Re: Is furthering your own goals always good? Judged by whom, and for what purpose?

From: Peter Voss (peter@optimal.org)
Date: Wed Dec 14 2005 - 10:17:57 MST


For those who think that evolutionary psychology or evolutionary ethics are
the key to 'good' and 'bad' may want to read:
http://www.optimal.org/peter/prescriptive_ethics.htm and/or
http://www.optimal.org/peter/ethics_skeptic.htm

'Cutting edge' is defined by what arguments most contribute to better
understanding.

Peter Voss
  -----Original Message-----
  From: owner-sl4@sl4.org [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org]On Behalf Of 1Arcturus
  Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 8:35 AM
  To: sl4@sl4.org
  Subject: **JUNK** Re: Is furthering your own goals always good? Judged by
whom, and for what purpose?

  Re: what morality is all about (at bottom) . . . Just a suggestion -
instead of muddling around with Kant's 'Categoricals' (over 200-year old
nonsense), or talking about 'good' and 'morality' as if Nietzsche had never
been born (100-year old seminal reconceptualization)...
  You should perhaps start at the state of the art: what little is known so
far about human behavioral psychology, evolutionary psychology, human
ethology, evolution of behaviors (cf. Hull's universal theory for
replicators - this ain't your grandpa's 'meme' theory), cultural evolution,
history of human cultures, neuroscience related to motivation and behavior,
etc.
  Humans don't agree on what is right or wrong today, and much of what they
do is different from what they say. Yet there seems to be a ing delusion
here that there must be an objective, absolute,
bird's-eye/God's-eye-point-of-view 'morality' from which such questions
could be decided, and then operation! alized in an AI to the benefit of all
humanity.
  Very strange... and frankly, old-fashioned, for what is supposed to be
cutting-edge discussion.

  gej



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