In my readings of book reviews yesterday, which I get from Herman, I read one I want to expand on a bit. It is titled ‘Nothing fixed’ by Enfield in TLS of 2012-10-05, p.8., a review of ‘Beyond Human Nature’ by J.J. Prinz. I would have called that book ‘Adapting Human Nature’, because the book is subtitled ‘How culture and experience make us who we are’.
You cannot really say that culture and experience make us, because the latter are merely human construct within culture itself. Therefore it is more accurate to use the notion that we humans learned from our experience as we lived and formed our culture as we went. This way of looking at our own human process makes inevitable the out come of the book itself as presented by Enfield in the review’s last paragraph as he says that Prinz shows us: “ … we need to focus on the extraordinary diversity, flexibility and adaptability that mark our species.”
… we need to focus on the extraordinary diversity, flexibility and adaptability that mark our species. [Prinz]
This is a no-brainer, when we consider that it is the flexibility of the brain that constitutes our ultimate adaptation in the process of development, which some call evolution, which is too teleological for me.
The brain and mind combination are an immensely flexible end product of a long development, which appears to maximise the entropy of opportunity. The latter refers to “Entropy law linked to intelligence, …", BBC News, 2013-04-23; web.
Enfield concludes his review with "The flexibility of morality does not condemn us to an anything-goes moral nihilism. It frees us from intolerance and moral stagnation and allows us to improve on what we have", as he appears to be quoting the author Prinz.
This conclusion stops short of what I see as the real consequence of relative nature of our ethical and moral rules. It is, that we are the responsible agent who is in charge of these rules. This responsibility cannot be assigned to or projected on some external cause or source. It is our post modern reality that we are the ones that make the rules - informed by our traditions - and that we must act on that newly discovered principle.
It is our post modern reality that we are the ones that make the rules - informed by our traditions - and that we must act on that newly discovered principle.[A.D. Vander Vliet]
This implies that we cannot just talk about an ‘allowing to improve’, but rather that it is incumbent on us to do our utmost to make improvement as aware humans . The need for such effort is evident in our integrating world today. There is not going to be any additional saviour other than the ones we have.
We are consciously aware human beings who know our heritage, our capabilities and our predicaments. We must act on our own discoveries such as this one about the nature of our morality and guard this acquired treasure with prudence and vigilance, because it is under threat continuously due to its adaptive flexibility.
<9:19am and 9:48am edited~