Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The Other Michael · 08-21-2002, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by echidna:
Female brains are 10% smaller than male brains. Does this mean females are 10% less intelligent ? (maybe we�d better not go there �)

Their brains aren't smaller, just petite.

cheers,
Michael

echidna · 08-21-2002, 08:30 PM

I value petiteness.

luvluv · 08-22-2002, 09:23 AM

Really though, how could there be objective values? Where do they come from? Are they just part of the natural furniture of the universe, like gravity and electromagnetism. If we humans did not exist, morals would not exist. They are functions of our existence. We give morals meaning, not the reverse. Therefore, if morals are just a survival mechanism that aids in the perpetuation of our species, we are perfectly justified in adapting them in cases where they hinder the very purpose for which they were designed.

Why not, for example, gather up all the AIDS and HIV victims and euthanize them? It makes a lot more sense than allowing them to potentially infect hundreds of millions of us who do not have the disease, and it would be cheaper than keeping them alive in quarantine. Morals only exist to help us survive. They are all in our heads. They are an uneccesary barrier to decisive action. It makes more sense, for all of mankind, for us to simply decide that the weak have no value for the sake of the survival of the strong.

Why would you arbitrarily choose to value people who could mean the destruction of your species? We don't need any neurological alarms system within us determining our future. Our intelligence makes moral laws obselete. We can choose what is best for ourselves better than our petty conscious can.

tronvillain · 08-22-2002, 10:11 AM

Ah, but there is no apparent reason we should care if morals are not fulfilling the purpose for which they evolved. We simply cannot step outside our moral framework, and so every decision must be made from within it.

Quote:

Why not, for example, gather up all the AIDS and HIV victims and euthanize them? It makes a lot more sense than allowing them to potentially infect hundreds of millions of us who do not have the disease, and it would be cheaper than keeping them alive in quarantine. Morals only exist to help us survive. They are all in our heads. They are an uneccesary barrier to decisive action. It makes more sense, for all of mankind, for us to simply decide that the weak have no value for the sake of the survival of the strong.

We do not do that because most humans prefer to find methods to deal with HIV that do not involve mass murder. You cry "But that's only because we have morals! If we didn't have morals we could do it!" Ah, but morals emerge from our emotions, and without our emotions what motivation would there be to do anything? Besides, that morals evolved does not mean that humans should abandon them whenever they do no promote survival.

Vorkosigan · 08-22-2002, 01:49 PM

If we humans did not exist, morals would not exist.

We are not the only animal with morals.

Therefore, if morals are just a survival mechanism that aids in the perpetuation of our species, we are perfectly justified in adapting them in cases where they hinder the very purpose for which they were designed.

Why not?

Why not, for example, gather up all the AIDS and HIV victims and euthanize them? It makes a lot more sense than allowing them to potentially infect hundreds of millions of us who do not have the disease, and it would be cheaper than keeping them alive in quarantine. Morals only exist to help us survive. They are all in our heads. They are an uneccesary barrier to decisive action. It makes more sense, for all of mankind, for us to simply decide that the weak have no value for the sake of the survival of the strong.

You're making the same mistake you did before, Luv, in our conversations on CS Lewis. You can euthanize them if you like, but few people will support that outcome.

Why would you arbitrarily choose to value people who could mean the destruction of your species?

How AIDS victim destroy our species? Besides, by your logic, we should be killing Xtians; they've killed a lot more people than AIDS has so far.

We don't need any neurological alarms system within us determining our future. Our intelligence makes moral laws obselete. We can choose what is best for ourselves better than our petty conscious can.

Remember all those links on the iterated prisoner's dilemma I put up? Read them again, and you'll see why the long run gains from cooperation far outweigh short-term gains from self-centered action. That is why really intelligent people cooperate.

Vorkosigan

Autonemesis · 08-22-2002, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
From the standpoint of Social Darwinism there are plenty of reasons for discarding the intrinsic value of humans, or placing it lower on our list of priorities.

That's why it sucks as a moral philosophy: it lacks anything that resembles humanistic values. It might fly at a Republican convention though. Any further questions?

Quote:

If that other persons well being requires expenditures of my money that I am not willing to part with, I would be totally justified in allowing him to continue to suffer since, despite whatever we are socialized to believe, he has no more instrinsic value than your stray dog.

Didja ever wonder why atheists and humanists despise the Republicans (and most Democrats) so much? It is because what you just said is what they actually believe and try to enforce on the country. Yes, even and especially the Christian ones. The more fundy they are the more overt their belief in this abhorrent conflation of human value with monetary value. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

echidna · 08-22-2002, 11:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
Morals only exist to help us survive.

Existence does not imply conscious purpose. Please understand.

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
Why would you arbitrarily choose to value people who could mean the destruction of your species?

Well, lets discard your mass population example. Say an individual moves to directly harm me or my family. We all have spheres of emotional attachment. Yes I will value myself and my family higher than that stranger.

Say myself or my family is in danger from lack of resources from other people using them up. Yes I will value myself and my family higher than strangers. If you yourself don�t do that, I respectfully submit that you are lying.

Now, that said, people who are HIV positive neither threaten me directly, or indirectly. Why do you single them out, why not ask the question of anyone with an infectious disease, or anyone who drives a car, etc etc etc ?

Luvluv, with more than 600 posts up your sleeve, I�m amazed that you still can�t grasp why your line of questioning is entirely mistaken.

Your.Master · 08-23-2002, 07:14 AM

Here's the problem with mental superiority: it is impossible to define, and thus, impossible to definitively gauge.

Many people at school claim that I am "smart". I like it, actually

. But how does one gauge this? If I were transplanted into Sammy Sosa's or Jerry MacGuire's body and given his physical attributes and my brain given the unconscious (NOT the conscious) benefits of practice, would I be as good at baseball as he is? No, because I have not trained my conscious mind that way. Could I have been as good at baseball as he is, had I trained my conscious mind that way? That is a thing we may never know.

I'm assuming those two are considered to be of "average" intelligence or lower, I really don't know, but my point still stands.

People exhibit proficiencies in different areas. I exhibit ones in maths and sciences (the logical courses) but am almost entirely inept at any arts subject, with the exception of English, which is mostly inexplicable. Why English? Why can I write and speak articulately and yet I can't give a single second of my attention span over to music? I bet you $40 that it's not that I have a small Music-part to my brain, or that it's atrophied. I believe it is both genetics and environment that determine your intelligence, but not necessarily in ways we can predict with any technology ever.

People who are more extreme are savants. They appear to have a very specific talent, but otherwise they are mentally incapacitated.

You would have to gain the technology and the clout to say that you could prove conclusively, that in EVERY last mental factor, every sub-factor (White men play this genre music better, but black men play that genre music better), every sub-sub-sub factor, in every way, was superior, in every case. With retarded people in every race, you know that cannot happen. If you could do so, I'm really not sure there is a problem with one race ruling, so long as they do not forget that the other deserves moral treatment, and that is easy to forget when you place them beneath you, so perhaps you shouldn't rule "lest you forget".

It is proven that men are more proficient in chess than women. Something like 95% of the time, a man and woman playing their first game together, the man will win. This is because a man's brain is geared more towards finite possibilities and can more easily read ahead within a constrained set of possibilities. I forget the counter-game women were better at (I know it's in my head somewhere) but it's one of those games where the rules aren't constraining. Women's brains are geared more towards finding the best possible solution out of an infinite variety of good solutions, all of which could possible have good or bad outcomes. That is an oversimplification, it's been a long time since I learned this. But the point is, both encounter both situations in everyday life, and both must deal with them, but if they work together and figure out who's better at what, they both end up complementing each other and find the best possible solution to every problem, be it finite or infinite or near-infinite (which is where men and women's brains meet and where most REAL problems exist).

BibleBelted · 08-24-2002, 01:22 PM

I don't know if anyone else is getting anything from this thread, but I certainly am. One of the reasons I was dismissive of atheism for so long is because I imagined that atheists were either Marxists or cold-hearted objectivists and social darwinist types. Probably bitter and lacking in passion.

Of course I found this not to be (mostly), and theyeti's, and others', posts lay out comprehensive and compelling reasons why it is perfectly acceptable for atheists to have emotions like compassion and even to be, in a sense, "guided" by them.

luvluv, I think I know where you are going with your analogy of equating morals with gravity and magnetism, the "natural furniture of the universe." (Love that phrase, btw. Think I'm going to have to steal it

) I think we are coming back to the moral authority issue.

There is a Christian song that has the words "the anchor holds, in spite of the storm." What is implied is that without some ultimate, omnipotent final arbiter of justice, humanity's desire for a moral code is as useless as a piece of driftwood on the ocean. From that supposedly it would follow that caring about the happiness of others would just be stupid sentimentalism, possibly harmful to your own ability to thrive.

Previous posters on this thread have already made excellent points (I think) on behalf of the humanist position, so I won't re-state them here, just ask this question: Is there reason enough to prefer the theistic position of positing the existence of a supreme being who will render eternal judgment on our souls, to that of mutual cooperation for secular reasons?

I would argue that the theistic position, particularly relying on the bible god, is the more unreliable because of the potential for problems of abuse when people submit to being led like sheep by "shepherds" who are often greedy, unscrupulous, delusional, or even just ordinary stupid - and often unimpeachable. The notion that there is some supernatural force operating in the background to somehow mysteriously unify all these various denominations is, to me, without even the slightest evidence.

Secondly, the bible-god vision for the future is one of nation against nation and the continuation of horrible suffering and massive slaughter. Surely in the absence of any evidence to support these gruesome predictions we have justification for striving to do better than that.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with Darwinism. Atheists may end up being trucked off to concentration camps for all our utopian dreams, and the entire world be forced to serve the most brutal and subversive of superstitions.

Since I believe that happiness is the greatest good, I prefer to promote a world that values liberty for the individual and mutual responsibility, to one of servitude to any deity. This is just my personal choice. I have no method of proving that it is one that will eventually "win out."

Dylan · 08-24-2002, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
[QB]Fine, there may not be a superior race now, but is it unreasonable to assume that, if we were able to gauge mental ability, and formulate a mathematical average for the different races (defined solely by color) that one racial group would not have a higher average than the others? Is it unreasonable to assume that the difference between some racial groups might not be substantial?/QB]

If that were to happen, the test is probably slanted towards a certain culture.

Also, for example, if you did that test in my area, you would probably come up with Indians in general being smarter than Mexicans. Why? Because there are lots of special programs in my area for Asians to come over on technology visas. So the smart Indians come to my area.

Mexicans, it is the opposite. The successful mexicans stay in Mexico, whereas the poor ones, looking for a better future, come to america.

You have to look for those kinda things in those tests.

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08-21-2002, 08:30 PM	#22
echidna Veteran Member Join Date: May 2001 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,832	I value petiteness.

08-22-2002, 09:23 AM	#23
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Really though, how could there be objective values? Where do they come from? Are they just part of the natural furniture of the universe, like gravity and electromagnetism. If we humans did not exist, morals would not exist. They are functions of our existence. We give morals meaning, not the reverse. Therefore, if morals are just a survival mechanism that aids in the perpetuation of our species, we are perfectly justified in adapting them in cases where they hinder the very purpose for which they were designed. Why not, for example, gather up all the AIDS and HIV victims and euthanize them? It makes a lot more sense than allowing them to potentially infect hundreds of millions of us who do not have the disease, and it would be cheaper than keeping them alive in quarantine. Morals only exist to help us survive. They are all in our heads. They are an uneccesary barrier to decisive action. It makes more sense, for all of mankind, for us to simply decide that the weak have no value for the sake of the survival of the strong. Why would you arbitrarily choose to value people who could mean the destruction of your species? We don't need any neurological alarms system within us determining our future. Our intelligence makes moral laws obselete. We can choose what is best for ourselves better than our petty conscious can.

08-22-2002, 01:49 PM	#25
Vorkosigan Contributor Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Barrayar Posts: 11,866	If we humans did not exist, morals would not exist. We are not the only animal with morals. Therefore, if morals are just a survival mechanism that aids in the perpetuation of our species, we are perfectly justified in adapting them in cases where they hinder the very purpose for which they were designed. Why not? Why not, for example, gather up all the AIDS and HIV victims and euthanize them? It makes a lot more sense than allowing them to potentially infect hundreds of millions of us who do not have the disease, and it would be cheaper than keeping them alive in quarantine. Morals only exist to help us survive. They are all in our heads. They are an uneccesary barrier to decisive action. It makes more sense, for all of mankind, for us to simply decide that the weak have no value for the sake of the survival of the strong. You're making the same mistake you did before, Luv, in our conversations on CS Lewis. You can euthanize them if you like, but few people will support that outcome. Why would you arbitrarily choose to value people who could mean the destruction of your species? How AIDS victim destroy our species? Besides, by your logic, we should be killing Xtians; they've killed a lot more people than AIDS has so far. We don't need any neurological alarms system within us determining our future. Our intelligence makes moral laws obselete. We can choose what is best for ourselves better than our petty conscious can. Remember all those links on the iterated prisoner's dilemma I put up? Read them again, and you'll see why the long run gains from cooperation far outweigh short-term gains from self-centered action. That is why really intelligent people cooperate. Vorkosigan

08-23-2002, 07:14 AM	#28
Your.Master Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 5	Here's the problem with mental superiority: it is impossible to define, and thus, impossible to definitively gauge. Many people at school claim that I am "smart". I like it, actually . But how does one gauge this? If I were transplanted into Sammy Sosa's or Jerry MacGuire's body and given his physical attributes and my brain given the unconscious (NOT the conscious) benefits of practice, would I be as good at baseball as he is? No, because I have not trained my conscious mind that way. Could I have been as good at baseball as he is, had I trained my conscious mind that way? That is a thing we may never know. I'm assuming those two are considered to be of "average" intelligence or lower, I really don't know, but my point still stands. People exhibit proficiencies in different areas. I exhibit ones in maths and sciences (the logical courses) but am almost entirely inept at any arts subject, with the exception of English, which is mostly inexplicable. Why English? Why can I write and speak articulately and yet I can't give a single second of my attention span over to music? I bet you $40 that it's not that I have a small Music-part to my brain, or that it's atrophied. I believe it is both genetics and environment that determine your intelligence, but not necessarily in ways we can predict with any technology ever. People who are more extreme are savants. They appear to have a very specific talent, but otherwise they are mentally incapacitated. You would have to gain the technology and the clout to say that you could prove conclusively, that in EVERY last mental factor, every sub-factor (White men play this genre music better, but black men play that genre music better), every sub-sub-sub factor, in every way, was superior, in every case. With retarded people in every race, you know that cannot happen. If you could do so, I'm really not sure there is a problem with one race ruling, so long as they do not forget that the other deserves moral treatment, and that is easy to forget when you place them beneath you, so perhaps you shouldn't rule "lest you forget". It is proven that men are more proficient in chess than women. Something like 95% of the time, a man and woman playing their first game together, the man will win. This is because a man's brain is geared more towards finite possibilities and can more easily read ahead within a constrained set of possibilities. I forget the counter-game women were better at (I know it's in my head somewhere) but it's one of those games where the rules aren't constraining. Women's brains are geared more towards finding the best possible solution out of an infinite variety of good solutions, all of which could possible have good or bad outcomes. That is an oversimplification, it's been a long time since I learned this. But the point is, both encounter both situations in everyday life, and both must deal with them, but if they work together and figure out who's better at what, they both end up complementing each other and find the best possible solution to every problem, be it finite or infinite or near-infinite (which is where men and women's brains meet and where most REAL problems exist).

08-24-2002, 01:22 PM	#29
BibleBelted Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Oklahoma, USA Posts: 891	I don't know if anyone else is getting anything from this thread, but I certainly am. One of the reasons I was dismissive of atheism for so long is because I imagined that atheists were either Marxists or cold-hearted objectivists and social darwinist types. Probably bitter and lacking in passion. Of course I found this not to be (mostly), and theyeti's, and others', posts lay out comprehensive and compelling reasons why it is perfectly acceptable for atheists to have emotions like compassion and even to be, in a sense, "guided" by them. luvluv, I think I know where you are going with your analogy of equating morals with gravity and magnetism, the "natural furniture of the universe." (Love that phrase, btw. Think I'm going to have to steal it ) I think we are coming back to the moral authority issue. There is a Christian song that has the words "the anchor holds, in spite of the storm." What is implied is that without some ultimate, omnipotent final arbiter of justice, humanity's desire for a moral code is as useless as a piece of driftwood on the ocean. From that supposedly it would follow that caring about the happiness of others would just be stupid sentimentalism, possibly harmful to your own ability to thrive. Previous posters on this thread have already made excellent points (I think) on behalf of the humanist position, so I won't re-state them here, just ask this question: Is there reason enough to prefer the theistic position of positing the existence of a supreme being who will render eternal judgment on our souls, to that of mutual cooperation for secular reasons? I would argue that the theistic position, particularly relying on the bible god, is the more unreliable because of the potential for problems of abuse when people submit to being led like sheep by "shepherds" who are often greedy, unscrupulous, delusional, or even just ordinary stupid - and often unimpeachable. The notion that there is some supernatural force operating in the background to somehow mysteriously unify all these various denominations is, to me, without even the slightest evidence. Secondly, the bible-god vision for the future is one of nation against nation and the continuation of horrible suffering and massive slaughter. Surely in the absence of any evidence to support these gruesome predictions we have justification for striving to do better than that. Of course, none of this has anything to do with Darwinism. Atheists may end up being trucked off to concentration camps for all our utopian dreams, and the entire world be forced to serve the most brutal and subversive of superstitions. Since I believe that happiness is the greatest good, I prefer to promote a world that values liberty for the individual and mutual responsibility, to one of servitude to any deity. This is just my personal choice. I have no method of proving that it is one that will eventually "win out."

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