When all is said and done, it seems that man "senses" something greater than his understanding can accommodate, all powerful and pervasive, that drives the universe - he calls it God.

Squeers asked, what are Dawkins' ethics and what is their source? It's a good question.

Flaubert laid it bare when he wrote:

"My kingdom is as wide as the universe and my wants have no limits. I go forward always, freeing spirits and weighing worlds, without fear, without compassion, without God. I am Science.

*Squeers asked, what are Dawkins' ethics and what is their source? It's a good question.*

Poirot, indeed its a good question. Yet another reason to swat up
on primatology. Lo and behold, we find empathy, food sharing,
caring about the young etc, all happening in chimp and bonobo
tribes. Clearly there is a genetic source, overlooked by
the anthropocentric

Yabby,

I think the relevant word in your reply was "tribes". The qualities you describe are those which serve the common purpose of a closed community. These attributes tend to diminish or disappear upon interaction with those outside tribal boundaries. In humans, differences in language, customs and culture add to the difficulties.

Is there a human standard for "truth" or do ethics rely merely on perception?

<Q, is relativism/equivocation of M & E just as bad as hard views either way on atheism/theism?>
Sorry, Formersnag, I don't understand the question?

Poirot.
thanks for reiterating my question, and I like the Flaubert quote.

Yabby,
some philosopher, I forget who, said we've been through one Copernican revolution after another with Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Nietzsche/Heidegger, Derrida and others. With each new development Humanity's place in the universe becomes less significant. I'm certainly not defending anthropocentrism/humanism, or Dawkins's liberal rationalism, I'm implicitly critiquing them. I'm just interested in the conundrum of consciousness that many analytic philosophers admit we're nowhere near understanding. Whether or not there is a dualism of body and mind, the human "perspective" is certainly dualistic; consciousness maintains a quasi-objective or critical distance from--as well as taking a kind of "vicarious" pleasure in--its bodily activities.
I'm not defending a belief system, I'm keeping an open mind, as well as weighing the political/ethical implications of materialism/idealism.

Squeers,

"...consciousness maintains a quasi-objective or critical distance from--as well as taking a kind of "vicarious" pleasure in-- its bodily activities."

I wonder if the only dualism is between the "conscious mind" and the body. The "sub-conscious" never sleeps and, like the heart and other biological imperatives, is overseen beyond our voluntary reflexes. Perhaps this inner sanctum of past experience and knowledge is the point past which duality ceases, a kind of template, to which we are enthrall as surely as to that of our biology.

My question is how much of human behaviour and ethics is guided by the collective sub-conscious?

Squeers
"That is of course if we assess Nietzsche on his own terms and accept the will to power as essential and essentialising being."

The will to power destroys "being." There is only "becoming." Although, yes, becoming could now be called the new being.

"But we can just as easily insist that he is using the mysterious faculty of reason in the very instance of rationalising it away; where is the empirical evidence of will to power (has the gene been isolated)? which sets us on an endless regress since each presuppose the other?"

I agree this is tricky. However, Nietzsche's argument would be that any "rationalising" is will to power. "Rationalising" is a manifestation of will to power; the drive to stamp one's will onto the world. The primary drive is will to power and any "rationalising" only proceeds and is a manifestation of it.
It may better to understand his argument when looking at who he is arguing against. His primary targets are the philosophers and theologians who claim there are static objects and static subjects. For Nietzsche, "objects" and "subjects" are human creations and are constantly subject to reinterpretation, hence there is no permanency, no "being" only "becoming."

But, in the end, Nietzsche can only claim, and he does so, that will to power is his interpretation of the world. He can't claim it as the "thing in-itself" as he is adamant human beings have no access to such a thing. However, historical evidence would suggest that "objects" really are constantly reinterpreted by thinkers over the centuries and decades. Any so-called permanent "object" is merely waiting to be reinterpreted. Hence, it would seem to favour the argument of becoming and not being.

"this shows though how idealism, even for Nietzsche, still precedes materialism."

Could it not be argued that any idealism initially finds its "inspiration" from the material, and not vice-versa? It seems the cause and effect has been reversed. If idealism precedes materialism, then humans are contemplating in a vacuum.