Muzman on 15/4/2008 at 06:38
I remember reading about that once actually. My scanty encounters with eastern philosophy usually turn up some eerilly relevant insight into the human condition. It's often well on top of the multiplicity of things, while we're all fussing around trying to be as categorical as possible for thousands of years. Tis most curious anyway.
Scots Taffer on 15/4/2008 at 06:44
hey guys if you find you've got enough time to devote it to discussion of whether compassionate acts are altruistic or not, you have too much time on your hands
try getting laid instead
now was that compassionate
or altruistic
Koki on 15/4/2008 at 07:16
Errr, social darwinism is not a philosophy, it's a hypothesis. It's not a set of rules, it's an explanation on why social evolution happens, just like darwinism is an explanation why biological evolution happens. It's also quite bold to say "it's wrong and it doesn't work" when there's multitude of examples that it does in fact work. When two social groups meet, one will eventually overtake another or they will merge together. It's true on all levels from a group of friends to whole cultures. And that's an example of social darwinism.
I think.
Another thing: social darwinism has nothing to do with genes, well as 'nothing' as society has nothing to do with genes.
Muzman on 15/4/2008 at 08:09
Indeed, and the problem is that 'fittness' at a cultural level is so nebulous and generational notions of 'selection' in culture are largely impenetrable without something ultimate to draw the line at (like say the introduction of unnatural selection via bullets). So the movement had little application outside of backslapping colonialism and outright "master race" posturing.
jay pettitt on 15/4/2008 at 08:17
Quote Posted by Koki
I think.
So it's not another stab at eugenics then?
See, I don't think it's as straight forward as Social Darwinism being an attempt at trying to understand how societies develop. I think it's an attempt to show how societies should (according to some) or could develop using a misplaced self professed association with and a fundamentally mistaken understanding of evolution proper. I could be wrong.
Ben Gunn on 15/4/2008 at 10:28
Quote Posted by Muzman
Incidentally I think that free will is pretty much dead as an absolute concept, thanks to most of the science of the brain lately. It's better to say we have will, but it's not in any sense of the word free and is sort of in arrears to the rest of our behaviour (so far as I understand it anyway). Some folks are rightly concerned that this has interesting legal and philosophical implications, but I'm pretty sure we'll work something out.
(Not only in the east.) Free will, as a concept, died something like 2400 years ago, when Democritus introduced for the first time a mechinistic-deterministic world view (our modern science is preaty much based on that view and that's why Democritus was mentioned in the Dicky D tube you linked here earlier)-
since then it has been ressurected and killed repeatedly.
It will never vanish because in our actual, mundane lives we will never stop feeling that our will, and other's, is free. There's no point in being angry with a child for doing something wrong if you think he had no choice in doing it.
catbarf on 15/4/2008 at 15:54
Quote Posted by BEAR
Dear god man, are you daft? Are you also completly ignoring me? Overall you're doing OK by me in this thread, but keep it together.
A) Thats not true to a spectacular degree and
B) Even if it were it wouldnt matter. Passing on genetic material that is favorable to survival is the only aspect of natural selection (I know there is more but its not relevant to this discussion). You could give tons of money to charity, go to tons of left-wing conventions, knock up 15 hippy chicks and call it a day. Even if you died by 60 you still did just fine by natural selection. But it doesnt matter because thats not how it works.
You should read the posts besides the one that comes right after your own. But in this case also read that one.
My apologies, I wasn't directing this at you in any way, nor do I defend social Darwinism in any manner. I was merely explaining the premise behind the concept of applying it to a personal level.
BEAR on 15/4/2008 at 19:58
Ah, I thought you were actually making a claim. Carry on :D
Nicker on 15/4/2008 at 20:19
What’s this? Free will has been dead 2400 years? Was it alive before Democritus killed it and is it really dead if mechanistic – deterministic science has to sit on the twitching corpse to stop it from reanimating? Where’s the memo?
First off – what is meant here by “free will”? Humans have a great deal of latitude in their choices within the spectrum of possibilities available to them, but they don’t have the “free will” to be other than human. A clarification of terms is in order, I’d say.
And in the context of determinism vs free will, determinism always comes out sounding like predestination. Is that the choice we are being offered (irony intended)?
Determinism, in the sense that all events are natural and lawful, not supernatural or fantastical, does not preclude free will in the limited sense of human choices (creative, moral, ethical and so on). The mechanisms that comprise our organic existence determine the scope of our choices and some rules for making those choices but they do NOT choose for us.
The map is not the journey.
But a declaration that free will is dead sounds fatalistic to me and suggests that we are the toys of supernatural determinism – i.e. our behaviours and choices are merely appointments in god’s day-timer. Such a prospect seems beyond absurd to me.
Vivian on 15/4/2008 at 20:43
What, so everything else in the universe is predictable if you know enough about it, but humans have some kind of magic get-out clause?
