If there isn't enough food the kids to survive or be it can be reproductively beneficial
for the parent to kill its own offspring.
Free up resources for the other kids or themselves and future kids.
Lots of animals do it, it seems natural.
So does that mean abortion or even killing a kid shortly after birth, is OK?
Studying evolution is kind of like studying sedimentation.
We look at these of rocks, and we want to know why they are the way they are.
We see weathering, we see erosion, we see deposition, we look at what the rock is made
of and we think about how long time is, times like real long, and we can start to get a
picture for why the rocks are the way they are.
Same with living things, we look at them, we look at how they work, we look at what
they're made of.
We see reproduction, we see death, we see mutation, and we start get a picture why we
are the way we are.
Why we might see a killing your own offspring behaviour.
But sometimes what's considered "natural" is taken to inform our rules.
For example, if life's all about "survival of the fittest", if the best organisms out
compete others to pass on more of their DNA, if whether a person can do something comes
down to ability, strength and power, let's let the strong get what they can.
And let the weak suffer their fate?
No rules for businesses, just competition.
If I have more than anyone else, it's only because I am better and stronger.
That's the natural order, the "survival of the fittest".
But there's some things wrong with this viewpoint?
First of all "fitness" in this context, doesn't mean how much power you have or how much you've
exercised.
It's also not how fit you are as a result of your DNA.
Like how genetically determined your smarts, speed and strength are.
OK, this fitness is Darwinian fitness or Biological fitness . It's trying to measure the reproductive
success of a genotype or a trait or an allele.
Basically counting up whatever reproducing thing we're focussed on like a gene purple
skin and sort of assuming the differences in amount of that gene generation to generation,
is as a result of that gene.
Everything else being equal.
You would need a large sample to estimate something like that, as there's lots of other
stuff going on.
But this is the general idea.
What you get out of that is the biological fitness.
A sort of general probability of something reproducing.
In this example it looks like genes for purple skin have a relatively good probability.
They have a relatively higher fitness than genes for grey skin.
The phrase "survival of the fittest" is really saying, or it's trying to say, the ones that
survive and reproduce more, are likely to continue to survive and reproduce into the
future and you'll see them more.
Things that reproduce more will reproduce more.
It's a very simple idea.
But it completely fails at trying to say that, doesn't it.
The phrase only makes sense if you understand what biological fitness is.
And if you understand what biological fitness you're probably never going to say the phrase.
Because it makes no gosh darn sense.
Maybe a gene or reproducer with more speed and strength would always just reproduce more,
and that's something?
But not if we factor the extra food they might need to maintain traits like these.
There's lots of organisms that reproduce just fine being relatively slow and weak.
Reproduction depends on how an organism interacts with their environment, never just a trait
alone.
Camouflage, dispersal and photosynthesis would all help reproduction in the right environment.
As would cooperation.
If there is a way to interact with an environment such multiple people can get more than individuals
acting alone, you've got a place where mutations that promote cooperation will be reproductively
beneficial.
Maybe as one example empathy.
We don't just look at one another as objects that can have value to us, we can understand
and consider each other's experience.
At the level of the brain, often experiencing something and watching someone experience
it, will stimulate the same areas.
It looks like we're trying to put ourselves into their shoes.
It looks like we're feeling disgust or happiness when we see them disgusted or happy.
This might be a motivator for us to make other people happy and not make them unhappy.
Or if not that, then at the very least, help us understand what we can do for them, drawing
upon what we would want people to do for us.
Anyway.
Yes, a male polar bear surviving on its own, competing with other males, depending on his
own strength and self-interest, might be relatively fit.
Doing morality based on survival of the fittest if you want to call it that.
But then so would a male bonobo who may be submissive to everybody else but who works
well within the community.
And so would a male human who got a job at a sperm bank, and replaced all the DNA with
his own.
But is this is it?
Is the only reason we're not taking more ethics lessons from what works for reproduction or
what seems natural?
We're just not doing it quite right?
What would it be about the way things are that even needs fulfilling, or repeating,
such that we think it ought to be?
Ought to be, meaning we should try to make this idea a reality.
Thinking it ought to be is a sort of command or expectation for things to be like that.
Why should what's natural matter?
I mean if we're in the mood for taking natural occurrences as life lessons, maybe dying without
reproducing is what we ought to be doing.
There's a difference between the way things are, and the way we think they ought to be.
And the way a thing is, isn't an automatic justification that we should try to make it
or keep it that way.
This is the "is-ought" distinction, or "is-ought" gap.
It means you can't take ideas about the way things are and then use that information logically
to say what ought to be.
For example if we think: Frank has 2 peaches, and he gets 1 more peach, and there's nothing
else going on.
Then it logically follows that Frank now has 3 peaches.
There's no other way to interpret what he has based on this information, he has 3 peaches.
But if we think: Frank has 2 peaches.
Does it then follow that he ought to have 3?
Does that follow?
No there's no way to interpret this situation where we can come to that idea.
He doesn't ought to have 3 or 2 or any number based on this.
What if we say peaches are delicious?
Does it follow that he ought to have them?
No.
Eating them may trigger the feeling of deliciousness, but that's all that means.
It doesn't mean a situation where he has them ought to be the case.
Our ideas about how peaches are, don't logically lead to how we should do about it.
The idea that he ought to have them is coming from somewhere else.
If Sally is hitting Frank with a stick, and he doesn't want to be hit with a stick, it
hurts.
Does it follow that she ought to stop?
No.
But it does look like he's going to think she ought to stop.
Because he wants her to stop.
And if we empathize with him, we don't want him to get hurt, or we don't people to hit
other people with sticks in general, that means we might get hit, and if we don't care
about what she wants right now, we're also likely going to think she ought stop.
Then way we're going to think things ought to be, is going to be related to our wants,
needs, experiences and instincts.
We want it to be a certain way so we think it ought to be.
Or we look at a way things could be, and wonder relatively speaking which we like more or
at least dislike less.
But what makes us want?
What makes things better or worse or feel right or wrong?
Why do we think things ought to be a certain way or not another?
One way to look at that is through the lens of our reproductive history.
If mutations in DNA can affect the way we are and what we tend to gravitate towards
and away from.
We can then imagine why any mutations that make us attracted to one another and makes
us feel pleasure from rubbing our junk together, might stick around.
Why attractions towards useful molecules like salt and sugar might stick around.
For their benefit for cooperation, mutations that drive us to be kind, punishing, and forgiving,
should stick around.
Genes for any of these traits should benefit the reproduction of those genes and we should
see them more.
Or at the very least genes for some sort of self-interest, which could be as simple as
hunger and a desire for sex, that would then motivate learning that there's a benefit from,
for example being kind, punishing and forgiving.
Environmental influences are essential for the way we are especially for anything relating
to brains and behaviour.
But any want we have will always come back to some sort of capacity or motivation for
that want, that was genetically influenced, if only in a small or indirect way.
But wait wait wait wait... wait.
If we are creatures of evolution, who like and dislike things based on what worked and
didn't work for reproduction, why aren't we going with ethics that promote some sort of
survival of the fittest again?
Isn't wanting reproduction, what we are?
Not really, we were not designed for reproduction.
Our impulses and what we want, reproduced and that's why they still exist today.
But the genetic aspect of those wants would have come from random mutations.
Our attraction and repulsion to things isn't necessarily going to line up with our models
of natural selection.
For example, we have a great attraction towards relationships and sex, but not necessarily
making babies.
Many of us will use contraceptives to prevent making babies past a few children.
Even deciding to have no children, despite having the resources and being committed in
a long-term relationship.
There's a difference between what a model says we want, and what we actually want.
Which matters, because it's how we feel about things, and what we want and don't want, that
leads into how we're going to think things ought to be like.
There's nothing about the fact that couples will decide to have no children that can automatically
tell us whether this is good or bad.
They may think it's better while we might have argument for why it's not.
But that's the point.
The is-ought distinction draws attention to the idea that, goodness and badness, and better
and worse, don't exist outside our minds.
What if there was a thing that was just dripping with badness.
It was the worst thing that ever existed, or it was one of the worst action that was
ever committed.
But it's didn't affect us.
Not even aesthetically.
And it's not affecting any conscious creature or even object that we can empathize with.
What's left over?
We wouldn't think to call it bad would we.
It doesn't have any of the features we would associate with something be bad.
We don't care, nobody cares, it's not affecting anyone, why is it bad again?
Goodness and badness aren't properties that exist out in the world.
They only come into play when we feel a certain way about things.
When we feel that it's good or bad.
When it affects a brain in a way it cares about.
At some point that's what a brain does.
Takes in information, and guides the body, makes us attracted or repelled to certain
experiences or actions.
Makes us feel things are fair or unfair, and makes us do wanting.
OK, it's not that there is good in the world, that it's good so it ought to be so that goodness
happens.
It's us that feel things are relatively better or worse for us or people we empathize with,
then we think things ought to be a certain way based on that.
It seems like just silly semantics.
But the point is it's out of what people like and want, where our commands, expectations,
and wishes for the world and one another, come from.
So if someone does want reproduction, and societal rules based on their ideas of survival
of the fittest.
If they feel that might is right, not just a descriptor of the world, but as a goal to
reach for.
They're just wants, out of someone's brain, to fulfill what they think they want.
It's not some fundamental natural order that needs to be fulfilled for its own sake.
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