(June 23, 2013 at 6:40 am)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote:Quote:Justice is doing the right thing. But who's to say what that is? Someone else might say dying is the right thing, if another might live. But there's no real way to prove that idea. If anything, one life lost for another life gained is morally neutral, unless one life is particularly good or another life particularly evil. I prefer to see justice as simply repayment. If someone sows goodness, they reap goodness. If someone sows evil, they reap evil. So for me, justice doesn't come into the question of giving my life for another. It becomes a matter of value.
Agreed for the most part that it wouldn't be justice, but I do think that some people believe that it's morally wrong to not save a life if they could, even if it's at the cost of their own life. Perhaps this would go under the same influence as religious belief. But what i really think why people give up their life for strangers is as dawkins said, it's an evolution malfunction, a misfiring of instinct/feelings for a wrong person (evolutionarily the right person would be a kin).
Quote:This, I understand. The person for whom I would give my life in order that he may live is the one being whom I love more than anything. While I do love others, I do not love them more than my own life. I would feel no regret in preserving my own life rather than theirs.
I don't know if i'm understanding you correctly. You love one person enough that you will die if it's the only way they'll live, correct? You do not love anyone else in your life to this extent. If that's the case we do not contradict here, unless you're saying that you'd rather die so they could live but at the same time you do not value their life over yours. Because the act of trading your life for theirs shows that you do. (up till this point i'm talking about this person you're willing to die for.) The only reason to die for anyone else, that I can come up with, i said in 1.
Quote:Couldn't it accurately be said that self-preservation is the primal instinct from which most other instincts tend to arise? Thus, to act in accordance with self-preservation is not conscious resistance to instinct, but conscious acceptance of it. The only time I can imagine it being instinctual to die so that another may live is in the cast of #2.If you look into evolution, the main concept to grasp is that the survival of the fittest, is actually all for the survival of the gene. You are fit to pass on the your gene. Your gene is the main character that lives on forever if it were lucky enough to live through fit bodies. So you have to look at primal instincts as preserving genes, not preserving self. Because traits were selected if they preserve the gene, not themselves.
A simple example would be a 70 year old grandmother refusing to die for her only live relatives: 2 grandsons. She has 100% of her own genes. Her grandsons each have 25%. It may make no sense for her to die (losing 100%), in return for a total of 50%. But she has reached the age where she can no longer reproduce. So if she chooses not to die, her grandsons die, she dies without reproducing again, all of the genes are lost. If she chooses to die, her grandsons live, 50% of the genes live to reproduce another day.
This is observed in the wild, in dangerous situations, animals exhibit self sacrificing acts that appear to be against their evolutionary advantage. And they do this more often if their relatives are in the line of danger.
Of course no one does this math in their head (well some would) the moment they "choose" to give up their life, I'm saying that the reason you feel like you would die for someone, is because you are "predisposed" to feel this way, your ancestors have felt this way, and it's in your genes and it was passed on to you. If your ancestors all lack this ability to die for their children, their children (you included) have lower chances of survival, and so are "less fit", and you will unlikely come to the conclusion that you'll die for someone, just like it's unlikely for a family that has had only brown eyes for generations to suddenly have a baby with green eyes.
evolutionarily speaking, i would say refusing to die for your kin (or mistaken kin/loved ones) could be for or against your "instincts" depending on your reproductive ability/genetic makeup. It would be different for different people. Dying would require you suppress your self preservation, and not dying would require you suppress the overwhelming feeling that you need to preserve the other person's life. Which would be hard for a lot of mothers to do to their babies, for example.
I think we're in agreement.
