Hi Platt and Squad
> "Emlen said female birds and mammals that seek sexual partners outside
> their partnership may be pushed by the biological drive to produce the
> best possible children. 'One of the patterns is that females seek males of
> high status and high quality,' he said. 'By doing so, they are able to
> produce offspring of higher quality that will be able to do better and
> survive better.’”
>
> Maybe Mr. Emlen read LILA with all his talk of "drives," “better,” "best,”
> "patterns," and "high quality."
I can see what you're getting at in one way but much of the above could have
come from almost any one of Richard Dawkins books. Dawkins would appear to
believe that existence stops at biology (OK so I'm misrepresenting him to a
degree, but not that much).
The drives Emlen is talking about are sexual drives, the patterns are patterns of
behaviour and the better, best and high quality are used as relative terms and not
as some form of absolute. Little of what he says is likely to bear much
resemblance to the MoQ - although I may be wrong!
> I’m always amused by scientists who in one breath speak like Mr. Emlen
> and then in the next breath claim that the universe shows no evidence of
> purpose.
And this is where the Subject/Object split causes problems in the use of
language, as pointed out by Jonathan in his post on "SO-cleavage of word
meanings". I would think that a number of the researchers involved in this area
would point out that 'objectively' there is no evidence of purpose in the universe
(without the tacit acceptance that some creator has created this purpose in some
way), but 'subjectively' there is a purpose but that it is relative to some desired or
desirable function.
Purpose in this sense is when a preformulated function is performed, but that type
of purpose presupposes that function is fulfilled for the benefit of a subject. This is
instrumental purpose (or value) and is generally acceptable in the SOM sense
because it can be ascribed by a subject to an object. It is one of the basic
proposals within Value theory. Where value theorists have great trouble is
providing 'empirical' evidence for the existence of Intrinsic Value.
What I think we have good grounds to propose with the MoQ is the existence of
Intrinsic purpose or value, which is quite different in that it does not require the
subject to recognise value or purpose in the object as a fundamental pre-requisite
for existence. If value exists prior to S or O then it is by definition Intrinsic - i.e.
inherent, essential or belonging naturally (Concise Oxford English Dictionary).
Instrumental value is secondary.
> Incidentally, the battle going on the U.S. now between those who think
> President Clinton should be excused on the grounds that everybody lies
> about sex and those who think he should be impeached because he
> committed perjury is an obvious national case of biology at war with
> society. Those seeking moral guidance from the MOQ need not look far
> for contemporary examples.
Or it might have something to do with the Republicans and a certain upcoming
election? :)
On a more serious note though, I think we should be careful of proclaiming that
because society requires something of biology then it is society that is
necessarily right. If two societies declare war on each other and as a
consequence succeed in the mutual annihilation of their respective biological
base is this still right? I think this is a far too simplistic form of moral judgement.
Horse
"Making history, it turned out, was quite easy.
It was what got written down.
It was as simple as that!"
Sir Sam Vimes.
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