Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> 1. Humans are not worms & bees.
Watching the American presidential debates(?) I'm beginning to wonder. The mass media/punditocracy/"liberal" "intellectuals" have really shifted the goal posts on poor Ralph. A Gore victory is just as much a victory for the right as BUsh.The Canadian election campaign and media coverage of it are little better though it is better.
Anyway and seriously, humans are part of nature and part of the same ecosystems that all other lifeforms are and are subject to the same laws, so why ignore it? Bees and other species are also social and have their own social relations.
> 2. Why seek a moral lesson in nature, be it an "egoistic" or
> "altruistic" one? There is no shame in becoming extinct, as Stephen
> Jay Gould says.
There are no moral lessons in nature,only causal explanations of how nature works. Gould is a dyed in the wool Darwinian which commits him to certain views. I don't think he would dispute what I've posted about group selection.
>
> 3. Since humans are creatures of social relations, there is no pure
> "egoist." What looks like a problem of "egoism" to us may be
> something else altogether whose essence & cause the term "egoism"
> doesn't capture.
What are you worried about? Women(and men who support them)being called egoists for having abortions? It is a moral dilemma that has to be worked through. J.J. Thompson's argument for abortion would solve it. Another person or foetus does not have the right to your body.
You can hold that the human brain is a product of natural selection yet the mind is the product of social relations. Requires some fancy footwork though a la Wilfred Sellars.
Sam Pawlett