Doubling reading efforts
Yesterday's entry gives me an idea of where you are moving metaethically. But it does not explain what kind of normative ethics you expect to obtain from evolution.
First things first. At this time, I do not think I have anything wonderful to contribute to normative ethics in the first place, just because I do not consider myself to be a moral revolutionary. I am happy with the norms of my society pretty much as they already stand. But I feel enough annoyance about the claims of moral realists that I want to shut them up with evolutionary anti-realism. But I also feel enough annoyance about the claims of cultural relativists to shut them up as well. My kind of evolutionary anti-realism also requires a moral consensus, so it eliminates relativism as well. Yes, I think that a synthesis between realism and anti-realism is indeed in order.
And what would you call your book?
Evolutionary Metaethics.
What work has already been done in this field?
A good question, which will require much research to answer. I have just conducted a web search on "evolutionary metaethics", exact phrase. The top-ranked page is a bibliography page in the Theory Lab of the Konrad Lorenz Institute, using the keyword "evolutionary metaethics". The page only contains one reference, a paper by B.N. Waller. "Moral commitment without objectivity or illusion: Comments on Ruse and Woolcock", Biology and Philosophy, Volume 11, pp. 245—254.
That seems a place to start. And because it's Saturday, you might be able to pop off to the university library this morning.
I am now at the university library, but unfortunately, it is a little disappointing. The library does not keep this particular journal in physical stock. It does have an electronic subscription to the journal. But the electronic archives only go back as far as Volume 12, Issue 1, of December 1996--no volume 11!
How did that page become the top-ranked page for evolutionary metaethics, then?!
Because of the prestige of the institution linking to it: the Konrad Lorenz Institute.
Was the article reprinted anywhere else?
Not that I can find. But it was referenced in "Methodological Problems in Evolutionary Biology XII. Against Evolutionary Ethics" by Wim J. van der Steen. Do you want to read that?
Well, because the article is opposed to evolutionary ethics, it might annoy me. But it's important to know what your enemies are saying about you, so I might as well read it.
Which has the priority, The Moral Animal or this paper?
I would be inclined to say The Moral Animal. If you do nothing but read journal articles all the time, you'll never get through the books you have bought.
Does this mean that we are going to switch to commenting on what we are reading from the books?
I think that that would be best. I have been itching to write about what I have been reading in The Moral Animal for the last few days. Unfortunately, it just hasn't linked up to my train of thought in my blog.
I have just read Chapter 18 of The Moral Animal. It basically involves a Darwinian explanation of the common norms found in religion. They basically amount to a suppression of our natural desires towards a completely disinterested kind of living. Particularly insightful, I think, is the notion of the futility of the pursuit of pleasure for the sake of the pleasurable goal in question. The actual feeling that you get from any achievement is momentary only, and leaves you hungry for more. But that's why you have to enjoy the pursuit of pleasure, rather than the attainment of pleasure. Because in the end, that pursuit is all you have; life is a journey, not a destination.
That's why I don't understand why Robert Wright is endorsing a utilitarian ethic in this book. The goal of utilitarianism is taken to be happiness, in rather primitive terms of the maximisation of pleasure. But if pleasure is fleeting and illusory, why should it be anyone's goal to maximise that pleasure? The pursuit, rather than the attainment, of a pleasurable goal, could still be enjoyed for its own sake. But it is hard to see how anybody can exactly "help" someone pursue pleasure in this way. The most that can be done is to remove all artificial obstacles in their way. This, it seems to me, can be done quite effectively without the kind of welfare-state mentality that left-wingers always seem to endorse. It is, indeed, promoted by political and economic freedoms, and by equality of opportunity.
I have now finished the appendix that Robert Wright wrote to his book, on frequently asked questions. I found his passage particularly insightful on why people choose to have few or no children. We are programmed to like sex, and we are also programmed to like the consequences of it nine months later. But we are not programmed to like the prospect of the consequences before they happen. In the ancestral environment, the first two instincts were enough to guarantee fecundity. We needed to enjoy sex so that we would produce the children in the first place. We also needed to actually love the children when they arrived, so that we did not simply kill them or abandon them. But one thing that we did not need, was to actually relish the prospect of having children one day. It was enough simply to enjoy having sex, because this was all that was needed in the past to ensure that children were the result. With the advent of contraception, this is now no longer the case. Merely having sex is no longer enough to have a child. One must actually want that child in the first place, or one simply does not have it, because one will simply use contraception to prevent it.
First things first. At this time, I do not think I have anything wonderful to contribute to normative ethics in the first place, just because I do not consider myself to be a moral revolutionary. I am happy with the norms of my society pretty much as they already stand. But I feel enough annoyance about the claims of moral realists that I want to shut them up with evolutionary anti-realism. But I also feel enough annoyance about the claims of cultural relativists to shut them up as well. My kind of evolutionary anti-realism also requires a moral consensus, so it eliminates relativism as well. Yes, I think that a synthesis between realism and anti-realism is indeed in order.
And what would you call your book?
Evolutionary Metaethics.
What work has already been done in this field?
A good question, which will require much research to answer. I have just conducted a web search on "evolutionary metaethics", exact phrase. The top-ranked page is a bibliography page in the Theory Lab of the Konrad Lorenz Institute, using the keyword "evolutionary metaethics". The page only contains one reference, a paper by B.N. Waller. "Moral commitment without objectivity or illusion: Comments on Ruse and Woolcock", Biology and Philosophy, Volume 11, pp. 245—254.
That seems a place to start. And because it's Saturday, you might be able to pop off to the university library this morning.
I am now at the university library, but unfortunately, it is a little disappointing. The library does not keep this particular journal in physical stock. It does have an electronic subscription to the journal. But the electronic archives only go back as far as Volume 12, Issue 1, of December 1996--no volume 11!
How did that page become the top-ranked page for evolutionary metaethics, then?!
Because of the prestige of the institution linking to it: the Konrad Lorenz Institute.
Was the article reprinted anywhere else?
Not that I can find. But it was referenced in "Methodological Problems in Evolutionary Biology XII. Against Evolutionary Ethics" by Wim J. van der Steen. Do you want to read that?
Well, because the article is opposed to evolutionary ethics, it might annoy me. But it's important to know what your enemies are saying about you, so I might as well read it.
Which has the priority, The Moral Animal or this paper?
I would be inclined to say The Moral Animal. If you do nothing but read journal articles all the time, you'll never get through the books you have bought.
Does this mean that we are going to switch to commenting on what we are reading from the books?
I think that that would be best. I have been itching to write about what I have been reading in The Moral Animal for the last few days. Unfortunately, it just hasn't linked up to my train of thought in my blog.
I have just read Chapter 18 of The Moral Animal. It basically involves a Darwinian explanation of the common norms found in religion. They basically amount to a suppression of our natural desires towards a completely disinterested kind of living. Particularly insightful, I think, is the notion of the futility of the pursuit of pleasure for the sake of the pleasurable goal in question. The actual feeling that you get from any achievement is momentary only, and leaves you hungry for more. But that's why you have to enjoy the pursuit of pleasure, rather than the attainment of pleasure. Because in the end, that pursuit is all you have; life is a journey, not a destination.
That's why I don't understand why Robert Wright is endorsing a utilitarian ethic in this book. The goal of utilitarianism is taken to be happiness, in rather primitive terms of the maximisation of pleasure. But if pleasure is fleeting and illusory, why should it be anyone's goal to maximise that pleasure? The pursuit, rather than the attainment, of a pleasurable goal, could still be enjoyed for its own sake. But it is hard to see how anybody can exactly "help" someone pursue pleasure in this way. The most that can be done is to remove all artificial obstacles in their way. This, it seems to me, can be done quite effectively without the kind of welfare-state mentality that left-wingers always seem to endorse. It is, indeed, promoted by political and economic freedoms, and by equality of opportunity.
I have now finished the appendix that Robert Wright wrote to his book, on frequently asked questions. I found his passage particularly insightful on why people choose to have few or no children. We are programmed to like sex, and we are also programmed to like the consequences of it nine months later. But we are not programmed to like the prospect of the consequences before they happen. In the ancestral environment, the first two instincts were enough to guarantee fecundity. We needed to enjoy sex so that we would produce the children in the first place. We also needed to actually love the children when they arrived, so that we did not simply kill them or abandon them. But one thing that we did not need, was to actually relish the prospect of having children one day. It was enough simply to enjoy having sex, because this was all that was needed in the past to ensure that children were the result. With the advent of contraception, this is now no longer the case. Merely having sex is no longer enough to have a child. One must actually want that child in the first place, or one simply does not have it, because one will simply use contraception to prevent it.
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