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Understanding Evolution And Its Implications

1. Philosophical Topics To Know

Evolution has innumerous implications for modern philosophy.

  1. Why Life Exists
  2. What Evolution Is and Why It Happens
  3. Understanding Evolutionary Explanations for the Characteristics of All Living Things
  4. The Egoism and the Intrinsic Selfishness of Life (Corollary)
  5. The Validity of the Senses (Corollary)
  6. The Validity of Reason (Corollary)
  7. The Relationship Between Emotions and Reproduction (Corollary): Emotions drive people to do things that cause them to reproduce. Emotions exist on a spectrum, and people’s behaviors are prioritized in accordance to the different relative strengths of their emotions.
  8. The Moral Accounting System (Corollary): Emotions keep track of what we owe and are owed within our personal relationships.
  9. The Flow of Energy (Corollary): Energy is Transferred from Father to Mother to Children.
  10. Understanding Why Humans Rule the World (Corollary): High Reasoning and Intelligence, Volition, Sophisticated Methods of Communication, Emotions, Optimal Limbs, Sufficiently Long Lifespan
  11. The Origins of All Value: Value is generated by sentient beings.

As humans, we are biological organisms, and highly intelligent ones at that, who evolved from the first living organism on Earth over the past 4+ billion years. A complete theory of epistemology must relate the implications of Evolutionary Theory to how the human brain works, and how humans work more generally if we are to have an unabridged philosophy.

Additionally, evolutionary biology is the least arbitrary starting point for forming a societal framework(s), since sociology, psychology, economics, etc are all essentially applied biology. In a sense, biology is more “pure” than starting from a sociological, psychological, etc point of view. And it’s not biased with morality either, the world’s greatest delusion.

2. Evolutionary Reasoning

It’s difficult to predict the evolution of the Future because a single, unpredictable mutation has the potential to completely change all the outcomes within an ecosystem. The best approach for gaining predictive power about an unpredictable system is to come up with a theory of stability and instability where there are stable states and unstable states. That will have predictive power because systems will be in a stable state most of the time by definition, whereas the system will not be in unstable states for long periods of time. This method of reasoning can be more generally applied to:

  • Biology when there are evolutionarily unstable states and evolutionarily stable states
  • Game Theory when there are Nash Equilibriums
  • Economics when there are economically stable states and economically unstable states
  • Geopolitics when there are stable geopolitical maps and unstable geopolitical maps
  • Chaos Theory and Differential Equations with equilibrium solutions (e.g. asymptotically stable, unstable, and semi-stable)
  • Historical and Social Change

3. Affirmation Of The Senses And Empiricism

The goal of this section is to affirm empiricism using evolutionary reasoning. The more ways we have to prove anything, the better.

  1. The senses deliver valid information about reality when they are not impaired (Corollary of Evolution).
  2. All the concepts we know are derived from sensual experiences.
  3. Thus, sensory input is the first step of the reasoning process (the input sub-process).
  4. Evolution designed how the senses work.
    1. Although they give us information about reality, the available information and how it’s presented are first and foremost designed to reach the next stage of evolution.
    2. Thus, senses aren’t necessarily designed to be infallible unless it’s necessary for evolutionary fitness.
    3. Likewise, the senses are only designed to give us sufficient information about how reality works so that we can survive long enough to produce and foster offspring.

4. The Historical Origins Of Consciousness And Intelligence

The first developments of consciousness on Earth were aimed towards enabling organisms to understand their environment, in an effort to gather more food. This should be indicative that intelligence is first and foremost, the ability of one to understand reality.

  • First, sensory input developed, then memory/concepts, then logic. This order of development is consistent with the theory of reason.
  • Further evolution of intelligence required the ability to reason.
  • Today, intelligence is aimed towards solving problems. Of course, reason has always been used to solve problems (that’s why it developed in the first place), but today it is used to solve significantly more abstract ones.

5. Why Humans Are The Dominant Species

5.1. Global Human Dominance

Reason and knowledge are not the only reason why humans rule the world. If we examine other mammals like orangutans, elephants, and cetaceans, we will find that they are surprisingly intelligent. They have demonstrated exceptional capabilities to memorize concepts, do arithmetic, communicate with humans on a limited level, demonstrate self-awareness, have emotions, organize advanced social structures, and have advanced communication. Since advanced knowledge and reasoning skills are not limited to just only humans, it must be concluded that there are therefore other reasons why humans rule the world.

5.2. Why Humans Are More Dominant Than The Runner Ups

The reason why humans have risen above orangutans, elephants, cetaceans, giant pacific octopi, and other mammals/animals is that we are able to combine reason, communication/interaction, and our capable bodies/appendages better than any other organism in our world.

  • Humans clearly have the best reasoning and knowledge skills in the world, which is pretty self-explanatory.
  • Humans have the most complex communication system and societies of any life known to mankind. Human language can express infinite quantities of ideas and information.
  • Humans have the most capable appendages and anatomies in the world. Human hands can grasp tools and build many things with relative ease. By comparison, cetaceans and elephants don’t have the same appendages or anatomies to enable them to build the same things that a human can, such as fires, wheels, shelters, compasses, aqueducts, medicine, modern computers, and all the other things humans have invented.

Humans also have long lifespans compared to other relatively intelligent species. The giant pacific octopus is possibly the smartest of all invertebrates, but since its lifespan only lasts 3-5 years at max, it doesn’t have much time to do the same productive work that humans can do before they die.

Nevertheless, intelligence is definitely the most important out of the four skills / qualities, but the other skills would both be rendered useless without the ability to reason.

5.3. Characteristics Necessary for Rivaling Modern Humans

With all of this in mind, we can conclude that intelligent life that is on par with human life is most likely to at least have the following six characteristics:

  • High Capacity to Reason (Intelligence)
  • Volition (the ability to reason implies volition)
  • Sophisticated Methods of Communication
  • Emotion
  • Limbs that are optimal for building tools and such
  • Sufficiently long lifespan

Social Cognition - Wireless Philosophy.

5.4. Human Life Is The Powerful Form Of Life

Human life has the most agency, the ability to do as it wants.

  • Humans can create cooperative civilizations that have the potential to avoid significant violence (even if it doesn’t completely prevent all violence).
  • Humans have the cognitive ability and freedom to choose their own meanings of life, whereas other life can only do what it is biologically programmed to do.
  • Human life is the most intelligent life that is known to exist.
  • Humans have the best form of entertainment: music, internet, intellectual pursuits, videogames, movies, sports, etc
  • Human life has the most expressive form of communication known to mankind: human languages.
  • Humans can abort fetuses if they know that the fetuses won’t develop correctly.
  • Humans are very able to end their lives if they determine that their lives aren’t worth living and won’t get any better.
  • Hypothetically, humans could use eugenics/genetic engineering to remove at least some of the unintelligent design that is present in human life.

7. Biological Realism FAQs

Last Modified: 2023 October 03, 10:14

Author: Zero Contradictions