RICHARD DAWKINS. THAT’S NOT PHILOSOPHY. IT’S ENTERTAINMENT (I love it when I can

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/richard-dawkins/richard-dawkins-rape-tweets_b_5633885.htmlDEAR RICHARD DAWKINS. THAT’S NOT PHILOSOPHY. IT’S ENTERTAINMENT

(I love it when I can out-do one of the big guns.)

It is most interesting that none of these supposed dilemmas are dilemmas at all, but framings that take advantage of cognitive biases. If instead, we say that we insure one another as a means of ensuring voluntary cooperation between large numbers of super-predators, and that without trust, none of the circumstances where the above supposed moral dilemmas can exist. So we are far more conscious of, and respectful, of norms (the terms of reciprocal insurance) than we are of any other factor, and if we were not, then no ‘society’ would be possible.

Morality is not a subjective matter, as we have supposed for millennia. But reducible to statements of necessity given the requirements for humans to rationally choose to cooperate in numbers greater than direct kin. The error is the application of enlightenment universal individualism to what are necessary rules of cooperation – without which cooperation is not rational, utilitarian or possible.

I have attacked these moral fallacies in philosophy everywhere I find them. They are no more than victorian parlor games. That doesn’t mean they aren’t fun. It means that the answer is not contained in the framing of the question, but external to it.

It’s a form of entertainment, a demonstration of the power of suggestion, but it’s not science. And it’s not good philosophy or psychology either. 🙂

–Curt Doolittle . The Propertarian Institute . Kiev, Ukraine.–