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Everett Lamplighter

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  1. These are excellent questions as well. For the first, as far as intentionality goes, a person who's adoptive of an evolutionary view of life could, with well-defined intentions, seek to preserve their genetic code, i.e. they could consciously choose to sustain themselves and reproduce for the purpose of preserving their genetic code, i.e. this could be the basis of their personal ethics. For the second, preserving yourself does result in the preservation of your genetic code to a point. The timeline of all organisms, should they survive all else, is eventually terminated as a result of senescence. So to your third question, I'd say that self-preservation would contradict the preservation of your genetic code if no additional action was taken to reproduce your genetic code (at least some of it via traditional reproduction or maybe all of it via cloning ) and you knowingly succumbed to organismal senescence without attempting at least to preserve the survival of your genetic code past the survival of yourself. I'm not saying that this is necessarily ethically true, but it would be true to an individual possessed of the above mentioned ethical values. Should reproduction at least, if not some level of altruism amongst highly genetically similiar people (e.g. immediate family members), be incorporated? Is it already there in Objectivism and I'm just missing it? It seems that it would be ethically permissible in an Objectivist system for the entire human race to decide not to reproduce. Is this the case? While the probability of something like this happening is extremely low, it would ultimately result in the death of humanity and the death of all ethical systems.
  2. Yes, I agree with you, Kendall, on this point. The distinction is clear. I don't think I'm confusing biological altruism (which is "mechanical", for lack of a better word -- devoid of conscious intention) with the context in which Objectivism speaks of altruism (which is within the sphere of conscious human action). My question is: if biological altruism seems to imply and is explained by a gene-centric view of evolution, then can/should the mechanism by which life sustains and strengthens itself, as it is understood within a gene-centric evolutionary framework, be incorporated into an ethical system? To me, it seems that omitting this understanding of life from an ethical system, is (bluntly) anti-nature. Of course, this opens up a whole new can of worms for me but I'm almost out of time to go any further with this tonight. However, I want to say that I am very much enjoying this conversation and I am grateful to be able to discuss such issues with the bright people whose thoughts I've had the pleasure to read on these forums. Rationalbiker, I apologize for issuing that no doubt seemingly glib & snarky response to your previous question. That wasn't becoming of the way I'd like to comport myself here. And I'll reiterate that I'm not approaching these forums with an anti-Objectivism bent. I'm open-minded -- not an acolyte, nor an apostate -- I'm reconnoitering the philosophical landscape, looking for a good place to set up camp.
  3. I'm interested in basing an ethical theory on science. I like much of what Objectivism has come up with, but this issue raises questions for me re. Objectivist ethics.
  4. Also, are scientifically derived ethical systems by virtue of their base views, inherently possessive of at least the potential to evolve? Science is an evolutionary epistemology -- it grows into better explanations of reality by the rules on which it is based. So how can an ethical system based on science be hoped to remain static?
  5. Currently, to the end that a scientific ethical theory is indeed scientific.
  6. OK, then on the basis of the best scientific theory of evolution we possess, why should we adopt a view towards human life's ultimate goal as being self-preservation? Objectivist ethics was created as a scientifically based system of ethics. Rand asserts that the ultimate value of all life (human included) is self-preservation. This was based on the prevailing scientific explanation at the time. However, the system of science has replaced this theory. *Emphasized "human"
  7. Considering the "selfish gene" paradigm, the old, dual Darwinian goals of life, survival & reproduction, resolve into one more explanatory goal of life: the survival of genes. Under this paradigm, a parent's care for a child can be viewed as an altruistic act that furthers the goal of propagating the parent's genes. We would not be here to debate this issue if it weren't for former acts of human altruism -- the genes shared by members of our species would have failed to reach their goal.
  8. I take your point, Greedy, however the observation of altruism in nature suggests that the ultimate value of life, the ultimate value being life's final goal (as defined by Rand), is not the "maintenance of the organism's life." The ultimate value would seem to be the propagation of the organism's genes. Ergo, life displays altruistic behavior that furthers this goal.
  9. From the essay entitled "Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness: "On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex -- from the nutritive function in the single cell of an amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man -- are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism's life." The most successful and widely accepted paradigm within evolutionary theory has come about after Ayn Rand wrote that passage. When I say successful, I mean that this new theory gives a more complete explanation as to what was once a puzzling observation that flew in the face of the above passage: the presence of altruism in nature. Standard Darwinian theory assumed the same view stated by Rand. This view is expressed in the passage I cited. However, altruistic behavior does exist in nature seemingly violating the Darwinian view that the motor of evolution was the primary goals of individual life forms: survival and reproduction. Thus altruism remained an unexplained phenomena until theories like Richard Dawkins', which refined standard Darwinian evolutionary theory to show that organismal behavior is not solely directed towards preserving an example organism's own life, but that the example organism's genes are the fundamental goal-setters governing it. Organisms are a means by which genes ensure their own survival. Within this paradigm, altruism can be seen to exist as a mechanism which aids the survival of individual genes. Some examples of altruism in nature -- from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological "Altruistic behaviour is common throughout the animal kingdom, particularly in species with complex social structures. For example, vampire bats regularly regurgitate blood and donate it to other members of their group who have failed to feed that night, ensuring they do not starve. In numerous bird species, a breeding pair receives help in raising its young from other ‘helper’ birds, who protect the nest from predators and help to feed the fledglings. Vervet monkeys give alarm calls to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators, even though in doing so they attract attention to themselves, increasing their personal chance of being attacked. In social insect colonies (ants, wasps, bees and termites), sterile workers devote their whole lives to caring for the queen, constructing and protecting the nest, foraging for food, and tending the larvae. Such behaviour is maximally altruistic: sterile workers obviously do not leave any offspring of their own -- so have personal fitness of zero -- but their actions greatly assist the reproductive efforts of the queen. From a Darwinian viewpoint, the existence of altruism in nature is at first sight puzzling, as Darwin himself realized. Natural selection leads us to expect animals to behave in ways that increase their own chances of survival and reproduction, not those of others. But by behaving altruistically an animal reduces its own fitness, so should be at a selective disadvantage vis-à-vis one which behaves selfishly. To see this, imagine that some members of a group of Vervet monkeys give alarm calls when they see predators, but others do not. Other things being equal, the latter will have an advantage. By selfishly refusing to give an alarm call, a monkey can reduce the chance that it will itself be attacked, while at the same time benefiting from the alarm calls of others. So we should expect natural selection to favour those monkeys that do not give alarm calls over those that do. But this raises an immediate puzzle. How did the alarm-calling behaviour evolve in the first place, and why has it not been eliminated by natural selection? How can the existence of altruism be reconciled with basic Darwinian principles?" Dawkins explains altruism in nature by viewing nature through the "eyes" of a gene (in his book The Selfish Gene). In his view, the survival and replication of genes is the fundamental goal of an organisms life. How does Objectivism explain altruism in nature?
  10. You're absolutely right, DW. The single-particle interferometer is a configuration of the double-slit experiment, in which only a single photon is emitted from the light source at a time. Interestingly enough, a single photon still behaves as if other phantom, undetectable photons are traveling through the slits with it, at the same time, to produce the wave-like interference patterns that led to the logically dissonant explanation known as wave/particle duality. One particle acts as if it travels through both slits at the same time in order to produce the interence pattern. A single photon traveling through the slits by itself will only strike the screen in areas that a beam of photons traveling together rom the same light source would strike. Allegedly, the photons in a beam of light interfere with one another in a way not unlike ripples on a lake interfere with one another to amplify and destroy one another -- thus producing a pattern of dark and light interference waves on the screen). This begs the question: if one solitary photon is traveling through the slits at any given time, what then is diverting it to land on the screen at the exact and only same spots as it would have followed if other photons had been traveling from the light source with it? The Copenhagen interepretation sez that the photon is interfering with itself -- interfering with itself as it exists in a state of unobserved, superpositioned versions of itself that do not resolve into one, definite real position until the photon is observed. Are these super-positioned states real or imaginary? Is there something wrong with quantum physics? Quantum physics explains the atom. The atom is an impossible paradox in Einsteinian physics. Classical physics (Einsteinian -corrected and -addended Newtonian mechanics) approximately describes the emergent behavior of quantum mechanical processes on the super-quantum, classical physics level. QP has no serious, rational rivals to challenge it as an explanation of reality at the atomic/sub-atomic scale. It is our deepest theory of reality and yet it has stood with the above-stated question left ignored since the Copenhagen interpretation until it has relatively recently been seriously examined. So, are the super-positioned states of a photon in a single-particle interferometor real or imaginary? If you answer it in the way in which MWI approaches it, new and age-old paradoxes are shown to be classical, commonsense misunderstandings of the true nature of reality. E.g. time travel. The equations of classical physics indicate that time travel is at least possible in theory. But our classical view of time produces paradoxes such as the Grandfather Paradox. Applying the MWI to the Grandfather Paradox shows that killing your grandfather before he's had time to sire your father produces no paradox. A history of your grandfather siring your father would still exist independently of you traveling back to a seperate history in which you murdered your grandfather. Time travel involves traveling into histories that have not produced your own -- your travel into these histories produces new, seperate histories. In other words: your history of traveling back in time to kill your grandfather is unaltered by your travel into and intereference with the past. Your travel produces a new history in which you are free to alter your past in any way you desire -- even if you desire to kill your grandfather. We don't know whether time travel is physically possible or not. Our ability to mathematically model it has traditionally produced these strange paradoxical offenses to logic. MWI provides an understanding of our mathematical models. It lends an understanding to many otherwise unexplained bridge-too-far gaps in knowledge. Take the EPR Paradox as another example: A particle decays into two seperate particles, one with -1/2 spin and one +1/2 spin. Because of the conservation of angular momentum, these two particles must be in these two spin states. However, each particle possesses no definite spin state until at least one of them is observed. If Particle A is observed to be in a state of +1/2 spin, then Particle B must exist in a state of -1/2 spin. If these two particles are seperated from each other by the distance of a light-year, while still neither has been observed, and then suddenly Particle A is observed to be a state of +1/2 spin, how does Particle B "know" that Particle A has been oberved, causing Particle B to resolve itself into a definite state of -1/2 spin? It would seem that it would take a light-year for a signal to reach Particle B from Particle A in order to communicate the fact that Particle A has been observed and no longer exists in a state of superpositioned +1/2 & -1/2 spin states. However, in the MWI, this paradox is resovled when you consider that the observation of Particle A produces two seperate histories: one in which Particle A has +1/2 spin and Particle B has -1/2, and one in which Particle A has -1/2 spin and Particle B has +1/2 spin. Each history exists and is observed in reality. Each definite history is not embarked upon until observation has taken place. Something interferes with the paths of single particles in the double-slit experiment. Either it's real or it's imaginary. It's further interesting that taking the more realistic POV in this choice and opting away from an explanation involving imaginary particles that can interfere with real paarticles but somehow do not really exist, one realistic interpretation being the MWI, it only explains more of the questions which burden a world-view unadoptive of an explanation that asserts that imaginary things cannot effect reality.
  11. Schroedinger's Cat refers to a paradox. It's actually resolved by quantum decoherence theories like the MWI. Also, I know of one researcher at least who's proposed an experiment to test the MWI: -Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds#A...e_and_Criticism
  12. Actually, it isn't an off-the-wall theory according to many leading researchers (the less explanatory Copenhagen interpretation is more of an off-the-wall theory) and it's relatively popular among physicists. From Wikipedia:
  13. Thanks for posting those links, David -- I read two books recently that dealt with Popper: The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch and Wittgenstein's Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. They were my introduction to Popper and I'm still very much a Popper greenhorn so I'm very interested to read a critical treatment of his work.
  14. Sure -- I can't offer a better brief explanation than the one I found on Wikipedia so I'm going to be lazy and quote it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
  15. There may be more potentially beneficial screensavers to run on your computer, however I've been a dedicated advocate of SETI initiatives for over 13 years -- SETI pioneer, Frank Drake's book, Is Anyone Out There? cinched my support. It may be a long-shot, and I do not currently run the Berkeley program's screensaver, but I believe that the universe is most likely rife with life -- it may even contain an E.T. civilization close enough to us in order to allow two-way communication. I base this belief on several properties of the universe: the fact that it's capable of learning about itself, its rich baryonic structure / chemistry, the structure of solar systems / galaxies, the values of the dimensionless fundamental constants etc. I'm veering into a crash w. the weak anthropic principle. But I am often compelled to see a universe "designed" to produce life. SETI'll either fail and never find anything or it'll discover something of immense importance to our understanding of the universe. I think it's a good gamble to make.
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