Different in degree or kind: a book agrees with Adler (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, February 12, 2016, 18:46 (3207 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: The moral “sense” comes with self-awareness. You wouldn't have a moral sense if you did not have to weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the community.-
You are applying lots of self-awareness to animals. Doesn't work.-> DAVID: Only some species are monogamous.
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> dhw: Every act of mating is individual. Monogamy is irrelevant. Do you or do you not agree that “appreciation of beauty” in the form of appearance, song, smell etc. has a role in the animal kingdom? If you do, then there you have the evolutionary beginnings of aesthetics.-Yes there is sexual play and dances with animals. Note the displays are always the same like the peacock's tail, or the polar bears playing until exhausted, resting and then mating. The key is the romantic play doesn't vary. For my view of you, you are still attributing too much to original animal action rather than recognizing instinctual behavior. 
> DAVID: Tell that to Thomas Nagel!
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> I am pointing it out to you, in response to your support for O'Hear and your complaint that I understate the gap. Why bring in Nagel?-Because Nagel raises the same questions as Adler. -> DAVID: We know complexification occurred by the history we see. We do not know why or how, or based on bacteria, that it was even needed by the stresses of nature. It had to be a given process.
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> dhw: “Needed” is not the point, as that = survival. I don't know the origin of organic awareness and the ability to improve, but those would be the “given” factors. How they are used would then depend on the nature of the organism and of the environment. That is Chapter 2, entitled Evolution, in the Book of Life.-This is the point of Denton's new book: Is functional need important or is everything built into structural types created by natural law which then evolve by the patterns set in the beginning? This is thinking that pre-dated Darwin, and Denton feels it is making a comeback. Remember I recognized patterns a long time ago. Denton is teaching me another approach to the whole problem of why things complexify if they are surviving in a truly satisfactory fashion.