For KellyJay: on The Evolution of Morality

Originally posted by LemonJello
Your first concern you raised was that Joyce was just taking prosocial attitudes in the hominid line for granted. Surely, after reading the first chapter, you can see that concern was unfounded. After all, more or less the entirety of the first chapter is focused on evolutionary processes regarding the helping behaviors.

It's also not surprising that ...[text shortened]... judgments.”[/quote]

By the way, I plan to start a thread on the Willard book later this week.

I'm going through the chapters, I'll more than likely have to do it a 2nd time too since I'm
not seeing anything useful with respect to my earlier questions. Even here in your quote
we are talking about helpfulness, and I have not gotten an answer yet on stringing
together a thought let along a desire to help. Emotions have been spoken about, carrying
for the young and so on, the brain being forced to be small due to how it had to pass out
of the mother, but nothing on thoughts and desires.

It is much like the "life" debate when talking about abiogenesis most of the early
discussions are about the first cell, the cell is highly complex, getting to a cell is a huge
leap. So it has been with this book so far we are talking about helping kin, and nothing
has addressed even getting a "desire" let alone a helpful one.

I'll admit I'm about to start chapter 3 now, hopefully my complaints are meaningless when
I get through the next two chapters.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I'm going through the chapters, I'll more than likely have to do it a 2nd time too since I'm
not seeing anything useful with respect to my earlier questions. Even here in your quote
we are talking about helpfulness, and I have not gotten an answer yet on stringing
together a thought let along a desire to help. Emotions have been spoken about, carrying
f ...[text shortened]... hapter 3 now, hopefully my complaints are meaningless when
I get through the next two chapters.

I think you are shifting the goalposts. Please look back to the original posts where you brought up your initial skepticism and I responded by recommending the Joyce account. Your initial skepticism was aimed at cross-cultural similarities of moral views. Positing God, you claimed, was necessary because otherwise we would not be able to explain such similarities in moral thought. Now you have changed your tune: it seems now you want to claim that positing God is necessary since otherwise we cannot explain the origin of any thought whatsoever.

Originally posted by LemonJello
I think you are shifting the goalposts. Please look back to the original posts where you brought up your initial skepticism and I responded by recommending the Joyce account. Your initial skepticism was aimed at cross-cultural similarities of moral views. Positing God, you claimed, was necessary because otherwise we would not be able to explain such si ...[text shortened]... ositing God is necessary since otherwise we cannot explain the origin of any thought whatsoever.

Can you quote me? NOT denying anything you said is true. but don't remember that.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Can you quote me? NOT denying anything you said is true. but don't remember that.

Okay, here was the exchange from Thread 169581:

KJ: “Why God would be involved basically boils down to who else could put within mankind
our common knowledge of right and wrong? It has to come from a higher power or we
would be in a broken hodgepodge of various views instead of our common themes.
Different starting points would mean that our root causes would begin with someone
completely different. All of the views genesis would be generated in people from varies
places, time frames, and values. We don’t see truly different views instead we see small
variations of behavior where we disagree.”

LJ: “…there are eminently plausible God-free accounts of how the human moral faculty has evolved and could be expected to support a lot of commonality regarding shared moral intuitions. See, for example, The Evolution of Morality by Joyce.”

KJ: “…As I pointed out if it were common what is it
about us you find common when we are scattered around the planet in so many different
types of terrain? If it were just through accumulation and dissemination wouldn't that mean
we would need to come from a common line and share the same history? Do you see that
occurring without a common birth place or beginning, and then we would have to continue
this accumulation and dissemination in a shared history. We are everywhere on the planet
how did that happen? A common source seems much more likely to me, since as you
are putting it together when the human race split up and went its different ways they kept
in agreement even though they were not sharing the same history, they were not sharing
the same environment, they were not sharing the same schools of thought on what was
and was not important.”

From this, I thought it was clear that what is at issue for you is explanation relating to the "common themes" as you put it – that is, the cross-cultural commonalities in moralized thought.

Originally posted by LemonJello
Okay, here was the exchange from Thread 169581:

[quote]
KJ: “Why God would be involved basically boils down to who else could put within mankind
our common knowledge of right and wrong? It has to come from a higher power or we
would be in a broken hodgepodge of various views instead of our common themes.
Different starting points w ...[text shortened]... "common themes" as you put it – that is, the cross-cultural commonalities in moralized thought.

Thank you I will review sounds like your right!