Reading Cicero
I read all of Book I yesterday and all of Book II today. That leaves Book III, where Cicero deals with the apparent conflict between duty and expediency. I think he actually makes a good case in Book II that duty and expediency are not in conflict most of the time, and from what I have read elsewhere, he will here try to establish that they only ever appear to be in conflict because of some things that merely appear good but are not. It sounds reasonable to me already.
Where does this leave you and your theory?
I guess that I am interested in the concept of social viability and its relation to ethics. Issues such as cultural memes that get transmitted from generation to generation will come to play here, and so will the degree to which certain institutions last over time. Moral beliefs--as opposed to moral realities, to the extent that those can be different things--will certainly constitute a species of cultural memes. In that respect, I guess I am interested in the degree to