[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life

--- On Fri, 12/12/08, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> wokshevs@xxxxxx wrote re 'survival of the fittest'
> 
> > Formulated as a maxim:
> 
> > In cases of limited resources and competition for
> these resources, only the
> > fittest shall survive.
> 
> > It looks like this is a non-universalizable maxim
> because it displays
> > self-contradiction...
> 
> This doesn't strike me as a maxim, seeing as how it
> isn't framed as something a person could, in that form,
> will. As it is, it sounds more like something God might, for
> some reason, decree.

It is unclear, because the use of the word "shall" is ambivalent, whether the 
"shall" above denotes "will" or "should" (or both) (cp. 'You shall go to the 
ball' with 'Thou shall not kill']. That 'only the fittest will survive' is 
clearly not something that can be willed where the claim is either a tautology 
(or almost one) or is an empirical claim. That 'only the fittest should 
survive' is something that can be willed only where it is not taken as a 
tautology or empirical law but as a normative claim.

> There's nothing contradictory about willing that only
> the fittest should survive (in fact, as a statement about
> how organisms prosper and decline, it looks more like a
> tautology, 'fittest' being defined in terms of
> survival). 

Since, in its Darwinian sense, 'survival of the fittest' is either a (near) 
tautology or an empirical claim, in this sense it cannot be willed. It cannot 
be properly 'willed' because to be able to 'will' something is to be able to 
form a certain mental intention in relation to an aim or end that we can bring 
about by voluntary action. We cannot bring about a tautology or an empirical 
law by voluntary action and so cannot genuinely 'will' them as an end or aim.

>If I were to will that only the fittest students
> should be admitted to Okshevsky U., I'd be doing nothing
> prima facie immoral or illogical. Yet if 'fittest'
> is cashed out in terms of grades and test scores, there
> might be objections to my willing this, on the grounds that
> some less advantaged students should be given a chance.

This is to switch to a concept of the 'fittest' prospering that it quite 
removed from the Darwinian sense of 'survival of the fittest'. Here the concept 
of 'fittest' is one we choose as a basis for selection and where we choose the 
criteria by which we measure it (e.g. grades and test scores). In 'natural 
selection' the creatures are taken, typically, not to choose that there are 
selection pressures or their specific character*. [*This is an aspect of 
standard Darwinism that may be challenged as creatures may to some extent 
select the selection pressures they are subject to by acting to change their 
ecological niche (e.g. a mammal that evolves from sea-dweller to ground-dweller 
or tree-dweller or underground-dweller through its exploratory actions)]. 

Moreover, the rejection of students because of their lesser grades may enhance 
rather than diminish their reproductive success and so not impact on their 
fitness to survive in any properly Darwinian sense. 

If we imagine a boat adrift on an ocean where survival of those on board 
depends on cannibalising some of the others on board, the selection of those 
others could be made in accordance with some notion of 'survival of the 
fittest'. That is, those most likely to survive the longest given access to 
cannibalised nutrition should be entitled to kill those least likely to 
survive. [In a famous legal case it was held 'necessity' in such circumstances 
was not a defence to murder]. But this is very much a special case that has 
little to do with 'survival of the fittest' in a Darwinian sense and much to do 
with survival at other's expense as an unavoidable moral dilemma. In other 
words, insofar as 'survival of the fittest' is taken as a moral maxim or 
normative claim it is akin to 'women and children first' as a basis for 
selection when survival is threatened and has very little, if anything, to do 
with 'survival of the fittest' in the Darwinian sense.    

That Robert Paul can both suggest that 'survival of the fittest' is not 
something a person could "will", and also suggest "There's nothing 
contradictory about willing that only the fittest should survive", can only be 
squared if we understand that 'survival of the fittest' is being deployed in 
two quite distinct ways here - in one as an 'unwillable' tautology or empirical 
law and in the other as a 'willable' maxim or basis for selection.
 
Donal




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