From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Wed 15 Feb 2006 - 02:14:30 GMT
At 03:06 PM 2/13/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>This is why I said Bentham-style -- the point being the scope is not
>universal; they kill themselves for the greater good of a bounded group of
>people.
The propensity to do so is the result of evolution, i.e., selection, in the
Stone Age. It requires Hamiltons' inclusive fitness where you have to
consider the genetic value of relatives.
>And how they believe they are acting is closely related; moral in their
>frame in a Benthian sense, immoral by another
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham
An amazing amount of philosophy can be reanalyzed from the ground up with
evolutionary psychology using the "selfish gene" and "inclusive fitness"
model. The history of "good times" is that of expanding the circle of
those considered worthy of rights--even to animals. The history of bad
times is quite the reverse.
Keith Henson
>Wade Allsopp wrote:
>>I think its got zero to do with Benthan and utlilitarianism. The key
>>tenet onf
>>utilitarianism is universalism - the idea that it doesn't matter who you
>>make happy or sad,
>>you just need to add up all the happyness/sadness or utility.
>>Whatever is going through their mind, I think we can be pretty sure that
>>the bombers attribute little
>>or no value to the suffering and pain they cause to their victims and
>>their families, indeed the general
>>presumption seems to be the more Jews or non Muslims that are killed the
>>better.
>>I'm also pretty sure that they believe they are acting highly morally.
>>It's just that (I would guesss) 99%
>>of non muslims would disagree and maybe 80% (?) of muslims too.
>>Wade
>>
>>
>>On 2/13/06, *Chris Taylor* <chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk
>><mailto:chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk>> wrote:
>> > Virgins or not, a few folks, even adults, seem to think blowing
>> yourself
>> > up and killing innocents is a good thing to do. To me, that
>> sounds like
>> > not knowing right from wrong, which qualifies as crazy in many
>> Western
>> > jurisdictions.
>> This is just a Bentham-style maximised benefit thing surely, not
>> immoral, just amoral..? Certainly not crazy (although I'd assert
>> rather misled).
>> Cheers, Chris.
>> ~~
>
>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk
> http://psidev.sf.net/
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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