ant wrote:Calm down and stop looking for a brawl.

I'm rarely anything but calm. I found it curious that you call the author's ideas naive, but then reinforce his ideas.

Interbane wrote:

ant wrote:Calm down and stop looking for a brawl.

I'm rarely anything but calm. I found it curious that you call the author's ideas naive, but then reinforce his ideas.

I didnt reinforce his ideas. I questioned their transference to a diversity of cultures.

Edited:

Also, scientific thinking will not and to date has not saved the day. Nor should it be seen as our savior.
Science and technology have turned loose some of the most horrific evils known to man.

It's naive to think science will save us from barbarism or stop it from happening.

always find it disturbing to see people, especially in large crowds, apparently acting according to primitive emotions rather than enlightened thinking"

Here the author is assuming our modernity is the equivalent of "enlightened thinking".
Interbane, you share his sentiments because you once claimed that humans have "evolved enough"

This of course is arrogant presumption and no surprise.

Scientifically speaking, the brain actually grows as culture grows.
it goes without saying that as we continue to advance culturally, tomorrow's culture(s) will call themselves the enlightened and modern.

It's naive of the author to hint that reason and science of today is enlightened thinking.
And Who's reasoning, Western culture?
Eastern cultures do not share western values, reasoning, or ideals.
Not everyone admires Warren Buffet like you do, Interbane.

ant wrote:Also, scientific thinking will not and to date has not saved the day. Nor should it be seen as our savior.

Science has saved the day. We would not be alive today if not for science. We would have starved or died from disease.

ant wrote:Interbane, you share his sentiments because you once claimed that humans have "evolved enough"

Evolved enough for what? We will continue to evolve, if we last long enough.

ant wrote:Eastern cultures do not share western values, reasoning, or ideals.

Logic and critical thinking are just as effective in Asia.

ant wrote:It's naive of the author to hint that reason and science of today is enlightened thinking.

Is it not enlightened? By the only thing we have to compare it to - the reasoning of ages past, it is enlightened. To say that we will be more enlightened in the centuries to come does not change this. You don't know what the future holds. This may be the best it gets.

Flann makes some excellent points. I think our disgust-meter is very helpful in most cases. Much of our distrust of GM foods has to do with distrust of the corporate influence with our food supply. One of Novello's main points is creating essentially emotional appeals like "frankenfoods" and "fishmatoes" which, as he points out, are based on a misunderstanding of genetics.

The other good point Flann makes is that science is often held hostage to corporate and political influences. It's also something of a moving target. What is deemed safe today might not be deemed so safe tomorrow as more evidence comes in. A healthy skepticism is in order.

A case in point is the case of BPA plastics. A public outcry over possible health risks over BPA plastics has led to a new influx of BPS plastics. But BPS may turn out to be worse than BPA.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

Science has saved the day. We would not be alive today if not for science. We would have starved or died from disease.

Brilliant!
Thanks for letting me know that!

Now I know science will save us all from each other!

Flann wrote:

I agree with ant on the cultural aspect of emotions. Some cultures eat snakes which apparently are safe and nutritious for them. For most of us westerners this would probably elicit disgust were it to appear on our dinner plate.
The appeal to science and evidence is reasonable but history also shapes our emotions and scientific claims are often viewed rightly or wrongly with scepticism.

Correct. And as I said before, language shapes our emotions and our world.
If emotions are our ethics, then different cultures will always have different ethics.

Not all cultures desire science to be a "one stop shop" for every aspect of life.
Some cultures value science for its practical applications, but beyond that there are other more influential areas of knowledge that influence people and their lives.

ant wrote:Brilliant!
Thanks for letting me know that!

Now I know science will save us all from each other!

Stop making stuff up. Who said science will save us from each other? That's the one thing it won't do.

Geo wrote:Flann makes some excellent points. I think our disgust-meter is very helpful in most cases. Much of our distrust of GM foods has to do with distrust of the corporate influence with our food supply. One of Novello's main points is creating essentially emotional appeals like "frankenfoods" and "fishmatoes" which, as he points out, are based on a misunderstanding of genetics.

Do you think disgust is a moral emotion? It seems more related to personal preservation, similar to fear. But I could see it being useful to a group, to keep disease from spreading.

Interbane wrote: Do you think disgust is a moral emotion? It seems more related to personal preservation, similar to fear. But I could see it being useful to a group, to keep disease from spreading.

I think it can cross over into the moral realm. Or perhaps as a precursor to moral judgment. For example, disgust in seeing the death and destruction after a battle (leading to anger and contempt). Conservatives tend to evoke disgust in their outrage over abortion as they paint graphic images of aborted fetuses, etc.

In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt discusses the tendency of Orthodox Jews to emphasize cleanliness, especially in places where food is prepared. The sense of disgust in some cultures does seem to extend into the moral realm.

From Wikipedia:

"Together with Paul Rozin and Clark McCauley, Haidt developed the Disgust Scale,[14] which has been widely used to measure individual differences in sensitivity to disgust. Haidt, Rozin, and McCauley have written extensively on the psychology of disgust as an emotion that began as a guardian of the mouth (against pathogens), but then expanded during biological and cultural evolution to become a guardian of the body more generally, and of the social and moral order."

geo wrote:I think it can cross over into the moral realm. Or perhaps as a precursor to moral judgment. For example, disgust in seeing the death and destruction after a battle (leading to anger and contempt). Conservatives tend to evoke disgust in their outrage over abortion as they paint graphic images of aborted fetuses, etc.

In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt discusses the tendency of Orthodox Jews to emphasize cleanliness, especially in places where food is prepared. The sense of disgust in some cultures does seem to extend into the moral realm.

I agree about the moral sense Geo. Our English word disgust seemingly originates in early French or Latin as the Oxford dictionary explains; Dis (the reversal of) gust (taste). Distaste. So it's very experiential, perhaps rooted in bitterness or sourness of taste.
And yet poisonous berries can look nice and probably even taste o.k in many cases.
The Orthodox Jews cleanliness emphasis is doubtless rooted in the Levitical laws, where certain foods are designated clean or unclean and there's a great deal of washing prescribed.
The rationale behind these laws was about moral awareness more than hygiene I think, but it included an understanding of physical infection for instance,as a reality as well as moral metaphor.
I imagine that those who discovered the Nazi death camps felt perhaps a mixture of physical and moral nausea which was palpable.
The introduction and implementation of basic hygiene by Florence Nightingale was revolutionary in the Crimean war where more had been commonly dying from infections in wounds and germs being spread, than from bullets directly killing soldiers.

The possible detrimental environmental effects on ecosystems of some genetically modified organisms is perhaps the most potentially disastrous outcome that could occur. Because they are living entities which interact with other living organisms and the environment it's not easily predictable what the outcomes will be.
And it's hard to get the genie back into the bottle once released.