Human ethics transcend nature
I don't think that's true. Of course you can come up with ethical systems which transcend nature but the ones that actually get adopted are simply sets and heuristics which make the group benefit the most from "just how it is."
Considering that moral attitudes are partially heritable, on a long enough time-scale, ethics that are truly separate from nature are bound to disappear or be relegated to marginal groups of people.
I suspect that human ethics transfer much faster memetically than genetically. In which case, their heritability is relatively unimportant. What matters is believability. It seems as though there will be a natural ebb and flow between ethics which propagate by defeating others, and ethics which propagate by convincing them. The equilibrium ethics will be somewhere in between, as I believe we observe for most real societies.
human ethics transfer much faster memetically than genetically
Almost certainly. But they transfer much more permanently genetically.
Re:The Strength of Us Versus Them
by carsongross on Saturday June 24, 2017 @03:44PM
(#14627155)
> get adopted are simply sets and heuristics which make the group benefit the most from "just how it is."
"Group" is a slippery thing, though. There is always a tendency for individuals and sub-groups to cheat on whatever wider group ethics might exist.
It's a more complex phenomena than most people give it credit for.
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I hear you, and agree. An individual human being living to increase the fitness of others would be considered extrememly mentally ill, possibly toxic in their inability to sustain themselves. When this is taken to a societal scale (ie many industrialized nations devouring themselves inside out for the benefit of a few at the very top and helping to pull many globally out of poverty) it is seen as somehow a sustainable thing. I'm not here to debate whether or not this is what should be done, but clearly the demographics of this way of being are the human equivalent of 'colony collapse disorder'.
That's not to say that nature and natures way can't inform ethics, or to commit to any particular ethical outlook.