Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Natural Conflict
versus
Cultural Peace

 Post 54. October 16, 2018

    Natural Law vs Cultural Morality

     Conservative vs Liberal vs Natural Justice

 Moral codes of the world are arrayed in a rainbow of colors, ranging from simple self-interest at one extreme ─ "what's good for me is all that matters" ─ to selfless altruism on the other end of the spectrum ─ "my personal interests must be subordinated to some general good". The former is the ethic of a Selfish Gene, and the latter is the stone-graved law of some totalitarian religions and political authorities. Fortunately, most ethical codes in the real world are somewhere in the middle, serving the interest of some group or lineage of genes, while maintaining some freedom for individuals to pursue their own ends.

Natural Laws are amoral1, in that they make no allowance for the interests of single organisms. Lone creatures have no Natural Rights, except to compete or die, like gladiators in the cosmic Colosseum. However, due to the statistical Law of Large Numbers, interrelated groups of entities do have some extra clout in the arena of might-makes-right struggles for survival. That's why homo sapiens have developed the concept of communal Cultural Laws, to limit inter-personal competition enough to foster human flourishing. While we may savor the notion of divinely-mandated Natural Rights, in practice we implement those utopian principles in the form of Legal Rights.

Ironically, our pragmatic social accommodations, are them-selves products of winner-take-all contests between ideas and ideals. Case in point : the perennial bloody bouts between liberal and conservative interpretations of the public & private Good. For instance, Fascist morality differs from Democratic mores in one key area : the theoretical foundation of moral value. For Fascists, the state (body politic) is the focus of moral concern, while for Liberals & Democrats, it's the individual moral agent.

Nazism more narrowly defined the Body Politic to make a particular sub-group of humanity their collective moral agency, specifically : the “Aryan” race. If not for that "chosen people" exception, the Nazi morality could be an extension of the coldly impartial evolutionary ethic, exemplified in Natural Selection. Nazi policy was to ruthlessly eradicate any pollutants in the gene pool of their Master Race. Likewise Nature – while showing no favoritism to any specific lineage – heartlessly roots-out handi-capped organisms. It seems to be indifferent to the moral rights of individual beings, weeding-out the week without weeping.

Instead of selecting individual creatures, Nature chooses functional traits. And it appears to set the value of its fitness filter relative to some universal teleological ideal that it is progressing toward2. Its selection criterion seems to be geared toward, not just reproduction – that's merely the means – but toward tighter integration & organization of parts into functioning organisms, as steps toward some barely imaginable ultimate end. Eventually, those self-referencing and self-reproducing systems become aware of Self-Other distinctions.

After strains of sentient Selves3 became self-conscious, that knowledge of Us & Them raised ethical issues known as Good & Evil. They then became aware of Ends & Means, and with that understanding, they began to take control of their own evo-lutionary destiny, in the form of Culture. Of course, the ideal objective imagined by any particular culture is not pre-destined. The cultures themselves will be subject to evolutionary pruning, if they cannot compete in the struggle for social survival. But the criteria for Cultural Selection will be human aspirations. And those may sometimes conflict with the values of Nature.

Post 54 continued . . . click Next

NOTES

By “Natural Law” I mean the Laws of Physics as known by Cause & Effect, actions & reactions. I’m not talking about the theological arguments that purport to find justification for Cultural laws in Natural systems.

By “Cultural Law” I refer to the Rules of Rulers that place limits on physical freedom of the ruled.

By “Moral Law” I’m talking about the Laws of Selves as expressed in Ends & Means. Ends are the goals of conscious creatures, and Means are physical actions that are used to attain those aims. When selves disagree on their ends & means, they must either fight or finesse to limit the range of moral means .

1. Amoral Nature :
Nature has always presented two faces to the meta-phorical minds of the human race. On one hand we have nurturing Mother Nature bringing Spring rains to water our newly planted crops. But on the other side, we have “Nature, red in tooth and claw”, which shows no mercy for defenseless humans. So, the Liberal notion of Natural Rights bestowed by Nature’s God, may be a propaganda myth to make us feel good about our high-minded form of self government : “of the people, by the people, and for the people”. Not “of God, by divine fiat, for His chosen people”.
See Post 53, Moral Philosophies

2. Natural Selection :
Evolution seems to be guided, not by random accidents, but by inherent programming constraints (laws) that govern each step of the process. Those conditional IF-THEN logic gates serve as algorithms to impose order on an otherwise random process. That’s why some kind of Ultimate Programmer seems to be a necessary inference from the teleological or teleonomic progress of the universe toward some Final Ouput.
See Evolutionary Programming

3. Selves :
In Terrence Deacon’s theory of the evolution of human cognition, “Selves” are entities capable of intentions, and of self-direction, including self-regeneration (reproduction). This is a more scientific alternative to the ancient notion of “Souls”.
See Self/Soul in glossary.

Neither Ghosts Nor Machines, The Emergence and Nature of Selves
Jeremy Sherman