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Full Idea
The philosophy of evolution offers us today a new criterion, which is objective and fixed, as an ethical test between right and wrong: That is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive.
Gist of Idea
Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong
Source
William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.44)
Book Ref
James,William: 'Selected Writings of William James', ed/tr. Bird,Graham [Everyman 1995], p.44
A Reaction
Perceptive for its time. Herbert Spencer may have suggested the idea. James dismisses it, because it implies a sort of fatalism, whereas genuine moral choices are involved in what survives.
| 6217 | Natural law is supplied to the human mind by reality and human nature [Cumberland] |
| 6924 | Plotinus was ashamed to have a body [Feuerbach] |
| 1568 | Nietzsche felt that Plato's views downgraded the human body and its brevity of life [Nietzsche, by Roochnik] |
| 7147 | Values are innate and inherited [Nietzsche] |
| 7190 | Our values express an earlier era's conditions for survival and growth [Nietzsche] |
| 18297 | We created meanings, to maintain ourselves [Nietzsche] |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| 23431 | Human defects are just like plant or animal defects [Foot] |
| 22187 | Genetic behaviours that have enhanced human success include aggression, rape and xenophobia [Wilson,EO, by Okasha] |
| 23515 | Human exceptionalism plagues biology, and most other human thinking [Seth] |