So what? He was wrong about some aspects of evolution. His texts aren't holy writ. Debates go on.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 3:06 amTrue of things generally: but an evolved feature cannot be both evolutionarily adaptive and evolutionarily maladaptive. Darwin was quite clear that unless a development produces a distinct survival advantage, and does not create a survival disadvantage, it cannot be selected for.Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sun Jun 07, 2020 9:44 pm 3 A thing can be adaptively both advantageous and disadvantageous.
#3 just begs the whole question. It assumes we "tend to make" judgments, but gives us no explanation of why it's more adaptive to "tend to" delude ourselves at all.
Again, there are many ways in which our tendency to hold incorrect beliefs may have had - and have - adaptive advantages.
As I pointed out - which you chose to ignore - what used to be advantageous can become disadvantageous - as has happened with religious and other kinds of supernatural superstition.If so, that creates the other problem: that we should not have reason to reject a belief that has proved adaptive so far, without thereby instantly jeopardizing our survival. If religion was once adaptive, as you insist, then explain why we ought to surrender that adaptive advantage.
No. Pay attention. We can be deceived into believing something - such as that fairies, gods and moral facts exist - but the belief itself isn't deceptive. For example, if people believe the earth is flat, they just believe something that isn't the case. No deception is necessary or even implied. You're not using a standard English expression.Ha. Then substitute the word "deceptive, "and this whole objection evaporates. Both agents and beliefs can be deceptive.Being deceitful is usually an attribute of an agent - never of a belief.
No, it's false. Your premise ' if morality isn't objective, then it must be relative' doesn't follow - except in the sense that the claims of descriptive moral relativism are true; and so is the metaethical claim that, when moral assertions conflict, there's no objective way to settle the conflict, because there are no moral facts.No, it's true. A non-objective belief is necessarily relative to the "agency" having it. Remove that agency (the person or culture) and the moral belief has nothing else upon which to exist, since it has no objective moral grounding at all. So it's relative to the agency.False...But if one rejects objective morality, one is obviously a relativist...meaning that whatever one says "morality" might be, it has to be "relative" to societies, interest groups or individuals. So the only way one can avoid relativism, then, is by being illogical, and not really thinking through what "subjective" entails.
You can deny it...but you can't escape the logic.
But I believe slavery and the oppression of women are, were and will be morally wrong anywhere in the universe, even if they were endorsed and never condemned by the devil of the Abrahamic faiths. I make that judgement universally, which is why I can and do condemn the monster you worship.
