INTERLOCUTOR:
One should change their mind for good reasons, but if we are just atoms bumping into each other in a cosmic accident, then there is no such thing as a good or bad reason.
TP:
Wrong, your atoms produce sentience, which is comprised of pain and pleasure. Those naturally give you both good and bad reasons.
INTERLOCUTOR:
Pursuing pleasure over pain, more often than not, helps chances of survival. But you assume life and its continuation is the ultimate or at least general good.
TP:
We are programmed by evolution to value life. No choice but to accept this axiom.
INTERLOCUTOR:
So, suicide isn't real?
Being self-aware and thinking beings we are able to choose the opposite of our natural drives.
The only thing we are unable to do is avoid choice. Either we "say screw it and go on" or "screw it and end it".
TP:
lol Thats a very small minded view of how we value life - our choices aren't based on simple boolean values. Nor is our evolutionary value sculpting based on the individual but rather the collective. Nor are our value systems infallible - evolution makes mistakes all the time. Finding a spurious counterfactual to generate a specious conclusion is a great way to confuse oneself, but it doesn't debunk the role evolution plays in forming our value systems
INTERLOCUTOR:
Simplicity doesn't mean something is false.
Never claimed value sculpting was only based on the individual.
How do you know a value system is false or evolution has made a mistake? What is the standard and how do you prove that standard's validity?
I gave no counterfactual. You said we had no choice in accepting the value of life. I gave the unfortunately real example of suicide that proves that statement false.
TP:
"If we are programmed by evolution to value life, then suicides would not exist." - I believe that this is the counterfactual your statements were implying, and "Suicides exist, therefore the premise is false." - is the specious conclusion you were also implying.
Reality is so complex that simplicity is a valid heuristic for falsity.
"Never claimed value sculpting was only based on the individual." Your specious conclusion is false if you grant collective values.
"How do you know a value system is false or evolution has made a mistake?" - Contradictions are false (law of non-contradictions) and violating your own goals is a mistake.
The standard is based on what can exist. That which pursues a goal of life can exist. That which doesn't pursue a goal of life will cease to exist. Given that we exist, we are axiomatically inheriting a goal of life - collective life - the continuation of the genes - a goal that requires cooperation, love, morality, etc.
INTERLOCUTOR:
Are you claiming we have no choice in valuing life or that we are predisposed to valuing life? There is a difference.
Saying life is good because it exists, and we are naturally inclined to it is an Is/Ought fallacy.
There are many ways in which human life can continue effectively, many of which some might consider dystopian hellscapes.
TP:
We have no choice in valuing life because we are predisposed to valuing life. Cognitive processes are usually slaves to the limbic system. You might be cognitively depressed, but when you find yourself at the edge of a cliff/skyscraper, your limbic system my take the reins and not allow you to commit suicide.
Obviously, there is a contradiction when one part of the brain wants suicide, and another part of the brain doesn't. The only way to commit suicide is for the pro-suicide portion of the brain to overpower the other parts of the brain. This will be only possible if evolution allows it, either for adaptive reasons (it's good to sacrifice the one for the benefit of the many), or maladaptive reasons (brain didn't develop properly to promote its own goals).
I believe some facts have values nested in them, so the is/ought gap is resolved in a de facto way. There is no such thing as a cosmic ought, oughts come from sentience, and so the fact of sentience generates these natural oughts.
Evolutionary value systems are too complex to map out in a simple comment. This entry in my blog might help explicate how evolution programs our value systems and how that factors into morality.