, actually approve of human altruism. Far from writing about it with cynicism or even incredulity, they make it quite clear that they think there should be more of it. Well, according to their own account, there could not possibly by less, since there could not be any at all. We can therefore only ascribe these authors’ enthusiasm for altruism to an amiable inconsistency on their part. Either to that, or to their attempting to manipulate their readers for their own advantage. For Dawkins is one of the sociobiologists whom I mentioned a moment ago, as believing that all communication is self-interested manipulation. And then, a fellow sociobiologist whom Dawkins admires has been candid enough to say in print that ‘morality aside, the optimum strategy for the unabashed egotist is unwavering praise of altruism. So perhaps Dawkins’ praise of altruism is not an amiable inconsistency after all, but something more consistent, and less amiable.
Even on that supposition, however, it is a mystery what the writer just quoted can have meant by his proviso, ‘morality aside’. All moral education is simply some more self-interested manipulation, if the sociobiologists are right. So what possible need can there ever be, or indeed what would it even mean, to set it ‘aside’? But this difficult question is plainly one which is best left to specialists in the exegesis of the New Darwinian Testament.
If Professor Wilson were right, it would be a ‘considerable theoretical difficulty’ why Darwin did not try to kill or maim Samuel Butler, for example, or why Wilson himself does not try to kill or maim his bitter enemy and Harvard colleague, Professor R.C. Lewontin. But this is not a considerable theoretical difficulty. It is just a joke, and a stupid one at that. It would probably be recognised as such even at Harvard; though it would certainly be recognised there as a risky joke too.
Dr Dawkins, likewise, cannot understand why mothers do not welcoome baby snatcher, and says that the question ‘deserves thorough research’. (This phrase is, of course, academese-English for ‘I have got all these unemployed graduate students…’) Though this is a perplexity which few can share, Dawkins is not absolutely the first to perceive the difficulty. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin the slave Elize flees with her young son, in order to prevent his being sold off the plantation, and the slave dealer is thereby put the expense of hiring slave hunters to capture the runaway pair. The dealer and the hunters ruminate on Eliza’s perplexing behaviour as follows. 'This yer young-un business makes lots of trouble in the trade… If we could get a breed of gals that didn’t care, now, for their young uns… 'twould be the greatest mod’rn improvement I knows on… I never couldn’t see into it. Young uns is heaps of trouble to 'em - one would thing, now, they’d be glad to get clear on ‘em; but they aren’t.’
Since Dawkins likewise cannot ‘see into’ mothers who do not welcome baby snatchers, the sensible place to begin the research he wants to done would be by asking his own mother why she did not offload him? Unless she too has been unhinged by the Darwinian vision of human life, as a ruthless competition to survive and reproduce, her answer would be something like the following. ‘Unless as it may not appera from your present “scientific” perspective, and perhaps from certain other perspectives too, I prefered not to.’ But even an imaginary scene is
painful to contemplate when it includes so much of both absurdity and insolence; let us draw a veil…
‘Why don’t men or dogs in a fight always try to kill or maim their enemy?’ ‘Why don’t human or monkey mothers welcome baby snatchers?’ These questions are typical expression of the selfish theory of human (and all animal) nature, as it has been revived by neo-Darwinians in the last 25 years. Before the late 1960’s, no one had ever asked, or thought of asking, questions like these.
…
It is because of this shared though tacit ideal of human and animal life, that the draft dodger and the sociobiologist both wonder how soldiers can be found for human wars, or for ant wars; that the sociobiologist and the ruthless free marketeer are both puzzled by the effectiveness of submission signals in human fights and dog fights; that the feminist and the sociobiologist are both mystified by baby snatching among women and monkeys; that the anti-religious zealot and the sociobiologist are both mystified by baby snatching among women monkeys; that the anti-religious zealot and the sociobiologist both marvel at the fact that a celibate priesthood can be kept up; and so on.
-from David Stove’s Darwinian Fairytales
…
James
[work in progress… more soon]
James wrote
Again, what I’m saying is that our generic blueprint helps explain the commonality of our human qualities and sentiments; namely, our shared sense of compassion. It doesn’t matter to my argument whether our species were made of doped-silicon instead of biological meat. What matters is that we’re all cast from the same, generic mold. I’ve said that this fact helps account for the propensity of humans to laugh at the same jokes, etc. - in short, to understand each other. To this end I quoted John Searles saying that we should be no more suprised that our brains work the same than we are that our other organs work the same. This is what I’ve said and this is what I want to say. I’m sorry if this doesn’t make any sense to you; in which case, I blame myself for not saying it more clearly.
I wonder, however, that when you misread my saying “generic blueprint” for “genetic blueprint,” that this fanned a simmering fuse that you seem to have burning against socio-biologists? But socio-biology has next to nothing to do with the claims I’ve made in this thread. My argument would scarcely change if humans were designed by a cloud-dwelling, long bearded hippie with a bad sense of humor, rather than the products of an evolutionary process.
Furthermore, I’m no apologist for Searles, or Dawkins, or anyone else that I’ve quoted. For all I know they could secretly beat their wives and brand little boys on their bums with coathangers bent to the shape of genetilia. I’m not a disciple of anyone. I’ve little doubt, however, that Dawkins has been misinterpreted; something Dawkins, himself, has bitterly complained of. You wrote (speaking to Tab)
James, I appreciate the element of humor (especially the reference to Team America), and yet I’d ask you to contrast that with something Dawkins wrote in his, The Devil’s Chaplain (I’ve posted this twice or thrice already in this forum so an apology in advance is in order)
“Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gives us all existence; the gift of revulsion against its implications; the gift of foresight - something utterly foreign to the blundering short-term ways of natural selection - and the gifts of internalizing the very cosmos.”
This is hardly strikes me as prose coming from someone bent on sliming humanity. Rather than diminish us for what we are, I hear Dawkins, instead, cheering us for what we’ve pulled ourselves out of. But then, Dawkins might be a closet human-hater or wife-beater. I really couldn’t say as I don’t know the man personally. I can only judge him by his works that I’ve read.
Best wishes,
Michael
Polemarchus
No I certainly did not misread it - I spotted you using the two terms interchangeably, and then tried to make a distinction between them, which you did not directly address. In any case, your position statement above was clear, though I still think it is flawed. If anything is your fault, it is not responding to my criticisms in the way I would have liked. But that is just to say that it is my fault for not making them clearer. And so around in circles we go. I was only trying to offer some food for thought - you can take it or leave it, as I have taken and left bits and pieces from your posts. Mostly left in this particular case, but that’s besides the point.
As for the sociobiology thing, I enjoy a good rant, and do so with a smile on my face - especially when reading Stove. But this is an important issue. Actually the stuff about evolution is more directed at Tab than at you, as I thought it might interest him. In any case, I accept your point that it is more or less irrelevant to what you are saying. Fortunately between you and I, it is also more or less irrelevant to what I am saying as well.
My Last Position Statement
My point was and remains about how you are conceiving of compassion. You say that it is enabled by DNA structure - I say that this is trivially true in that every biological entity is ‘enabled’ by DNA structure, but that compassion is also enabled by the DNA structure of other species whom, at the same time, are not enabled by their DNA structure to take part in a piece of theatre by Mozart. So what enables Mozart for us and not other species is not the same as what enables compassion in us, because what enables compassion in us either enables it elsewhere as well, or else is not primarily responsible for enabling it at all.
Therefore I concluded that there was no explanatory force in saying that compassion is ‘enabled’ by DNA - it is like saying that fire is caused by the potential for fire, which bark and grass both have. It does not explain why they have this disposition under ‘normal’ conditions, and not under other conditions.
In other words then, it is like saying that bark and grass are both made out of similar materials, which are flammable under the same conditions. This is a family resemblance argument - but it is a false analogy to compassion in humans, where DNA simularities with other species do not show any particular correlation with the presence or absence of compassion.
Thus the ‘stuff’ from which we are made does not explain why we have compassion and other species don’t - because there are species that have it which have relatively less in common with our ‘generic’ mould, and yet other species which do not have it, yet have relatively more in common with this mould.
It was to respond to this argument that you originally gave your tree analogy. I have tried to take it into account. This is why I then drew a distinction between two different kinds of family resemblance; leading me to conclude that your analogy was false. My argument ran like this;
“So whilst it is true that nothing in your example seems to require that animals can be compassionate, something in your argument does seem to imply that it is our DNA composition which is predominantly responsible for our being compassionate. I am saying that this is like analysing ‘air’ as a kind of tree bark or grass, instead of analyzing it according to air pressure or whatever. Or at least that seems like a telling conclusion to my rant.”
If you think this is misplaced, I would ask that you distinguish between ‘DNA composition’ and ‘generic blueprint’. DNA is a kind of blueprint, and it is more or less generic. Wouldn’t you agree? My conceptual argument was this; you seem to be conceiving of compassion as a dispositional property which a lot of different things can evince, even though they have different ‘generic structures’. With this idea, you wished to sidestep my objection, basically by arguing that tree bark is different from grass, yet they are both flammable. Translation = human DNA is different from chimpanzee DNA, yet they are both compassionate (for instance).
I thought this was a flawed analogy, because compassion is not (just?) like a disposition held between different generic structures under the same conditions, but could also be a disposition held by different generic structures under different conditions. For me this is a good counterargument because it detachs compassion from generic structure in a way which you cannot account for with your tree bark analogy. It forces the conclusion, in my mind, that it is somewhat trivial to assert that compassion is based on generic structure, in just the same way that it is trivial to assert that air is flammable due to it’s chemical composition, when it will plainly never be flammable under ‘normal’ conditions at all. As a conceptual argument, I am essentially saying that your definition of compassion is therefore incomplete, and incomplete in a non-trivial manner.
Why do I think this? Well, comparing the relation between composition and disposition, you will note that there is some difference between likening the [generic structure—>compassion] connection to the [tree bark—> flammability] connection, and likening it to the [air—>flammability] connection. If you think this is a trivial distinction, then I apologize - for I have misunderstood you. It did seem to me though that you were trying to explain why bark and grass are flammable, without explaining why air is flammable, and why therefore - to translate the analogy - compassion is neither a physical property nor something that happens under certain conditions and not others, but a relation which occurs between different substances under different conditions, like two causal chains intersecting at right angles.
I believe that my analysis is more fruitful, because it allows a better explanation of why the very same, human generic mold can produce greatly varying levels of compassion. The difference is not just that air is flammable at a different air pressure, but that the same concept of flammability applies in different conditions, as well as to different generic blueprints. If I have understood you, then you believe you can just take your narrow definition of compassion, and apply it analogously to the example of air. I believe though that it is what makes this example recognizable as an example of flammability to begin with, that is therefore tacitly assumed, rather than explained, in this thesis. Perhaps I am confused in this belief, or else it does not apply to you. Perhaps I have merely picked out something inessential in your original analogy.
In any case, I think it is necessary to work backwards from what unites air and wood, being that it is not the normal conditions present between wood and grass, nor any similitude in generic structure. I have my tarrying back and forth between analogy and argument has not been too confusing. Comments would be appreciated.
Regards,
James
Sorry to auto-quote, but I couldn’t find anyone higher in the hierarchy to quote from. 
Just because a ‘noble’ or ‘moral’ or ‘altruistic’ trait may to some extent have it’s roots in the mundane and uncaring coils of the DNA within us, at least in my view, does not effect the appreciation of the beauty (sub) of its outcome. No-one goes around saying, “That Mona-Lisa splurge by whatshisname, horrible, its just a big bunch of dirty oil on a bit of tree for God’s sake…!” Well, no-one with taste anyway.
Simply put: [size=75](and Hell, what else am I capable of )[/size]
*Humans are an omnivorus pack animal, rather than lone predator types.
*Humans are comparitively weak, and save ‘intelligence’ are a Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none species.
→ They must co-operate to succeed.
*Successful co-operative behaviour is marred without a degree of trust.
*A pack-animal that fails to operate co-operatively, is, in the long-term after sufficient itterations of said behaviour, doomed.
→ Successful pack animals have the ability to trust one another.
*To continually trust the untrustworthy is suicide.
→ They must develop, or have instilled by ‘external forces’, an ability to adequately judge.
*You cannot make judgements without (?adequate?) information.
*You also cannot ever actually become in all specifics, that which you wish to judge.
*The best you can do is to study their external conditions and behavior and draw conclusions with reference to personal experience/memory.
→ Empathy is born.
*To empathize is to compare one thing with yourself.
*Exact equality of life/lifestyle is unusual.
→ An element of inequality is concluded by the empathizer.
*Dependent on the co-operative activity in question, various internal skills/abilities/physical-atributes and external (material) componants are favoured.
*Inequality within these areas reduces the maximal success of the venture.
*It would be foolish to reduce the attributes of the more greatly endowed, to the level of those of the other.
→ Helping/supplying/teaching partners in a co-operative venture is beneficial to all parties in said venture, if a dependency is extant.
Compassion, as a driver to ‘altruistic’ behavior, is a useful trait. In genetic/memetic evolution, such a trait would be conserved, and tend to spread within the genome/“menome”. Those successful in the long term, are compassionate.
The world is an ever smaller place. Soon, if not already, we all become inter-dependent partners in a species-wide joint co-operative venture.
Compassion is cool.
Tab.
Tab.
“One of the pioneer of genetics, William Bateson, was fond of repeating a remark which a Scotch soldier made to him during the 1914-18 war, after listening to one of his lectures: that genetics is ‘scientific Calvinism’. Well, what Dawkins did in The Selfish Gene was in effect to embrace this old joke, or three-quarters joke, as being no joke at all, but the sober truth. Genes are to him what demons were to Calvinist theologians in the 16th century, of what ‘Zurich gnomes’ used to be to socialist demonologists of our own century. That is, they are beings which are hidden, immoral, and invested with immense power over us: power so great, indeed, that we are merely their helpless puppets, except insofar as God, or History, or some equally extraordinary causal agent comes in to assist us.” - Stove
I was going to copy more, but at some point or other it would constitute a copyright infringement. In any case, I will read your book, if you read mine. 
Regards,
James
You won’t believe it, but have just finished “A very short History of the World” (Just to piss off Imp and his “To not study history is to repeat the mistakes of the past” ad-infinita - thoroughly recommended btw - for people who hate history books) AND ACTUALLY KNOW WHO CALVIN IS!!! 
Anyway - Do you really believe that beyond childhood, the ancient strings of our DNA are cut completely…? That without a certain mental constancy of “en-garde” against the impingement of instinctive motivators on would-be purely rational behavior, an adult would still remain free of the Zurich Gnomes…?
Can the adult mind remain aloof of the body…?
doesn’t piss me off in the least…
but it is ironic… imagine taking english classes from a professor who loathed reading books…
speeling counts? why? he isn’t going to read it enywho…
-Imp
p.s. Zurich Gnomes? didn’t they open for black sabbath on their last tour?
Impenitent,
for the good of society (and for the expense of universal health care,) free love, promiscuity and homosexuality must be stopped just like smoking…
Can you extend into caring about the other if you can’t even care about the self? Perhaps any form of self-abuse is immoral…if I were to knowingly and intentionally force an other to drink alcohol to the point of liver failure, I don’t think anyone would argue that this would be an immoral. Why would it be moral to do it to oneself? We own our self, but we also “own” pets,children,etc…and it is not moral to abuse them.
Smoking is the pits. I’m quitting next week. This child saw me buying cigarettes, and I told him (not in a scary way) that smoking makes you “cough up a full cup of puke-tasting green phlegm every morning and you can never ride a bike or do anything fun ever again once you start smoking”. (The shopkeeper thought I was serious and told me to inhale salt water…but just from the neck up…) I was so concerned that this stranger child never started smoking…he said that he would “Never,ever smoke”…(and that he ate 5 oranges every day)
I’m not entirely sold on the immorality of sex. Having consensual sex with a person isn’t abusing them…most are pretty happy about it,I’d say. If you have a sex addiction it could be self abuse. I don’t understand why penis-in-bum is less moral than penis-in-vagina. The real morality/immorality comes from the relationship surrounding the act. A mutually loving, kind, understanding gay couple seems more moral than an angry,abusive,gamesy straight couple. I think it’s more about how you treat people than what you do with each other’s bits.
again, it depends on how you define morality… seen through the morals of secular “progressive” politics, any action that harms the self also harms the community (who has to pay for the repair of said harm). harming the community is the gravest of secular sins. personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass about what people do. they will do as they will for their own reasons. and I going to “reasonably” stop them? no. how then are they stopped? at the end of a gun.
and as far as quitting, the patch worked for me- but you have to be really committed to stopping smoking. good luck with that, but victors don’t believe in luck do they?
-Imp
[I was going to edit this onto the end of the last post to James, but well…]
Ramble time:
I think that to answer the question of “making it moral” or talk about morality at all you have to come from the “group-survival” POV. Every other place to stand and look down upon it is just so damned shakey. So prone to interpretation and circular discussion.
“Thou Shalt not kill” - pretty much crops up in both secular and religious moral code.
“But-but, what if someone attacks me and I accidently kill them…?”
“Er - gee, er, ok, just don’t self-defend kill people too much. And no killin’ people unless they attack you first…!”
“But-but, what about war…? Killing the enemy…? Pre-emptive self-defence…?”
“Er, damn, damn - hmm, well okay, er - war’s okay, cos er, war’s like noble or summin innit. So - no killin’ unless someone attacks you first, or there’s a war on, and your leader tells you to, okay…!”
[Hitman walks in]“Hi - I used to be a sniper for the military, they paid me and told me to kill enemies and I killed them. Now, people ring me up, say “kill this enemy”, they pay me and I kill their enemy… My intent is the same, it’s not personal, my client’s enemy is not individually mine… How can the same behavior be moral in one context and immoral in another…?”
“LOOK - IT JUST FUCKIN’ IS OKAY !!!”
etc.
An individual speaking of morality, is bound to be biased, and at some point throw up his hands and say “It just is.” Even a philosopher is a product of his time and place.
Speaking in (abstract) evolutionary and group-survival terms is the only way to stay impartial… No…?
Anyway - to un-pissed-offImp’s “might makes right.”
He’s right isn’t he folks. C’mon fess up. But it still runs in parallel to the evolutionist’s “morality from genetic prompting”, and does not contravene it…
ie: To be able to impose your will, and your morality, you have to have the power to do so, and keep doing so. Even Christ was given a helping hand by some Roman Emperor who decided to adopt Christianity for political rather than “I see the light” reasons. I forget which.
A powerful individual imposes the morality that becomes the morality of the group. The moral majority only comes after the ‘hyper-moral’ one. “Moral-majority” is a fallacy of numbers anyway.
But what kind of morals does he impose…? More truly- What kind of morals is he bound to impose…?
The kind that protect the weaker from the stronger. Because he knows that their is always someone stronger than yourself.
“Thou shalt not kill” implies that you can kill, but shouldn’t. ie - aimed at the strong, not the weak.
“Thou shall not steal” implies you posess the capability to steal, but shouldn’t. ie - aimed at the strong, not the weak.
etc.
The forceful one, in imposing a moral code that protects the weak, and confines the behaiviour of the strong (Like himself) is not being altruistic, he doesn’t gain the pinnacle of power and suddenly “see the light”, and go all lovey-dovey “violence is wrong etc.” No, he imposes a moral system that will protect him from future rivals. Ham-stringing them via meme, before they ever come to oppose him.
Morality isn’t moral.
And just as the theory of group survival producing an ‘organic’ morality that favours the many, rather than the one, a ‘rational’ morality, aimed at curbing the power of the strong (single), and inadvertantly protecting the weak (plural) ends up doing exactly the same job, if coming at it from the opposite direction.
Interesting that however you spin it, it’s bound to end up looking the same… Even the strong are led around by their little genie-weenies.
Why are some things like (pre-meditated ‘rational’ ie memetic led not genetic led) violence morally wrong…? [Tab strides confidently into complete loopy-land] Its all about the dog-psychology of God.
The concept of an infinitely powerful (but largely none-violent) being arises from human extrapolation. “X is stronger than me, I am stronger than Z. There must be something stronger than X, and something stronger than that something in turn…” All the way up to the infinite.
If you project enough strength, you circumvent the need to resort to actual violence. Your ‘enemy’ will submit without daring to enter into a direct conflict he cannot win.
God is not violent, he does not have to be, because no-one in their right mind will fight with God.
If you have to dominate through violence, wether you win or lose, you are admitting you are weak. Weak enough for someone to believe they are a match for you at least.
It is in man’s deepest nature to admire and try to emulate that which they percieve as better than they are. They emulate God, in order to become God-like.
Ergo - in the minds of even the most powerful of men/women, violence becomes ultimately abhorrent as an admission of weakness, something that those whom suspect in their heart of hearts that they are not strong enough cannot tolerate.
Or something like that perhaps, maybe, you know.
Tab.
[size=200]Shyster !!! [/size] [size=150]You are not powerful enough to impose you moral stance on the width of the page !!! Cut down the size of your Signature line - Or I will Kill you !!![/size]
[size=200]Never!![/size] If you come to kill me, I’ll try to have sex with you.
And it’s not the width of the page, in fact, if you were to measure mine and certain other poster’s sigs, you’d find that mine isn’t that big. It’s just pink and sparkly, to match my slippers.
Have I mentioned that you are really hot?