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Evolution and baseball caps

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Interbane

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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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ant wrote:You've added semantic meaning with the word "immoral" (rightfully so) but nature (and any natural explanation) is blind to your outrage, right? You have an illusion grafted on to your blind genes.
Why would nature be blind to my outrage? Emotions are natural.

Moral judgments are primarily emotional judgments. There's no numerical scale inside our brains that tells us the value of each evil so that we may pick the numerically inferior evil. It's nebulous and messy, but still natural. I wouldn't pretend my moral judgments are better than yours or anyone else's. There's no certainty, and any hint that we're right is itself an emotion.
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Interbane

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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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ant wrote:A comet once obliterated life on earth. Do you think the life scale is unbalanced now? How did we lose out?
Life still found a way to blindly flourish. We are just one of many branches on the tree of life. I thought naturalism prides itself for recognizing we are no more special than any other branch of life. Only theists believe we are cosmically special. (we value our lives, of course)


In QM's Many Worlds Interpretation the Nazis probably won and eventually flourished after their evil atrocities.
Is that universe the wrong universe to inhabit? Why - because Nature screwed up?
Morality only applies to the behavior of humans. We don't judge natural disasters as evil(unless we're the sort of atheist that blames an evil god for natural disasters). We also can't blame our universe for being Nazist.
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Interbane

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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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ant wrote:All I'm trying to do is get naturalism and its beliefs clarified.
It's quite easy really. The only real difference is that naturalists see morality as natural rather than supernatural. You can dig as deep as you want, but you won't find the problems and contradictions that you seem to think exist.
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Flann 5
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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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Interbane wrote:Morality only applies to the behavior of humans. We don't judge natural disasters as evil(unless we're the sort of atheist that blames an evil god for natural disasters). We also can't blame our universe for being Nazist.
This may be a foolish question but why does morality only apply to humans? The book on Bonobo's,(which I haven't read) is subtitled "the search for humanism among the primates". This is suggestive but I'm not sure what they actually found,not having read it.
The theory seems unfalsifiable since whatever had "fitness" survived and natural selection decided.

As ant is saying I think,natural selection is neither conscious or moral but merely selects whatever is "fittest"

So if some animals are vegetarian and others fierce predators there is no explanation beyond this was selected by blind nature.
A cat may play with a mouse before killing it.I'm not saying there's a moral sense beyond they seem to enjoy playing.
They seem quite proud of their successful killing and far from ashamed of it.
Quite often the mouse escapes due to this propensity and it's not the most efficient approach for this reason.

Nonetheless cats have survived.It does seem a bit odd that their behaviour has this sometimes counterproductive element.
I think the rationale is that playing sharpens their skills. Of course the already skilful ones do this too.
Last edited by Flann 5 on Sat May 30, 2015 11:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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Why would nature be blind to my outrage? Emotions are natural.

Is this some sort of joke now?

Emotions are tagged with semantic meaning that is perspective-unique by a conscious human being.



You're emotionally outraged by what the Nazi's did.
A Nazi is/was not outraged by his actions.

Let's say you fell victim to a Nazi atrocity..,
You died at the hands of a Nazi.
Your genes can replicate no more.
The Nazi eventually propagated.

Nature is "outraged" because you were?
Are you saying the Nazi's joy at survival and propagation is not a "natural response" because you were outraged??
Last edited by ant on Sat May 30, 2015 12:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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Interbane wrote:
ant wrote:All I'm trying to do is get naturalism and its beliefs clarified.
It's quite easy really. The only real difference is that naturalists see morality as natural rather than supernatural. You can dig as deep as you want, but you won't find the problems and contradictions that you seem to think exist.

I think what's ultimately being said here by this particular naturalist is this:


We do not believe in God, but morality exists because it is natural.

But if the Nazi's and their meme was the fittest and flourished as a result, it would be immoral despite the fact that blind nature selected the fittest.
Last edited by ant on Sat May 30, 2015 12:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Interbane

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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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ant wrote:Nature is "outraged" because you were?
I really don't understand where you're coming from. Why would nature be outraged or blind to outrage? Nature isn't anthrpomorphic. The only thing meant by the term is that there is nothing supernatural going on. You seem to have added a tremendous amount of baggage. I am outraged, and perhaps other people. And that outrage is a natural thing.

Really, I have no idea what's going on in your head. Explain yourself.
ant wrote:We do not believe in God, but morality exists because it is natural.
Morality doesn't exist because it's natural. That's twisted and weird. Really, you'll have to explain what your understanding is, because it's alien to my own. You don't understand naturalism ant. I don't mean that as an insult.
Flann wrote:This may be a foolish question but why does morality only apply to humans? The book on Bonobo's,(which I haven't read) is subtitled "the search for humanism among the primates". This is suggestive but I'm not sure what they actually found,not having read it.
It's not a foolish question, I was wrong. It applies to social animals. Humans primarily, but other animals fit the bill. Not comets, however. Morality is a social behavior guidance system.
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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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This is a very cryptic statement:
Why would nature be blind to my outrage? Emotions are natural
\


Emotions and language are tied together.

Language is semantic

Nature, to my knowledge, does not understand semantic meaning

If nature was not blind to Interbane's outrage (which is an emotion, expressed by language, which is semantic because emotions MEAN different things to different people and cultures) then Nature somehow understands Interbane's semantic perspective. And that's supposed to be natural.

This might be a weird question but here it goes:

Because you understand that emotions are natural, are they any different than a theists emotions?


(Do you want to discuss how you're using the word "blind" here?)

Thanks, Interbane.
Last edited by ant on Sat May 30, 2015 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Interbane

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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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ant wrote:If nature was not blind to Interbane's outrage (which is an emotion, expressed by language, which is semantic because emotions MEAN different things to different people and cultures) then Nature somehow understands Interbane's semantic perspective. And that's natural.
Why would nature be blind to anything, or not blind to anything? You're reading too much into my question. Does nature have eyes, or is it a characteristic? Define what you think nature is.
ant wrote:Do you want to discuss how you're using the word "blind" here?
I can't think of any way in which the word applies, even metaphorically. So yes, I want to discuss it. Explain what you mean because I don't get it.
ant wrote:Because you understand that emotions are natural, are they any different than a theists emotions?
There is absolutely no difference. The only difference is in the understanding of how emotions work and what causes them. The subjective experience is precisely the same. They affect us the same way.
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Re: Evolution and baseball caps

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So why isnt the baseball cap explanation a plausible?
It seems natural enough if we reduce eevolutionary psychology to our selfish genes.

Is it not testable?
Whats the issue
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