tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223797477664258632.post2270025474499930659..comments2023-09-11T01:18:18.763-07:00Comments on Natural Right and Biology: Genuine Morality & Natural Selection 3Ken Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09580209017016829598noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223797477664258632.post-54828319616381280092013-05-04T22:20:21.452-07:002013-05-04T22:20:21.452-07:00We are pushed and pulled by our emotions and must ...We are pushed and pulled by our emotions and must decide, in any morally relevant situation, which way we will go. That capacity for deliberation is what constitutes the moral self. I don't see why it detracts from the morality of our actions that both the emotions and the deliberation depend on neurotransmitters in the brain. A heroic athlete can do what she does because she has muscles in her arms and legs. Does it detract from the genuinely heroic character of her deeds that these muscles and her brain are made of cells? <br /><br />In other words, I reject reductionism. A door key must be made of some material but the material alone cannot open a lock (as you will see if you melt it down). It is the information embedded in the key that does that work. A mind must subsist in some material (at least in this world). The brain is composed of distinct organs, each with its own evolutionary history. The mind is a whole that emerges out of the material and the integration of those parts. My mind is responsible for my behavior, moral or otherwise. <br /><br />I won't speak for Larry Arnhart, but I do not regard evolution as a teleological process. It is what Aristotelians call a case of efficient causation. There is no program guiding evolutionary change. It does, however, result in teleological processes. <br /><br />I don't think we can rule out the possibility that the Kosmos is governed by some kind of teleology. The cosmological constants argument still seems to me to be very strong. Unless there are indeed a vast number of parallel universes (a very big ad hoc assumption) then it looks like someone was setting a large set of dials to just the right degrees to produce a Kosmos that produced us. It also seems that the emergence of life on earth by mere chance is very difficult to explain. <br /><br />Evolution, however, involves none of these questions. It must presuppose not only the existence of this Kosmos but the existence of biological self-replicators subject to natural selection. That is a rather more confined business. Ken Blanchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09580209017016829598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223797477664258632.post-17434783138742466392013-05-04T12:49:32.622-07:002013-05-04T12:49:32.622-07:00I suppose I was guilty of overstatement in implyin...I suppose I was guilty of overstatement in implying that moral behavior is "robotic" under Darwinism--though, to the extent that we're moral because our hormones (or Oxytocins, or whatever) are pushing us that way does seem to me to detract from the morality of our actions.<br /><br />I find intriguing the argument about the potential for life, consciousness, etc. (from Hans Jonas--your post of May 1). One difficulty I see is that there are innumerable unfulfilled potentials in our universe. If one of them pops into existence at some moment, is that to be construed as a further perfection of the universe, which was somehow incomplete until that moment? That seems implausible to me. What about all the unrealizable potentials in this universe that might be realized, they tell us, in parallel universes?<br /><br />But I take it that you, with Larry Arnhart, do not take this teleological view of the universe or of evolution, but only of individual creatures brought about by the two. Arnhart corrected me on that score in Chicago; I had misconstrued his argument.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05615589761967126451noreply@blogger.com