ragland37{at}webtv.net (Michael Ragland) wrote in message
news:...
> ragland37{at}webtv.net (Michael Ragland) wrote in message
> news:... 
> 
> Challenges for Evolutionary Ethics 
> How can a trait that was developed under the pressure of natural
> selection explain moral actions that go far beyond reciprocal altruism
> or enlightened self-interest? How can, for instance, the action of
> Maximilian Kolbe be explained from a biological point of view? (Kolbe
> was a German priest who starved himself to death in a concentration camp
> to rescue a fellow prisoner.) 
> 
> Could not human beings have moved beyond their biological roots and
> transcended their evolutionary origins, in which case they would be able
> to formulate goals in the pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth that
> "have nothing to do directly with survival, and which may at times
> militate against survival?" (O'Hear, 1997: 203). 
> 
> 
> 
> This is the theme of my article Alive and Human. Evolution and Reason
> are two decoupled survival systems. Reason provides analogies to
> Evolution in a different level, like superseding biological adaptation
> with technological adaptation. Other examples can be found in the
> aforementioned article (google groups). For all practical considerations
> evolution is stopped and that is the main difference between Rational
> Living Beings (Man) and Irrational Living Beings.
> 
> 
> 
> Is English your second language? I ask because alot of what you write
> while written correctly in english doesn't make much sense. If that is
> the case perhaps in your native language you would have better
> success..or perhaps not. 
I admit I am writing in a hurry and under inconvenient circumstances;
can`t afford reviewing since I can lose what I just wrote (no
clipboard available).
> I think "reason" or "intelligence" is a part of
> our Darwinian evolution and all our scientific, medical and
> technological advances wouldn't have been possible without it. This
> doesn't detract from the reality there is a huge lag between our
> biological evolution and cultural evolution e.g. scientific and
> technological developments but just to highlight all these scientific
> and technological developments are based on our DNA which in turn was
> most likely based on RNA and so on. All the great advances thus far in
> physics, technology, science, medicine and other fields have been made
> possible by the minds of humans  (recently in our evolutionary history
> as a species) not by nanotechnological machines which build upon
> themselves and constitute life forms which possesses certain forms of
> "consciousness" which can self repair and self duplicate themselves.
> Perhaps in the future such nanotechnological machine life forms will
> replace DNA based life being more stable in space. 

As long as we have a closed dynamic that perpetuates itself and a
support to accumulate information that can be transmitted, we can
speak of Life. If these system develops connectionist subsystems to
process information sooner or later there will be a consciousness
field. Nano may be better than bio when and if the universe starts
cooling. Though the idea of replacing bio sounds to me a little like
suicide. There is an old, old SF novel called The End of Man. The last
man gives himself to the first `magnetic` bacteria.

> But at the present
> moment I don't see how there can be technological adaptation without
> biological adaptation. 

Easy. We evolved somewhere in Africa; by the time we were fighting the
glacial era we were adapting (like animal population, survival of
fittest, selection of traits), but we were, more importantly, adapting
to the cold environment through he technology of Clothing, a result of
the application of Reason to search possibilities in Reality. I am not
aware of any other species that actually *creates* portable
semienvironments. Not even nests or shells equal clothing.

> Some have argued if we don't "biologically
> improve" ourselves and at least in some ways try to keep pace with
> advances in computers, science and technology that we will subsequently
> fall far behind and that eventually there would be the possibility
> computers could advance to the point of developing superior intelligence
> and becoming the dominant life form on earth. 
> 
> You write, "Reason provides analogies to Evolution in a different level,
> like superseding biological adaptation with technological adaptation." I
> could be mistaken but currently an earthworm is more intelligent than a
> computer. I personally don't think future technological adaptation will
> occur (and that includes the possibility of ultimately replacing DNA
> based life) without biological adaptation of our species. For whether we
> like it or not it will be our ability to biologically adapt to the
> current and ongoing scientific and technological developments in our
> present day environment which will in all liklihood determine whether we
> survive as a species. 
> 

Oh, it will occur. You mentioned nanotechnology. THAT is technological
adaptation to the environment.

> A part of our evolutionary history is we have demonstrated we are a
> highly intelligent species (as evidenced by our discoveries in science
> and applications of technology as well as other areas) but at the same
> time we are products of Darwinian evolution which has also imbued us
> with aggressive and very primitive instincts which were adaptive in the
> ancestral environment but are no longer adaptive today.
> 
A *really* big problem!
> Freud is considered outdated by many. At least some of his theories but
> he was a great man. He was best recognized for his "Interpretation of
> Dreams" but I always like the thesis behind "Civilization and its
> Discontents". Man is an animal whose primitive aggressive instincts are
> in constant conflict with the requirements of civilization. Now it is
> true, as the recent article "Evolution of Despair" noted that it seems
> like civilization itself is destroying or suppressing the more
"gentle"
> side of human beings. But this isn't the fault of civilization but
> rather that man's primitive aggressive instincts are
"stratified" within
> civilization. Not meaning to joke but in a sense there is no
> "civilization" on earth, at least not by my definition. 

By mine, Civilization is the reduction of uncertainty.

> There are moral
> codes which seek to keep in check these animal instincts but they have
> failed over and over again throughout human history. Police, courts,
> religion, etc. It also depends on your definition of civilization. A
> nation can be technologically and scientifically advanced and have a
> rich cultural history and a highly educated public and yet such a nation
> can turn out like Nazi Germany. It's not the science and technology or
> level of education of a nation by itself which constitutes whether it is
> "civilized" but how effectively it controls the base and primitive
> instincts of its citizens. In that respect, Nazi Germany receives the
> lowest grade possible.
> 
Nazi Germany was *very* civilized, so much civilized that ended up
inhuman. There must be several points of equilibrium among all
possible organizations that we can call civilization (Nazi Germany was
not a particularly stable form of civilization).

> Darwinian evolution hasn't stopped but I agree for all practical
> purposes it has. But this does not mean biological adaptation to our
> current environment is necessarily impossible. It may be true the
> relatively new science of genomics, proteomics, biotechnology and gene
> therapy and genetic engineering promise more than they can deliver but
> they nevertheless offer the hope of biologically altering our primitive
> aggressive instincts. Not anytime soon but maybe within a couple hundred
> years. As Hawking stated, "We won't change much in the next hundred
> years." I think he is right and that is depressing when you consider
> what the last one hundred years was like.
> 

But those changes, if at all, are the result of our technological
adaptation. They are not brought about through Jungle Law (not much
anyway 8)

> You state, "For all practical considerations evolution is stopped and
> that is the main difference between Rational Living Beings (Man) and
> Irrational Living Beings." What are Rational Living Beings (Man) and
> irrational Living beings in the context of "evolution has
stopped"? Only
> Darwinian evolution has "stopped" or can't be waited on to effect
> biologically adaptive changes to our environment. Modern science and
> technology has opened up a whole new frontier which offers the hope of
> some kind of directed evolution.
> 
Irrational living beings are subject to the classical principle of
spreading to the maximum the genes of the fittest, those who survive
enough to spread genes, where more offspring is sign of success.
> Michael Ragland
> 
> "It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term survival value.
> Bacteria do quite well without it."
>  Stephen Hawking

Directed evolution is the next argument in one of my threads abot
Future of Man...
(8)=[
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