[lit-ideas] Re: Aesthetics and Evolution/Denis Dutton RIP

  • From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 15:15:34 -0600

Perhaps the survival value of suicide rests in the removal from the species
of those individuals who would commit suicide.  It would be best if
suiciders offed themselves prior to producing any suicidal progeny, but
obviously that isn't always the case, still the principle holds good for if
everyone killed themselves then suicide would have no preservation virtue,
but if only those who are inclined to commit suicide do so before any
profligate reproduction then suicide has preservation value.  A conjectural
way of looking at this was suggested by Kurt Vonnegut in his short story
Welcome To The Monkeyhouse in which people are urged to visit The Federal
Ethical Suicide Parlors and help relieve massive world overpopulation.

Mike Geary
preserving himself in Memphis (a social kind of suicide)



On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

>
> --- On Sun, 2/1/11, David Savory <dsavory@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >I think I have a better understanding of my own objection to Denis'
> theory: he's only being a little bit of a scientist.It's all very well to
> say "Well, this trait has persevered therefore it confers some survival
> value" but then you totally stop being a scientist and you begin telling
> non-falsifiable just-so stories.>
>
> For those interested there is material on Denis' theory, easily googled,
> including:-
>
> http://boingboing.net/2010/11/23/denis-dutton-a-darwi.html
>
> Without referencing the specifics of Dutton's or anyone else's theory
> (which may or may not rest on the claim) the claim that a trait that has
> "persevered" or survived "therefore...confers some survival value" itself
> needs very careful unpacking if it is to amount to more than a
> non-explanatory or pseudo-explanatory 'tautology', or even something
> testable but false. The "trait" of committing suicide has "persevered" in
> the human species, for example, yet in what (Darwinian) sense does it confer
> some survival value? It is compatible with Darwinism that adaptions/adaptive
> traits may "persevere" or survive even if they are "poor" from the POV of
> ensuring survival, at least until they prove so "poor" that they are
> eliminated - and so dispositions/traits may "persevere" that are more
> conducive to death than survival. "Poor" adaptions may even outlast
> seemingly better adaptions, such are the contingencies of evolutionary
> history.
>
> Donal
> Where the river is not dry yet
> But it's getting there
> London
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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