Is Meat Really Murder?

lucifer_sam · 11-21-2011, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

What issues and why?

Morals have evolved and evolution is predictable. Some strategies/behaviours help maximize fitness and so are rewarded and sustained through evolution while others are not. Rather than saying morals are objective, I'd say morals (unless you're one of the special few damaged people who don't seem to posess any) ultimately come from the same place in all of us.

There's a wealth of litterature you could learn a lot from as well. For example I'm sure you could learn a lot from reading Richard Dawkins' classic The Selfish Gene. And I'm not blowing hot air either.

Nope. Morals are not evolutionary in design. They represent a higher level of cognition that follows from the recognition of other beings as disparate self-consciousnesses. Outside of primates, there are very few animals capable of making this distinction.

And in fact some "morals" that we've adopted today are completely anti-evolutionary: humanitarianism, for one. Humanitarianism is helpful when it allows for sustaining a genetic profile of a certain group of people, but there is no evolutionary reason why we should feel pity for humans who exist outside our sphere of genetic influence. When we sacrifice personal resources to the aid of peoples that are so far removed genetically, we create a situation in which evolution can stagnate.

Which is a dominating factor in why people have so much difficulty grasping subjective morality. Your morals are a product of your experience, nothing more. If rape was the only means by which people procreated in your society (as it is in some fundamentalist Muslim countries), chances are you'd be a rapist too.

I've read Dawkins, Hobbes, Darwin, Malthus, and plenty more. I still suggest reading Genealogy of Morals, or at least a criticism of morality that isn't written by a rabid believer in ethics, it might help normalize a lot of that frustration you seem to have with people that live outside that right-and-wrong box.