Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
i don't believe in souls either. i believe in brains. all i'm saying is the individual organism doesn't benefit from making the altruistic sacrifice, so the individual organism isn't being 'selfish.' the gene might benefit, but the gene is not the organism.
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Whether or not that's what you mean, it sounds like you're suggesting that genes and the cells that make up the organism really on different logic than the organism itself. Your consciousness is really just the emergent process of all of these smaller parts working together in order to better acquire resources. It's likely that the entire reason "you" even exist is to basically work as a slave in order sustain them, just as a cell does for it's organelles (not to mention vice versa). I imagine the logic that drives you to perform "altruistic" acts is governed by that basic directive.
I also imagine human societies works for the benefit of individual humans in much the same way and operate by the same rules that govern an individual human's relationship to the cells that make up his body (making a society or a species sort of like it's own singular organism). So if a human were to sacrifice himself "altruistically" for the benefit of the larger human species, it would be the same mechanism as a cell that dies when the body restricts blood flow during hypothermia. The cell isn't being altruistic, it's just operating in the way that evolution has deemed will maximize survival for the greater organism.
Alright, that's probably my contribution to the thread. You all am smarter than me and I'm just praying that that all made sense.