Darwin and responsibilty

Well as a matter of law I would favour Hitler's "Mein Kampf" being freely available, and not forbidden. But that I would allow it doesn't mean it can't cause any damage IMO. Besides I would only allow it in so far as the knowledge is not forced on people. If scientists would respect people's integrity of personal knowledge, the freedom to reject or accept any knowledge, then that would be a great step forward in my opinion. But many scientists don't respect this integrity of the individual, and even the law says that people have to hear some things, even if they don't want to.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

quote:

---

You can find Darwin's theory in the opening of "Descent of Man". from memory "Do the races or species of man, whichever term applies, encroach on and replace one another until some finally become extinct, just as with the lower animals?"

---

A natural question to ask, to me anyway. Humans are not exempt from the laws of nature. If a person jumps off a roof, that person will fall down. If a person sticks her hand in a fire, she will be burned. If a population of persons increases to the point where the environment cannot support any more increase, then, without modern means of population control, some humans simply will not survive to reproduce. According to the laws of natural selection, the ones that will reproduce will be the ones who are better adapted to the environment.Now, are there significant differences between the "races" of humans to give one a survival advantage over the others? Remember, the only anthropological data to which Darwin had access was collected by others. These, unfortunately, were colored by the racism and ethnocentrism of the researchers. Darwin himself was no anthropogist (if such a field even existed at the time). He was trained as a naturalist, that is, his scientific training was in geology and biology. He simply had no access to other data or theories than was provided by the milieu in which he found himself.Now his theory of common descent by natural selection is a purely scientific theory. It is an objective explanation of observable phenomena, and makes definite predictions. It, itself, contains no hint of racism. Of course, humans are biological entities, and natural questions are to ask how this new theory explains the origin of humans and the future of the human race.Of course, to apply natural selection to humans, one needs to ask what is the range of variation in humans, and what survival advantage to various variations confer. If the data to which Darwin had access was tainted, is that his fault?An interesting point is to be made about Darwin. Despite the fact that, based on the biased, prejudiced anthropological theories of the time, Darwin believed that the non-white races were inferior to Europeans and would eventually be replace by them. Again, is it Darwin's fault that he had no access to other data or theories? But, he opposed slavery, cruelty, and felt that it was important that the Europeans showed kindness and benevolence to the non-whites.Another interesting point about the Social Darwinist beliefs of the British middle class of the time. Darwin did not invent Social Darwinism - it was already the social belief of his class that helping the poor just allowed them to overbreed and degrade the quality of society in general. Darwin himself did misapply his theory (remember, this is the first time that anyone was thinking along these lines!), and he did believe that social programs to help the poor allowed the inferior individuals of the species to breed, when they would otherwise be culled by natural selection, and so the overall fitness of the human species would suffer.Yet, he was still a humanitarian. He contributed money and supervision to programs to help the poor. He advocated help for the poor. He believe that kindness, altruism, and benevolence were part of the essence of what made humans human - he believed that people have a natural instinct toward kindness and empathy that was selected for - and he believe that to squelch these instincts would be to degrade the human species to far greater degree than helping the poor would be.

Syamsu First of all amazon.com has issues of Mein Kampf so what you mean by forbidden I am not sure.Second the book and its contents are themselves not the thing that causes damage it is the use of the book to support the cause of people and it is their actions that makes it what it is. You can have it as part of a university course or as part of a skinhead rally but the book is incapable of damage or construction. I don't understand by what you mean by being forced to hear anything.The freedom to accept or reject any knowledge is still yours to make but you must have the knowledge taught to you for you to make an informed decision. That you have to hear some things you do not wish to hear,well,life sucks eh? but in order to reject knowledge in the first place you must have that knowledge.As the saying goes "Everybody is entitled to their own opinion,they are not entitled to their own facts."

Perhaps he's speaking of outside the U.S. There are countries in which it is not legal to sell Mein Kampf, e.g. the Netherlands (http://www.rnw.nl/amsterdamforum/html/031128hitler.html) or it's difficult to legally sell it, e.g. Germany (Page not found | WIRED).

To force people to hear facts, is just bigotry in another disguise. Of course the facts they will teach are about the degeneration of the race in a situation where civilization constrains the workings of natural selection. Why with "absolute certainty" the well respected scientist Eugen Fischer announced that all European races would become extinct. So then supposedly we *must* all hear this, over and over, and over.This is still believed by many mainstream biologists by the way, that medicine is losing in a race against disease generated by increased spread of genetic mutation. That we don't hear so much about it is largely due to the history of the holocaust suppressing this idea of genetic detoriation.Anyway, you should be able to see now why it is better to have checkpoints at every individual to accept or reject anything, because of the possibility of having to deal with some very overexcited scientists and governments.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Chiroptera:
"Now his theory of common descent by natural selection is a purely scientific theory. It is an objective explanation of observable phenomena, and makes definite predictions. It, itself, contains no hint of racism."You can't guarantee that the modern conception of natural selection doesn't have "illegitimate valueladen teleology", as in the paper I referenced in another thread.I can't see your opinion as anything other then shameless lawyering on behalf of Darwin, undermining the ideal of objectivity in science in the process. Assertions about "purely scientific" kill the ideal of objectivity IMO. Every theory has it's weaknesses in regards to objectivity. Even the force of gravity is now said not to exist, that it was just a subjective notion over the underlying reality of bending space or something.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Syamsu, You mean the philosophy paper you referenced, as opposed to a scientific one?Mark

quote:

---

You can't guarantee that the modern conception of natural selection doesn't have "illegitimate valueladen teleology", as in the paper I referenced in another thread.

---

I have explained the bare scientific conception of the theory of evolution. The ideological baggage people bring to the theory themselves is not Darwin's fault, just like Jesus is not responsible for modern conceptions of Christianity, nor is Mohammed responsible for all the modern conceptions of Islam, nor is Moses responsible for the modern conceptions of Judaism.-

quote:

---

I can't see your opinion as anything other then shameless lawyering on behalf of Darwin, undermining the ideal of objectivity in science in the process.

---

Funny, by trying to remove ideological and emotional baggage from the theory of evolution, I thought I was promoting objectivity in science. In my opinion, it is those trying to equate the objective, scientific theory of evolution with ideological racism that are undermining the objectivity of science.But it is possible that I don't really know what your argument is. I just read a post claiming that there is a passage in Descent of Man that shows that Darwin was a racist and hinting he supported some sort of eugenic replacement of inferior races with the white race. I merely pointed out that this is not a correct reading of the passage, neither by its context, nor in the context of Darwin's actual biography. Since it appears this topic is no longer under discussion, may I assume that I have made my point?-

quote:

---

Even the force of gravity is now said not to exist, that it was just a subjective notion over the underlying reality of bending space or something.

---

Under this reasoning, objectivity in the sciences does not exist, even as an ideal.

Usually people excuse Darwin's mixing of valuejudgements into his work, by saying that it was the common practice of the time (eventhough actually Mendel's work of the same timeframe doesn't suffer from the same errors). But you on the other hand just make out as though how Darwin writes is the proper way to do science. That is why I say you undermine the ideal of objectivity in defending Darwin in the way you do.Science should be uniformly understandable, unlike religious texts which may contain deep wisdom in highly interpretative texts, saying much to many people with just a few words.What Darwin meant with civilized races exterminating savage races, what he meant with a hope for higher civilization then the white race, seems unclear to me. It seems to me he meant Western colonising will largely make natives in the colonies extinct, as he also talks about the extinction of the Maori's and Aboriginals elsewhere. The higher civilization could refer to higher technology, or maybe democracy and social laws, in stead of higher biological nature. But since in the same paragraph he refers to gorilla's being exterminated, who have no technology to speak of, it seems like he is referring to higher biological nature, for the paragraph to be consistent.Now give me your "correct" reading of the passage.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

quote:

---

Usually people excuse Darwin's mixing of valuejudgements into his work, by saying that it was the common practice of the time (eventhough actually Mendel's work of the same timeframe doesn't suffer from the same errors).

---

I guess I still don't understand quite what your argument is. I excuse his value judgements, when they occur, because they are side comments that do not affect the validity of his science or his conclusions.-

quote:

---

What Darwin meant with civilized races exterminating savage races, what he meant with a hope for higher civilization then the white race, seems unclear to me.

---

Here is the only place in Descent of Man (chapter 6) where he mentions the civilized races exterminating the savage races: To me, the meaning is quite clear. Darwin is trying to explain why we see "gaps" in the current heirarchical classification of life -- why existing species do not form a smooth continuum.I don't know how knowledgeable you are about history, Syamsu, but in the 19th century the European colonial powers were dominating the people in the colonized regions, and that the less "developed" tribes were suffering from horrendous rates of death. It would certainly seem to someone living in the 19th century that the less developed peoples would eventually be decimated, perhaps to the point of extinction. I find nothing in this passage that would indicate that Darwin approves of this.Now, it is clear in the passage that Darwin viewed the "savage races" as being somehow closer, taxonomically, to the non-human primates. This is unfortunate, but given that Darwin was not an anthropologist, and given the general anthroplogical beliefs at the time, why do you think that Darwin should have known better? Furthermore, in other places in Descent Darwin talks about the "degraded" state of culture of the "savage races", but I find no passage where Darwin states that these "races" are anything but fully human.

I can find something in the passage that indicates that Darwin approves of the decimation of savage races, namely his expressed hope for higher. In any case, why this passage is wrong in the first place, is not because of that, but because of proclaiming certainty ("will almost certainly" "no doubt") over issues which properly fall into the domain of human choices. Imagine the problems of politicians having to deal with issues such as this, when the scientists proclaim the outcome is almost a certainty already.Darwin's morality as expressed in "Descent of Man" is some sort of rational selfishness. It runs parallel to Christian notions (as he also quotes the commentary about the Fall of Man, parallel to Christianity) that if you help someone else then your soul becomes better. So your purpose in helping is not to improve the fate of someone else, but to improve your own fate. The soul is replaced with higher parts of human nature in Darwin's moral doctrine, including sensitivity, tenderness and sympathy. The proper benefit of this tenderness etc. is probably something like the pursuit of science and arts, and the side-effect of this sensitivity is to help the "lower" people. Darwin theorizes that you can't check your sympathies to not help the "lower", because that would kill your sympathies alltogether, so you also wouldn't be able to have sympathy in places where it is "proper".Also, in other passages of the book, it describes the kind of totalitarian (Nazi) tribal society, as being very low on the scale of human societal evolution, as being savage.So you can argue that in fact Darwin's book is an argument against eugenics, against totalitairianism etc. But I think the more significant point is that he makes up some sort of pseudosscientific racist religion. There are sects in this religion with differing opinion, some softer, some harder, but I believe the point is that it is basicly a pseudoscientific racist religion. Religions such as that will naturally degenerate towards more cruel versions of themselves, as the effects of the religion permeate throughout society, and the religion is changed by personal experiences. (in this light you might consider what will happen when depressed and otherwise mentally ill people get indoctrinated with an evopsych worldview, how they will change such a worldview).That Darwin is against eugenics because it would destroy the higher part of human nature, doesn't stop him from saying that people in any significant degree inferior shouldn't marry. It doesn't stop him from hoping for a higher state of civilization, in a passage about the organic chain of man and his nearest allies. It is a particular sect of pseudoscientific racist religion, largely influenced by Christianity, but it is that all the same.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Gotta call BS on this.You seem to harken back to Darwin = Nazi time and time again. That is simply silly. Please consider this quote... There you can see the source of eugenics and it is not Darwin, but Christianity.Sorry, but you have been so far unable to support your assertions of Darwin's Responsibility.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

quote:

---

Darwin's morality as expressed in "Descent of Man" is some sort of rational selfishness.

---

As is the morality of Christianity/Judeaism/Islam: be good, or God will send you to Hell.At any rate, Darwin acknowledge that people are nice to one another because the feel that they should. He proposed an evolutionary origin of these feelings, but he none-the-less acted on these feelings; he helped and advocated helping the less fortunate because he felt it was right.-

quote:

---

I can find something in the passage that indicates that Darwin approves of the decimation of savage races, namely his expressed hope for higher.

---

Yes, I am sure that anyone can find what they are looking for in Descent of Man; eisegesis is not a hard skill to pick up.Since you are so convinved that Darwin was an unrepentent racist, and that his theory is a justification of racism, and nothing I or anyone else can say is going to change your mind, I will let you have the last word on this. I find that I am just repeating the same thing over and over again, a game I do not find all that enjoyable.

I think you may find the repetition stems from just seeking arguments to defend Darwin, in stead of exploring Darwin's work in respect to the ideal of objectivity. The reality of the complexities of objectivity and subjectivity in Darwin's work do not coincde with your simplistic notions of objectivity.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

The whole notion of survival of the fittest is being misinterpreted in our western culture. The actual competition in the evolutionary process has hardly any link to the survival chances of the individual. Individuals of the same species almost by rule don’t compete for food except when there is real shortage. The real competition lies on the side of procreation, having sex. This only ensures the survival of the genes. That’s what is wrong in our western cultural thinking, we think it’s the survival of the fittest individual, while in evolutionary reality it’s all for the next generation, and the next, etc.