@Nils Loc

I agree with most of your post; what you say is true.

We both talk about trends, but we don’t assign the same meaning to them. For me, the trends that can give rise to ethical principles are long-term trends that are far above events which, on the time scale we are considering, are not significant.

The fact you mention about cod and capelin, or also whales and plankton, does not undermine the great trend of generating life. From this, we cannot deduce that evolution generates death or destruction, the life of cod, capelin, whales, and plankton continues. In any case, we might deduce an important trend: living beings need to feed, and some do so by eating other animals, a trend that also extends to humans, who feed on cod, chickens, or pigs.

You are just cherry picking "trends" that align with some sense of life/diversity conservation. Nature's means of limiting growth may not be fun. — Nils Loc

I don’t believe I engage in "cherry-picking" and, since I aim to reason rigorously, I have no objection to delving deeper into the topic of great trends and, if necessary, making corrections. The trends I speak of are sequences of events originating in very remote times, persisting, and many of them "passing through" the plant kingdom, continuing in the animal kingdom, and finally reaching humans.

I think we must distinguish between a trend and the mechanisms that sustain it. "Equilibrium" is, in my view, a constant in evolution. As you rightly say, the mechanisms nature uses to maintain this trend are not fun.

Your comment provides an opportunity to present a good example of what I’m trying to convey:

• Equilibrium, the propensity for life, and freedom are three evolutionary trends which, according to my thesis, shed light on how we should act.
• Human overpopulation is a fact that is destabilizing certain areas of the planet. Since humans must maintain these trends, we need to correct this imbalance.
• The actions we take cannot go against the trends of evolution.
• To solve the problem, we must fully utilize the attributes we’ve been given: intelligence and consciousness.
• Possible actions could include informing the population about the advantages of limiting the number of children, providing free contraceptives, and educating women in sub-Saharan countries (where population growth is highest), among others.
• Actions that cannot be carried out because they violate evolutionary trends (propensity for life and freedom) include sterilization, penalties for exceeding a prescribed number of children, and wars that eliminate individuals.

Animals have their instincts. We can't rely solely on basic instincts; we have more sophisticated tools and must decide how to adapt to and respect the trends in our present world.

If we do not understand where we are, we cannot know where we should go. — Seeker25

I could not agree more. But the problem is, how do we get them all to listen? Anti-intellectualism has a long and brutal history, from Socrates to Galileo, to the deportation and subsequent murder of Armenian intellectuals (1915) to the mass exterminations of Stalin’s Great Purge (1930s) to China’s cultural revolution (1960s) to the persecution and murder of Navalny in Russia.

Anti-intellectualism is strong in the US, where Evangelicals and Southern Baptists denounce a belief in evolution and climate change as sins. Rejecting the intellectual “elites” may have been the deciding factor costing Harris the election. With Trump elected, we can expect the country to get more regressive, not progressive. The number of book bans in the US has skyrocketed in the last few years, and in “stop-woke” Florida they are teaching that slavery was good for the enslaved person since it taught them “valuable skills.”

In fact, Florida’s new education standards led to this quote from Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar:

“How can our students ever be equipped for the future if they don’t have a full, honest picture of where we’ve come from? Florida’s students deserve a world-class education that equips them to be successful adults who can help heal our nation’s divisions rather than deepen them … Gov. DeSantis is pursuing a political agenda guaranteed to set good people against one another, and in the process, he’s cheating our kids. They deserve the full truth of American history, the good and the bad.”

https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/floridas-new-history-standard-blow-our-students-and-nation

So, how do we produce “citizens of the world” if they are denied the full truth?

Whether we like it or not, we must make decisions continuously, thereby shaping our life and our world. What criteria do we use to decide? — Seeker25

Education. We need an educational system that guides our young people to take into account and acknowledge all of history and all perspectives. And this requires that we overcome the forces (like populism) that keep us mired in our basest instincts.

• Equilibrium, the propensity for life, and freedom are three evolutionary trends which, according to my thesis, shed light on how we should act. — Seeker25

Stable relationships between species over time may include warfare/conflict or large acts of predation . Eusocial species, like ants, may develop means to distinguish between in-group out-group individuals of their own species and have conflicts on that basis. Sometimes it may be purely down to dietary source creating a pheromone signature.

Chat GPT says that evolutionary equilibrium is compatible with an arms race, such that perennial pattern of territory dispute between species could continually evolve together in a kind of reciprocating balance of adaptations.

The development of the human cognitive capacity probably emerged in part from endless conspecific war, resource/territory conflict. Such resource competitions are ongoing under the rules of a national/global Capitalist paradigm. We sink our savings into the stock market because we want to preserve the 'freedom' it gives us despite ridiculous, excessive and destructive aspect of a lot of consumption, which is about individuals collaborating/competing to acquire resources (economic warfare/game). One might question the ethics of a lot of economic relationships which serve us insofar as one would rather remain ignorant of their unwholesome reality.

Is it ethical to own stock in Coca Cola? Why aren't they just a culturally sanctioned version of harmful drug dealers? Shouldn't we be free to sell coca cola? One person's benefit is another person's harm but such a trade-off is acceptable if we value the freedom at the cost of such consequences.

So, how do we produce “citizens of the world” if they are denied the full truth? — Questioner

Education. We need an educational system that guides our young people to take into account and acknowledge all of history and all perspectives. And this requires that we overcome the forces (like populism) that keep us mired in our basest instincts. — Questioner

This is an important question. I have some ideas that need to be checked and refined.

I am deeply convinced that politicians will not solve humanity’s problems. Here’s why:

1. Self-Interest over common good: Many politicians are not genuinely interested in addressing human issues; they pursue their own interests and those of their cronies. Even truly democratic politicians prioritize staying in power, which often conflicts with humanity’s larger needs.

2. Geopolitical constraints: Politicians are bound by geopolitical considerations and cannot act solely based on ethical principles. For example, Biden providing weapons to exterminate Palestinians to secure Jewish votes and support, or the global south supporting Russia’s invasion to counterbalance Western dominance.

3. Erosion of global Institutions: Politicians have rendered crucial global institutions like the UN ineffective. Some actively try to weaken others, such as the EU, and we have yet to see the long-term impact of Trump’s influence on U.S. institutions.

Politicians will not drive the transformative change the world needs.

Could we leverage major evolutionary trends to provoke this change? Maybe, let us think about it.

I am not naive, and I know that what I am about to explain is not easy to achieve. However, I also know that when something does not work, we must imagine actions that, even if they seem utopian at first, can, if well-developed and implemented, help us solve the problems.

There is an enormous source of potential that could ignite this change: the 8 billion intelligent minds spread across the globe. These minds could be mobilized into action if honestly equipped with knowledge, accurate information, and shared human objectives. So, why is basic education still managed by local governments, each imposing its own biases, instead of creating a global standard for basic human education?

Fortunately, we now have tools that didn’t exist a decade ago. We can create worldwide networks, access instant translations in hundreds of languages, and more. These tools offer unprecedented opportunities for collaboration and change.

If a certain consensus could be reached among people from different countries and cultures about what is good or bad for humanity, it could mark the beginning of a collegiate apolitical authority capable of morally censuring actions by governments and other centres of power that go against humanity's interests. If this idea works, millions of people could join in and drive change.

Politicians will not drive the transformative change the world needs. — Seeker25

No, probably not. But, political systems provide the conditions that determine whether progress can be made or not. Only democracies, with representation from free and fair elections, human rights like freedom of association and expression, and the rule of law, allow the free exchange of ideas and their implementation.

And while the worldwide trend over the last couple of centuries has been towards democracy, there has been democratic backsliding. According to a recent report measuring the global state of democracy, the number of countries worldwide moving towards authoritarianism is more than double the number moving towards democracy.

So what do we do as we watch the world slide into autocracy?

If a certain consensus could be reached among people from different countries and cultures about what is good or bad for humanity, it could mark the beginning of a collegiate apolitical authority capable of morally censuring actions by governments and other centres of power that go against humanity's interests. If this idea works, millions of people could join in and drive change. — Seeker25

That would be heaven on earth.

Couple questions:

Could the entire world’s population agree on what is good or bad for humanity?

What form would this “apolitical authority” take and from where would it derive its power?

Are you advocating for anarchism?

Plus I am not sure how i can really reach the conclusion that there are no moral principles without assuming the reality of principles of reason, and those are just as much jeopardized by the evolutionary account as the moral principles are. — Clearbury

How is it that you think principles of reason jeopardized by the evolutionary account? What if principles of reason are in accordance with the way the world is. We don't see contradictory realities or things which are neither this nor that. The LNC and the LEM are two central principles of reason. If inductive reason leads to a belief in the evolutionary account, and inductive reasoning is an aid to survival, then how do you see the two as being in conflict or being incompatible?

Principles of reason seem as jeopardized by an evolutionary account as moral principles are (which are, i take it, just another form of principles of reason anyway), because principles of reason are not part of the physical landscape in which evolutionary forces are operating. Even if they accurately describe that landscape, the fact remains that they are not part of it, and as such all that needs to be posited is the belief in such principles, not the principles themselves.

So to explain why we have the beliefs we do about the sizes and shapes of things in our immediate environment we posit actual sized shaped things in our immediate environment. Being disposed to form approximately accurate beliefs about them would get selected for. So in that case positing the actual existence of what the beliefs are about helps explain why we have them.

But in the case of principles of reason, we do not have to posit the principles themselves, but only the beliefs in them. It is believing in the truth of the law of non-contradiction that helped my father breed more successfully, because by believing in it he would have avoided (for longer) being killed by something shaped and sized. But as it is the shaped and sized thing that would have killed him, not a principle of reason, then we do not have to posit any principles to explain why my father survived and bred.

I don't yet see a way around this. Nothing stops one from supposing that there really are principles of reason, but their actual existence would be pure coincidence given a wholly evolutionary account of our development.