Category Archives: Darwinism

The digital environment, argues Reading Rooms Rushell Clarke, is Darwinist: its evolve-or-die. Heres Clarkes field guide to continuous evolution.

In todays fast-paced, ever-evolving world, digital transformation is no longer just a buzzword. Its business critical. Organizations that remain rooted in outdated practices, relying on aging systems, are at risk of falling behind. Meanwhile, those who embrace change can adapt quickly and soar to new heights.

Welcome to the age of the future-fit phenomenon, where agility, adaptability and foresight are key to success.

Being future-fit trumps being future-ready. While future-ready tech may seem sufficient for now, it can limit organizations when new innovations emerge. At Reading Room, we champion a future-fit approach, crafting tech solutions designed for continual optimization and improvement as technology and user expectations advance.

A future-fit mindset empowers businesses to stay ahead of the curve, fostering innovation and growth. Instead of relying on static solutions, we help build dynamic digital ecosystems that adapt to the evolving technological landscape. This cultivates a culture of continuous improvement, setting your organization up for long-term success.

Being future-fit is more than just having cutting-edge technology; its about embracing change and championing ongoing optimization. This requires a curious and empathetic approach that acknowledges the challenges of change while embracing the opportunities it presents.

Its essential to invest in your organization's digital infrastructure, but its equally important to empower your team with the skills, mindsets, and resources to navigate ongoing change. By cultivating a workforce that's agile, adaptable, and ready for whatever the future holds, youll be better equipped to capitalize on emerging trends.

To thrive today, organizations must adopt a digital-first mindset. This means prioritizing digital channels, embracing digital tools, and leveraging data to create meaningful customer experiences. By putting digital at the heart of your operations, you'll stay ahead of the curve.

A digital-first doctrine empowers businesses to be proactive in addressing customer needs and staying relevant in a rapidly changing landscape. Through strategic investments in technology and innovation, you can unlock new efficiencies, optimize processes, and deliver more personalized experiences to your customers. The result? Increased customer satisfaction, stronger brand loyalty, and, ultimately, greater resilience and profitability.

For example, our digital-first work with UK Coaching delivered a 50% increase in web visits, a 14% increase in membership subscriptions, and a 3760% increase in e-learning courses from the previous year.

Embarking on a digital transformation journey can be daunting, but it needn't be an insurmountable challenge. With the right guidance and support, your organization can thrive, now and in the future.

First, its crucial to have a clear vision of digital objectives that are aligned to support broader business objectives and a roadmap to guide your transformation journey. This involves setting achievable goals, identifying potential roadblocks, and establishing metrics to measure progress. With a well-defined plan, you can ensure that your organization stays on track and maintains momentum throughout the change process.

Secondly, its important to foster a culture of experimentation and learning. Encourage your team to embrace new ideas, question the status quo, and take calculated risks. By creating an environment where innovation is rewarded, youll foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Finally, dont be afraid to ask for help. Progressing through your digital journey can be complex and overwhelming, but you dont have to go it alone. Partnering with digital transformation experts can provide the knowledge, skill, resources and support needed to guide your organization through the intricacies of change, from assessing your digital maturity to implementing cutting-edge solutions.

The journey to becoming a future-fit organization is not without challenges, but the rewards are well worth the effort. By embracing agility, adopting a digital-first mindset, and seeking the right future-fit guidance, your organization can digitally evolve and emerge as a leader. The key is to approach transformation with curiosity, empathy, and a forward-thinking attitude, equipping your team with the tools and mindset they need to adapt and thrive.

The digital landscape will continue to change, presenting challenges and opportunities along the way. By staying agile, adaptable and prepared for the technological advancements that shape our future, your organization will be well-positioned to seize new opportunities and achieve long-term success.

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Digital Darwinism: How To Build Future-fit Foundations For Business ... - The Drum

Photo: Kate Winslet, by GabboT, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Recently, theWall Street Journalreported that Kate Winslet, and other actors, for the sake of the newest frontier in blockbuster moviemaking are learning how to hold their breath underwater for several minutes.

Around the same time the websiteScience Dailyhighlighted an article fromCurrent Biologythat expounded on how crocs can go hours without air, thus blowing Miss Winslets impressive feat seven and a quarter minutes holding her breath right out of the water. The article attributes this croc ability to evolution.

But things are not as simple as they look. This is especially true once you understand how life works to survive, and the causal hurdles that would have had to have been surmounted to build life from the ground up.

Thats what my recent book, co-authored with Steve Laufmann,Your Designed Body,accomplishes for the reader. Read the book and youll be prepared to analyze the validity of Darwinism, ask evolutionists better questions, and expect better answers rather than just accepting their just so stories.

As Steve and I demonstrate, with each lesson learned about the complexity of life and survival and the built-in engineering that makes that possible, the explanatory power of Darwinism fades away until all that is left is the narrative gloss.

The fundamental building block for all life is the cell. One of the cells most important needs is energy. The cell, whether it lives and works in Kate or the croc, mostly gets this energy from cellular respiration. Cellular respiration involves the cell, in the presence of oxygen, releasing the energy from within the glucose molecule (while producing carbon dioxide) and storing it as ATP (the cells energy currency). The cell does also have a much less efficient way of getting a lot less energy from glucose, called glycolysis, a process that is anaerobic in that it does not require oxygen.

A one-celled organism, such as an amoeba, is like an island of life. Thats because it can get what it needs from its watery environment, while getting rid of what it doesnt need as well. When it comes to energy, the amoeba gets its glucose and oxygen from its surroundings and releases carbon dioxide.

In contrast, a multi-cellular organism, like Kate or the croc, is like a deep dark continent of life since almost all of its trillions of cells are not near its surroundings. Thats why the organism needs to have a respiratory system to bring in oxygen (and release carbon dioxide), a gastrointestinal system to bring in glucose, and a cardiovascular system to carry these chemicals in the blood to or from all of the cells.

Not having enough oxygen (or for that matter, glucose) for your cells, especially the ones in the brain, which affords consciousness and controls breathing and the cardiovascular system, is a quick path to death. So, understanding how a creature can perform these breath-holding feats, while staying alive, is not an exercise in abstraction.

Physicians and engineers, unlike evolutionary theorists, work in the real world of science. The end point that proves any of their thought or practical experiments to be wrong is death whether its that of the body or of a machine. Thats why understanding why an organism has to have enough oxygen (and anything else it needs to survive) and what happens when it doesnt (death) must be plugged into any theory of life. Without this grounding in real life and death science, evolutionists are just letting their imaginations run wild.

Like every multi-cellular organism, Kate Winslet has a respiratory system through which she can bring in the oxygen her trillions of cells need (and release carbon dioxide). This consists of the nose, mouth, pharynx (throat), larynx (voice box), trachea, bronchi, bronchioles, and millions of alveoli, each surrounded by hundreds of microscopic capillaries where oxygen enters the blood from the lungs and carbon dioxide leaves the blood through the lungs. To complete the picture of the respiratory system, we have to add the chest cavity, consisting of the twelve ribs on either side, the sternum (breastbone) up front, the thoracic vertebrae in the upper back, and the connective tissue that holds them all together in addition to the diaphragm and intercostal muscles.

But thats not all. Experience tells us that our respiratory systems function is under control. When we try to hold our breath, within a few seconds something tells us to breathe. This urge comes from the respiratory center in the brain stem. The respiratory center constantly receives information about the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in your arterial blood from sensors in the main arteries leading to your brain and from within the brain itself.

Every control system, whether biological or technological, is irreducibly complex in that it must have at least three parts for it to work correctly. Absent any one part, the control system fails, and life is impossible.

The first part is a sensor, like the oxygen and carbon dioxide sensors, to detect what youre trying to control. The second part is an integrator, like the respiratory center, to analyze and interpret the sensory data, decide if everything is OK or if something needs to be done, and then send out instructions to correct the problem. And the third part is an effector, in this case the respiratory system, which when signaled by the respiratory center releases built-up carbon dioxide and brings in a new supply of oxygen.

By hyperventilating beforehand, Kate Winslet maximized her blood level of oxygen and minimized her blood level of carbon dioxide. While holding her breath, as her carbon dioxide level rose and her oxygen level dropped, she would have had to resist the urge to breathe and also deal with symptoms like tingling limbs, impaired vision, feelings of freakout while being at risk of becoming unconscious and drowning. Thats why she always did this under the supervision of a trainer. Do not try this at home or alone!

Besides her respiratory system, putting oxygen into her blood to get it to all the cells in her body, Kate has a cardiovascular system. This consists of the heart with its right and left sides, and the pulmonary and systemic circulations. The right ventricle pumps deoxygenated blood through the pulmonary arteries to the lungs where it enters the capillaries surrounding the alveoli to pick up oxygen and then returns to the left side of the heart through the pulmonary veins. The left ventricle pumps oxygenated blood through the systemic arteries to the capillaries in the tissues. There, the cells get the oxygen (and glucose) they need and download the carbon dioxide. The blood then returns to the right side of the heart through the systemic veins.

One final problem remains, though. It turns out that oxygen doesnt dissolve well in water. Thats why Kate Winslet has hemoglobin thats made in her red blood cells, which are made in her bone marrow. Hemoglobin is a complex molecule, containing iron, that locks onto oxygen when it enters the blood from the lungs and so allows the blood in the body to have enough oxygen-carrying capacity.

With maximum exercise, Kates body needs a 14-fold increase in oxygen consumption compared to when shes at rest. This means that her blood has to have enough red blood cells with enough hemoglobin to carry enough oxygen to meet the metabolic needs of her body, no matter what shes doing. So, that means that her body has to control her hemoglobin.

As noted, every control system needs at least three parts and the one that controls the hemoglobin is no different. Kate has specialized cells in her kidneys that sense her blood level of oxygen and in response, the cell as the integrator sends out a certain amount of a hormone called erythropoietin. Erythropoietin travels in the blood and attaches to specific receptors on immature stem cells in the bone marrow and tells them to develop into red blood cells, which produce hemoglobin. So, if the oxygen level goes down the kidney cells send out more erythropoietin which tells the bone marrow to make more red blood cells which gives the body more hemoglobin.

Given her impressive feat, its safe to say that Kate Winslets respiratory, cardiovascular, and hematological systems were all working at maximum efficiency. But the croc can easily beat her. Now, remember, the croc needs this functional capacity for survival. Hes not worrying about performing well enough to meet the needs of the newest frontier in blockbuster moviemaking. Nor is he trying to impress his friends by showing them how long he can hold his breath underwater while risking death by drowning. No, when the croc grabs the hindquarters of an antelope, he instinctively dives down deep into the water, where he knows he can survive for an hour or two without drowning, but the antelope cant.

Since this involves the respiratory, cardiovascular, and hematological systems, they would seem to be the right places to start in comparing Kate and the croc. But before we do, we have to take into account that Kate is warm-blooded, while the croc is cold-blooded.

This difference means that Kate has to use a lot more energy (oxygen) than the croc to maintain her core temperature, which is between 97oand 99oF. She needs to do this so that all of her organ systems, especially her brain, can work properly. Remember, the croc only has to worry about surviving and reproducing. It would seem that being cold-blooded doesnt bother his self-esteem one bit. However, being warm-blooded allows us to have the biggest brains in the animal kingdom, a fact that affords us numerous abilities, like intelligence, reasoning, creativity, self-reflection, and free will, going far beyond mere survival and reproduction.

In contrast to Kate Winslet, the croc can usually maintain its core temperature, between 82oand 92oF, with little effort simply by making sure it lives in a warm climate. In fact, at rest the croc only uses about 15 percent of the energy that a human does. And when it dives down deeper where the temperature is lower, because it is cold-blooded, it is able to reduce its metabolic rate even further.

So, for a given ambient temperature and level of activity, the croc requires much less oxygen (energy) than a human does to survive. This is so even if the human and the croc have the same amount of oxygen available for use. In fact, it means that as compared with Kate, the croc can get by on the anaerobic process of glycolysis to obtain the limited amount of extra energy it provides because he only needs 15 percent of what Kate needs.

From the start we can see that since the croc uses much less oxygen per minute than does Kate, this would at least partially explain why it is able to hold its breath under water so much longer. But theres more. On Monday well ask, How Does the Crocodile Hold His Breath So Long? Stay tuned.

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In Breath-Holding, Kate and a Croc Are Champions - Discovery Institute

Evolution goes beyond the genetic code and the transformation of physical form, from land-mammal to whale or dinosaur to bird.

At the core of evolutionary science is a triad: variation, selection and replication, explains Binghamton University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences David Sloan Wilson, the founder of Binghamtons Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program. You can see this triad at work in culture as well, from economics and business, to engineering and the arts, and the functioning of society at all levels.

Knowing how cultural evolution happens also means we can harness it for the larger good, creating a more just and sustainable world. Thats a topic of Multilevel cultural evolution: From new theory to practical applications, a new article by Wilson recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

Co-authors include Binghamton alumnus Guru Madhavan, MBA 07, PhD 09, senior program director at the National Academy of Engineering; Michele J. Gelfand, professor of organizational behavior and psychology at Stanford University; University of Nevada Psychology Professor Steven C. Hayes, who developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT); Paul W.B. Atkins, visiting associate professor of psychology with Australian National Universitys Crawford School of Public Policy and co-founder of the non-profit ProSocial World with Wilson; and microbiologist Rita R. Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation.

The wide-ranging article explores the three hallmarks of cultural evolution: prosociality, or behavior oriented toward the welfare of others; social control, which enforces prosocial behavior and penalizes those who behave selfishly; and symbolic thought, which relies on a flexible inventory of symbols with shared meaning.

Humans have evolved to live in small, cooperative groups, not as disconnected individuals. To be effective, however, society also requires structure.

Otherwise, strategies that are beneficial on the individual or small-group level become maladaptive: Self-preservation becomes self-dealing, helping friends and family becomes nepotism and cronyism, and patriotism fuels international conflict, for example.

We have to have the global good in mind and everything that we do in some sense has to be coordinated with the good of the whole, Wilson said.

The application of evolutionary concepts to larger human society is not itself new. For example, in 1898, Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen wrote an article called Why is economics not an evolutionary science?

Thats a good question, according to Wilson. Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, Binghamtons EvoS program applies evolutionary principles across the curriculum, crossing disciplinary lines into psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics and political science, even the humanities. It was the nations first when it began two decades ago, although similar programs have since developed at other universities.

The curriculum is highly individualized, which allows students to follow their own path. One highlight is its seminar series, in which prominent scholars discuss diverse topics from an evolutionary perspective, from microbiology to anthropology.

Its rare for a transdisciplinary program such as EvoS to last for 20 years, Wilson points out. Graduates include Justin Garcia, executive director of the Kinsey Institute, as well as professors and researchers at a variety of institutions.

Evolutionary concepts have been misused, however. Take social Darwinism, for example, which is often used to justify competition and harsh social inequities as survival of the fittest, a misunderstanding and misapplication of Darwinian theory. Social engineering also has insidious implications, Wilson noted.

We need to ask: Is there anything about evolutionary theory that is especially dangerous in that regard? Or is it the case that anything that can be used as a tool can also be used as a weapon? Wilson asked. I think its the latter.

These concepts become weapons when they are used as means of control, with little to no input from the people they impact, he explained. When people decide to use evolutionary principles to shape their own actions and goals, however, these principles are largely benign.

Checks and balances are at the core of multilevel cultural evolution to avoid power imbalances, making it the opposite of social Darwinism, which portrayed social inequities as necessary and inevitable. Social Darwinism actually has little to do with Darwin or his theories, Wilson points out; its a stigmatizing term associated with the moral justification for ruthless competition, and probably closer to the principles behind neoclassical economics.

But fields such as economics and business neednt define themselves with the neoclassical greed is good ethos of Milton Freidman. Wilson points to the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom, who proved that groups can self-manage common-pool resources avoiding the proverbial tragedy of the commons if they implement eight core design principles.

Wilson collaborated with Ostrom to show that the core design principles can be generalized, providing a key to successful governance for nearly all forms of cooperative activity.

To begin, you need to have a good, strong sense of identity and purpose; thats the first core design principle, Wilson said.

Other principles involve the equitable distribution of benefits and resources, inclusive decision-making, transparent behavior, and levels of response to helpful and unhelpful behavior, as well as fast and fair conflict resolution, local autonomy and authority, and relationships with other groups.

These principles not only build better workplaces, neighborhoods and nations, they can also heal the mind. As social mammals, our minds interpret social isolation as an emergency situation, the authors note, and social support is key for the treatment of such conditions as anxiety and depression.

The tools used in therapy particularly mindfulness are also applicable on a societal level, encouraging adaptability and cognitive flexibility, which helps individuals recover from adverse life events. Thats true of groups as well, Wilson said.

Creating a more prosocial world grounded in equity and cooperation isnt some unreachable pipe dream.

There are practical applications, said Wilson, who established the nonprofit ProSocial World to plant these ideas outside of academia. Right now, not in some far, distant future, we could be using these ideas to accomplish positive change.

Its important to avoid what Wilson calls the archipelago of knowledge and practice, consisting of many islands with little communication. Otherwise, ideas and solutions may become trapped in separate silos.

In essence, the EvoS speaker series functions that way for students, mingling lectures on bacteria with Neanderthals, morality, the arts and more. Students are exposed to ideas they may not have otherwise encountered, which introduces new paths and possibilities. The same can happen in the larger society, too.

While technological changes can spread from one culture to another over decades or centuries, Wilson hopes to spark societal change more quickly. He draws upon the concept of catalysis in chemistry: Added in small amounts, a catalytic molecule hastens the rate of change, he explains.

As catalytic agents, individuals may inspire changes that would otherwise take decades or not happen at all. And this catalysis can happen in ordinary ways, by leaning into the small-group community mindset that fuels our humanity.

Consider a community garden, for example: Reaching out to different community gardens and sharing knowledge can only benefit everyone involved, Wilson said. And those connections dont need to consist of dull meetings; they can involve social interactions such as parties and potlucks, which bring people together and encourage them to make connections.

Imagine repeating that in every walk of life, in our schools or businesses, on every scale from small groups to cities, he explained.

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How the principles of evolution can create lasting global change ... - Binghamton

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Recent debates around transgender people and sexual diversity have been marked by essentialism, a profoundly conservative mindset with deep links to religious and metaphysical dogmatism. It is a stance through which conservative thinkers seek certainty in a world of change and fluidity.

Essentialism comprises three key ideas.

First, there is the idea that nature is divided into discrete kinds of things, which are completely and definitively distinct from each other. For example, there is the view that living things are fundamentally different from non-living things, or that human beings are fundamentally different from other animals.

Second, there is the idea that these differences are eternal and necessary. This sometimes takes the form of the religious doctrine that God created the world and all the things in it in accordance with an unchanging typology. But the idea can also be attributed to Plato, the father of Western philosophy, who postulated eternal and changeless "forms" that worldly things copied and instantiated. If a particular thing is an instance of an eternal metaphysical form, according to this theory, it must have clearly delineated properties.

Third, essentialism suggests that each kind of thing has an "essence," which requires it to maintain its distinctness by acting in a way that is true to its nature. If God created things as clearly distinct from one another, then these distinctions become sacrosanct. Another example is Descartes' view that the essential difference between human beings and animals is that only human beings have rational souls.

Many implications, including ethical ones, have been drawn from such claims. To say of an organism that it has an "animal nature" implies that it falls outside the purview of our moral responsibilities, while the existence of "human nature" implies that a person is subject to various moral norms and prohibitions.

There are strong reasons for rejecting such essentialism. The first of these is Darwinism. It is a commonplace of modern biology that human beings evolved from other life forms. Indeed, all the life forms that inhabit the earth today evolved over eons of time from earlier life forms and from non-organic matter.

Those who reject this scientific consensus for religious or other reasons do so because they want to maintain the links between essentialism and a priori moral principles. This way lies doctrinal and moral dogmatism.

The most obvious implication of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is that natural typesas exemplified in biological speciesare not eternal or changeless realities. Species change all the time. The human species has changed over the large spans of time which are required for natural selection to do its evolutionary work.

It follows that there is no human essence and no changeless typology that marks off human nature from the rest of the animal kingdom or from the world of things more generally.

There are also ideological and ethical reasons for avoiding essentialism. The view that human beings are essentially different from other animals supports the view that humans have a unique moral standing. It used to be argued that because animals do not have souls or minds, it was morally legitimate to use them in any way we pleased. The religious version of this argument is that God created animals to be of use to humans. Add to this the argument that animals do not feel pain (because they do not have minds) and all kinds of cruel practices are legitimated. Peter Singer has labeled these theories "speciesism."

Racism is another example of this way of thinking. The basis of this view is also a form of essentialism: in this case, the view that there is an essential difference between black people and white people.

The scientific challenge to racism is data that shows the differences are genetically very slight. The moral challenge is to argue that they are irrelevant. During periods of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, racism often took the form of empirical claims some people were inherently and necessarily less intelligent than others, or more prone to violence, or were in need of strong discipline, or were "primitive" and in need of civilization. People of mixed race are troubling to racists, because they cross essential boundaries, blurring the difference between "us" and "them."

Nationalism, racism and certain views about class are examples of the inherently oppressive quality of essentialism. Economic and social thinkers (sometimes inspired by misunderstandings of Darwin) used to argue that members of the working classes (sometimes referred to as the "lower orders") were inherently stupid and dissolute, so it was doing them a favor to keep them working in the factories and pits for long hours, because only in that way would they ever be productive.

Never mind that talent is distributed arbitrarily across all socio-economic classes and needs only the opportunity to develop in individuals, no matter what class they belong to. As for nationalism, the view that some people are inherently of less worth than others because of their nationality is not the least important of the many causes of war.

Essentialism also lies at the heart of many sexist practices and forms of life. To cite Aristotle: "The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and one rules and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind."

According to such essentialism, certain things are said to have inalienable features and, as a result, have a lower or higher status on an imagined hierarchy. Aristotle grounded his view on biological theories about women and men and their sexual functions that we now know were incorrect, but the key point here is that he attributed a different metaphysical "nature" to each sex.

When biological differences are turned into immutable essences of moral significance, they can be used to justify practices that are oppressive and unjust. It is easier to justify preventing women from taking a full part in public and commercial life if one asserts that it is the nature of women to be housekeepers and mothers.

Essentialism also plays a part in the oppression of sexuality. If one maintains that the essence of the male/female distinction is that it is the basis of procreation, then homosexuality can be proscribed as "unnatural." But there is no essential purpose to sexuality. While procreation is an important outcome of sexual activity, it is not its only function.

Transgender identities show there are no essential links between sexuality, gender and biology. Trans activists deny that apparent biological differences create immutable gendered essences. The claim is not that transwomen are biological men who prefer to dress and act like women; it is that, because biological essence does not determine gender identity, transwomen are women.

This is a claim that a male or female identity is not defined on the basis of any material reality of embodied maleness or femaleness, but on a higher abstracted or psychological plane. While it might be difficult for non-trans people to understand what this plane would be, it is clear that it eschews any essentialist definition of what a woman or a man should be.

When gender differences are turned into immutable essences, one can give them moral significance and use them to justify practices which are oppressive and unjust. Nothing can be more offensive to an essentialist than the blurring of boundaries represented by transgender identification. It is the fixing of empirical differences into the categories of metaphysical essences that does the work of grounding oppressive principles.

Prejudices of all kinds usually take an essentialist form. It will often be found that the standards of human excellence propounded by essentialist theory are the standards held by the propounder of the theory. This is why essentialism is usually oppressive to anyone who is "other" in relation to the essentialist. To an essentialist, difference is pejorative.

By contrast, Jean-Paul Sartre's famous phrase "existence precedes essence" proposes that our self-conscious mode of being is not determined by any essential human nature. The "existentialism" he founded is the opposite of essentialism.

Rather than claiming that our human nature, our socialization, our genetic inheritanceor any other material or historical forcedetermines who we are and what we ought to do, existentialists make the radical claim that it is our subjectivity, our project of self-making, which projects itself into the world and uses those factual and formative elements to forge an identity for itselfan identity of its own choosing.

Unlike essentialism, which seeks to fix human life into the definitions its metaphysical categories bring with them, existentialism reminds us that our initiative and creativity are vital in the living of our lives.

Existentialism is anti-essentialist in relation to human existence. It claims the self is not a fixed entity. Human beings create their own modes of being, their values, and their destinies. And this applies to sexuality. Gender is an existentialist project, rather than a fixed essence.

Depending as it does on ancient metaphysical and religious doctrines, essentialism seeks normative certainty in a fluid world. It suggests that everything should act in accordance with its eternal and necessary nature. It is an inherently conservative stance which ought to be expunged from contemporary ethical and political debates.

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What is essentialism? And how does it shape attitudes to transgender people and sexual diversity? - Phys.org

"We must grow and we must adapt even Darwin style, as a business is the ultimate survival of the fittest."Boss Baby

New World's Worst CEO just dropped.

Meet James Clarke, the chief exec behind the tech-meets-media publisher Clearlink who, in a viral leaked video, told his content-writing staff that they should be using AI to put out upwards of 50 times more content than they already do.

"Many content writers today are now exclusively using AI to write," said Clarke, without giving any examples of who those writers may be. "I can do that in about 30 minutes of an 8-hour workday."

"So what do we need to do?" he pondered, before offering that Clearview writers should use AI to "put out 30-50 times our normal production, or substantially more of our production."

We know we probably don't have to say this, but: 30 to 50timesmore output is an absolutely unhinged and quite frankly, probably impossible productivity goal to put on a workforce, with or without AI integration.

But if we were going to interrogate that AI claim? We'd probably say that any responsible integration of AI isn't much faster than just 1. writing things yourself and 2. using Google, rather than the AI, to find and aggregate facts. Generative AI-written text is known to crib pre-existing writing, and often spews out total fabrications to boot. Soundly checking the AI's work for plagiarism and errors is no small or quick, if you're doing it well task.

To that end, it's worth noting that a lot of Clearlink-owned publications are personal finance hubs. Not great, considering that AI text generators are known to be extremely terrible at math and finance.

Somehow, though, that AI-assisted output projection wasn't even the most deranged thing Clarke said in the leaked call.

Elsewhere, the CEO went into a bizarre rant about how he supports single mothers but thinks they also might be bad at balancing parenting with full-time work, praised one employee for giving up their dog for the sake of the grind which she was seemingly forced to do as a result of company leadership's unexpected demand that formerly remote employees get back into the office and inexplicably bringing up the fact that he went to both Harvard and Oxford out of absolutely nowhere.

But according to the exec? It's all just business, and business is all just Darwinism, baby. Snooze it or lose it.

"Things that do not grow are on a path to die," the CEO added. "We must grow and we must adapt even Darwin style, as a business is the ultimate survival of the fittest."

READ MORE: CEO Celebrates Worker Who Sold Family Dog After He Demanded They Return to Office [Vice]

More on AI CEOs: Red Ventures Knew Its AI Lied and Plagiarized, Deployed It at CNET Anyway

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Media CEO Says Writers Should Be Using AI to Churn Out 30-50 ... - Futurism

The US Census Bureau recently estimated that 3.3 million American adults are displaced from their homes every year due to fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Most are evacuated from the path of danger and return within a week, but 500,000 never go home. Half a million people equals a good-sized city roughly the population of Liverpool, Edinburgh, Atlanta or Kansas City, displaced every year. But were not missing any major cities. Instead, what is happening is the emptying out, and in some cases, abandonment, of hundreds of scattered, smaller places.

Thinking of entire towns disappearing reminds me of the book series Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve, a YA tale about a future, war-shattered Earth riven by erupting volcanoes and earthquakes, where cities mount themselves on giant tracks and become predatory, chasing down smaller, slower rivals and consuming them, absorbing their resources and enslaving their inhabitants. Only the biggest, fastest, and most pitiless survive, and they justify their violence with the doctrine of Municipal Darwinism the survival of the fittest.

Its the doctrine of Municipal Darwinism the survival of the fittest

Is real life on Earth coming to resemble Mortal Engines? In a sense, yes. Our landscapes are increasingly buffeted by ever-stronger natural forces, intensified by global warming, destabilising even the ground beneath our feet. Sure, cities havent become physically mobile, as in the book, but their inhabitants and their capital have; a zero-sum competition is increasingly the norm between larger and smaller urban areas, for resources to deal with climate chaos.

This worrying trend is happening everywhere and is sadly likely to be in everyones future. But for many it is already here: most visibly in places exposed to frequent extreme weather events. In the US they include Florida, Louisiana, Texas and of course California, where I live. Ever the trendsetter, California is a climate early-warning system, thanks to its statistic-topping variability of wet/dry and hot/cold, where normal weather has always been marked by extremes, making the new extremes even more ferocious.

In the last five years, firestorms of unprecedented intensity have obliterated whole towns, including Greenfield, Concow and Paradise, where 85 people perished in flames. This year, a nonstop parade of powerful atmospheric river storms training in from the Pacific Ocean have overtopped levees and inundated scores of towns: Pajaro, Kernville, Woodlake, Felton, Porterville the list grows with each weeks new storm with at least 22 dead. Along the coastline, wind and waves have smashed piers, devoured roads, and collapsed cliffs from under apartment buildings. Even snow, not generally associated with Southern California, has proved fatal, with thirteen people found dead in San Bernardino County after heavy snows buried towns for more than a week, exposing the shocking failure of local authorities to prepare for predictable events.

For some, recovery is relatively quick. Money flows from insurance for those fortunate enough to afford it, and from the federal government, which unhesitatingly funds generous relief outlays so long as communities have the political clout to demand it. The wealthier a place is to begin with, the more relief money it will garner. With few strings attached to aid and subsidies, many rebuild bigger on the same spot, putting more value in harms way, and in the process becoming richer, at least on paper. Repetitive losses are the rule not the exception: on hurricane-prone coasts, homes having been rebuilt four times with taxpayer funds are not uncommon.

But for others, recovery comes haltingly or not at all. Lower-income communities and those with a high percentage of immigrants, people of colour and, especially, undocumented residents, fare the worst. Most lack insurance, the personal capital to tide them over, much less to rebuild, and the political clout needed to compel politicians to help. The results are shrinking, weakening towns and settlements, sometimes abandoned altogether.

In the recent March storms, the town of Pajaro, home to around 3,000 mostly Spanish-speaking workers, was flooded when the Pajaro River, which separates it from the more prosperous city of Watsonville, broke through a levee. Authorities had known for decades that the levee on the Pajaro side could fail but had rejected an improvement project on cost grounds. Its a low-income area. Its largely farmworkers that live there, were the words of one official. For a century and a half, low-lying Pajaro was where immigrant, non-white agricultural workers were relegated: first Chinese, then Japanese, Filipino, and now Mexican. Though the residents pay taxes, they get few services in return County authorities historically have been slow to pave streets, or to provide water, sewerage and other infrastructure.

The residents of Pajaro may never be able to return to their homes. Watsonville, with a better-maintained levee, remained dry.

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Survival of the richest - Perspective Magazine

The evolution of moral norms.

In the Descent of Man, Darwin speculated on the origins of what he called our moral sense. He argued that other intelligent organisms, were there any, would acquire a moral sense other than our own. Darwin cites the case of the hive-bees who might well support fratricide (Descent, chapter 4). According to Darwin, and I daresay, contemporary sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists, the kind of organisms we are determines, in a broad sense, what kinds of norms we are likely to develop and endorse. This has both a positive and negative aspect.

On the positive side, given our social natures and the need for communal support in the raising of children, human beings have evolved altruistic motivations that temper inclinations toward self interest. We can well imagine, in the spirit of Darwin, that other creatures that are intelligent but self reliant would not be moved by considerations of sympathy and empathy with their fellow kind.

On the negative side, just as the Naturalistic Fallacy suggests that is does not imply ought, it is often pointed out in ethical circles that ought implies can. The idea is that no norms that require what is impossible can be binding on us. So, for instance, it is folly to establish or endorse norms that are beyond our capacity to obey. The norm Thou shalt not kill seems perfectly proper while the norm Thou shalt not eat seems ludicrous. There are limitations to the expectations we can have for ourselves and for others. These limitations are a result of our limited physical, emotional and intellectual capacities. But these limits are the fruits of our evolutionary progress. So, it seems reasonable that the evolved limitations of our physical and mental capabilities ar relevant to determining or setting the boundaries of our normative demands.

Some moral theorists might take exception to the above conclusion. A God-centered ethics might argue that the limitations of human beings are the reflection of original sin or something of the sort and that this just shows that human beings need to resign themselves to the will of their Maker. A secularized version of such an ethic can be found in Kant who postulates an ideal Kingdom of Ends as the (ultimately) unachievable model for human moral behavior. These concerns can not be easily dismissed although I do not propose to pursue them here. Instead I commend to your attention James Rachels Created from Animals which explores the implications of Darwinism for formulating a moral theory and effectively calls into question both theologically based and Kantian ethical positions.

Rachels book is one long argument to the effect that Darwinism undermines the concept of human dignity that he claims forms the basis for traditional moralities. This, in turn, has implications for the moral status of animals. Rachels takes what he calls the traditional concept of human dignity to be the presumption that the primary purpose of morality is the protection of human beings and their rights and interests [Rachels, 1990]. This presumption is supported by certain factual (or quasi-factual) assumptions about human nature. Two basic claims emerge from this factual base and support the sanctity of human dignity. One is the presumption that human beings were created (as special) in the image of God. Rachels calls this the image of God thesis. The second is the presumption that human beings alone among the animals are rational beings. It does not follow logically from these presumptions that human dignity is or ought to be the lynch pin of morality. But, Rachels argues, the primacy of human dignity does rest on and is supported by these presumptions. They serve, as it were, as the rationale for putting human concerns ahead of all others in matters of morals.

Darwinism indirectly undermines the primacy of human dignity by undermining the presumptions that support the doctrine. The Darwinian perspective marginalizes God as the creator of human beings as special. Although Darwinism does not entail that God did not create human beings as special, it renders the story superfluous or suspect.1 From the Darwinian perspective, humans are just one among the animals. The Darwinian theory of common descent suggests that all organisms are interrelated. Darwinian gradualism suggests that differences between species are often matters of degree and not matters of kind. These implications undermine the status of human beings as special and in so doing undermine the traditional moralities which are based on that explicit or implicit assumption.

To replace the discarded image with something of value, Rachels proposes a view he calls moral individualism. Moral individualism treats all individuals, human or not, as individuals and not as members of a certain species. Considerations of moral relevance are to be determined by circumstances and not by fiat. Rather than pursue that development here I want to note that Rachels argument is not intended merely to replace one set of moral norms by others but that it calls into question some of the fundamental assumptions that lie behind any norms. This takes us into the realm of the meta-ethical.

What, if anything, are the implications of Darwinism for meta-ethics? The verdict is still out but one can find adherents of a wide diversity of views. Michael Ruse, for one, has argued that a Darwinian approach to ethics rules out any form of moral realism in favour of an error theory of the form first promoted by David Hume [Ruse, 1986]. This has led to a vigorous debate in the literature with no clear resolution in sight.

One might argue that Darwinism lends itself to moral realism by adapting an argument formulated by Donald Campbell with respect to human cognitive faculties. Campbell argues that just as the physical environment shapes the evolution of organismic features, so the physical environment is held to shape the evolution of what we know [Campbell, 1974]. Our cognitive faculties and our scientific theories fit our physical environments in much the same way the organisms in successful lineages are co-adapted to their environments. If our cognitive abilities and guesses about the world we live in were not on the mark more often than not we would be on the road to extinction. There is a congenial reciprocity between what we think and how we think and what we think about. Campbell calls this view critical realism and thinks that a Darwinian viewpoint is committed to it. I have some reservations about this argument in its guise as an account of the evolution of our cognitive capacities but, were one persuaded by it, it might be invoked as a defense of the contention that Darwinism is committed to or, at least, is compatible with some form of moral realism.

If we understand a minimal version of moral realism to be committed to the view that there are moral facts in the world then we can well imagine that the moral environment might shape the evolution of our moral capacities and moral norms in much the same manner as the physical environment is held to shape our cognitive capacities and cognitive norms. I'm not sure how far this argument can be pushed but it seems that the cognitive realm and the moral realm are, prima facie, on a par and if an evolutionary argument for critical physical realism can be made then perhaps an evolutionary argument for critical moral realism could be made as well.

This ignores, of course, all the arguments that have been made to the effect that moral claims have an absolutely different status from physical claims and I am far from suggesting that an appeal to evolutionary theory is likely to resolve this debate. In fact, since I do not think that Campbell's argument should persuade us of the truth of critical physical realism as he understands it, I do not think a parallel argument would persuade anyone of the truth of critical moral realism either. With respect to the ultimate status of moral claims evolutionary theory is, to this point, silent.

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Darwinism - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

In this article we will discuss about the Darwinism theory of evolution with its criticism.

In 1831, Charles Darwin on a voyage on HMS Beagle for five years noted the flora, fauna and geology of the islands of the South Pacific and collected numerous living and fossil specimens. He also sailed to the Galapagos Islands about 600 miles from the west coast of America (Fig. 7a and b).

He observed a number of variations or differences among the organisms that lived on these islands. The common birds of the Galapagos Islands were the finches that were remarkably different from the finches of the mainland. These closely related species of finches had beaks of different shapes and sizes and were adapted for feeding on completely different diets.

In 1838, Darwin read an essay on The Principles of Population by Malthus who explained that the rate of reproduction in animal was very rapid and that animal population increases more rapidly than the available food supply. The food supply increases in arithmetic ratio while the population increases in geometric ratio.

Malthus noted that the human population was capable of doubling every 25 years. This increase in population would soon outstrip the food supply, leading to starvation, famine and war, which would ultimately reduce the population.

At the same time, Alfred Wallace, a young English naturalist made similar observations to Darwin. Wallace and Darwin adapted Malthus ideas about how scarce resources could affect populations. Darwin put forth all these ideas in the Journal of Proceedings of Linnean Society in 1859. Darwin also published his observations in a book titled the The Origin of Species by Natural Selection. Darwinism is the term coined for the explanation offered by Darwin for the origin of species.

Origin of Species by Natural Selection or Theory of Natural Selection:

The main points of the Theory of Natural Selection are as follows:

a. Over Production or Enormous Fertility:

Living organisms have an innate capacity to produce more individuals to ensure continuity of the race. For example, an oyster may produce over 60-80 million eggs per year. A rabbit produces six young ones in a litter and four litters in a year and the young rabbit becomes reproductively active in six months from birth. A single female salmon produces 28,000,000 eggs in a season.

b. Struggle for Existence:

Organisms multiply in a geometric ratio, while the food supply increases in an arithmetic ratio. This leads to intense competition between organisms to ensure living to obtain maximum amount of food and shelter.

Struggle exists at three levels:

i. Intraspecific struggle is the competition among individuals of the same species or closely related forms. This type of struggle is very severe as the need of the population is the same.

ii. Interspecific struggle is the struggle between organisms of different species living together. Individuals of one species compete with other species for similar requirements.

iii. Struggle with the environment means the various hazards of the nature like extreme heat or cold, excess moisture or drought, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes eruptions, etc. also affect the survival of various organisms.

c. Variations amongst Organisms:

Differences that exist among organisms are called variations. Variations may be harmful, neutral or useful. Variations that are passed on from generation to generation are called heritable variations and these form the raw material for evolution. These variations arise due to changes in the genes or the chromosomes.

d. Survival of the Fittest:

During the struggle for existence, the individuals that exhibit variations beneficial in facing the environment will survive, while those that cannot face the hardship will be eliminated. Those organisms best able to survive and reproduce will leave more offspring than those unsuccessful individuals. This is referred to as survival of the fittest.

According to Darwin, the giraffe exhibited variations in the length of the neck and legs. When the grass on the ground became scarce, giraffes with long necks and legs had an advantage over those with shorter neck and legs, as they could feed on the tall trees. So these forms survived and reproduced and became abundant. Over a period of time, giraffes with short necks starved and became extinct (Fig. 8).

e. Origin of Species:

As a result of struggle for existence, variability and inheritance, individuals that are better adapted, survived and became abundant. Slowly over a period of time, this group, which was remarkably different from the original population, becomes established as a new species. This group is also subject to the same forces of change as their ancestors were and this process continues to give rise to new species.

Members of this group may possess variations that may be beneficial to them in another environment. As a result, two or more species may arise from a single ancestral species. Over many generations, unequal reproduction among individuals with different genetic traits changes the overall genetic composition of the population. This is evolution by natural selection. This mechanism can cause a population to change so much, that it becomes a new species. This is known as speciation.

But neither Darwin nor Wallace could explain how the process of evolution occurred; how did the inheritable traits, i.e. variations pass on to the next generation? This was because of the fact that during this period, no one knew anything about genetics. During the twentieth century, genetics provided that answer, and was linked to evolution in Neo-Darwinism, also known as Modern Synthesis.

The following points have been raised against the theory of natural selection:

a. Darwin was unable to explain the mechanism of inheritance of characters. Darwin proposed the theory of pangenesis to explain this phenomenon. He said that every cell or organ produces minute hereditary particles called pangenes or gemmules. These were carried through the blood and deposited in the gametes. This theory was not accepted.

b. According to natural selection, only useful organs are favoured by natural selection. The existence of vestigial organs in organisms could not be explained.

c. In some species of deer, the antlers develop beyond the stage of usefulness. These structures are of no functional significance to the animal.

d. Darwin was unable to explain the source of variations in organisms.

Artificial Selection:

Artificial selection is the isolation of natural population and the selective breeding of organisms with characteristic which are useful to humans. In this method, human exert a directional selection pressure that leads to changes in allele and genotype frequencies within the population. This is an evolutionary mechanism which gives rise to new breeds, strains, varieties, races and subspecies.

Darwin studied domestication in plants and animals in detail. He concluded that by artificial selection different varieties of plants and animals could be produced. Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, brussels sprouts could be produced from the common wild mustard (Fig. 9). Similarly, Darwin also raised several types of pigeons from the rock pigeon by artificial selection.

Similarly, the various breeds of fowl are all derived from the jungle fowl, Gallus gallus. Artificial selection has been used by breeders to produce high yielding cows, the Great Dane dog, the Shetland pony, the sleek Arabian horse, etc. The rate of species formation by artificial selection is fast. The analogous process that occurs in nature is natural selection, which proceeds very slowly.

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Darwinism Theory of Evolution (With Criticism) | Biology

survival of the fittest, term made famous in the fifth edition (published in 1869) of On the Origin of Species by British naturalist Charles Darwin, which suggested that organisms best adjusted to their environment are the most successful in surviving and reproducing. Darwin borrowed the term from English sociologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer, who first used it in his 1864 book Principles of Biology. (Spencer came up with the phrase only after reading Darwins work.)

Darwin did not consider the process of evolution as the survival of the fittest; he regarded it as survival of the fitter, because the struggle for existence (a term he took from English economist and demographer Thomas Malthus) is relative and thus not absolute. Instead, the winners with respect to species within ecosystems could become losers with a change of circumstances. For example, fossil evidence supports the notion that the mammoth (Mammuthus) was more fit during the most recent ice age (which ended roughly 11,700 years ago), but it became less fit as humans hunted it and the worlds climate warmed; fossil evidence suggests that the mammoth succumbed to extinction a few thousand years later.

Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection entailed three crucial elements: variation, reproduction, and heritability. Variations in the physical features of organisms that tend to benefit an individual (or a species) in the struggle for existence are preserved and passed on (or selected), because the individuals (or species) that have them tend to survive. The success or failure of a given variation is not known when it emerges; it is known only retrospectively, after organisms that possess it either grow and mature and pass it to their own offspring or fail to mature and reproduce.

Importantly, Darwin was influenced by the thinking of English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, whose system emphasized experimentation, mathematics, and logic over subjective sense experience. During Darwins time, his evolutionary theory was an attempt to construct a similar system for the living world, a frontier not yet crossed in the biological sciences.

Some philosophers and scientists have suggested that the notion of survival of the fittest is an example of circular reasoningthat is, a tautology (a statement framed in such a way that it cannot be falsified without inconsistency). In tautologies, any true statements that follow are a matter of definition. Indeed, describing those that survive as the fittest is similar to stating that those that survive survive. British philosopher Karl Popper considered survival of the fittest self-evident at first; however, he changed his mind after realizing that Darwin posited variation axiomatically; that is, Darwin noted that all individuals did not start with the same set of characters (or traits). Therefore, the forces affecting survival did not weigh on individuals and species equally; there were always variations, some of which would prove favourable and confer fitness over others.

Darwin was also influenced by Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, whose An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. In this work, Smith venerated self-interest: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Such self-interest was based on a philosophical view of the world that posited that only individuals, and not groups, were the important elements. In so doing, Smith was aligning himself with a nominalist worldview (which held that reality is only made up of concrete and individual items). According to Smith, what he termed the invisible handa metaphor in which beneficial social and economic outcomes arose from the accumulated self-interested actions of individualswould settle matters between people, bringing a sense of balance to their performance. Smiths worldview was associated with the doctrine of laissez-faire economics (the policy of minimum governmental interference in the economic affairs of individuals and society), and it is reflected in Darwins own account of evolution by natural selection:

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

The logic of survival of the fittest and natural selection was thought to be transferable to humanity. Within the context of the ascendancy of Victorian England (18201914), a perspective arose that the more intelligent would rule the less intelligent, or those who were less fit. To realize this perspective, Darwins cousin, British scientist Francis Galton, who coined the term eugenics (derived from the Greek for well-born), established the Eugenics Education Society of London in 1907. Galton, along with many others among the educated classes, hoped to actively discourage the overbreeding of the less fit and so preserve what was best in Victorian society.

As it related to the concept of survival of the fittest, eugenics was divided into positive and negative forms, with positive eugenics actively encouraging good breeding and negative eugenics preventing bad breeding. A pertinent example of negative eugenics appeared in the work of American psychologist Robert Yerkes. During World War I Yerkes analyzed the intelligence of U.S. Army recruits, and he concluded that heritable traits accounted for differences in intelligence between races, despite his use of culturally biased intelligence tests. U.S. Pres. Calvin Coolidge, who was influenced by Yerkess findings, signed the 1924 Immigration Act, a law that prevented people from immigrating to the United States by virtue of their nationality or race. In 1907 Indiana became the first U.S. state to pass laws that allowed for compulsory sterilization of those who had been classified as unfit. More than 29 other states would follow, passing their own compulsory sterilization laws; however, the eugenics movement in the U.S. declined in popularity after the 1920s.

The eugenics movement burgeoned in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. German politician Adolf Hitler wrote, in Mein Kampf (1925), that positive steps should be taken to encourage the flourishing of the fitter, because the system itself often worked against them. In this passage Hitler appears to twist the tenets of Darwinism to support his fascist worldview. Eugenics lost much of its appeal in Europe and elsewhere after World War II, due to its association with Nazi Germany.

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Survival of the fittest | Definition, Applications, & Examples

Argument asserting that it is fallacious to explain something good reductively

In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that any reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as pleasant or desirable, is false. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica.[1]

Moore's naturalistic fallacy is closely related to the isought problem, which comes from David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (173840). However, unlike Hume's view of the isought problem, Moore (and other proponents of ethical non-naturalism) did not consider the naturalistic fallacy to be at odds with moral realism.

The naturalistic fallacy should not be confused with the appeal to nature, which is exemplified by forms of reasoning such as "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable" or "This property is unnatural; therefore, this property is undesirable." Such inferences are common in discussions of medicine, sexuality, environmentalism, gender roles, race, and carnism.

The term naturalistic fallacy is sometimes used to describe the deduction of an ought from an is (the isought problem).[2] This usually takes the form of saying that If people do something (e.g., eat three times a day, smoke cigarettes, dress warmly in cold weather), then people ought to do that thing. It becomes a naturalistic fallacy when the isought problem ("People eat three times a day, so it is morally good for people to eat three times a day") is justified by claiming that whatever practice exists is a natural one ("because eating three times a day is pleasant and desirable").

In using his categorical imperative, Kant deduced that experience was necessary for their application. But experience on its own or the imperative on its own could not possibly identify an act as being moral or immoral. We can have no certain knowledge of morality from them, being incapable of deducing how things ought to be from the fact that they happen to be arranged in a particular manner in experience.

Bentham, in discussing the relations of law and morality, found that when people discuss problems and issues they talk about how they wish it would be, instead of how it actually is. This can be seen in discussions of natural law and positive law. Bentham criticized natural law theory because in his view it was a naturalistic fallacy, claiming that it described how things ought to be instead of how things are.

According to G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica, when philosophers try to define good reductively, in terms of natural properties like pleasant or desirable, they are committing the naturalistic fallacy.

...the assumption that because some quality or combination of qualities invariably and necessarily accompanies the quality of goodness, or is invariably and necessarily accompanied by it, or both, this quality or combination of qualities is identical with goodness. If, for example, it is believed that whatever is pleasant is and must be good, or that whatever is good is and must be pleasant, or both, it is committing the naturalistic fallacy to infer from this that goodness and pleasantness are one and the same quality. The naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because the words 'good' and, say, 'pleasant' necessarily describe the same objects, they must attribute the same quality to them.[3]

In defense of ethical non-naturalism, Moore's argument is concerned with the semantic and metaphysical underpinnings of ethics. In general, opponents of ethical naturalism reject ethical conclusions drawn from natural facts.

Moore argues that good, in the sense of intrinsic value, is simply ineffable: it cannot be defined because it is not a natural property, being "one of those innumerable objects of thought which are themselves incapable of definition, because they are the ultimate terms by reference to which whatever 'is' capable of definition must be defined".[4] On the other hand, ethical naturalists eschew such principles in favor of a more empirically accessible analysis of what it means to be good: for example, in terms of pleasure in the context of hedonism.

That "pleased" does not mean "having the sensation of red", or anything else whatever, does not prevent us from understanding what it does mean. It is enough for us to know that "pleased" does mean "having the sensation of pleasure", and though pleasure is absolutely indefinable, though pleasure is pleasure and nothing else whatever, yet we feel no difficulty in saying that we are pleased. The reason is, of course, that when I say "I am pleased", I do not mean that "I" am the same thing as "having pleasure". And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that "pleasure is good" and yet not meaning that "pleasure" is the same thing as "good", that pleasure means good, and that good means pleasure. If I were to imagine that when I said "I am pleased", I meant that I was exactly the same thing as "pleased", I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics.

In 7, Moore argues that a property is either a complex of simple properties, or else it is irreducibly simple. Complex properties can be defined in terms of their constituent parts but a simple property has no parts. In addition to good and pleasure, Moore suggests that colour qualia are undefined: if one wants to understand yellow, one must see examples of it. It will do no good to read the dictionary and learn that yellow names the colour of egg yolks and ripe lemons, or that yellow names the primary colour between green and orange on the spectrum, or that the perception of yellow is stimulated by electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of between 570 and 590 nanometers, because yellow is all that and more, by the open question argument.

Bernard Williams called Moore's use of the term naturalistic fallacy, a "spectacular misnomer", the question being metaphysical, as opposed to rational.[5]

Some people use the phrase, naturalistic fallacy or appeal to nature, in a different sense, to characterize inferences of the form "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable" or "This property is unnatural; therefore, this property is undesirable." Such inferences are common in discussions of medicine, homosexuality, environmentalism, and veganism.

The naturalistic fallacy is the idea that what is found in nature is good. It was the basis for social Darwinism, the belief that helping the poor and sick would get in the way of evolution, which depends on the survival of the fittest. Today, biologists denounce the naturalistic fallacy because they want to describe the natural world honestly, without people deriving morals about how we ought to behave (as in: If birds and beasts engage in adultery, infanticide, cannibalism, it must be OK).

Some philosophers reject the naturalistic fallacy and/or suggest solutions for the proposed isought problem.

Ralph McInerny suggests that ought is already bound up in is, insofar as the very nature of things have ends/goals within them. For example, a clock is a device used to keep time. When one understands the function of a clock, then a standard of evaluation is implicit in the very description of the clock, i.e., because it is a clock, it ought to keep the time. Thus, if one cannot pick a good clock from a bad clock, then one does not really know what a clock is. In like manner, if one cannot determine good human action from bad, then one does not really know what the human person is.[7][pageneeded]

Certain uses of the naturalistic fallacy refutation (a scheme of reasoning that declares an inference invalid because it incorporates an instance of the naturalistic fallacy) have been criticized as lacking rational bases, and labelled anti-naturalistic fallacy.[8][pageneeded] For instance, Alex Walter wrote:

The refutations from naturalistic fallacy defined as inferring evaluative conclusions from purely factual premises[10] do assert, implicitly, that there is no connection between the facts and the norms (in particular, between the facts and the mental process that led to adoption of the norms).

The effect of beliefs about dangers on behaviors intended to protect what is considered valuable is pointed at as an example of total decoupling of ought from is being impossible. A very basic example is that if the value is that rescuing people is good, different beliefs on whether or not there is a human being in a flotsam box leads to different assessments of whether or not it is a moral imperative to salvage said box from the ocean. For wider-ranging examples, if two people share the value that preservation of a civilized humanity is good, and one believes that a certain ethnic group of humans have a population level statistical hereditary predisposition to destroy civilization while the other person does not believe that such is the case, that difference in beliefs about factual matters will make the first person conclude that persecution of said ethnic group is an excusable "necessary evil" while the second person will conclude that it is a totally unjustifiable evil. The same is also applicable to beliefs about individual differences in predispositions, not necessarily ethnic. In a similar way, two people who both think it is evil to keep people working extremely hard in extreme poverty will draw different conclusions on de facto rights (as opposed to purely semantic rights) of property owners depending on whether or not they believe that humans make up justifications for maximizing their profit, one who believes that people do concluding it necessary to persecute property owners to prevent justification of extreme poverty while the other person concludes that it would be evil to persecute property owners. Such instances are mentioned as examples of beliefs about reality having effects on ethical considerations.[11][12]

Some critics of the assumption that is-ought conclusions are fallacies point at observations of people who purport to consider such conclusions as fallacies do not do so consistently. Examples mentioned are that evolutionary psychologists who gripe about "the naturalistic fallacy" do make is-ought conclusions themselves when, for instance, alleging that the notion of the blank slate would lead to totalitarian social engineering or that certain views on sexuality would lead to attempts to convert homosexuals to heterosexuals. Critics point at this as a sign that charges of the naturalistic fallacy are inconsistent rhetorical tactics rather than detection of a fallacy.[13][14]

A criticism of the concept of the naturalistic fallacy is that while "descriptive" statements (used here in the broad sense about statements that purport to be about facts regardless of whether they are true or false, used simply as opposed to normative statements) about specific differences in effects can be inverted depending on values (such as the statement "people X are predisposed to eating babies" being normative against group X only in the context of protecting children while the statement "individual or group X is predisposed to emit greenhouse gases" is normative against individual/group X only in the context of protecting the environment), the statement "individual/group X is predisposed to harm whatever values others have" is universally normative against individual/group X. This refers to individual/group X being "descriptively" alleged to detect what other entities capable of valuing are protecting and then destroying it without individual/group X having any values of its own. For example, in the context of one philosophy advocating child protection considering eating babies the worst evil and advocating industries that emit greenhouse gases to finance a safe short term environment for children while another philosophy considers long term damage to the environment the worst evil and advocates eating babies to reduce overpopulation and with it consumption that emits greenhouse gases, such an individual/group X could be alleged to advocate both eating babies and building autonomous industries to maximize greenhouse gas emissions, making the two otherwise enemy philosophies become allies against individual/group X as a "common enemy". The principle, that of allegations of an individual or group being predisposed to adapt their harm to damage any values including combined harm of apparently opposite values inevitably making normative implications regardless of which the specific values are, is argued to extend to any other situations with any other values as well due to the allegation being of the individual or group adapting their destruction to different values. This is mentioned as an example of at least one type of "descriptive" allegation being bound to make universally normative implications, as well as the allegation not being scientifically self-correcting due to individual or group X being alleged to manipulate others to support their alleged all-destructive agenda which dismisses any scientific criticism of the allegation as "part of the agenda that destroys everything", and that the objection that some values may condemn some specific ways to persecute individual/group X is irrelevant since different values would also have various ways to do things against individuals or groups that they would consider acceptable to do. This is pointed out as a falsifying counterexample to the claim that "no descriptive statement can in itself become normative".[15][16]

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Naturalistic fallacy - Wikipedia