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A Naturalistic AfterlifeReal Intelligent Design

A Naturalistic Afterlife: Real Intelligent Design [How is our posthumous individuality registered in evolution? By being the basis of the behavioral predispositions that are passed down from generation to generation as culture evolves. Knowing that what we do in life matters to future generations is a powerful impetus for secular people to actively design our moral lives. Drawing on Daniel Dennett’s image of an evolutionary “design space,” the idea of a moral design space, in which we situate the ethics of our behavior, is developed. It is proposed that a good way to keep track of our moves in moral design space is to imagine that our actions are altering—slightly, yet significantly—the course of evolution as symbolized by the phylogenetic tree of life. All this reinforces a critical point: cultural evolution ultimately condenses down to individual behaviors and the attitudes that direct them, so there must be some way for individuality to be registered permanently. In cultural evolution, the carrier of behavioral predispositions, of heritable individuality, is our nonconscious communal self.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Naturalistic AfterlifeReal Intelligent Design

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
ISBN
978-3-319-57977-1
Pages
141 –162
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-57978-8_8
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[How is our posthumous individuality registered in evolution? By being the basis of the behavioral predispositions that are passed down from generation to generation as culture evolves. Knowing that what we do in life matters to future generations is a powerful impetus for secular people to actively design our moral lives. Drawing on Daniel Dennett’s image of an evolutionary “design space,” the idea of a moral design space, in which we situate the ethics of our behavior, is developed. It is proposed that a good way to keep track of our moves in moral design space is to imagine that our actions are altering—slightly, yet significantly—the course of evolution as symbolized by the phylogenetic tree of life. All this reinforces a critical point: cultural evolution ultimately condenses down to individual behaviors and the attitudes that direct them, so there must be some way for individuality to be registered permanently. In cultural evolution, the carrier of behavioral predispositions, of heritable individuality, is our nonconscious communal self.]

Published: Aug 2, 2017

Keywords: Evolution; Ethics; Secularism; Cultural evolution

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