[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 15:53:41 -0800
Donal wrote, quoting Walter
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...
and then me
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.
He responds
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.
Well, part of my complaint against Walter was that
[t]here'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).
I should have written '...even though, as a statement...' Beyond that,
I see no reason to revise anything in this paragraph. People can, out of
ignorance, will all sorts of things. The objection that one can't will
things that are impossible, e.g., so that such willing is incoherent, is
an objection made at a different level. Surely, one can will what one
believes one can accomplish, even though a description of what they are
trying to accomplish may be ultimately self-contradictory, or the
enterprise itself impossible to complete in the sublunar sphere.
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.
I see that I've blundered around trying to respond to this above.
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)].
True. It's a different sense. And it was directed against a different
point, viz., that we can will (plan, propose, consider doing, intend)
things for a few without violating an requirement that our willed acts
(or our acts of will) should be universalizable (somehow). I'd meant to
talk about this in response to Richard Henninge. The exchanges on these
topics come thick and fast.
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.
I suggest the former because because 'the survival of the fittest' is
not the description of a 'willable' action—it is an expression used in
and somewhat elucidated by a theory. 'I will the survival of the
fittest,' is a mysterious utterance, although I can imagine some
divinity saying this in a Cecil B. DeMille epic.
According to the highest sources, it's 20 degrees F warmer in London
than it is outside my front door.
Robert Paul
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