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You often hear it argued that the families of victims will not "find peace" until the murderer/rapist/etc. is executed. Certainly, victims' families feel an intense burning desire for retribution. I would too, I am sure! But does it actually make them feel better? As one who does not really believe in the idea of "closure", I am skeptical... But it just occurred to me while reading the recent Hitchens piece on the topic that we ought to be able to measure this.
One problem might be getting a large enough sample size, since there are only so many people executed per year, and you need to get the families to agree to do a series of questionnaires. And you need to have the first questionnaire administered before anybody's been executed, and you don't know for sure whether the execution will be granted, etc.
Anyway, I figure you want to have three cohorts (and two of them are indistinguishable before the end of the study, so it's tricky). One is families of murder victims where the perpetrator will certainly not be executed because the state does not have the death penalty. Another is families of murder victims where the death penalty was sought and granted, and the third is families of murder victims where the death penalty was sought but ultimately denied. You take various measurements of their psychological state at the outset of the study, then at various intervals later (e.g. 1 year later, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, or something), and also immediately after the execution for families in the relevant cohort.
In this fashion, we could see whether seeking and getting the death penalty actually does make victims' families feel better. My hypothesis would be that we'd expect to see a short-term bump immediately after the execution, but no long term differences -- and I would not be surprised if families in the cohort where execution was sought but denied might do worse even in the long term. I would love to see it measured...
I've come to learn a lot more about meta-ethics since I wrote this fumbling post way back in August of 2009. That long ramble is still fairly close to my current thoughts, but now I know a lot more of the conventional views and terminology -- and let's face it, even though jargon can be obscure and irritating, properly used it can help clarify and focus our thoughts, by giving us a name by which to refer to a very complicated idea -- and as of late, I've been stimulated to ponder it much more deeply by four events: The discussion over Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape, which I suppose I will have to read now; a series of posts from Russell Blackford about meta-ethics, partially as a follow-up to discussions with Harris; my discovery of Daniel Fincke's blog Camels with Hammers, and his unconventional take on meta-ethics; and a conversation with Bjørn Østman in which he called me out on sloppily referring to objective morality in another post without proper caveats. So my thinking is evolving.
Despite the fact that as recently as a week ago I declared that I "certainly do not" subscribe to moral error theory, I am beginning to think that on some level it is the most accurate approach to meta-ethics. Although I think it is utterly irrelevant in practice, if we want there to be (as Blackford puts it) "more metaphysical grunt" behind morality, if we want to assert that people are compelled to behave morally as opposed to just naming what is moral and what is not... if that's important to us, well, you can't have that, so in that sense if that is what most of us are trying to say when we make moral statements, then that is necessarily an error, and moral error theory must be correct.
I am not sure if in practice the lack of a true metaphysical imperative is really all that important, though. I might also describe myself as a moral realist in the sense that I think what is meant by morality is non-arbitrary, describable at least in principle, and -- here's where I got into trouble tossing around that word "objective" so flippantly -- once we have all that, I think that for many moral propositions we can confidently assign it an unambiguous truth value.
The only thing that is missing is some ghostly metaphysical demand that we "ought" to behave that way, but I don't think this is actually a problem. As a result of natural selection, virtually all of us (excepting true sociopaths and those whose meta-ethical foundations have been severely distorted by bogus ideologies and dogmas) buy into the core subjective "ought": namely that we ought to try and promote those universal values which seem to be shared among all human cultures.
The elusive metaphysical imperative is unnecessary, because we already have the necessary imperative built in; indeed, one could argue that it's a pretty fundamental part of being human.
Which is not to say that humans naturally behave morally, heavens no. But we all naturally have an inclination towards fairness, towards avoiding undue suffering, etc., and given that, our big brains are (or ought to be) able to puzzle out some more advanced moral concepts in order to support that underlying imperative.
So I am asserting: that morality is supported by a built-in imperative universal to virtually all humans; that it is non-arbitrary; and that for at least some moral statements, we can confidently state their truth or falsity in a way that firmly transcends culture. That's 99% of the way to moral realism, I think, and so I am hesitant to disclaim the label. Call it moral quasi-realism perhaps?
Now there is a parallel here to my thoughts on the Problem of Induction. In both cases I am making an assertion ("inductive reasoning is effective", "people ought to behave in a way that promotes universally shared values") which I believe to be ultimately unsupportable, but I am not too worried about it because I think these assertions are shared by pretty much everybody; and I think that the rest of what we want to get (objective reality in one case, moral truth in the other) flows naturally from that.
There is one important difference, however: In the case of inductive reasoning, while I believe the assertion is unsupportable without resorting to a defective circular argument, I also happen to believe the assertion is objectively true, no matter what humans might have to say about it. If the world blew up tomorrow, I'm pretty confident that inductive reasoning would continue to be a valid way of uncovering reality (assuming there were some other beings around to do the reasoning, but of course even if there weren't, it would still be true that it would work). Objective reality does not depend on the existence of humans or other sapient beings. I cannot prove this, nor can I really offer any evidence without resorting to circular reasoning; but I am extremely confident it is true nonetheless.
In the case of morality, however, even though I think it is non-arbitrary and that moral statements can sometimes be classed as true or false, all of that depends on humans (or sapience, or at the very least sentience). Morality is non-arbitrary only in reference to who we are, and if we didn't exist, or if what it means to be human fundamentally changed in certain key ways, those assertions would no longer stand up.
So while my belief in objective reality depends on an unsupportable assertion, I believe that assertion is objectively true. It's objective all the way to the core. In contrast, my belief in "objective" morality not only depends on an unsupportable assertion, but that assertion depends on some subjective traits of humanity. My meta-ethics has a crunchy objective shell with a chewy subjective middle. Bite into it, and I suppose I subscribe to moral error theory; but for all outward intents and purposes I am a moral realist.
Much has been made -- appropriately, I think -- of the fact that the shameful murders of UN workers in Afghanistan was not directly in response to Terry Jones' burning of the Koran (which initially did not make that much press this time around since it was after all just some crazy fundamentalist kook holding a dumb little ill-attended show inside his church), but rather in response to Afghani president Hamid Karzai's very public announcement and condemnation of Jones' actions, and subsequent incitement by some very angry mullahs. I immediately spotted the parallel to the Danish cartoon affair, which barely made the news outside of Denmark until a couple of imams decided to tour the Mideast a year later stirring up anti-Danish sentiment (I was not the only one to make this observation, by the way).
So in both cases we have a Western nation experiencing an otherwise rather short-lived and mostly harmless free speech controversy, in which freedom of speech ultimately triumphs despite widespread condemnation of the message (which is just great; that's how liberal democracies are supposed to work) -- which was later turned into an international incident when some mullahs deliberately tried to make an issue out of it and fan the flames of violence. To me, it seemed easy to see where the blame lies: with the mullahs, not with the dumb bigot pastor or the controversial cartoonists.
That is, until I realized that unless one rejects cultural relativism (which, thankfully, I do) that argument falls apart, or at the very least undermines some other moral statements we'd very much like to make.
Take for example the problem of child witchcraft accusations in parts of Africa. Ophelia Benson's blog is a good resource to find out about this, but in a nutshell, there is a problem in certain parts of Africa where bad events are blamed on local children practicing witchcraft, and the children are then exiled or murdered in the most brutal ways. Terrible stuff.
Of course, like the Terry Jones book-burning and the Danish cartoons, locally it is not that big news. Sadly, that's not too far out of bounds for how things are done in those regions.
Perhaps this is a poor example because, shamefully, this travesty hasn't gotten much press in the West. But if we did want to do something about this, the way to do so would be to publicize what had been only a minor local issue, get people over here angry about it and motivated to do something. In other words, do exactly what the mullahs have done in regards to perceived slights against Islam in Western nations.
Don't misread me here. I am not drawing a false equivalence. I happen to think that murdering children in the name of superstition and scapegoating is not even comparable to the questionable exercise of free speech. And I happen to think I am right about that in some objective sense, not just as a matter of cultural or personal bias.
But that's just the point I am making. Without a strong statement that, in this particular case, one culture has got it right and the other one has just plain got it wrong, we cannot blame the mullahs for inciting violence. They simply drew public attention to what, in their cultural perspective, was an unacceptable event taking place elsewhere -- an event so unacceptable that they felt, just as I feel about the child witchcraft stuff, that they could not turn a blind eye to it just because it is happening halfway across the world. From their cultural perspective, burning a Koran is as bad or worse than murdering children. And so, unless we reject cultural relativism, the mullahs were perfectly justified in what they did.
As much as a sick fuck as Terry Jones is, it's baffling and enraging to me that people want to put as much blame on him as they do on the mullahs who directly incited violence, or on the angry mobs who murdered innocent UN workers in their infantile rage. But maybe it's because of cultural relativism run amok. After all, unless we flat-out reject the idea that it's okay for another culture to be as angry about their holy book being desecrated as we Westerners might be about murdered children, then we have no leg to stand on in condemning them.
We should not make the leap from a long overdue rejection of our history of cultural imperialism and an appropriate humility about our own cultural perspective and its potential flaws, into a pure ungrounded cultural relativism. There is nothing inherently superior about Westerners that ought to make our culture always superior; and when culture does not warp people's values into a twisted caricature of morality, cultural variation is part of the rich tapestry of human experience. But none of that changes the fact that there can be issues on which another culture is just flat-out objectively wrong, no ifs ands or buts.
I've been meaning to do this post for awhile, so I'll have something to link to for reference, because this point comes up a lot and it's already settled philosophy, and has been for hundreds of years -- even the theologians agree on this one! This will be old hat for almost anyone reading this, but I just want to get it down so I have something to link to.
Morality does not and CAN not come from God. The argument to show this is quite simple. Consider: What if God commanded you to eat babies? Would that make it moral? Three possible answers:
1) No it would not. Good for you. Hence, morality exists independent of God.
2) God would never command such a thing, because She is perfectly moral. Slightly trickier than the first, but this still proves that morality exists independent of God. The statement makes a prediction on what God would or would not say based on what is moral -- but if morality is defined by whatever God says it is, then this test is circular. The assertion becomes "God would never command such a thing, because He's never commanded such a thing." This is obviously unworkable. Therefore, in order to answer this way, one must posit a morality independent of God.
3) Yes it would. Well okay then. I would argue that anyone taking this position is fundamentally amoral, and I'd be rather frightened of them. Beyond that, many philosophers assert that morality cannot be synonymous with simple obedience, and that therefore this would not form a coherent morality either. I'm not sure if I think that part of the argument is bulletproof -- but I'm not worried about it, because as far as I'm concerned, as soon as somebody takes this position, I've won the debate.
Now, many people may still legitimately argue that God/belief in God helps them to be moral. I would almost always disagree, but this is a position that can be reasonably debated. It cannot be cleanly logically refuted; it must be debated on evidence. However, the position that morality does not exist without God is empty. It's dead. It's been defeated long long ago, and cannot be adequately defended.
Good, so now I can just link here instead of retyping this every time.
Frans de Waal writes a response to all of the comments he got on his previous article, which went on and on about how morality clearly had a natural origin, then at the end said, "But maybe we need religion to be moral anyway!" de Waal seems like he is not aware of a lot of what has been said on this already. I could not manage to read his whole response (I read the first one, it was disappointing, and this one is just aggravating). But I want to comment on two things:
Even though 90 percent of my text questions the religious origins of human morality, and wonders if we need a God to be good, it is the other 10 percent — in which I tentatively assign a role to religion — that drew most ire. Atheists, it seems (at least those who responded here) don’t like any less than 100 percent agreement with their position.
Sigh. The reason you're getting so much "ire" over that particular 10% is because it has a hidden implication that us atheists (including de Waal!) may be less equipped to be moral than our deluded counterparts. That's offensive. I mean, imagine if he had written a piece in which he hints that Islam might be inferior to Christianity when it comes to keeping people moral, and then was all surprised when Muslims get pissed off at him. Duh! Of course that is going to piss atheists off. In fact, I don't understand... is de Waal saying he himself is less moral?
I understand that de Waal is trying to draw a distinction between societal effects and individual effects. But that kind of comes across as elitist ("I don't need religion to be moral, but the unwashed masses do!"), and in any case, the way he put it in his previous column and the way it just came out of left field with no evidence was really off-putting. "Morality clearly has nothing to do with religion... but now I'm going to say, for no reason whatsoever, that our society might become immoral without it!" WTF. Of course that raised our ire.
Those who wish to remove religion and define morality as the pursuit of scientifically defined well-being (à la Sam Harris) should read up on earlier attempts in this regard, such as the Utopian novel “Walden Two” by B. F. Skinner, who thought that humans could achieve greater happiness and productivity if they just paid better attention to the science of reward and punishment. Skinner’s colleague John Watson even envisioned “baby factories” that would dispense with the “mawkish” emotions humans are prone to, an idea applied with disastrous consequences in Romanian orphanages.
Double sigh. So, he hasn't followed any of the discussion surrounding Harris' controversial idea? First of all, a lot of atheists think he's full of it, and that morality has to stem from arbitrary conventions. (I fall somewhere in between) So he's representing a false dilemma here: Old-time religion vs. Harris' radical idea. Um, no. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, a huge amount of the discussion about Harris' idea is in regards to similarities and differences between past Utilitarian and Utilitarian-esque ideals. de Waal is late to the game here if he think he's enlightening anybody by pointing out that Utilitarianism is not only insufficient, but has a real dark side. Get with the program.
Of course, he follows that with the dumbest fucking comment of all:
And talking of Romania, was not the entire Communist experiment an attempt at a society without God?
Really?
Seriously?
Can I get some of what you've been smoking, de Waal?
Yes, Communism in its two most high-profile manifestations, as well as many others, tried to enforce a society-wide atheism, but that's not central to the Communist experiment. Look the fuck up what Communism is. It has nothing inherently to do with godlessness, it has to do with economics and distribution of resources. And yes, it turned out to be a big failure. It turned out to be an even bigger failure because those high-profile manifestations were also brutal dictatorships. Did it occur to de Waal that maybe the human rights disaster in Communism was partly because the people were forced to abandon their religion, which is not what any sane person is discussing.
Gah. Fuck you, de Waal. You're an idiot.
Bjørn inspires me to answer Michael Egnor's questions. It's actually not a bad summation of the "Big Questions", even though some of the ordering and phrasing is clearly meant to have a polemical element. Still, probably worth each individual going through it.
Before I start, I do have to say that, first, as Bjørn points out, all that is required to be an atheist is a lack of belief in gods. The way Egnor begins his post is analogous to a philately club president asking, "If aphilatelists don't collect stamps, just what the fuck do they collect?" Clearly a dumb question. Even if we are charitable and assume Engor is specifically trying to understand the Gnu Aphilatelists, who have made a lot of press lately opposing the influence of stamp-collecting on public policy, and pointing out rampant examples of misogyny, homophobia, and child abuse that have been regularly occurring at philately clubs... he implies that "[i]f New Atheist belief can only be expressed by negation of the beliefs of others," that this is inherently a bad thing. It's not. If I protest against Canada's sanctioned baby seal harvest, that position can only be expressed as the negation of another's -- so what? When you are opposing something you believe to be damaging, naturally that opposition must be described as, um, er, an opposition. I don't see a way around that.
Lastly, Egnor's "New Atheism Cliff Notes", while I realize they were meant to be tongue-in-cheek, contains a very objectionable one: "Theists are IDiots". No, many theists are not IDiots. IDiots are idiots. Some theists (like Egnor) are indeed IDiots; some theists are idiots but not IDiots; hell, some atheists are idiots but not IDiots; and of course, many theists are neither idiots nor IDiots. I think all brands of theistic belief are kinda silly at best, and usually rather, well, idiotic.. but that doesn't mean the people who believe them are idiots. I do some idiotic things, too; we all do. But the difference is, while I may do idiotic things like I dunno, drink too much at band practice when I know I have an early meeting the next morning (not that that would ever happen...since last Thursday), I'm not out there demanding that any political candidate that gets my vote must also be foolish about how much they have to drink on a work night. In fact, it would be better if they didn't, eh? In any case, Egnor is being unfair. We only think he is an IDiot, not all theists.
Okay, with the caveats out of the way, each individual Gnu -- each individual thinking person, for that matter -- ought to at least give some thought to these sorts of existential questions, and Egnor's list, while it contains some red herrings, is not a bad jumping off point. Let's do it!
1) Why is there anything?
Coincidentally, I revisited this question in a recent post. This is a difficult question, and I have a few ways of approaching it. I will reserve one type of approach for Egnor's second question, but for this one, I think I will use a new tactic I developed in that recent post.
So what are we really asking? Any answer to this question which falls in the subset of "anything" would, by definition, fail to answer the question. Why do bananas grow on trees? Because of banana trees. No, not an answer. So really, what are we asking? We are asking, "What is the nothing that caused there to be anything?" Well that's easy! Nothing.
Of course, this comes off a bit snarky, but I think it's a better answer than anything else you will get. Physics might give us some pretty satisfying answers for how the universe came to be given very simple laws (I'll tackle that in the next question) but by definition it must start out with something, some law or way of evolving the "anything." If you want to know why that exists, you're out of luck. And God is not an answer; in fact it's a rather stupid answer because God is most definitely "something". Don't give me this Uncaused Cause bullshit, because that's just an assertion. Why do bananas grow on trees? Because of an Uncaused Cause that caused them to appear there. Yeah, you lose, try again.
2) What caused the Universe?
Here I will fall back on the physics-oriented answers. A popular one is that "nothing" (as in nothingness) is unstable. Another similar answer is that even in nothingness, there are constantly virtual particle/anti-particle pairs being created and then annihilated as result of the natural fluctuating of the quantum field. Certain rare events could conceivably cause those fluctuations to result in a spontaneous symmetry breaking, and thus the Big Bang. Stephen Hawking appears to mount yet another answer in his new book, one which seems to be similar to multiverse theory, and which he claims only depends on gravity.
Moreover, logic is not a fundamental law of the universe; it is an emergent property that works rather well at the macroscopic level. It just may be that in the first few picoseconds after the Big Bang, asking what "caused" a thing is just using misleading language. Sure, things still had to obey physical laws, and the math seems to describe those crucial existential moments pretty damn well so far. But to try to take a high level logic of "event A caused event B, which in turn caused event C" etc., and apply it to that time in the history of the universe... I suspect it's a futile endeavor. Might as well ask about the tensile strength of an electron. Both concepts are real, but... the former does not apply at the scale of the latter.
So, more directly: What caused the Universe? I don't know, and nobody is sure... But physics is beginning to offer some rather mathematically elegant answers. Those answers may turn out not to be particularly existentially satisfying -- but the Universe is not here for our existential edification, we're responsible for working that one out on our own.
And given the context of Egnor's questions, I have to add: "Goddidit" is en even less existentially satisfying answer, at least for me. "Fluctuations in the quantum foam" leaves the romantic part of my brain asking, "That's it?" But "Goddidit" leaves the romantic part of my brain asking, "That's it?" and the logical part of my brain crying, "You've got to be fucking kidding me..."
3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?
Taken in isolation, this question is a tough one, and as I already hinted at in my answer to the first question, I suspect it might be unanswerable.
A modified question, though, is quite answerable: "Which poses greater explanatory difficulty: regularity or irregularity?"
If we think about the types of answers that would be required to explain regularity and/or the existential challenges posed by the lack of any satisfying answer, those answers/challenges pale in comparison to what would be required for an irregular/lawless universe. For our universe, the only question is why it should obey this small set of mathematically simple laws -- a set which is shrinking all the time, as we find how to derive more complex behavior from simpler behavior. For a lawless universe, every single event has a "why" attached to it! And even worse, if a lawless universe developed organisms stable enough to ask these sorts of questions, then you have some serious explaining to do. Why should all of these random lawless events result in humans?! That's just bizarre.
Again I cannot escape returning to the theistic subtext of Egnor's questions: I always find it surprising that people think an ordered universe obeying simple laws is evidence of a god. I think quite the opposite! One of the most convincing pieces of evidence I can imagine for a theistic explanation of the universe would be if matter and energy obeyed no consistent laws whatsoever, and yet still we had humans and trees and rocks and dirt (and two horses)... well holy shit, that would pretty much imply there had to be some sort of Intelligent Designer orchestrating the whole thing, wouldn't it?
4) Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?
Okay, I'm going to need to look this one up, because I'm not familiar with the Four Causes... but before I do, first I need to point out that Aristotle's achievement was in practicing an unprecedentedly rigorous brand of philosophy, in tackling questions where before the best answers had been of the "zeusdidit" variety. His achievement was not in having outlined a particularly good philosophy, not by modern standards. So before I even Wikipedia this, my expectation is that it will be a big shrug.
Okay, looked it up. It's not as bad as I expected, and I think that Aristotle's classification of causes is just reasonable enough that I can answer Egnor's question: I believe in the first three as properties of the physical world (with caveats -- Aristotle's understanding of 20th century physics is weak at best :p ). I believe that "final causes" exist only as abstractions in the mind of sentient beings -- and that those minds only exist (again with caveats) as a result of the first three causes. (Note that something which approximates "final causes" exists in nature as a result of natural selection... but it's not really the same thing. As Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini so impetuously and unceasingly point out in their recent aggravating book, you can never formally say with perfect certainty that a particular trait was "selected for" in order to satisfy a particular selective pressure. There's always the theoretical possibility of a pleiotropy, genetic drift, or whatever as the actual "cause". And as F&P also point out -- like people didn't know this? -- natural selection has no mind, and therefore can have no intention in mind. No, "final causes" do not exist in nature. A seed does not exist for the purpose of becoming an adult plant -- the seed just exists, and natural selection has caused it to be a thing which turns into an adult plant. Purposes are the exclusive realm of sentient beings.)
I think I've satisfactorily answered the question, but before I move on, a comment about Aristotle and physics... yeah, the first three causes were an awesome attempt at a taxonomy of physical causation -- for c. 350 BC. But now we know it's pretty wrong. For instance, the first cause, "material cause", is really a subset of "formal cause" -- the material a thing is made of is a function of the form of it's subatomic particles. And in order to make the causes comprehensive, we have to stretch -- really stretch them. Does "efficient cause" cover quantum chromodynamics? Hmmmm....
5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?
Now that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, in'n't it? I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this one, mostly because it requires a book-length treatment to even approach the question. (See Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop for an excellent, if flawed, attempt. Although I have not yet had the pleasure, I understand Daniel Dennett has done great work on this topic as well.) For now, suffice it to say that, at the very least, we have some damn good explanations for how a purely objective reality could give rise to beings who looked, acted, and quacked like conscious beings with subjective experience... and since I think Chalmer's P-zombies don't hold up to scrutiny, I suspect it might just be philosophical fair game to say that the positive result on the Duck Test justifies the existence of subjective experience.
I also am questioning to what extent subjective experience is real to begin with. We already know that personal identity is somewhat of a hallucination. The difficulty in isolating a true present makes me wonder if you even need to posit the existence of the hallucination. I don't know. These are very difficult existential questions, and almost by definition we cannot be equipped to know the answer.
In any case, I'm going to dodge this one for now just because it's too damn long and deep. Again in the theistic context: Even if I were convinced that some sort of immaterial soul was somehow "responsible" for subjective experience, these same questions would remain. After all, we already have a physical mechanism to explain how an organism could act as if it had subjective experience... why would a spiritual explanation of that same thing be any better?
6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something?
This post is getting long... but I have to say, given a material answer to question 5, I don't see how this is even a question. The brain is a naturally selected aboutness machine... isn't it? It would be like asking how the pixels on my computer screen can be about something. They're built to do that. What's the question here? I guess I'm just not a good philosopher...
7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)
I've written quite a long post on this, so I'll merely direct there. In a nutshell: Mostly the latter, and there is no problem with that. (Nor does that make it relative... the fact that the sole reason I don't like to be kicked in the balls is because of an artifact of natural selection does not diminish the absolute fact that if you kick me in the balls for no reason, you are a fucking asshole! Some "morality" is purely relative, though in most cases I question whether that is truly moral. Most worthwhile morality is relative to our species, but not relative to culture or individuals -- within our species, it is absolute! And that's why I will not apologize for saying, for example, that FGM is a disgusting and barbaric practice, and "cultural tolerance" is not a valid reason to allow sick fucks to chop off little girl's clitorises. kthxbye)
The post I directed to has some ideas for a species-transcendent morality... but it's just that, an idea. I dunno if it makes sense. In any case, even if my ideas for a species-transcendent morality are sound, it still exists only as an inherent artifact of natural selection... it still requires natural selection to exist.
Notice that this is a much better answer than God-says-so. Even theologians agree that morality must exist independent of God, or else it's not morality. If the only reason child-rapin' is wrong is because you're afraid of getting burned in hell, that is not moral (and it's offensive to say so, by the way!). Even if we accept a belief in God, morality must exist independent of Her, with God helping us to determine what is moral rather than dictating it. Otherwise, it is not, by definition, moral.
8) Why is there evil?
Yo mama.
Sorry, post is long. On the home stretch now!
First of all, does Egnor mean "evil" or "Evil"? If he means the latter, then I don't believe in it. If he means the former, does he mean natural evil, like earthquakes and shit; or human-caused evil, like the Holocaust and New Country music; or both? I'll divide it up.
Natural evil exists because the universe doesn't care about us. In fact, in a way, natural selection could not work without natural evil... we are what we are because the universe is constantly randomly killing us, and it turns out that an error-prone digital method of replication allows us to develop better survival mechanisms in the face of this unending danger.
Human-caused evil exists, first, because of the same reason as natural evil. Humans are part of the universe, and there's no magic wand being waved with the incantation, "Universe, don't kill stuff." Moreover, there are all sorts of reasons for humans to behave in immoral ways. For one, it appears that fairly simple genetic mutations or brain injuries can "break" that mechanism, e.g. in the case of sociopaths. For another, there are models which predict evolutionary stable states (ESS) where some fixed portion of the population "cheats" due to their genetic makeup. And even those of us who are normally functioning "moral" humans have still evolved to only be moral some of the time... there are competing impulses, as well as a likely selective advantage to cheating "some" of the time. Lastly, our modern conceptions of morality and ethics are a prioritization and synthesis of our often contradictory and self-defeating naturally-selected moral imperatives -- so obviously our naturally-selected selves are not always going to be driven to behave according to this modern conception.
This again is a question that I think is fairly boring if you already have a material view of the universe. Why wouldn't there be bad shit in an unguided universe? It would be like asking, "Why is there yellow?" Well, there's a certain range of wavelengths of light... So what?
So there you have it. My answers to Egnor's questions. But notice, while I may have some answers in common with other Gnus, these are my own answers. You will tend to see the Gnus giving materially-oriented answers, but what form those take will vary highly from individual to individual. The Gnu Atheism is about opposing the destructive social and public policy influence of religion. Yes, Egnor, the Gnu Atheism is defined as a negative -- so what?
What Egnor asks would be like asking a bunch of anti-war protesters about their views on abortion. Oh sure, you might tend to get a high percentage of them being pro-choice, just because of the left-leaning association... but it will be by no means uniform. Anti-war protesters are defined as those who oppose war, not as those who have pro-choice views, etc. That opposition is made up of individuals, just like Gnu Atheism.
It occurred to me the other day that anyone who really believes in Hell as a literal place of eternal suffering for non-believers, ought to be out there every day trying as hard as they can to convince other people of "the truth". In particular, I'm thinking of the vast masses of Catholics who just callously go about their day-to-day business believing that most of their friends and neighbors will burn forever in a lake of fire. That's stone cold, yo.
Of course, it's also far less annoying than evangelizing. So really this is a purely academic point. It's totally fucked up that someone would believe I was going to experience maximal suffering forever and ever, and yet not do anything about it -- but if the alternative is annoying the piss out of me, I guess I won't complain too much.
Most of the theists I have any respect for don't believe in Hell anyway, or at least not as a place of eternal and/or unbearable suffering. It's hard for me to understand how anyone could believe in Hell and not go completely insane in a matter of days, so I guess this is all a moot point.
I was reading an article in Playboy1 about the alleged approaching technological singularity, particularly in regards to neuroscience and human cognition. It carried the usual wildly optimistic futurist predictions, with the usual suspects like Ray Kurzweil trouted out -- though to the author's credit, he at least pointed out a number of past predictions where Kurzweil was laughably wrong. I actually find Kurzweil thought-provoking, if a bit loony, and I like these sort of far future stories as a fun and interesting thought experiment, even if the constant "this is coming in only a couple of decades!!!!1111!!" nonsense inspires the occasional eye roll.
One topic that was discussed was whole brain emulation, the idea of a software model of a specific brain that, run on the appropriate hardware, would produce functionality essentially identical to the original brain. Despite the irrational optimism of some of the folks interviewed, this is fascinating stuff. I think it's plausible but not definitely possible2, but in any case it is cool to think about if only for the ethical and existential implications.
What caught my eye was the lack of any ethical discussion of the following proposition:
Randal Koene, a neuroscientist at the European technology firm Fatronik-Tecnalia...offered some reasons for why anyone would want to work so hard to make a whole brain emulation in the first place. Even if it behaved like a generic human brain rather than my or your brain in particular, scientists could still use it to run marvelous new experiments. They might test drugs for depression, Parkinson's and other disorders.
Woah, hold them horses just a minute. There's a potentially huge ethical problem with this proposition.
Depending on the accuracy of the simulation, it is quite conceivable that this "generic human brain" would experience suffering just as meaningfully as a real human brain. In fact, the more perfect the simulation, the less appropriate it is to compare the experience analogously, and the more appropriate it is to consider the experiences identical.
The best and most recent research indicates that consciousness is a product of the interaction of the various components of our brain. If each of those components were emulated to a high degree, and the emulations allowed to interact, there is no non-supernatural explanation for why the emulations would not also produce a "conscious being" on the same level as you or me. To then subject this conscious being to experimentation without consent or any regard for possible damage or suffering, just because it is "a generic human brain rather than my or your brain in particular," would be ethically on par with creating embryos with a "generic" human genome, letting them be born and develop to adolescence (!) and then performing medical experiments on them arguing that they are just a "a generic human rather than me or you in particular." In other words, an ethical and moral disaster.
A rather surprising irony arises from the word "non-supernatural" in the previous paragraph. All of these grave ethical concerns about experimenting on generic whole brain emulations get neatly swept under the rug if you accept the ludicrous concept of "ensoulment". These "generic human brains" don't actually have free will or experience suffering, because Jeebus never reached down and put a baby soul inside them, right? So experiment away, and be damned with the "suffering" of these mindless machines!
We could envision a future where, much like some theists today oppose stem cell research because their belief in ensoulment precludes them from rationally evaluating whether a clump of undifferentiated cells can be meaningfully referred to as "human", future nontheists might oppose "whole brain emulation research", while theists support it because, inversely, their belief in ensoulment precludes them from rationally evaluating whether a perfect emulation of consciousness can be meaningfully referred to as "human".
I find this to be a fascinating potential role reversal. Of course, there are similar issues today (e.g. you sometimes hear theistic justifications to ignore issues about treatment of animals, since beasts don't have a "soul") but the strong parallels to stem cell research -- with the roles simply reversed -- makes this an issue worth pondering.
1I know nobody is going to believe this, but the reason I get Playboy is that my wife secretly subscribed us to it so she could read the articles. Just like the old commercial, right! Except we soon discovered that Playboy's heyday of publishing edgy fiction and high-quality thought-provoking opinion pieces was long gone. It's just a mediocre-to-poor men's magazine now. Of course, we already paid for the subscription, and despite an irritating and slow-to-change misogynist undertone to the whole magazine, many of the articles are at least good enough to make for sufficient bathroom reading material... so that's how I came upon this.
2Why might whole brain emulation be impossible? Well, there could be some subtlety of brain functionality that we are missing, which makes the problem far more complex than we currently imagine (though current advances in neuroscience are making this seem less and less likely every day). On the technology side, Moore's Law will not necessarily hold forever. Actually, it won't hold forever -- "I would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling fundamental laws of physics!" -- so the question is just whether or not it will hold for long enough. Even at present, it looks like we are nearing the practical speed limit for a single-threaded processor (Moore's Law continues to hold because of increasing parallelization, but who's to say that whole brain emulation wouldn't require some rip-roaring fast serial process?). Of course, logically an artificial brain must be possible, since there's nothing supernatural involved in "natural" brains, but it may turn out that doing it with computing technology as we presently understand it is a pipe dream. I'm guessing it will be possible after all, but this is anything but a slam dunk.
I had a feeling my previous post would get more comments than usual...
I was responding in the comments, but I noticed my response was starting to get longer than the original blog post. So I figured I'd start a whole new post to answer the comments, and elaborate on my situation and where I am coming from.
I'll start with just a couple of quick responses, with the meat of this post below the fold.
gerwitz said:
Someone has to start social change.
Well duh, but that doesn't stop it from sucking for those who do. Someone has to be an early adopter of new technologies too, and those people generally get fucked (e.g. my friend who bought a Series 3 TiVo, only to see the TiVo HD released less than a year later with more features and a third the price). The fact that "somebody" has to do it is cold comfort when you are the one paying the price -- whether we're talking about something as trivial as DVRs or as important as climate change.
Sabio Lantz wonders about one of my remarks:
"I'm a reasonable man."
?
:-)
I just mean, I may have my faults and foibles, but I'm a good dad and a good husband and I pay my bills and go to work, and I'm not a thief or a crackhead or anything. The worst things I do are that I pirate music sometimes, I almost never remember to bring the reusable shopping bags to the grocery store, I lose my temper a little too easily, and I eat and drink a little too much. I'm a reasonable man.
Also, at one point in arguing with my wife I unexpectedly found myself quoting Radiohead...
Joel said:
The idea that air travel is "unethical" because it causes pollution seems bizarre to me. Is there an ethical imperative not to pollute ever?
I'm actually way less worried about that one, and it's not been an issue for my family, i.e. we both agree that flying is necessary sometimes and well worth the trade-off. It was just frustrating stumbling on that comment at Bjørn's blog when I was already undergoing ethical overload. Just as I have posted at least three times about how my visceral need (as opposed to the rational need) to speak out about religion is fueled by the ubiquity of religious exposure, I find it similarly frustrating to find that a lot of every day choices are, if you look beneath the surface, infused with hidden political and ethical implications. In the same way as I feel I can't escape religion, I sometimes feel I can't escape considering the ethics of my choices, even for a day.
Of course, there is an important difference, in that religion is all made up, while many of the ethical and social and environmental problems facing humanity are all too real... But that doesn't make it any less annoying that I find myself constantly confronted with it!
And now on to the tough stuff. Joel also said:
Also, guilt only works if you let it.
Heh, this is true... but I also don't feel I want to be the person who lives any kind of life I want without regard to the effect on society and on the planet. Of course it's a balancing act, and one can only do one's best. One needs to decide what is important to each one of us -- and that's the crisis I'm having right now, is I'm so overwhelmed with all of the factors in play (see my response below about The Vegetarian Myth for just how complicated it can get) that I am having trouble telling what is important to me. Add to that a bitter spousal dispute over household diet, and... yeah, it pretty much sucks right now.
Sabio Lantz continued:
Suggestion: Challenge your wife to read:
The Vegetarian Myth before she insists her whole family follows HER fanatic trip !
So without having read the book, but only reading the description on Amazon... This might be interesting, but I worry this would mean we'd just need to buy more expensive produce :D
I'm already aware that the argument about meat production being inherently inefficient (calorie-wise) is bogus. Humans can't eat grass, and you can't plant human-edible crops on every square inch of land that is undeveloped. Furthermore, massive agricultural monocultures -- be they organic or conventional -- can be just as devastating to the local environment as most factory animal farms (except perhaps pig farms, which are an unmitigated disaster -- but my wife and I long ago mutually agreed to mostly give up pork, except for wild boar and occasionally a bit from local farms where the pigs are pasture-raised).
But the rebuttal to the "efficiency" argument mostly falls apart when you are talking about modern factory farming. Cows fed on corn are most definitely less efficient calorie-wise (even though the varieties of corn fed to cattle is not generally fit for human consumption, that doesn't mean the same land couldn't be used for human-edible agriculture). Which is why -- again, mutually agreed -- my wife and I decided to mostly avoid factory-farmed meat and try to buy from small operations at local farmer's markets.
This was the position held by both my wife and I until quite recently. The problem was that for Christmas she got the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer acknowledges the points above, visits small animal farms raising animals in a sustainable and ethical manner, and agrees that this is a good thing (though he points out -- and I was already aware of this, but had decided this was not enough on its own to make me give up meat -- that all the animals go the same slaughterhouses, the conditions of which are not well-regulated and in many cases are highly problematic).
But Foer goes on to argue that in practice it is virtually impossible to be a meat-eater and never eat factory farmed meat. (And indeed, though my wife and I mostly eat meat from operations where we can feel good about it, in practice it has turned out to be anything but a hard and fast rule) He argues that anyone who wishes to avoid participating in the factory farming industry must for all practical purposes become a vegetarian.
To be honest, I think this is a reasonably solid argument. My only response is to ask, what is the goal? Is it to push for change, or is it to remain ethically pure? Of course, my wife called me out on the fact that my invocation of "purity" was a form of begging the question, but I think, perhaps phrased in a less confrontational way, this is still the central question, and the one my wife and I answer differently. For her, the idea that she is playing a part in unnecessarily unpleasant and unsanitary conditions, that she's supporting an industry with highly dubious (and viscerally disgusting) practices, is the paramount concern. And taking that as a given, I think Foer's argument more or less holds.
I can't actually in good conscience say that my paramount concern is enacting change, though I do feel that, as far as rationalizations go, I've got a pretty damn good one: If you are a vegetarian, the mainstream meat industry does not consider you a potential customer. You're dead to them. On the other hand, if enough people starting buying meat only from local farms with more sustainable and ethical practices, the mainstream meat industry will say, "What can we do to capture this market?"
Still, I must admit my paramount concern is just that I love food and I love cooking. My wife's argument that meats are just a few foods, and that there are a whole world of vegetables, is frankly fucking bullshit. Blue is just a few shades, and there is a whole rainbow of other colors, but if somebody told me I could never see the color blue again, I'd kick them right in the nards. And there's more to it even than that, which I won't bother to go into here since this post is already getting really long.
My wife either backed off from saying she wants me to go vegetarian, or else I misunderstood her. Well, I might argue that her continuing position that she "hopes" I might feel the same way is a de facto request, when it comes from a spouse, but in any case that's not a central bone of contention. Mostly she was upset because she felt that I responded with hostility and derision to one of her aspirations, and she wants me to be supportive. I didn't mean to be hostile or derisive -- mostly I was just glum, because if I'm the only person in the house who eats meat that means in practice I won't be able to enjoy cooking meat the way I have in the past, and furthermore I think it's pretty fucking fair for a foodie to be a little unhappy that his wife is renouncing meat altogether -- but I also need to remember that my wife and I mean different things by the words we use, and often I interpret her comments to be far more definite than they are.
For example, if I say, "I'm ready to go", that means I can walk out the door in less than thirty seconds, or else I'll be apologizing because I forgot something; whereas if I she says, "I'm ready to go", that means sometime in the next ten minutes. By the same token, though, if she says, "Maybe we should consider exercising some more," I tend to hear, "Get off your fat ass now, you lazy slob!", when of course it's unreasonable to interpret it that way. The biggest two lessons I have gotten out of this are a) whenever I think my wife is making a demand I should interpret it as a suggestion, and whenever I think she is making a suggestion I should interpret it as just brainstorming; and b) my first response to any idea my wife has, no matter how shitty I think the idea is, ought to be questions rather than rejection. This latter part is both so that I will be less rude, and also because, as I described above, my wife and I mean different things by the same words sometimes...
The gorilla left in the room is what to do about our son. He's only ten months old right now, so I'm not that concerned if he eats a purely vegetarian (not vegan!) diet. But when he gets a little older, it is really important to me that I be allowed to share with him the full palette of flavors and food experiences, and someday the experience of cooking meat. (I'm sorry, but there is nothing in the vegetarian world that is remotely like the experience of braising a beautiful piece of short ribs or chuck roast, seeing this tough fatty piece of meat transformed into a buttery, savory treat... Braised vegetables are total ass in comparison)
We've discussed some of how this might work, and I think we'll be able to make it happen. My wife would love it if I took him hunting or fishing before consuming our bounty, or take him to a cattle farm (preferably the one we'd be buying he meat from) to meet a cow and explain that it helps transform the grass into something we can eat, etcetera. I agree this would be a lovely experience, though I don't want it to be an absolute prerequisite, and there could be some disconnect about appropriate ages. (Though I do hope to be able to talk frankly to my son about things like the reality of eating animals from as young an age as reasonably possible..)
Luckily, we have a few years to work that one out.
And one last quip from Joel:
Running the heater in the winter pollutes, is that unethical?
Hey, don't laugh, I have a friend who is really worried about this and struggling to find the least carbon-emitting method of keeping their pipes from freezing. He won't even let his wife get a stove with gas burners, because then they'd need to get a propane tank (they live out in the middle of nowhere) and he'd rather use electricity, since around here it mostly comes from sustainable sources (nuke and hydro -- I know hydro in general has it's own problems with environmental destruction, but in this case I'm talking about Niagara Falls, which is pretty much free sustainable power).
So yeah... some people DO worry about it all the time. In a way I admire that, but it's not for me. No sir, not at all.
I was reading Stephen Pinker's excellent book The Blank Slate this morning and I had some thoughts about a topic that's been rattling around in my brain. In the passage I was reading, Pinker was asserting that humans are neither inherently good or evil, but that people most likely have both good and evil tendencies, and whether or not they are acted on is a function of each individual's neurological processes. His reference to "good and evil" without qualification inspired me to think once again about what is meant by this -- but this time, I was doing so in the context of Pinker's ideas about human nature.
In a previous post, I railed against the idea of relativism, both in terms of interpretation of factual data, as well as -- to a more limited extent -- in determining morality. I probably should have been a little more guarded when I maintained that some things were "absolutely" right or wrong. "Absolute" is probably too strong, but what I meant is that much of what constitutes morality is both non-arbitrary and independent of culture. Clearly morality does not exist on its own. There are no absolute moral laws woven into the fabric of reality in the same manner as physical laws.
This of course prompts the question: Whence this morality, if not from culture?
Perhaps the obvious answer is biology. The concepts of "good" and "evil" can be viewed as products of natural selection, a natural extension of various instincts we have evolved over time. In the case of altruism, this is not just speculation; as I'm sure everyone reading this post knows, there is growing evidence that genuine altruism is a side-effect of a sort of selfish altruism evolved by our primate ancestors. The so-called Golden Rule can be seen as the logical conclusion of our altruistic natures, i.e. the product of instinctual altruism multiplied by abstract reasoning ability is the mandate that others ought to be treated in a way we would prefer to be treated.
But there's even more to this. It seems obvious, but it is easy to ignore that the way we prefer to be treated is itself determined by our biology. Consider a harmless but painful electric shock. There is clearly no eternal abstract reason why a harmless jolt of electricity is undesirable, but we find it painful because it stimulates systems within our bodies which have evolved to warn against possible harm. In other words, the reason I don't want to be shocked is itself a byproduct of biology. And therefore, the reason it is not cool to go around shocking people with a hand buzzer is due not just to our altruistic nature, but to other features of biology.
To what extent can we take this without it becoming absurd? What if instead of a hand buzzer, I am talking about lopping off your arm? Is this only "wrong" because of instincts that make me want to keep my arm? Well, no, there are plenty of practical reasons why we might want to keep both arms anyway. But aren't those reasons also the product of our biology? Having one arm may make it harder to do everyday tasks like tying my shoes, but why do I want to tie my shoes in the first place? Isn't it because not wearing shoes damages my feet, and I have a biological imperative not to damage my feet?
Logically extending this idea, I could argue that it's only wrong to kill people because they have evolved the desire not to die. Well, maybe. But I am not entirely sure whether this takes us all the way to explaining all manifest morality.
What I mean by this is best explained by a thought experiment: Consider an alien race -- call them the Eschatolians -- which for whatever reason have not evolved an altruistic instinct. Perhaps their civilization is structured more like an ant colony, where loyalty to some "Queen"-like being is the driving moral code rather than a do-unto-others ethic. This of course might make them seem quite evil by human eyes, but I don't think that is entirely fair. Eschatolian individuals are not treated with respect, but they don't even have the evolved desire to be treated in this way. Who are we to judge that?
Now suppose the Eschatolians invent a technology that can please and protect their Queen -- the highest form of morality in their civilization -- but it will set in motion a process that will significantly hasten the heat death of the universe. The Eschatolians' sun will be long dead by this time, so it's no skin off their (or their Queens') backs, but it will lop untold trillions of years off the meaningful life of the universe.
Now is there some arbitrary standard that makes the Eschatolians "evil" -- beyond even our specifically human concepts of morality? Every fiber of my being wants to say yes: destroying the universe for short-term gain is wrong, independent of biology. But how can I say this without invoking some sort of morality from the clear blue sky?
I think today I have a partial answer, but before that, I want to digress into a different thought experiment, so that when I propose my answer to the Eschatolian problem, it will be clear what I am not saying. I was once challenged with the question, if only one human woman remained on earth, and she refused to have sex, would it be moral to rape her?1 To me, this is a fascinating question, and I still haven't made up my mind entirely. (Update 2010/08/17: FWIW, I am now leaning towards no.) Debating this question is beyond the scope of this post, but I want to address one particular fallacious argument against it.
When I first heard it, some who answered "absolutely not!" asserted that our desire to reproduce and to propagate the human race was nothing more than the parasitic effect of our "selfish genes", and that a rejection of those imperatives was necessary to "liberate" ourselves from the "tyranny" of our genes. (Some of this, I realize, is straight from Dawkins, but I don't know how much. I unfortunately have not read The Selfish Gene yet, so I am not aware if my objections to this line of reasoning would apply to his ideas, or merely to the interpretation of them presented by some folks on PZ's blog. I apologize if some of what follows comes across as strawman-ish.)
While I think it is incredibly valuable to have an awareness of how our behavior is shaped by evolution, and while I think Dawkins is quite right in pointing out that genes act in their own self-interest rather than in the interest of the collective of genes we refer to as an organism, at the same time I think this idea of becoming "liberated" from the "tyranny" of our genes is utter nonsense. Who, exactly, is being liberated? This smells like Cartesian dualism, like we are saying there is some ghost imprisoned in our DNA that is just waiting to be freed.
Hogwash! What are we if not the product of our genes and our environment? To dismiss our innate impulses and desires because they are also a product of our genes is a futile attempt to divorce our selves from our selves. Certainly, our instinctual preferences will conflict with each other, and an awareness of how these preferences have developed from the "selfish" nature of genes can inform the conflict and help us reach a decision. But even if we do decide to suppress an instinctual impulse, it will not be because of some external moral code that hangs in the air sui generis, or because of the willed choice of some mythical "soul" -- it will be because we have decided to favor a different instinctual impulse that is itself a result of selfish genes.
In the case of the Last Woman on Earth thought experiment, if we decide that rape is not acceptable even in a last ditch attempt to save the human species from extinction, it will not be because we have "liberated" ourselves from the parasitic impulse to propagate our selfish genes. It will be because the logical extension of our altruistic instincts -- also a parasitic impulse wrought by our selfish genes -- has convinced us that the rights of the individual are more important.
So if morality cannot exist independent of selfish genes, then what of the Eschatolians? Can we possibly say they are "evil" in some non-arbitrary sense for wanting to destroy the universe, without engaging in human chauvinism? Isn't there some meta-morality we can invoke, that transcends individual gene pools?
I am going to tentatively answer yes, though my reasoning relies quite heavily on speculative assumptions about the extent to which evolution is convergent on different planets (if life even exists elsewhere, that is, which itself is uncertain). This species-independent morality I am positing cannot exist independent of the phenomenon of selfish replicators2, but it is not tied to the specifics of an individual pool of replicators.
I think it is quite reasonable to assert that any successful form of life will have evolved biological imperatives which resist extinction. Individuals may not necessarily have self-preservation or self-reproduction impulses (e.g. ant worker castes), but must have some impulses which would be violated by pretty much any mechanism forcing the species into extinction, or else natural selection is going to get rid of such a species in a big hurry.
If we accept that morality must be a product of instinctual impulses, then I think it logically follows that from the perspective of species X, the extinction of species X is immoral. That doesn't mean the extinction of species Y is immoral from the perspective of species X, of course, but we have established here a species-transcendent moral pattern.
How much more would it take to transform this into a species-transcendent moral code? I suppose I might invoke a sort of vague "galactic utilitarianism" and argue that if a particular act -- e.g. destroying the universe -- violates the morality of enough species, then it is perhaps also immoral in some universal and non-arbitrary sense. Of course, utilitarianism almost certainly has its roots in our altruistic instincts, and it is clearly not the case that all species have a similar instinct. But I think we are almost there.
It is conceivable that altruistic impulses are a likely/necessary feature of sapient life. How realistic is it to envision a civilization with an ant-like social structure that has developed enough self-awareness to start talking about morality? Of course this question is impossible to answer, as it is asking about convergent evolution on an interplanetary basis, and for all we know the question itself is invalid.
But I think it's an interesting question nonetheless. Depending on the answer, this could establish some basic moral codes, not quite as immutable laws, but as an inevitable byproduct of sapience. There are not many things that fall into this category -- basically, just don't destroy stuff for no reason or for reasons which are insignificant compared to the destruction -- but it still seems like an appealing idea, not just because it provides a possible answer to the Eschatolian thought experiment, but because it provides a much firmer underpinning for environmentalism than might otherwise be achieved.
This still does not justify the absurd notion that we can be "liberated" from our selfish genes. If this transcendent morality is justifiable, it will still be because of selfish replicators, not in spite of them. To denigrate our instinctual impulses because they exist solely for the purpose of propagating DNA is to practice self-contradiction in the name of some mythical ghost in the machine. It is both Puritanical and delusional.
1Unfortunately, the rather shrill and unimpressive person asking me this question merely wanted to use it to accuse me of being a "rape apologist," which it seems to me relied on a rather preposterous definition of "apologist": that if you say X is acceptable under any circumstances you are by definition an "X apologist". If I think it is acceptable under some circumstances for police to forcibly detain and imprison an individual, does this make me a kidnapping apologist? If I think chemotherapy is a good thing, does this make me a poison apologist? If I think that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is not protected speech, does this make a censorship apologist? If I think a hysterectomy is acceptable for medical reasons, does that make me an apologist for forced sterilization?
This kind of context-free morality is not just absurd; it is dangerous. It is a close cousin of the kind of lazy and asinine reasoning that compels idiots to assert that gay marriage will lead inexorably to a legalization of incest and pedophilia.
2I steer away from the word "gene" from this point on, because I am now speculating about how life might evolve on other planets. Presumably, though, some kind of gene-like "replicator" would be necessary for natural selection to evolve life, so I will content myself to refer to it as such.
