A friend of mine believes that chess-players' photographs should be banned altogether, convinced, as she is, that nothing good ever came from one. (as opposed to myself who collects them)

Well, I suppose I tend to believe that the most highly evolved of any given species tend to lead the species as a whole (or perhaps better put, the species tends to lag behind its most advanced members.) So I guess I look to the most highly evolved people I've known as the standard (and hopefully the anticipation) of what the future should/will look like. (Ah, but what a gap there may be between that "should" and "will".)

Perhaps I am naive, but I am with the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow in believing that if a human being is allowed to develop unhindered, a highly developed moral nature will naturally be the outcome. The flower will naturally grow and blossom beautifully, but if someone covers it with a heavy rock (or it just happens to be under a heavy rock), there will be limits to the extent to which it can grow (if it can grow at all).

(Incidentally, the psychological theorist Lawrence Kohlberg comes to an opinion somewhat like that of Abraham Maslow, though he arrives at it along a rather different path: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlbe... )

I guess in a purely anecdotal way, when I find someone who seems to be cruel or callous (the two most extreme human vices, in my view), it often becomes quite clear quite quickly that this person has been damaged in some very specific way over some very specific time in their lives.

Of course, the critic might respond, well, if you met someone who was cruel or callous and you could not find any source for these faults, you would *assume* that it had something to do with harm that befell them early. But maybe it didn't! Maybe they are just purely and irreducibly BAD APPLES!!

Furthermore, the critic might continue, this whole musing of yours is dependent on the notion that evolution is DIRECTIONAL, and further that it is ETHICALLY PROGRESSIVE which is a massive overgeneralization, you silly Bishop with your nonsense pointy hat! Evolution is not directional: it merely MEANDERS!

Of course, my response to all this is, if evolution has not been directional up to now, let's make it directional hereafter! More than any species we have known up to this time, we have the power (to an extent) to *choose* the course our evolution takes. And little by little, I think we are making the right choices. (I posted a message relative to this recently (in the form of a copied email message) over on The World message board.)

If nature has "evolved us" up to now with a certain amount of hard-wired cruelty and callousness under even the best circumstances (a notion I reject altogether), well, let's remove these vestiges of our past.

Ah, I'd like to go on, but I have to run and meet a friend for dinner at Emeryville's delightful "Manzanita" vegan restaurant!

http://www.manzanitarestaurant.com/

But I hope we can continue this discussion, which I think our man Paul would have loved!!

Thanks, Sarah <SBC>! Your thoughts on these subjects are always valued (and by others in addition to myself, I'm sure.)

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

A bit more on Abraham Maslow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraha...

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/c...

My own little Maslow page. How many of the "16 Characteristics of Self-Actualizers" do our friends here possess?!

http://www.100bestwebsites.org/alt/...

He could allow himself to drift away in his antique tub, purchased from one of America's largest family-owned retailer of clawfoot tubs, that transported him back in time, to a time and place where he found himself simply immersed in time, surrounded by time, merely engulfed.

And, although he being a mere chessplayer, he nevertheless always took a cold bath after his routine afternoon walk, and simply allowed himself to drift away, in the mid, to later 19th century

Hoping you enjoy your Manzanitan repast, I wonder, do they serve wine there?

This in no way is meant to gainsay anything you wrote, but rather to elucidate my own thoughts.

Since the so-called age of enlightenment, how many enlightened countries have perpetuated genocide or something approaching genocide upon their own peoples? We could include Germany, Russian and the USA without ever going into places like Iraq or Yugoslavia.

In third world countries where the leaders are probably among the better or best educated in their own countries, such things are even more common, I would think.

Slavery, in most peoples' minds, was denounced in the 19th century, yet here it is, the 21st century and, according to National Geography, there are 27,000,000 slaves in the world today - http://magma.nationalgeographic.com... and BBC contends that human trafficking is a $30,000,000,000 a year industry.

John Dryden and, later, the Café de la Régence regular, Jean-Jacques Rousseau created and perpetuated the myth of the Noble Savage. While this myth did little to help the repsective savages, it did a lot to rationalize their mistreatment. But, in many ways one can identify with the myth. Primitive societies, while they lacked the prerogatives and conveniences of modern societies, seem or seemed no less moral or ethical than even the most modern society today. It was the nomadic Indians who followed the roaming buffalo herds for sustinence. It was civilized and advanced man who killed off the herds for fun.

We aren't any better at chess. We just have bigger ECO's.

<apropos evolution and ethics, have either of you read any Dennett>

As for the future of humanity, one will certainly find plenty of evidence from history for those who think the future will go very badly. (As this distinctly non-vegetarian satire of motivational posters says, "The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly": http://despair.com/ambition.html I have to say, I find some of these despair.com poster absolutely hilarious! Have fun laughing at your neuroses: http://www.despair.com/indem.html#v... )

Even so, I am optimistic in the long view. One reflection that gives me hope is this. There is power in numbers, and other things being equal, intelligent, ethical people tend to form strong, enduring groups. Unethical tyrants and other misguided but charasmatic people can amass large, dangerous groups of people, but these groups tend to be unstable over time and also tend to cancel one another out in their conflicting contests for dominance.

Wise, compassionate human beings tend to leave an enduring legacy. And it is to be hoped that it is these people will carry the "endgame" of human development.

Time will tell.

Thanks for your ideas!

(He mentions Jerry Fodor in this paper. I briefly knew Prof. Fodor's son Anthony in the late 80's: a very thoughtful and intelligent person, in my experience.)

Do you find Prof. Dennett's thoughts particularly compelling on this subject?

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

In fact, I had heard that the whole thing sprang from a project funded by an unlikely alliance of Beatle John Lennon's second wife and a wealthy friend of former US President Richard Nixon. It was said to have been occasioned by a conversation the two of them had about the evolution of pre-human consciousness.

It was provisionally titled the "Yoko Ono Bebe Rebozo proto-Bonobo Denne Fodo Antonio Damasio" project, but they discovered that...

OH WAIT!!!

So sorry!!

This is the wrong message board for that! I forgot that I was not on the Efim Bogoljubov message board!

(Ahem...)

Actually, I would like to learn more about Antonio Damasio. Perhaps I will track down some of his writing! I never much connected with Jerry Fodor's writing, though the fault may have been with me.

Perhaps I should revisit all three of these thinkers.

Thanks for the tip!

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

(Even if they are Birkenstocks (?))

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)