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While the gap between moral and technological progress may be known, the argument here is that it becomes increasingly dangerous as technological progress accel

by jal278 13y ago

While the gap between moral and technological progress may be known, the argument here is that it becomes increasingly dangerous as technological progress accelerates relative to moral. I think it would be a huge mistake to assume that the gap is an inherent part of human existence. Our morality results as a product of our brain and our culture. We can potentially use technology to remedy parts of our brain or our brain chemistry to enhance morality. Of course, this in itself is a dangerous moral undertaking, but it is a possibility, one that perhaps needs greater research attention.

brudgers 13y ago
The zeitgeist of each civilized age is that the world is on the highway to hell. The quote from Plato wasn't accidental, the Athenians condemned Socrates. Though something from Confucius or Rousseau would also have worked. However, leaving literary and cultural arguments aside, the argument that natural selection has not or will not create a good balance for the human ecological niche seems to show no more faith in science than an appeal to a divine creator. Likewise, the idea that humans are somehow exempt from natural selection in a way which allows them to shape it, similarly relies on some notion of our holding some unique biological status. If you're selling brain state materialism, then you lose traditional notions of morality and culture. That's just the price of radically redefining traditional notions of the mind. Even more to the point, the idea that morality cannot cope needs to show why the Hobbesian view - developed during a time when the movable type printing press enabled spreading Protestantism to violently play itself out in the English Civil War - is not the correct path. In other words, the morality gap depends on the absence of political progress - an argument difficult to wage in light of modern history and the diminishing of colonialism, slavery and monarchy, and the rising of the idea that there are universal human rights and more recently pressure for their extension to other species.

by jal278 13y ago

brudgers 13y ago

The zeitgeist of each civilized age is that the world is on the highway to hell. The quote from Plato wasn't accidental, the Athenians condemned Socrates. Though something from Confucius or Rousseau would also have worked. However, leaving literary and cultural arguments aside, the argument that natural selection has not or will not create a good balance for the human ecological niche seems to show no more faith in science than an appeal to a divine creator. Likewise, the idea that humans are somehow exempt from natural selection in a way which allows them to shape it, similarly relies on some notion of our holding some unique biological status. If you're selling brain state materialism, then you lose traditional notions of morality and culture. That's just the price of radically redefining traditional notions of the mind. Even more to the point, the idea that morality cannot cope needs to show why the Hobbesian view - developed during a time when the movable type printing press enabled spreading Protestantism to violently play itself out in the English Civil War - is not the correct path. In other words, the morality gap depends on the absence of political progress - an argument difficult to wage in light of modern history and the diminishing of colonialism, slavery and monarchy, and the rising of the idea that there are universal human rights and more recently pressure for their extension to other species.