I realize you were tired, but did you read what I wrote? "While
we may have the capacity for language and learning "ethics" without other
people we won't learn them, ..." I am sure we have capacity for "ethics" - which, imo, are merely part and parcel of the rules for social interaction. If you were raised with no people around, I'm not sure you would develop any, just as you would probably lose the ability to develop language. Ethics require someone else to be ethical with, AFTER they are learned they can be practiced in isolation, but I happen to think that what ethics you do pick up (like religion) are a mere accident of birth. And I disagree with you that the Darwinian model no longer applies. Our survival will depend on our values, we may not know, or be able to see which values could destroy us, but if we pick the wrong ones, I am sure they could. I am utterly confident that humans have the power to destroy themselves as a species. And I am equally confident that given an inopportune set of value choices, and decisions leading from those choices, we could destroy our species. If we do that, the Darwinian model will have spoken loud and clear...but there may be no one here to hear it. :-) If the Darwinian model speaks in a forest and there aren't any humans left to hear it, does it make a noise? |
