There is evolutionary advantage to us caring about each other. We have also evolved higher brain function which allows us to engage in abstract thought - there is evolutionary advantage to this, too. Abstract thought has allowed us to come up with concepts such as morality, "right" and "wrong" and to extend our abstracted "selfish gene" empathy to other species. While this proclivity may well be part of our "fundamental nature" in terms of its genetic origins (a combination of empathy with abstract thought), that doesn't stop it being purely the result of random processes and as such not a universal absolute. Isn't Darwinism great!
This isn't a fact, it's a belief. Your belief in this is therefore an act of faith. It's just as impossible to demonstrate that 'caring' is function of evolution as it is to demonstrate that spirit is 'real'. This is even more of a leap of faith. Why should we extend an abstract concept to other creatures? What evolutionary advantage does it offer us to care about a fox? If anything, it is surely a disadvantage. In order to construct a theory that fits with evolution you're reduced to abstractions and leaps of faith that are no different froma belief in spirituality. And again, if your view is correct, and we're simply a random collision of atoms, why should I care about the fox? If it entertains me to kill it, why should I not do so?
It offers us no direct evolutionary advantage to care about a fox. It doesn't need to. I suggested that caring about foxes is a result of abstract thought. Abstract thought is what gives us the evolutionary advantage. And it may well prove to be a disadvantage in evolutionary terms to use our abstract thought in this way, it's quite a new development. Doesn't negate the hypothesis that it has come about as a result of evolution. Evolution is a series of accidents - some work, some don't. No reason. If it fits with your moral standards, there is nothing absolute or fundamental stopping you from killing for pleasure - foxes or mosquitoes or people. What there is, is society: those of us who would disagree with the activity and try to stop you. (Thankfully, this is a majority of our society, hence the hunt ban.)
I accept that. But there's still no basis to extrapolate from that the idea that this should cause us to extend our sense of morality to include the animal kingdom. Again, this is a leap of faith on your part, not a statement of fact. Then you have a particularly cold and heartless view of the universe. When you look at suffering and feel your heart torn from your chest... when you cry tears for another..... do you really believe this to simply be a product of evolution? According to your world view then, the only thing informing our behaviour is an evolutionary quirk. There is no right and wrong, these are just abstract concepts. If I was to rape someone, then this is on no objective level wrong, it's simply unacceptable due to the social norm. Why thankfully? Who gives a fuck about the fox? It's a chance collision of atoms. Why does it matter if it suffers and dies? Your world-view is very bleak. You're quite welcome to hold it, but you should accept that it is no more a demonstrable fact than my own belief in a spiritual universe.
Why not? I understand that foxes feel pain, I think it's bad to subject them to this unnecessarily. This is the result of me abstracting my genetically-driven ability to feel empathy. Yes, absolutely. This is my view of the universe. Cold, heartless and intellectual. Welcome to my world! Freed from absolute truths and cosmic judgements, I am required to form my own standards for behaviour. We don't need to think everything through from first principles, though. We have to a large extent internalised the standards of our society. I would suggest these standards are a direct result of the way we have evolved to work together in groups and our capability for abstract thought. First we cared about our offspring and empathised when they felt pain, then we cared about protecting our troop, then as our societies became larger we cared about more people to whom we were not directly related, and ultimately we started to care about pain and suffering no matter where they occur. Abstracted empathy. Who gives a fuck? I do. It doesn't ultimately mean anything if it suffers and dies, but I understand that it feels pain, believe pain to be a bad thing, and choose to protect the animal from this unnecessary suffering.
I wasn't avoiding it, I just agree with you. It's a hypothesis based on a particular worldview. I'm not arrogant enough to believe it's unquestionably the truth! You should already know that. According to this existentialist hypothesis, the universe is cold, heartless and amoral. My evolution has brought me to a stage where I have consciousness, higher brain function, and consequently can understand that other beings experience life the same as me. It has also given me the faculty for empathy. A quirk of evolution, an accident of biology has turned me into a being with moral agency and a relativistic sense of right and wrong. If my pleasure were served by the fox's pain, and my relativistic sense of morality were not offended by killing the fox, then I might well choose to kill the fox for fun. Many people do this. However, my pleasure is not served by the fox's pain, and it also offends my sense of morality that people are prepared to use the suffering of an animal for their own fun. That's why I care, why do you?
I think we should get the fox hunters and make them run away from dogs... SEE HOW THEY FUCKING LIKE IT!
Oooh, you're logic is slipping! You might have thought that there was a rational chain of logical deduction leading inexorably towards your conclusion, thereby endowing it with an authority that my world-view lacks! But you're still only postulating an underlying mechanism. You're singularly failing to explain why this mechanism should deliver the result that you describe. You have explained how you believe we have the capacity through evolution to arrive at empathy, but you have not described why we have arrived at empathy. That's like arguing that the reason that a car travels between London and Manchester is because physics allows cars to exist! But if your sense of morality is merely a quirk of evolution, then why not choose to ignore it? It has no inherent value according to your reasoning. Why should you listen to a sense of morality that precludes putting your own pleasure before another creature's? What purpose does it serve? We've already established that both you and the other creature are just a chance collision of atoms. We've also established that there's no objective reason for you to have any moral concern for the other creature. So why are you still listening to your 'relativistic sense of morality'?
I believe the reason why we have arrived at empathy is inexorably tied to the mechanism underlying its evolution. To understand how empathy arises in evolved creatures is to understand everything about it. There are no reasons behind why things occur in nature! They just do. (According to my materialist hypothesis!) I choose to. It has no inherent value, but it has personal value: it is important to me as a moral agent. Furthermore I have largely internalised society's values, so it's not actually that hard a choice to make. Given that I am a socialised creature, my moral sense is pretty much shared with most other members of my society. People do choose to ignore their morality (or rather, do not share the same moral sense as the rest of society). These people do not have a necessarily wrong moral sense, they just have one that is different to mine. I'm not arrogant enough to believe that my moral sense is necessarily right. It's just my moral sense. But according to my moral sense, I am prepared to condemn the actions of another. I will not say their morality is wrong (except perhaps as shorthand), but I will say that their behaviour offends my moral sense. If most people in a society share their moral sense (socialisation) then that society creates laws based on that morality. I largely support these laws against such things as rape, torture, murder and, soon, fox hunting.
So you're argument to explain why we empathise with other creatures comes down to "we just do"? But you're still not answering the question. You're just using semantics to camouflage your inability to address the point in any meaningful fashion. If it's important to you, why is it important to you? Why do you choose to assign any value to what happens to another creature? Then the question applies equally to society. Let's ask it again: But if SOCIETY'S sense of morality is merely a quirk of evolution, then why does SOCIETY not choose to ignore it? It has no inherent value according to your reasoning. Why should SOCIETY listen to a sense of morality that precludes putting your SOCIETY'S pleasure before another creature's? What purpose does it serve? We've already established that both SOCIETY and the other creature are just a chance collision of atoms. We've also established that there's no objective reason for SOCIETY to have any moral concern for the other creature. So why is SOCIETY still listening to its 'relativistic sense of morality'? You're still failing to explain why we choose to concern ourselves with the welfare of another species. All you're demonstrating is the possibility of a mechanism that would allow for the faculty to evolve. Then by that definition, fascism would not be 'wrong'. It would simply offend your morality. But in a society where the majority of the population share the internalised social values of fascism, then fascism is surely the correct form of government for them?
No, that is a complete misrepresentation of everything I've written and you know it. I've explained a possible mechanism by which empathy may arise by natural processes. When it comes to asking "why", I have no answer other than that I believe it happens for no reason or purpose whatsoever. We're just going over old ground. This question: "But if SOCIETY'S sense of morality is merely a quirk of evolution, then why does SOCIETY not choose to ignore it?" answers itself. Society chooses not to ignore its sense of morality because a quirk of nature has given society a moral sense. Society is therefore outraged when something occurs to offend this moral sense.. There are many different possible societies, including ones which may have totally different moral values and which may be happy with exploitation, cruelty and murder. If this is the moral sense which has been internalised by members of that society, then that is the morality by which they live. Morality is relative. At some point we're going to have to agree to disagree on that unless you want to spend the rest of your life having this debate. I've greatly enjoyed thinking about all this stuff, but I suspect you won't let it lie because you are approaching the issue from an entirely different (though equally justifiable) standpoint. I'd be interested to hear your ideas on why we feel empathy, etcetera. That might be a more positive thing to do than simply to attempt to criticise mine ad infinitum. Indeed so, but in this you are also setting a trap by steering the debate towards the concept of majority / minority and suppression of the minority by the majority. Something I with the only sense of morality I know would not support because in the case of a fascist society, the majority view would personally offend my moral sense, as I know it. If my moral sense were different, and in line with the majority in the case you describe, then I would quite clearly feel happy going along with fascism. This happened to some extent in Germany during the 1930s and explains how millions of people were able to hold fascist views without it offending their moral sense. It offends my and your moral sense that they did that, because we are the products of a different society. If I were alive in Nazi Germany I would hope I would have spoken out, but millions didn't because they had internalised different moral values than the ones I hold.
Well no actually, it honestly seemed that this is what your argument comes down to. So in other words.... "we just do"? No. Your argument illustrates how you believe a moral faculty to have developed, but it does not illustrate why there should still be a compunction to protect the welfare of another species, even where it is clearly contradictory to our own self-interests. For example, internalised moral values teach me that it's wrong to walk down the street naked. If, however, my own personal interests were served by so doing, I would have no difficulty ignoring my social conditioning, stripping nude, and wandering down the street. I disagree. I believe such societies are repressing their natural, fundamental moral instincts. Oooh, Mr Met! You are a bad boy! You enjoy having the last word as much as I do, as you well know! Let's remember who supposedly left this thread a while back and then couldn't resist coming back to respond further, eh? I think you've now accepted the point that your belief regarding morality is just as much a leap of faith as my belief in spirituality, which was the main point I was trying to illustrate. As to my own views.... as I've said, I believe we are creatures of both matter and spirit. I believe our empathy is a function of our spiritual nature. I think that to try and rationalise this is to make the same mistake as organised religion. I don't want to attempt to construct a belief system around my views on this matter, because I believe that the nature of the universe is unfathomable. Hell, even science must accept the latter point! We're incapable of comprehending infinity, and our brains are not equipped to understand physical dimensions beyond the ones within which we exist. That's only a trap in the sense that it's an inevitable consequence of the logical progression of your argument! If your thinking produces results with which you're uncomfortable, that doesn't make them traps! Quite. But to follow your logic, the fascists are not incorrect. They simply have a different internalised morality. To follow this through, do you therefore have any right to oppose a fascist, if that fascist represents the majority opinion? In fact, the paradigm that you describe is really quite disturbing. In a world with no absolute rights and wrongs, there is no moral basis for opposing fascism. Any opposition of such a society would be purely based on a subjective internalised moral code, which would be no more valid than that of the fascists. So therefore, why should you have any right to oppose them and enforce your own set of values upon them?
It certainly is. All the sabs in my area are out today and very much not looking forward to what is likely to happen, but adamant they won't be intimidated. My old mans down this morning so I can't be out there. You could say I'm slightly worried about everyone.
HUNT BAN... ok i think that you can say foxes are vermin and can kill for fun as well as for food . So must be kept under control because they kill animals that we wish to kill later. Running around on horse back with a dozen or more dogs maybe a bit OTT .... but i doubt a fox cares if it is inflicting pain and suffering onto the animal it kills or maims , so if you want fox hunting is pay back. Murdering animals and killing them are 2 diffrent things . Murdering them for kicks is clearly wrong... killing them to keep them under control is not. The countryside alliance would i guess say they are killing them not murdering them. Me personaly i can't quite deciede if killing animals that kill animals is wrong or right.!!! the No.s involved make me think that this is a big stink over erm nothing. The people that 'stormed' the commons were self indulgent arrogant tossers.
In many ways, this is what it comes down to. I don't have a problem in principle with the need to control the fox population (I don't believe it's needed in practice, but that's another debate). What I do have a problem with is that it's legal to pursue and kill an animal as a 'sport' in what's supposed to be a civilised society. Hunts are pretty bad at catching foxes. Having been out on sabs, I've seen this first hand. If they're attempting to control the fox population, it's a very strange and inefficient way of going about it. Not to mention the fact that I'm far from convinced that a fox being ripped to shreds by a pack of dogs is 'humane'......
so i think the lack of them actualy finding foxes ... sways me to say 'let them get on with it ' i don't know the success rate ??? how many foxes actualy die because of hunting ???... a jolly jape with friends is one thing but i agree deeming this a sport is legitamizing something that boils down to grand badger baiting at best . this is what 'does my head in' and what i was trying to explain .. the foxes do the same thing... i do not doubt this point has been answered somewere above (maybe by you ) . I personaly don't see any killing of animals as humane...but do not wish to stop all animal killing right now..that would be completly well i don't no...just would never happen , i unfortunatly accept that.
