Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth

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An over-lap exists, to be sure- I just found the implication that ANYTHING is objectively-moral or immoral amusing,
as well as the implication that ethics does not by definition involve reason.

I have doubts about your conclusion, or how it relates to your point.

From the dictionary:

ethics

plural noun
1.
( used with a singular or plural verb ) a system of moral principles: the ethics of a culture.
2.
the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.
3.
moral principles, as of an individual: His ethics forbade betrayal of a confidence. [b]

Tradition is far more involved than reason

In some moralities they burn witches, imprison blasphemers, beat unruly children, permit bankers to steal billions, let poor people starve, murder disobedient daughters. kill girls who have been raped. Does that look like reason?

They are? Since when?
I've yet very few outside academia familiar with the notion of deliberate argumentation.
I would say most opinions are formed un- or subconsciously, usually very similar if not identical to those of your original culture, and any "shaping" done is strictly post-hoc.


The majority of the ethical precepts people cling to serve no beneficial purpose, and are often indeed quite harmful to themselves and their group and species; why should the mechanisms leading to their formation (IF, as I highlighted before, we presume deliberate reasoning of any kind is usually involved in people's thinking) be any different?


No, we have to show that the underlying traits currently-manifesting as (a select few) people's ability to make good arguments were beneficial enough to get selected. Many if not all the traits modern humans possess were originally mis-firings:

As Dawkins (originator, w/ Krebs, of signalling theory) says
"Perhaps religion exists for the same reason computer viruses do: the indiscriminate transfer of information. For instance, we can all accept at face value that a child's willingness to dogmatically obey adults and adult tribe members and authority figures served a positive adaptive role in our history. But the extremely-malleable mind of a child cannot differentiate from 'Don't paddle your canoe in the crocodile-infested waters of the Limpopo' and 'You must sacrifice a goat at high-noon following every new moon, or else the rains will fail.' and thus, non-beneficial and even harmful information is passed from one generation to the next along with the good.

Well yes it could be, because just as "ethics" is not synonymous with "moralities",
"reason" is not synonymous with "not allowing for sh*t I think ain't cool according to my no more-objective ethical paradigm".

I could decide that because some people suffer horribly from allergies, crucifying as many kittens as possible is ethically-imperative,
and such would be no less an ethical system than any other.

Last edited by ValentineWiggin on 19 Jun 2011, 1:13 am, edited 2 times in total.

Well, you'd normally be right, but if the claim is that "reason was used for arguments, which were used for power", then this is selection based upon ability to argue, not on traits underlying ability to argue.

The distinction you pointed out though is useful and easy to not think about, particularly since we're tracking one detail so far and thus can miss that larger picture without care.

Ah, I see now.
I tend to get overly-excited when he or his ideas are referenced in any context and butt-in with more of his awesomeness.
D'oh!

It's ok. I mean, your view that arguments are just a matter of other underlying traits, not the actual selection criterion has validity. At the same time, human beings can reason, and this reasoning had to have value somewhere in the chain. I would imagine that it did something, even in criticizing ideas. It just.... isn't that transcendent force that people try to portray it as. I mean, practical reasoning, and even practical arguing doesn't seem like it is useless to me, it's the abstract things that are likely worse.

I don't understand what the significant difference is. How does rationality go about winning arguments if not through addressing what is plausible and what is not?

Reason is useful to the Thinking groups for cranking the engine at critical points in the research process.

Reason is useful to the Power groups for making garbage propositions look plausible.

GIGO lives.

But, admittedly, reason is a rather weak tool for garbage production. Faith is a far more powerful garbage producer.

The Greeks managed to produce Garbage with Reason. Look at Plato and Aristotle. From an empirical viewpoint, they are mostly Garbage.

ruveyn