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

by dhw, Saturday, February 13, 2016, 13:53 (3206 days ago) @ David Turell

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.
DAVID: You are applying lots of self-awareness to animals. Doesn't work.-No, the self-awareness is ours! My point is that morality has its evolutionary roots in the individual organism's relation to society, but our human self-awareness leads us to consciously articulate and question codes of behaviour to a degree far beyond animal “morality”.
 
DAVID: Only some species are monogamous.
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.
DAVID: 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.
 
I am arguing that what you call instinctual behaviour is the basis of all three attributes singled out by O-Hear as inexplicable through evolution. Every peacock display is different. That is why individual females will choose one male in preference to another. Ditto throughout the animal and human kingdom. I am not saying that our fellow creatures have the same “appreciation of beauty” as us, but like everything else, through our self-awareness we have developed what you call instincts (the same instincts) far beyond the scope of their origins.-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.
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.-DAVID: 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.-It will be interesting to hear what he means by “patterns”. Since he is an agnostic, I can hardly believe he means a computer programme for all innovations set out by your God 3.8 billion years ago. I have suggested that his “telic law” is the drive for survival and improvement, and that this law is implemented by an in-built, autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism (origin unknown) within the cell/cell communities. I eagerly wait to hear his alternative.