> >Just out of curiosity, why should memetic viewpoint be fairly free of moral
> >judjements?
>
> It's a trap, isn't it? I say "memetic viewpoints should be free of moral
> judgements because a memetics fan believes an analysis of The Law in terms
> of self-replicating cultural agents is more fundamental than just a bunch of
> statements of personal moral belief," and then you jump back and say "ha ha,
> you said 'should', you're making a moral judgement!" and I cower.
>
> >I mean, most of us definately have a moral viewpoint or as we say
> >"Virian Virtues".
>
> In effect, yeh: I guess you could see a huge proportion of culture as moral
> statements of a kind... you know, newspaper articles that denounce alcoholic
> footballers, basically any item of culture that takes a side and makes value
> judgements... come to think about it, newspapers often seem more or less
> there to tell you how to behave, rather than just to report facts.
>
> Shit, so maybe I can't emit memes without implicitly making a moral
> judgement.
Funny you should say that, our Illustrious Professor Tim just presented an acticle
from someone about the function of the limbic system and decision making processes.
>From the article I gathered that our decision makig process first has to deal with
the emotions of the mind, before the rational aspect. This implies to me that all
decisions have the moral stamp of the person making the decision. Sure it is not
overly dominant in most of us, so our rational processed have a great deal of
effect on the process before any results come out, but it is still a frightening
thought to me.
> >If our virtues are to be guideposts of moral thought for the
> >church, then these morals will certainly have an effect on our viewpoint about
> >laws.
>
> Oh, I hadn't picked up on the intensity of the list's churchy overtones.
> Wow, I spent the years of my childhood sat at the back of church going "I'm
> not sure I'm convinced about all these 'morals'" and now I'm in the same
> position, only on a mailing list devoted to evolutionary processes in
> culture.
>
Generally we are not very "churchy" in the common sense, but we all pretty much
agree with the basic moral outlook or "virtues" Reason - Empathy - Vision. You can
see all this athttp://www.lucifer.com/virus
I think you will find that as far as churches go, we are pretty lax in most
respects, but we all seem to make at least one demand - you need to be rational -
no one seems to last too long if they come in speaking of the wonders of the
supernatural world and the glory of god. Some try, but with few exceptions, they
are unable to rationalize their viewpoint.
> >You are very right though that the "laws" themselves should be free of
> >moral judgements. We can all pretty much agree that homicide is bad in almost
> >all situations.
>
> Well yeh. I can say "murder is what happens when one person kills another
> and that killing is not endorsed by the culture in the context of which the
> killing is carried out", but at the end of the day, if someone broke into my
> flat and killed one of us, I'd say things like "This is bad." So that
> probably tells me what I really think. Or should that be which memes are
> really dominant?
You might not say homocide was bad though, had it been Geofrey Dahmer that got axed
- Its not so much that people dont like killing, its that people dont like people
they care about getting killed. Thanks to Empathy, we can spread our affections out
to include all of mankind, or in extreme cases, all that lives.
Bill Roh
Sodom