From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Mon May 25 14:05:10 EDT 1992
Article 5628 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: AI failures
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <MORAVEC.92May10004528@turing.think.com> <1992May12.081742.22060@norton.com> <upsnbINNk2c@early-bird.think.com>
Message-ID: <1992May13.210948.5060@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 May 1992 21:09:48 GMT

In article <upsnbINNk2c@early-bird.think.com> moravec@Think.COM (Hans Moravec) writes:
>In article <1992May12.081742.22060@norton.com>, brian@norton.com (Brian Yoder) writes:
>|>  
>|> On what basis do you claim that morality is an issue of *social* rules?  
>|> Doesn't morality have anything to say to people living on desert islands 
>|> all alone?  Things like "Don't be lazy!" and "Don't take foolish risks!".
>
>Society conditions us (especially as children) to act in ways we
>probably wouldn't if we grew up in a state of nature. 

For someone who disparages "dead humanist windbags", this sound an awful
lot like Rousseau.  And, using the term "state of nature" to imply that
solitary existence is the natural state of humans is just plain wrong.
Humans, just like our primate ancestors, are social creatures.  Society,
in whatever form, *is* our true "state of nature".

>|> If anything, the fact that morality is a matter of life or 
>|> death means that we ought to use our best tools to address the questions at 
>|> hand (ie. reason rather than unidentified emotions or traditions).
>
>Sure.  But reasonable people make mistakes, and the bottom line is still
>trying things out and seeing how they work.  Marx's reasoning convinced
>a lot of people on how to structure a just society.  His conclusions
>were tried out. 

It could very well be argued that they *weren't* really tried out, but
altered beyond recognition by the regimes that used his name.  This is 
certainly the claim made by some groups.

> They didn't work.   (Social) Evolution in action.

And capitalism *does* work?  (Counterexample provided upon request...)

>|> slavery kept enormous numbers of people from developing their powers
>|> fully and resulted 
>|> in arrested development of civilization.  Are you saying that because it 
>|> existed it must have been good or must have served a purpose (and a 'good' 
>|> one at that!)?   Incredible!
>
>I think a strong argument could be made that the early civilizations
>depended on slavery the way ours depends on mechanization, and wouldn't
>have worked otherwise.

So therefore it was right?

>  The citizens of Egypt, Greece and Rome had
>the leisure time to develop many, many things that remain the basis of our
>world because slaves were doing most of the necessary the hard work
>to support basic survival.
"Basic survival" of the *free*, and *not* basic survival of all members of
the culture.  (BTW, would *you* have been content to be a slave in Rome,
knowing that, in your small way, you were producing the leisure time
necessary to develop the foundations of Western civilization.  *I* certainly
wouldn't have been...)

>   > Of course, name calling is an effective tool in political debate,
>   > and sways opinions.
>
>|> "Useful" for what?  Deceit?  Do you think that morality is just a con game 
>|> for politicians who want to gain power?  You certainly seem to.
>
>	I think moral claims are often used as a political ploy to sway
>opinions for or against a government, a cause, a group.  Look how much
>mileage generations of US politicians gained by crusading against godless,
>immoral, communism.  And how much mileage communist politicians gained by
>crusading against evil, exploitative capitalism.

All of this is certainly true.  It indicates that morality, like *anything*
else, can be used to further political aims.  So?

>|> Aside from a few primitive reflexes (like the suckling reflex in infants) 
>|> human beings HAVE NO INSTINCTS.  Unlike animals, we have conscious control 
>|> of what we do.  How do you propose to demonstrate that these "instincts" 
>|> exist?  If you could somehow show that instincts (rather than choice) 
>|> determined our actions in some context, that would remove that area from 
>|> the field of morality, since morality deals specifically with matters of 
>|> choice.  If you have no choice about your actions, it makes no sense to 
>|> evaluate the morality of that situation.
>
>When we haven't eaten for a while we become hungry because of a
>conscious decision to be hungry, to salivate when food appears?
>When we reach puberty we suddenly become attracted to the other sex
>because we decided to do so the year before?  When someone punches
>us in the nose, we become instantly angry because of what we've been
>taught?   Mothers hold and protect their babies because of what
>they've seen on TV?   Children and adults form peer friendships
>because they learned how to in a book?  We enjoy looking at wide open
>spaces because we were taught to in school?

No doubt these things are instinctual.  The list you give, though, is
a far cry from what is necessary for the sociobiological claim that
almost *all* human ethics is derived from our evolutionary heritage. 

>Our social structures are built around many more instincts like these,
>in a sense perverting them to build something quite unlike the tribal
>context where they were initially developed and  tuned.  But like
>the biological genes that build the instincts, the
>cultural perversions are also inherited, via punishment/reward
>conditioning, by example and teaching.  The cultural part evolves
>a lot faster than the biological part, though.  For one thing
>the contents of a mind can change several times in a lifetime,
>but the DNA based biological heritage is frozen in an individual.

[various stuff deleted]

>|> > I'll take E.O. Wilson over your favorite dead humanist windbag any day.
>|> 
>|> I'm not familiar with Wilson.  What's his story?
>
>Harvard biologist known as the father of sociobiology.  Much
>of his life's work is a definitive study of insect societies.
>Really outraged the left in the 1970s by applying evolutionary
>reasoning to social development in humans.  Was doused with
>water by yippies while giving an invited lecture at a AAAS
>meeting around 1975.
>There was a lot of controversy about his positions (most of
>it by some of his left leaning former students like Roger Lewontin)
>in the 1970s, but that has faded away and his views are now
>part of the biological mainstream.

Um...aren't we being a little misleading here?  The debate between
Wilson, Dawkins, and others vs. Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould, and others
has by no means "faded away", nor, as far as I understand it, is
radical sociobiology embraced by most biologists.  It *is* true that
there has been a recognition that evolution shapes behaviour as well
as morphology.  However, the "just-so stories" that sociobiologists
try to tell about behaviours are for the most part simply ad hoc
accounts, with *very* little work examining the actual selection
pressures at work, and *no* attempt to quantify their work, or indeed
suggest what would count as a falsification of their explanation.  This
is "science"?  Sounds more like religion to me...

By the way, I would still suggest that you read _Vaulting Ambition_
by Kitcher.  His extremely detailed attack on Wilson is simply
devastating.   

>The message hasn't gotten through to the softer heads
>in the humanities, though.

But didn't you say that *society* shapes us, too?  So why should we
be that interested in a view that for the most part denies this?

>You'd love to hate him.   I'd love to see you hate him.
>Like watching Elmer Fudd driven to apoplexy by that cwazy wabbit.

Honestly, Hans, must you be *quite* so rude?

[BTW, this topic is straying from the domain of this newsgroup.  Is there
someplace else we should send it (alt.flame, perhaps ;-)]


- michael


