Biological Altruism

Also, having read R.Dawkins "selfish gene" and "ancestors tale" - there is much that 'resonates' here in melding both the philosophical and biological aspects of 'altruism'.

Post 21

Saturday, August 27, 2011 - 9:16am

And, finally - this observation is brilliant. Thanks to Fred.

"Because they are afraid. Because of irrational existential terror. They are afraid that those they think they depend on the most will freely say 'no', or fail to freely say 'yes' enough to satisfy their world view for them. And, they believe that fear empowers them to seek point of a gun solutions to what they want(one form of politics, the art of getting what you want from others.)"

Post 22

Saturday, August 27, 2011 - 10:59am

Merlin,

Russell Roberts, may mean something different by altruism, but nobody holds a monopoly on its meaning.

You've said this before ("nobody holds a monopoly"). While true, it is terribly misleading. The very idea of being able to hold a monopoly on epistemological matters is an appeal to the primacy of consciousness. Only under a primacy of consciousness view would the notion of "holding a monopoly" have meaning and relevance.

The reason that it is important to criticize your wording then, is because it could be used to argue for a primacy of consciousness. If it is accepted as both true and relevant that nobody holds a monopoly on definitions, then folks would get to have their very own definitions for things -- based on their unchecked, internal desires. But the problem with this is that it ignores, even contradicts, the purpose of a definition. Here's Rand on that (ITOE, 47):

... a definition cannot be changelessly absolute, because it cannot establish the relationship of a given group of existents to everything else in the universe, including the undiscovered and unknown. And for the very same reasons, a definition is false and worthless if it is not contextually absolute�if it does not specify the known relationships among existents (in terms of the known essential characteristics) or if it contradicts the known (by omission or evasion).

The purpose of definitions is to underscore the real (factual) relations of things to other things, and so it is that if a definition is not true it will fail to do this correctly (and if it fails to do this correctly, it is not true). This means that there is a 'natural monopoly' on definitions (more like a 'natural hierarchy'). If you come up with your very own definition for something (e.g., altruism), and it doesn't underscore the real relations of things, then your definition is false. Let me give an easy example:

Johnny defines a square as a closed figure with 4 sides and 90-degree angles at the corners.
Sally defines a square as a closed figure with 3 sides, and 90-degree angles at the corners.

Jimmy pulls Sally aside to alert her that her definition doesn't underscore the actual relation of things. He starts to try to explain how you cannot have a closed figure with 3 sides and 90-degree angles ... and Sally gets all up in a huff about this. She says to Jimmy:

"Nobody holds a monopoly on definitions."

But there is a 'natural monopoly' on definitions. It isn't just because of 'personal, esthetic preference' that we can declare that Johnny's definition is both true and, therefore, superior to Sally's. It is because of reality that we can do that. Some definitions are better than others, because they underscore the real relations of things better than the other definitions. Rand's definition of altruism, for instance, is better than others -- because it is better at underscoring the actual relations of things.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/27, 11:12am)

Post 23

Saturday, August 27, 2011 - 11:52am

I'm always interested in the motivation behind different theories (First I want to understand and evaluate the theory, but after that I'm curious to know what makes it attactive to its advocates).

For example, there is what I'd call the Utopia Pull. As a rational egoist I'm delighted that Capitalism is a system that benefits me, which is my goal, but that it is also a tide that lifts all boats is sweet. The pieces all fit together and that is the pull for me ("Utopia? This way, please.")

(Note: I'm discussing feelings about ideas, not rational explanations - for example, it may be on some tiny level a delight that an acorn becomes an oak, but on a rational level the response, is "Of course, what else would you expect?!" We are talking about an emotional spectrum that runs from delight to mental dissonance and lives behind the ideas. My bias, as a psychologist, is that for any two ideas in competition with one another, look to see, all else remaining equal, which idea fosters the strongest attraction in those who hold it. Because while ideas are always in competion rationally on the basis of logic, they may also be in competition irrationally in the feelings they generate.)

For example, take someone who is an altruist - not necessarily a gung ho altruist, but rather just the person-next-door sort of altruist - and who wants to believe that "things fit together". That the "selfishness" of genetic evolution could somehow be compatible with kindness, charity, helping others, etc. That is their 'pull.' Finding that evolutionary biology might 'match' with altruism could give them that 'acorn becomes an oak' feeling.

There are those who advocate a group, or species as the unit of selection in evolutionary biology and they say that altruistic behavior is evidence of their theory of a higher level of selection being the best.

For someone like Dawkins, the author of the Selfish-Gene theory, there is a pull to find that it is in the selfish interest of the gene (pardon my anthropomorphizing), to do what only looks like altruistic behavior. This would we be an absolute requirement of his theory that the gene is the unit of selection. (Note: I like Dawkins and his unit of selection arguments, his Meme concept, and his extended phenotype theory, but he has some very unfortunate political beliefs).

For reciprocal altruism in evolutionary biology, the first item to discuss is whether or not we are talking about humans, who have knowledge, values, self-awareness, and choice - or a creature that isn't a free agent. If we're talking about birds, for example, and we see a pattern of behavior where bird A does x which benefits bird B who then does y which benefits bird A, then I just see the pattern as a whole being more beneficial to the propagation of that gene than not. Those birds with that gene will leave behind more successful offspring than those that don't have that gene. But you also have to remember that "leaving behind more successful offspring" is an interaction with a complex, dyamic environment. For example, is it more beneficial, in some bird species, for the male to be a philanderer, or to be faithful? The philanderer goes around fertilizing many eggs, leaving more offspring, but isn't there to help protect and feed them. The faithful spouse leave far fewer offspring, but they each have a greater chance of reaching maturity. It turns out that when this is modeled with a computer, it is a certain percent philanderer and the majority faithful will give the largest number of successful offspring.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 8/27, 12:12pm)

Post 24

Saturday, August 27, 2011 - 12:23pm

Interesting post, Steve.

The faithful spouse leave far fewer offspring, but they each have a greater chance of reaching maturity. It turns out that when this is modeled with a computer, it is a certain percent philanderer and the majority faithful will give the largest number of successful offspring.

My guess is that the optimal ratio of philanderer-to-faithful will vary tremendously from animal to animal, and even in the same type of animal (e.g., birds) from species to species. I was totally miffed when I learned that there is a bird species in which the female routinely "cheats." I think it is the Bower bird. The female routinely tricks a male into thinking the eggs in her nest are his offspring, and so he guards the eggs while she goes out carousing with other male birds and whatnot. Apparently, this behavior is evolutionarily advantageous.

Usually, it is evolutionarily good if the male is a philanderer and the female is faithful. In apes, it often turns out that just one guy gets all the girls. Sometimes there's no real boundary condition to even get to a conclusion. I'm thinking of species of female fish that drop ova onto the sea floor, only to have a male come by and "spray" them. Who's faithful and who's a philanderer in that scenario? I guess the difference is that the little fish-babies don't require much parenting. Where offspring require lots of parenting, faithfulness is more important to the survival of the species.

Ed

Post 25

Saturday, August 27, 2011 - 1:27pm

Thanks, Ed.

I think you're right - that the optimal ratio varies from animal to animal (and probably from season to season or location to location as survival conditions in the environment change and maybe the optimal ration can vary by the population size of a given species for a given area).

The reason that it is almost always the male who is the philander is that they do the fertilizing and can usually take off before the female gives birth. It is an issue of who can leave first without endangering the viability of the offspring. With eggs where they require fertilizing after laying it is trickier for the male to get away first since he is last to act. Where with live birth he has the option of disappearing first. If the female lays the eggs and waits till the male shows up to fertilize them and then she takes off, she can do the same thing again and again and maximize the number of offspring her genes are leveraged into. And if the male fish doesn't stay and guard the eggs, his genes don't continue on without his staying and protecting. When she disappears, he has been 'tricked' into guard duty.

We use words taken from the human realm of behavior ("philanderer," "faithful") and apply them to birds and fish - Dawkins got a lot of people upset when he did this in one of his books and people thought he was talking about humans (that the optimal situation was where a certain percentage of the population were philanderers) - and he had to publish an article to explain that he was talking about a bird species.

I see the morality (the good) as related to the agent of change. For a bird, who doesn't have volition and can't 'value' then the 'good' becomes effective at the level of the agent which is the gene (and the phenyotype as a tool acting to further the leverage of the genes into as many viable offspring as possible). Dawkins probably wouldn't agree, but I see it as different for the human. Volition is the agent for man and it is employed to support the life of the individual. Another way to locate egoism.

Post 26

Sunday, August 28, 2011 - 4:42am

I find the meme concept a bit problematic. It seems to me that it is a pragmatic way of explaining how information is passed on from one generation to the other. Unless he is referring to it in a metaphorical way.

Post 27

Sunday, August 28, 2011 - 4:57am

Ed,

At times you really surprise me. This was one of them. I could understand invoking primacy-of-consciousness if by 'nobody has a monopoly on the meaning of a word' I was talking about, say, using the word "tree" to mean not only a tree, but also a vine, a boulder, happy, discombobulated and numerous other things. However, that was nowhere close to what I meant.

By the way, people, do use some words in that way -- for example, it, this, that, thing. :-) That includes you. :-)

Johnny defines a square as a closed figure with 4 sides and 90-degree angles at the corners.
Sally defines a square as a closed figure with 3 sides, and 90-degree angles at the corners.

Jimmy pulls Sally aside to alert her that her definition doesn't underscore the actual relation of things.

Granted, but the case of "altruism" I addressed wasn't like that. Russell Roberts apparently and others use "altruism" in a far broader sense than Rand did. So it is not a matter of whether or not the usage fits the facts, but the level of abstraction or range of the referents.

Hope that helps.

Post 28

Sunday, August 28, 2011 - 8:41am

My thought on the point about 'forced association' and notion referred to by Fred as "putting the gun to your own head". To my understanding this type of 'Progressive Social Sanction' amounts to the act of 'identifying with once captor', and thus (to quote Mamet) a form of "stockholm Syndrome".

Excerpt - http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowledge-Dismantling-American-Culture/dp/1595230769
The problems facing us, faced by all mankind engaged in Democracy, may seem complex, or indeed insolvable, and we, in despair, may revert to a state of wish fulfillment-a state of "belief" in the power of the various experts presenting themselves as a cure for our indecision. But this is a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. Here, the captives, unable to bear the anxiety occasioned by their powerlessness, suppress it by identifying with their captors.

This is the essence of Leftist thought. It is a devolution from reason to "belief," in an effort to stave off a feeling of powerlessness. And if government is Good, it is a logical elaboration that more government power is Better. But the opposite is apparent both to anyone who has ever had to deal with Government and, I think, to any dispassionate observer.

It is in sympathy with the first and in the hope of enlarging the second group that I have written this book.

Mamet pulls no punches in his art or in his politics. And as a former liberal who woke up, he will win over an entirely new audience of others who have grown irate over America's current direction.

Post 29

Sunday, August 28, 2011 - 8:48am

Merlin,

If you go to the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, the entry for 'Charity' was written by Russ Roberts. In it you will find the following quote:

But most of us donate to charity for the same reason that we give our money to the ice cream vendor or the car dealer�the satisfaction and pleasure we get in return make the monetary sacrifice worthwhile. That is, much of our giving stems from what might be called self-interested altruism, the joy of seeing others helped.

In this quote, a form of altruism is equated with kindness, benevolence, and good will ("the joy of seeing others helped"). That equivocation is how you can attempt to maintain correspondence to the factual relations of things in the world -- while also going ahead and collapsing the distinction between self-interest and altruism (in order to get this so-called "self-interested altruism").

My first question is: Don't you see a problem with calling something 'self-interested altruism' (i.e., self-interested other-interest)? It actually appears to be a contradiction in terms.

I admit that there is joy in seeing others helped (that there is human empathy), but I don't refer to it as a form of altruism, as Roberts did. Instead, I refer to it as a form of self-interest. It has to do with human values. For instance, we can often explain the behavior of a man who buys food by reference to the possibility that he's hungry. We know what hunger is, we know what it feels like, and we know what we personally would do (buy food) if we got hungry. So it's easy, using an economic model of "Rational, Self-interested, Economic Man" [RSEM] to explain most food purchases.

However, staying within the same model (and this is where professional economists fall flat on their faces), it is possible to explain charity and giving. Russ Roberts says you have to go outside of the rational, self-interested, economic man (Homo economicus) model in order to explain charity and giving -- because rational value-maximizers just wouldn't normally give to charity. This is false. It doesn't have to do with an insufficient understanding of economics, it has to do with an insufficient understanding of what it means to be a human being

Go back to the hunger-food example. Buying food fits the model, but giving to charity doesn't?? What is the difference? What factual relations of things are in play? It turns out that the pain and pleasure you get from hunger and eating are not actually categorically different from the pleasure and pain that you get from charitable giving. Where physical hunger explains food purchases, a 'spiritual hunger' explains charitable giving. In both cases, there is an internal feeling of pleasure or pain and the man is acting in order to adjust the balance (to maximize value).

In both cases, assuming there is a measure of rationality in play, the man is acting in his self-interest to maximize value. There isn't a deficiency in the rational-self-interested-economic-man model -- a deficiency that would need to be addressed by importing concepts like "altruism" -- there are just a bunch of professional economists who are deficient in their thinking (philosophically-deficient). Russ Roberts' use of the word 'altruism' (above) was wrong, it was the employment of an anti-concept. It isn't innocently explained by the existence of a different "level of abstraction or range of the referents." It is explained as an inevitable patchwork-attempt of unnecessarily-broken relationships of things stemming from a deficient philosophical understanding of man.

It is error added onto error.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/28, 8:52am)

Post 30

Monday, August 29, 2011 - 7:12am

Russ Roberts says you have to go outside of the rational, self-interested, economic man (Homo economicus) model in order to explain charity and giving -- because rational value-maximizers just wouldn't normally give to charity. This is false. It doesn't have to do with an insufficient understanding of economics, it has to do with an insufficient understanding of what it means to be a human being

After scanning Russ Roberts' charity entry, I don't see you and him disagreeing.

Go back to the hunger-food example. Buying food fits the model, but giving to charity doesn't?? What is the difference? What factual relations of things are in play?

I see quite a difference between buying food for oneself, or for one's children, or to give to a food bank (charity).

Post 31

Monday, August 29, 2011 - 8:23am

Merlin,

I see quite a difference between buying food for oneself, or for one's children, or to give to a food bank (charity).

Okay, but the question isn't whether there is some kind of a difference (rather than the 2 things being totally identical in nature), it is whether there is a difference so large that only one of them can be said to flow from rational value-maximizing behavior, and the other not. Roberts said it clearly enough:

Economic man (it is never economic woman) is a rational, self-interested fellow always looking out for himself. He does not give to charity.

It's simply false -- wrong of Roberts -- to assume that a rational, self-interested man "does not give to charity." It's to this early mistake in thinking that he then needs to respond -- by importing the concept of altruism into the concept of self-interest (in order to explain the reality). If he hadn't made this first mistake, then he wouldn't need to conjoin disparate concepts in order to try to make sense of things. As Steve put it earlier:

It must include things that were acquired at a cost and to make them over to the benefit of others entails a sacrifice - unless it is a voluntary transaction that is entered into in hopes of a profit. If that is the case, Mr. Roberts would be saying that altruism includes selfishness. Nonsense.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/29, 8:32am)

Post 32

Monday, August 29, 2011 - 8:55am

It's simply false -- wrong of Roberts -- to assume that a rational, self-interested man "does not give to charity."

I disagree that he "was wrong". The assumption describes homo economicus as stated in his first paragraph, not Roberts' own view of human nature. Indeed, in the next paragraph he says: "There is another name for this type of person: straw man."

Post 33

Monday, August 29, 2011 - 2:21pm

Okay, but the solution to a straw man is to take the straw out (and leave the man in).

It's not the economists' theory of homo economicus that needs to change, it is their view of human nature (i.e., their philosophy). The theory is fine and corresponds to reality -- as long as you don't look at it through such a cloudy lens.

I've got a related question:
How come the historical "vices": greed, lust, gluttony, etc. are held -- by otherwise-intelligent economists and game theorists -- to be things always tied to rational, self-interest ... but the historical "virtues": temperance, prudence, justice, etc. are not?

Why does rational self-interest get tied to only the "bad" things?

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/29, 2:22pm)

Post 34

Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 5:13am

Okay, but the solution to a straw man is to take the straw out (and leave the man in).

It's not the economists' theory of homo economicus that needs to change, it is their view of human nature (i.e., their philosophy).

I agree, with an exception. The homo economicus model seems fine to me in a very limited context, for example, a market where the "perfect competition" model assumptions are met, at least approximately. As I wrote in the RoR Economics forum: "The best example might be a futures exchange with a high trading volume." Even mainstream economics recognizes "imperfect competition" (link).

Why does rational self-interest get tied to only the "bad" things?

Only? Regarding 'too many bad things', I am stumped.

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 8/30, 5:32am)

Post 35

Sunday, January 1, 2012 - 4:45pm

I think Dawkins's model splendidly explains a lot of what happens in nature. Most of his "selfish gene" arguments, as applied to non-humans, are correct. I think the fallacy is how his model is being misapplied by various evolutionary psychologists like Michael Shermer (and, to some extent, Dawkins himself) to rationalize their presumption that altruism is perforce the only standard of morality for human beings.

Post 36

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 - 8:39pm

Michael, good point.

Here's Shermer on Rand:

Although I now disagree with her ethics of self-interest (science shows that in addition to being selfish, competitive, and greedy, we also harbor a great capacity for altruism, cooperation, and charity), reading Rand led me to the extensive body of literature on business, markets, and economics.

But that is a non sequitur. Let's say Rand defined man as a 'featherless biped.' Shermer would say that he disagrees with that because man -- think of an American Indian in a head-dress -- because man harbors a great capacity for being "feathered." Or, let's say Rand defined man as a 'rational animal.' Shermer would say that he disagrees with that because man -- think of flaky, post-modern existentialists or of discombobulated Wall Street Occupiers -- because man harbors a great capacity for irrationality.

Shermer takes the existence of some behavior -- behavior that is not prescribed by a morality -- as proof that the morality is wrong. Think about that for a moment. Think about what it would look like for a morality that everyone automatically embodied (as Shermer's poor reasoning suggests is required). It is not enough to merely cite that humans have behaved in a certain way. That might be what you talk about in history, or maybe even in science, or social science -- but it is not a proper way to do moral science. If you add up everyone's behavior, you get a norm, but it is a statistical norm.

It would be an instance of the naturalistic fallacy to say that the statistical norm represents the moral norm.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/03, 8:40pm)

Post 37

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - 11:24am

Reading between the lines, it appears that Shermer thinks the continued existence of cooperation and charity among humans disproves Rand's ethics. The only way that that makes any sense, however, is if Shermer also thinks that Rand's ethics -- if fully adopted by homo sapiens -- would lead to a total lack of cooperation and charity among humans.

This is the same philosophical mistake that Russ Roberts made when he said that a rationally selfish man doesn't give to charity. Interestingly, Rand dealt with this issue in detail, discriminating her position from such cut-throat Nietzschean egotism:

The Objectivist ethics holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action and that man must act for his own rational self-interest. But his right to do so is derived from his nature as man and from the function of moral values in human life�and, therefore, is applicable only in the context of a rational, objectively demonstrated and validated code of moral principles which define and determine his actual self-interest. It is not a license �to do as he pleases� and it is not applicable to the altruists� image of a �selfish� brute nor to any man motivated by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, wishes or whims.

This is said as a warning against the kind of �Nietzschean egoists� who, in fact, are a product of the altruist morality and represent the other side of the altruist coin: the men who believe that any action, regardless of its nature, is good if it is intended for one�s own benefit. Just as the satisfaction of the irrational desires of others is not a criterion of moral value, neither is the satisfaction of one�s own irrational desires. Morality is not a contest of whims . . . .

A similar type of error is committed by the man who declares that since man must be guided by his own independent judgment, any action he chooses to take is moral if he chooses it. ...

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selfishness.html

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/04, 3:37pm)

Post 38

Monday, January 9, 2012 - 6:10pm

I'm reading the book, Pathological Altruism, and chapter 2 is written by 4 authors: Lynn E. O'Connor, Jack W. Berry, Thomas B. Lewis, and David J. Stiver. On page 11, they make the claim that there are numerous reports of altruism in the non-human animal kingdom. I take issue with that statement. References supposedly in support of it are named and predominately involve publishings by the primatologist, Frans de Waal.

You can point to "eusocial" creatures such as ants and bees and say that they have "altruistic" (supposedly self-sacrificing) behavior, but that's not an instance of actual altruism in the animal kingdom. For instance, the non-replicating "worker bees" seem to be acting for the reproductive success of others, but in actuality (as explained here), the work performed reproduces their genes. So this is an instance of "kin selection" -- not of "altruism." You can say it is "altruistic" behavior, but only if you follow that with the qualifier: it reproduces the actor's genes.

Also, you can point to chimpanzees choosing to help half of the time, but that is also very poor evidence. Imagine a test with 2 options, and one of the options is chosen half of the time. What does that tell you? Not very much. Let's say that the option was to press a button to change the channel on a TV set. Let's say that the chimps had the option to watch a football game or to watch a baseball game. Let's say that, on average, they chose to watch football about half of the time. Do those experimental data really tell us anything about the "football-watching propensity" (the innate desire to engage in football-watching) of chimpanzees? No, they don't.

A recent review of several primate studies was published in the journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is a link to this review:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3131813/?tool=pubmed

In it, the authors compile the results of several investigations into the "altruistic" behavior of chimpanzees (see Figure 1). They refer to the behavior as "prosocial" instead of as altruistic. The difference between "prosocial" and "altruistic" is that the concept of prosocial behavior does not require sacrifice (sacrifice is not an essential characteristic of being "prosocial"). In the experiments, free food was given and giving to others did not come at a cost to oneself. Even then, even using this "less altruistic" form of "altruism," when you add up all of the results of all of the studies, you get an aggregate response rate of 51% (about half of all of the dichotomous choices made by the chimps happened to have involved helping others). So, when given the choice between 2 options, the chimpanzees chose one of them about half of the time. And that doesn't add up to much.

I certainly wouldn't refer to those several studies, and say that they are reports of altruism. They are not even reports of conceptually "watered-down" versions of altruism (e.g., reports of "prosociality", reports of "kin selection", or reports of "reciprocal altruism").

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/09, 6:32pm)

Post 39

Monday, January 9, 2012 - 6:38pm