Just to note, when I said some of it could be “b” I may have interpreted this differently to DtC and others.
I was thinking of game theory and iterative prisoner’s dilemma. I see now from reading up-thread that the intent was more around a subconscious knowledge of depleting the gene pool; this I didn’t mean.
[quote=“Lobohan, post:718, topic:551952”]
Gee you really are missing the point aren’t you.
Are you suggesting that Tribe B is ‘hard wired’ for empathy but not Tribe A?
[quote=“Lobohan, post:718, topic:551952”]
Your seem to be swaying between the survival impulse and a hard wired mechanism. Which is it?
In this case you suggest a survival mechanism. Big city or small town, other people arre competiton for scarce reosurces. That’s simple economics as well as biological necessity.
Define “murder”.
No, not an attempt at semantic gaming, just that I don’t think it means (for the issue at hand) what you think it means.
Animals kill members of their own species, animals may also protect their own group / tribe / pack / whatever. These are not contradictory goals.
Young male lions that take over a pride – killing or chasing off the current male – will systematically kill the cubs. The cubs are not of the new males gene-line and eliminating them increases his chance of passing his genes to the next generation.
Looking at just our closest (living) cousins, chimps carry out raids and a simple form of warfare on neighbouring groups – this increases the resources available to their own group and gives their own off-spring & relatives a great chance of survival. Male gorillas will attack nursing females and slay infants, in response – and I’ll understand if you find this perverse – the female will mate with the killer and become part of his group. (He’s demonstrated that she “needs” his protection – her current protection not being good enough).
Humans (to go back to the pre-state Yanamamo example) do not have an aversion to murdering those outside their group.
I’m not sure where you have this idea of an aversion to murder (with an exception of close family).
So do you suggest a purely ‘hard wired’ solution to empathy? If so, how do you explain that this is not the default position with evolutionary psycologists?
I’m not an evolutionary psychologist, or even terribly knowledgeable in the area. I did a few Anthropology courses more years ago than I care to remember, and have read books by Gould, Dawkins, Pinker, and others. I’m no expert.
We do seem to be hard-wired / have instincts to protect our own young and close family. Some of the same triggers can fire for other young – heck even the young of other species – I can’t find my copy of The Panda’s Thumb at the moment, but Gould’s essay on the Evolution of Mickey Mouse – or why we like Mickey Mouse more than Mortimer Rat – is worth a read.
We also have memory and can plan and predict. Game theory shows that the optimum outcome of an iterated prisoner’s dilemma is initial co-operation followed by whatever the other party did last time – in short co-operate with the other guy if he co-operates with you, punish him if he fails to co-operate, forgive him if he begins co-operating again. (See Sagan The Rules of the Game)
Our societies have got built on a balance of co-operating for mutual survival, and punishing cheaters, while at the same time trying to gain personal advantages. Interestingly we can also find altruism suspicious – we trust benevolence less than mutual assistance.
My impression then, and once again – not an expert – is that it’s a mix of wiring and learned behaviour.
Apollyon…thanks for your posts.
By the word ‘murder’ I essentially mean the wanton taking of an innocent life.
It is difficult to provide a definition as comprehensive as may be necessary, but suffice it to say it excludes genuine self defence, actions within the rules of engagement, etc.
In response to your other points, which are well made, I will outline my position more fully.
Let’s begin with contemporary humans.
Most (if not all) sane contemporary humans share an aversion to ‘murder’. Perhaps the most obvious evidence for this is found in the legal statutes of individual nations.
Unless it is proposed that this aversion was present in the earliest prokaryotes, (and that would raise a whole load of other problems), then evolutionary psychology suggests that this aversion has developed over time, from not being present at all, to what it is today, commencing at some indeterminate stage of the evolutionary ‘tree(s)’, and jouneying along throughout and across various species, arriving at what it is in the present.
My argument is simply this.
Species did not simply wake up one morning with an aversion for murder.
During the evolution of this aversion, species would be wantonly killing for survival (competing for mates, resources etc) without compulsion, until the development (or at best the earliest stages of development) of this aversion.
Put simply, survival, let alone population expansion, would be extremely unlikely.
It would seem logical that the development of this aversion would commence with ones immediate ‘family’, then progress to ones ‘tribe’, ones ‘nation’ and so forth.
But in the meantime, competition for scarce resources would result in murder of neighbouring tribes, including children.
Once again we have a factor operating against population growth.
If, as has been claimed, these aversions are a subconscious responses, it is not logical to argue that the species will understand that it’s actions threaten its own survival, or if they did, that they could not be reversed.
In summary, the evolution of an aversion to murder is not viable.
Just a point on game theory. It is largely irrelevant to the subject at hand, simply because it has only been tested on contemporary ‘animals’, not any of our alleged predecessors. In other words EGT is based on untested and untestable models as far as previous populations arre concerned. I have used basic forms of game theory for business applications. For predicting results over millions of years, it is simply guess work.
It is not my beliefs, but quotes from the Bible that are just beliefs in what a God said or did! I stated that “if” the creator you believe in, is all knowing and loving the Bible doesn’t present Him in that way, but an unloving unfair monster. Of course I can prove the writers were just human, can you prove that God spoke through them?
And, again, if he could speak through the writers, why did he have difficulties with the english translators?
Why did “murder” become “kill” ?
And you “know” this because? It is just as likely that God should have had a beginning as any other explaination. Until one can prove that God is a separate entity, apart from existence than the idea is moot!
No one can say in truth they know anything about God, just Belief that there is a God. Huge difference!!
The word God has had different meanings through the ages. The Pharo’s were called Gods, in those days it just meant some one in power. The Jews believed their God was another being not seen, except for His back side that he was to have showed to Moses. The idea of an unseen god evolved. The Jews decided they were the only people of God. So if that were so, then Christians etc. would not be considered as God’s children. And God had his chosen children kill the others.
Of course people like to use God as an excuse for a lot of things, the extremeist Muslims for example believe they can kill because they make claim s that they are doing God’s will, just as the crusaders did when they killed Jews and Muslims. And the Jews killed whole towms of people to get the land they claimed God promised them.
Rather than God speaking through the writers why didn’t Jesus (who is said to be God) not write a book Himself so that all people would see it in their own language, and understand as he would want them to do?
Why did kill become murder? The person is dead no matter how you look at it!
This begs several questions:
This is not an explanation. This just moves the question back. What is ‘spirit’? What is ‘super-natural’?
As to God being beyond our understanding of time and space, what does that mean? That God can do something impossible?
How do you know any of this if God is beyond our understanding? How can you sit there and say that, on the one hand, God is beyond our understanding, yet on the other hand contradictorily claim that God is Spirit, Supernatural, beyond time and space, etc?
Seems to me that the most basic definition is incoherent then. You can’t just assume that it’s coherent.
How did God have time/space/materials to create time and space?
Magic?
True, but so what? You can’t just beg the question on the a theory. The B theory is more parsimonious with our understanding of relativity. It also makes more sense out of cosmology. Both of which are reasons to support this interpretation over the A theory.
Fair enough - however, let’s remember you are the one putting forth the notion that this universe is not eternal.
Further, my point is that if you support the idea that something can come from nothing, then it seems to me to make more sense to say that this something is necessarily uncaused for the reasons I outlined.
This remains to be shown. You are completely begging the question against eternalism/B theory/block time in favor of an incoherent appeal to magic.
Which is fine by me, but you can’t then turn around and claim to be rational.
Time loops, previous universes, and parallel universes are still more rational to hold then your magic man simply because we can start to make sense of them.
We can’t out of your magic man who would require time in order to create time.
You are still completely ignoring block time.
There are models and explanations to support them. Therefore they are to be favored over the incoherent gibberish you are putting forth.
Further, as I have repeatedly made plain, you completely ignore block time.
Utter nonsense.
We can either accept one of the many theories that we have or we can admit that we don’t know.
We cannot rationally accept the idea of an incoherent magic man acting incoherently to create time and space.
What does ‘outside’ time and space mean?
Further, I’ll point out again that you are ignoring the most parsimonious answer: Block time. No creation necessary and it makes sense with regard to relativity.
In short, you are asking us to accept incoherent magic, based on NOTHING.
My question is, why?
The Big Bang does no such thing - this is, again, begging the question.
Further, it does not fit with a ‘creator’, it contradicts a creator, since a creator would require time/space in order to act.
Asking us to accept incoherent nonsense is insulting when the purpose of this board is to squash ignorance.
If this is the case, then we should prefer the theories/models that do the best explaining.
As I pointed out (and you failed to rebut), “God” is not even on the table in terms of explanations.
Please demonstrate that the existence of God is ‘possible’. So far, this remains to be seen, you can’t even define what you mean by ‘God’.
I find it extremely hypocritical for you to put forward “God” as possible when you can’t even define it, much less present ANY evidence in favor of it, yet you are harping on the inadequate evidence for all other branches of science.
You are picking and choosing what you want to accept/believe.
Nonsense, appealing to ignorance is not ‘evidence’.
How did God create organisms or morality? God is non physical, did he take two scoops of nothing and create a single cell?
You are simply guessing and then claiming that this guess is on par with scientific theories and models.
So, to recap, here are the rational choices we have right now for the following, in terms of morality/cosmology/origin of the species:
Either of these is perfectly acceptable.
What is not an acceptable rational reasons is:
We have no evidence of this, we have no coherent explanation of this, and we have no reason - outside of our ignorance - to believe this.
It is not on the table, in terms of rational explanations, primarily because it is not actually an explanation.
Of course not. Why would you assume that?
The same as we developed it for anyone else.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no such society.
Not all species have to be social to sustain.
The empathic response is both biological and physical.
Since you’re being insulting about it, I’m going to call your bluff - what book(s) that we should have read mention this phrase?
I cannot quite see how the the lack of population growth pressure leads to your conclusion.
I agree that our aversion begins with close family – we don’t kill our kids because they’re our kids – and then it extends in part to the wider group.
We don’t kill our neighbour, even when he uses his leaf blower at 6am on a Saturday morning because: a) we do see him as part of our wider tribe , b) we live in a society with a social contract that has norms and rules of reasonable behaviour, and c) because burying bodies in the backyard is hard work and not likely to prevent an eventual long jail stint with a cellmate named Bubba.
Now, you’re arguing that until we don’t kill our neighbours for these reasons there would be murder aplenty which would stymie population growth… and murder aplenty and low population growth is what we see in pre-state societies.
But as I mentioned earlier, if you are good at killing your neighbours, then the family that you aren’t killing (because of genetic wiring) get more resources and a higher survival chance, which leads to tribes who are good at co-operating at helping each other and killing off the neighbours really efficiently… which leads to bigger tribes, and us extending our family killing aversion to more people, some of whom are only notionally family with little shared genetics… and the more internally co-operative and externally aggressive states out compete the others, and so on and so forth…
…it doesn’t seem to need any outside agency to reach the point where I don’t shoot my neighbour for using the leaf blower. (I might leave something unpleasant in his mailbox however). 