Survival

The final stages of a Cordyceps fungus infection of a wasp: The parasite controls the brain of its host, so that the wasp is compelled to climb to the top of a tree or other plant before the fruiting bodies of the parasite explode from its body, guaranteeing maximal dispersion of the parasite spores while…

by David Sims EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS that there are both good people and bad people in all races. Certainly, I’ve never said otherwise, even if at times I’ve referred to groups of people in general terms. But there are times when we must generalize. Not every grain of sand in a pile of sand is…

by David Sims I HAVE noticed that philosophers almost continually speak as if they could create morality by making their preferences known; i.e., as if the truth about morality were something to be decided, rather than something to be discovered. I think that the reverse is the case. Morality evolved…

A reprise of my central point regarding the efficacy and worth of philosophy in the absence of science by David Sims I THINK that philosophers know as little about ethics, absent any empirical research into it, than they do about anything else. Rather, the reason philosophers make free, at present,…

The synergy of philosophy and science — and the limits of philosophy in the absence of science by David Sims THE QUOTES below are from the semi-Politically Incorrect pop-philosopher Stefan Molyneux. “Philosophy is the greatest intellectual discipline in the realm of human thought.”…

by David Sims MORALITY isn’t the same thing as justice. Morality is a guide to behavior that puts values (such as justice) into a hierarchy, in which some values are higher, or greater, than other values are. Proper morality, or a moral system that does what moral systems ought to do, is about survival,…

by David Sims IT IS OFTEN SAID that the well-being of the individual organism is the highest moral goal of any organism. But that is false. Rather, the well-being (survival, enhanced prospects) of the particular group of organisms that made his own existence possible is the highest moral goal of any…

What can exist forever is infinitely more valuable than what exists for a short span. And what does not exist, and cannot exist, is worthless. by David Sims A RANDIAN libertarian said to me: “I don’t agree with [the idea] that the moral person puts the needs of the group above the needs of the…

by Charles Galton Darwin (1953) endnote by Bradford Hanson IN THE ESSENTIAL matter of survival there are two things needed, the survival of the individual and the survival of the race. We are all very well endowed with deep instincts for both, and curiously enough we are ashamed of both these instincts.…

by Dr. William L. Pierce THE BIGGEST THING in the news now is the imminent killing of the young soldier Timothy McVeigh by the Bush government. Even though I’ve never met or corresponded with Timothy, I’ve had dozens of reporters calling me for interviews in connection with the killing,…