-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > Glen E. P. Ropella wrote: >> If we had access to perfect information, there'd be no need for morality. > > Why? Having perfect information says nothing about the distribution of > power.
I'll explain my rhetoric; but I'll trust that you realize I can't really _ground_ my rhetoric in data. I do believe there are valid scientific experiments that could arise from the rhetoric, though. My claim is that things like emotions, perceptions of "good", perceptions of "pornography" (can't define it but I know it when I see it), etc. are actually a culmination of physiological processes rather than ontologically extant things out the world. I.e. there is no such thing as "good behavior", "love", "trepidation", "pornography", etc. out there in reality. These are all just figments of human imagination. If we could correlate states of the body (including but not limited to the brain) with the body's environmental context, then we would see that things like "goodness" are dynamic attractors within the body that represent a kind of sensor fusion. They're merely high-level roll-ups of data we've taken from our environment. Morality is the individual's organization of, grammar for, and use of such high-level culminations. When such organizations, grammars, and usage patterns are communicable to many people and are actually communicated (i.e. some form of collective morality obtains), the individuals who are successful at manipulating the morality have the opportunity to take some measure of power over that collective. For example, a televangelist manipulates the morality of Christianity to acquire and hoard money. That's where power enters the picture. However, if all humans had access to perfect information, such a collective morality could not obtain because each individual could actually perceive reality as it is ... _without_ the culminated rules of thumb that are necessary for the ignorant to navigate an uncertain reality. Stated directly, because we only have imperfect information, we have to resort to heuristics to navigate the world. Such heuristics make us vulnerable to opportunists who happen to be more facile with manipulating such heuristics. If we could perceive the world as it actually is (i.e. had access to perfect info), we would not be vulnerable in this way. - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. -- Kurt Vonnegut -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGvHB5ZeB+vOTnLkoRAkDEAKCU2YbjylyBxEB3oxkUADL1yzBw3ACgitEG eoURig9fs5ctYGs/x9o5c6c= =Do6c -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
