Well, think of evolution and natural selection not only within the context of individuals but also tribes. Survival of one single individual meant pretty much nothing in the prehistoric age, so it makes sense that natural selection selected for the survival of the tribe over the individual.
That is a possible explanation as to why people feel shame about selfishness and even more as to why japanese samurai would rather kill themselves than dishonor their “tribe”
That goes completely against self preservation yet it happens. It happens because the survival of the tribe is more important than the survival of the individual. Only if the tribes survive, does the genes continue.
Reading over some of this thread, it’s fun to take a step back and ask ourselves, based on your post:
If survival of an individual meant nothing, what did survival of the tribe mean, in comparison?
Does the natural-selection process produce results that “make sense”? To anyone/anything but us?
Granted that natural selection does make sense, why? What is “sensible” or desirable about a species surviving?
These are all variations of the same question, probably: What can teleology tell us about what is the case? If X intends or leads to Y, what additional predicate has been added to Y? That something has been added seems clear – but what? What do we now know about Y?
Dude evolution is literally just, what survived, survived. Those who were good at surviving, survived. Others didn’t. That’s it. It doesn’t signify anything other than that. Evolution didn’t handpick humanity. They just didn’t die. And we came all the way here.
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Well, dude, then what’s the part that “makes sense” (your words, not mine)?
(I think you’ve mistaken me for someone who thinks evolution had/has a purpose. That’s not at all what I’m asking about.)
I suppose I meant that people alone died and tribes survived. I see the miscommuniation there. It “makes sense” for tribes to survive because tribes survive. Alone humans, don’t.
OK, no sweat. So what do you think? – if we learn that birds evolved from dinosaurs, is there any other predicate we can now add to “birds” besides “evolved from dinosaurs”?
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I would just say, why stop at dinasours. They evolved from something too. But it would be like calling every adult just a grown up baby. It is true, but it makes it harder to communicate. You can call humans evolved apes, but then you can just go further and further back, seemingly needlessly. Birds are birds, because we call them that, and humans are humans.
I admit I may have missed your point, this is simply my take on it.
And I may not have expressed my point well. I’m trying to see whether we know anything more about X – any species – when we find out what it evolved from. I can’t think of anything, myself. Specifically, have we learned that X was designed to have evolved from Y, or had the potential to have evolved from Y, or that natural selection wanted X to evolve from Y – I would say “no” to all of that. The only thing left seems to be something about life itself – “life tries to go on living,” maybe, which tells us something, but not much, and besides is not specific to X in that it doesn’t tell us anything new about that species in particular – it applies to everything that’s alive.
So . . . what would a teleological framework get us, if all this is right? How could we still think in terms of what humans are designed to do?
Now you’re asking the right questions!
Also I’d say it’s not that “life tries to go on” but more like “life that happens to go on, goes on” many species are indeed extinct.
And of course those who happen to be better at surviving and reproducing, did so. As for what humans were designed for, it would make sense to say that humans that were better at surviving, survived. That’s about it. With that came a whole lot of instincts and such.
And with X and Y, many Xs can come from a single Y, so I doubt that Y would give you too much insight into a specific X.
Yeah, pretty much all we’re left with, from this point of view, is “life does life” – except I do think there’s value in pointing out the “trying” part. Anyone who’s ever watched a living thing try to keep on living knows that it isn’t uninvolved – it really tries. “Some life happens to go on” is true, but not the whole picture. The life that goes on has really tried hard to do so. Same, most likely, on the species level, where the whole selfish/sacrifice question comes up. So I think it’s fair to say that life, once it emerges in a particular context, is a process of self-perpetuation if at all possible. What we can’t say, though, is that life is/was designed to do this. Or at least not now, when we know so little about the hows and whys of biology.
Evolution created animals. And selfishness has always existed, even within animal social groups. But humans are no longer animals. They invented something evolution couldn’t conceive of: morality. The categories of good and evil are our own, human invention. Yes, selfishness is an animal trait. But we don’t want to be animals, do we? So, we don’t need to strive to cultivate this archaic personality trait.
The OP was mainly focused on the idea that evolution produced a range of behaviours including parental care, kinship and stewardship of communities.
I don’t disagree that society shapes moral rules but successful moral codes are buildt on the foundations of innate sensibilities
Yes, I understood this point of view, but I had my own view, which I haven’t changed after reading the thread. I’ll try to explain my reasoning. Animal sociality (indeed, a consequence of evolution), for example, led to the emergence of rational humans. Now humans treat diseases that, in the natural environment, would have led to a dead end for the genetic line. In these specific cases, humans broke the evolutionary mechanism against themselves. Evolution led to rationality, but rationality broke evolution. We can’t say that the breakdown of evolution is a consequence of evolution, can we? Of course, one can look at it from this perspective: the macrocosm is deterministic. But it seems to me that the situation with morality is exactly the same. Humans developed morality, which is a completely abstract concept and therefore completely unforeseen by evolution. I believe this point of view, although conditional, allows us to draw more correct conclusions.
I don’t entirely agree but we do both seem to agree that evolution, rationality and society each have a role. That"s a start.
Participating in cooperative social systems can be based on selfish motives. If the society you belong, improves in quality and standard by your participating in cooperation, then you will benefit from the improvement.
Selfishness is not always contradiction to cooperation, fairness, reciprocity, loyalty, empathy and stewardship. One will scratch others back expecting them do the same to him.
Yes, it may sometimes be true. However, the extent to that it can be relied upon is a different philosophical question.
In my view, it is true in most cases of human actions.