Biological Altruism

What? Chimps aren't people?!?! OMG, if that kind of wild rumor gets started, who knows how much research will be invalidated. The government might even start asking for it's grant money to be returned... No, wait, I guess that isn't really a possibility.

Post 41

Monday, January 9, 2012 - 9:22pm

Pop Quiz

What is the likelihood of the anthropomorphization of chimpanzees, from a guy who wrote a book called "Our Inner Ape"?

Just asking.

:-)

I suppose if apes could write, I would suspect they might write a book called "Our Inner Human: It's really a jungle out there, but we can find peace in our post-modern progeny" -- or something like that.

Ed

p.s. And here's a telling quote, from the book link above:
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The bonobo's female dominance, cooperative nature, and use of sex to restore peace poses a challenge to certain male-biased theories that equate humanity's aggressiveness with progress.

Over the last few decades, biologists have popularized the image of humans as driven by "selfish genes," doing only what is good for themselves. This message fit the Reagan-Thatcher Zeitgeist of greed as the foundation of the free-market system. Well before Enron and the spate of corporate scandals, however, ...

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(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/09, 9:24pm)

Post 42

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - 7:56pm

I think it was EO Wilson who said that since bees are eusocial, humans should be, too.

Post 43

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - 7:18pm

Ed, I spotted this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUjBih5MQi0&feature=related, which was a broader part of a discussion on the existence of God. There is an american evolutionary psychologist who talks about "universal consciousness" and mentions kin selection and altruism. what do you make of her discussion:

(Edited by Michael Philip on 1/17, 7:18pm)

Post 44

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - 9:22pm

Michael,

I half-agree with Diana Fleischman's explanation, which includes the possibility of humans being able to trick each other into being altruistic. Karl Marx is proof of that. But she explains that, in the military, the phrase "brothers in arms" is used in order to leverage kin selection in order to make people altruistic (to make them risk their lives for each other). It would have been more accurate, though, if she had said that we leverage 'reciprocal altruism.' Kin selection is other-regarding behavior that is performed without expectation of reciprocation, but the brotherhood in the military is different. It is more like 'reciprocal altruism' in that an unspoken vow between soldiers is:

I will risk my life for you and I expect you to risk your life for me.

Upon analysis, this is not altruism, but simply the tit-for-tat behavior of market exchange -- only the "market" in which soldiers make their deals is a battlefield. In a battlefield, you are not concerned with trading a pound of sugar for a bushel of wheat, or whatever. Instead, you are concerned with trading a life for a life, or a risk for a risk. You are not concerned about your stores of wheat over a long winter, you are concerned with making it through the day without a bullet through your body. If you found yourself wounded in the middle of a battlefield, you would hope that other soldiers would risk their lives in order to drag you to safety.

When soldiers agree to do this for one another, it is not altruism, it is egocentric risk management. A truly altruistic soldier would throw their body on a live grenade in order to save civilians, but the military code instilled in soldiers is different. It only involves risking your life for other soldiers. Risking your life for other reasons than this might compromise the mission.

Ed

p.s. I think that Diana would agree with this, and that she only accidentally said "kin selection" because this TV round-table discussion is so fast paced. I think that if she were given enough time to formulate her answer, that she would not have used "kin selection" to explain behavior of soldiers.

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/17, 9:33pm)

Post 45

Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - 11:49am

Ed is right about the "tit for tat" explanation of soldier's behaviors. And add to that mental conditioning. The military trains soldiers to treat one another like brothers and the enemy as something almost not of the same species, but that is a psychological attitude born of training, not a gene-based reaction (which is what kin selection is). Also, with people, as opposed to lab rats, we should try to remember that we think and choose and form values. Kin selection has a lot of logical problems of its own.

Definition: Kin selection is an evolutionary theory that proposes that people are more likely to help those who are blood relatives because it will increase the odds of gene transmission to future generations. The theory suggests that altruism towards close relatives occurs in order to ensure the continuation of shared genes. The more closely the individuals are related, the more likely people are to help.

Lots of problems here.

Kin selection started as one of the proposed genetic evolutionary strategies - not human psychology.
And before going further we should be clear that altruism has to mean more than being kind, or lending a helping hand, or simple sharing. It has to include some degree of sacrifice... else it just ain't altruism.
Next, the definition uses Dawkin's selfish gene theory, which I agree with, but which many authorities in the field do not agree with. Most of them hold the individual as the unit of selection, and at least a few hold the species or group as the unit of selection (often used to give an evolutionary pseudo-explanation to the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the group).
In addition, the definition implies that people have no choice but to act to sacrifice (behave altruistically) towards those who are genetically related. But we know that this isn't so. There are many people who would choose to help a friend yet have relatives they wouldn't do anything for. Kin can also be near strangers and try to tell me that some first cousin you met only once or twice in a lifetime will engender sacrificial feelings in you.
And that is the biggest flaw - that it implies that people don't engage in reasoning, form values, and make choices. We often value our relatives (some more than others) not based upon 'shared genes' but upon the accident of being born in a group that we ended up spending time with... and out of that time grew personal relationships - some positive, some negative, and all tempered by the cultural beliefs regarding family that we chose to adopt. Don't you think it is peculiar for what is being passed of as psychology really only acknowledges genes as motive force and deciders?

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An ethnologist was claiming that the way many birds make a cheeping sounds when they come across some food was altruistic since those birds that are nearby will hear the sounds and come eat the food. Dawkins countered that saying that birds stay close to those they are related to... parents and siblings, and the birds that are most often going to hear the cheeping will be relatives and that this evolutionary behavior was explained by the fact that those who shared the same genes would be more likely to eat and have a better chance to pass on those genes. Genes inducing behaviors that maximize the likelyhood of those genes being passed on.
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I fear that our future will be littered with the ugly attempts to find pseudo-scientific explanations for altruism. Evolution, genetics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology are all areas where attempts will be made to smuggle old religious concepts in disguised as newly discovered scientific 'truths.'

Post 46

Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - 2:27pm

Steve,

Don't you think it is peculiar for what is being passed of as psychology really only acknowledges genes as motive force and deciders?

It does appear that 'evolutionary psychology' is actually a contradiction in terms (when applied to humans). And you can't get very far with a theory that is internally invalid. It seems to work for nonhuman animals, though.

I fear that our future will be littered with the ugly attempts to find pseudo-scientific explanations for altruism. Evolution, genetics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology are all areas where attempts will be made to smuggle old religious concepts in disguised as newly discovered scientific 'truths.'

Unfortunately, you may be right. Most (more than half) of the new book "Pathological Altruism" can be characterized as being guilty of what you describe above. It has some redeeming value, though, and there is always that residual value you get from having an intellectual opponent's word in writing (you can use it to expose their intellectual missteps).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/18, 2:28pm)

Post 47

Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - 3:49pm

I noticed that in that same video Diana talked about universal consciousness. I wonder if this is some sort of metaphysical monism

Post 48

Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - 8:53pm

Michael,

I don't remember Diana talking about universal consciousness in that same video. I noticed that that video is "part 1" of a 4-part series. When you say that she talked about universal consciousness, are you referring to one of the other 3 videos in the series?

Ed

p.s. On a purely analytical note, universal consciousness, like that proposed by Hegel, would be a form of idealism and, for that reason, would also be a form of metaphysical monism. From what I know of Hegel, everything comes from the Idea (I'm using a catch-all term here) and even returns to the Idea. The Idea is what it is that has primary or fundamental existence in the universe.

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/18, 8:58pm)

Post 49

Thursday, January 19, 2012 - 8:13pm

Ed, she mentioned it as a passing comment at the end of her talk about ants and altruism

Post 50

Friday, January 20, 2012 - 7:19am

Okay, Michael, but then you then appear to be asking about whether her view is metaphysical monism, rather about whether the view associated with universal consciousness is metaphysical monism.

It's unclear from her answers, but just judging from the odds of people in her profession, she is probably a materialist (a metaphysical monist).

Ed

Post 51

Monday, January 23, 2012 - 4:42pm

Ed, I thought I might point out this video which argues against Jerry Fodor's objections to evolutionary psychology and natural selection in general

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g4sJj888Qnc

Post 52

Monday, January 23, 2012 - 10:25pm

Thanks, Michael.

I will view the video when I have more time. All I know of Fodor I know from my Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy:

1) he argues against one of my gurus (the direct-perceptionist, JJ Gibson)
2) he argues for innate ideas
3) he argues for "folk psychology" explanations of human behavior

That's already 2 strikes against him.

:-)

Ed

Post 53

Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - 5:22pm

Okay, I got to the "beef" part of Fodor's rejection of Darwinian natural selection as a theory that explains the existence of things or features which differentially affect the reproductive success of genes. Whew! That sentence was hard to say in my mind. The neat thing about video is that you can stop it and comment before hearing how the presenter advances his solution. That's what I've done here. I've stopped the video at 10:55 to give my answer before hearing Rosenberg's.

Fodor's argument (introduced at 10 minutes into the video) is paraphrased below:
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1) It's logical to assume that hearts are for pumping blood.
2) It's logical to assume that blood pumping is good -- that blood pumping is something that natural selection would "want" to select for (that blood pumping is that thing that we would want Darwinian processes to explain)
3) But the pumping of blood is inextricably intertwined with something that might hurt your survival: the nonquiet beating of a heart (which may give away your position to a super-astute predator). And, at the very least, it is logical to assume that the nonquiet beating of a heart does not, in-and-of-itself, have any survival advantage whatsoever.
4) Whatever you have to say about blood pumping and nonquiet, beating hearts, they always go together (because of physical laws).
5) One can imagine a scenario where hearts were able to pump blood completely quietly (without the audible beating of a heart)
6) One can also imagine a scenario where hearts beat regularly, but do not pump blood.
7) Comparing and contrasting # 5 and # 6, Darwinian processes, because they are entirely physical processes, could not be said to favor one over the other. It is possible that Darwinian processes favored blood pumping (and we got the audible heart beats as a superficial artifact of that specific, selective pressure), or, alternatively, it is possible that Darwinian processes favored audible and regular heart beats (and we got the blood pumping as a superficial artifact of that specific, selective pressure).
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8) Therefore (because Darwinian processes can't discriminate #5 from #6), Darwinian processes have to be thrown out as an explanation for the evolved function of hearts.
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I will post again with comments regarding Rosenberg's answer (when I found out what that is), but here is my first-pass, knee-jerk answer:

Fodor seems dismayed that Darwinian processes cannot be used in order to explain definitively that, in the formulation of the heart, the exact problem that natural selection was working on was the pumping of blood, to be differentiated from a hypothetical problem where natural selection was merely first working on building a heart with regular, audible beats -- and it just so happens that that processes inexorably results in the pumping of blood. A reason that this might have been the case would be one wherein there was a survival advantage to being able to keep track of time -- and a beating heart is like a time-keeper, of sorts.

Imagine an organism in a pre-cardiovascular stage of development. For some reason, natural selection is developing a heart inside of that species (over many generations). There is no way of telling whether the final (the ultimate) purpose of the heart is the same as the initial (the proximate) purpose -- which may have been as a simple time-keeping device. Because audible heart beats and the pumping of blood always go together (because of physical laws), there is no way to tell which of these 2 things were being acted on by Darwinian processes.

Therefore, looking above to # 2, we find out that our reason for appealing to Darwinian processes in the first place, is to explain blood pumping, but it is precisely the Darwinian processes themselves that cannot do this. They cannot perform this function -- the explanation of the evolution of blood pumping -- because there is no way to tell what it is that natural selection was working on and for what reason. This seems to be an appeal to the Primacy of Consciousness (a form of idealism), where every explanation has to be one where motives are involved. But under a Primacy of Consciousness, nothing of importance ever emerges from happenstance recombinations of atoms of matter (e.g., genes, chromosomes, traits, etc).

If you say that natural selection has to have a motive -- so that it would be possible to differentiate the natural selection of a heart made for its blood pumping, from a heart made for its audible beats -- then you are, a priori, claiming that the natural selection is "unnatural" (e.g., man- or God-made). It's the fallacy of Begging the Question. Now, my answer is subject to the charge of being a straw-man. All it would take is for Fodor to come in here and say he doesn't care about motives, only processes -- and that he is merely lamenting the fact that physical processes are underdetermined genetically. I am willing to bet that Rosenberg has an even better answer than I do on this one.

Let me restart the video in order to find out ...

:-)

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/24, 5:31pm)

Post 54

Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - 5:42pm

Okay, I admit it, his answer was better ...

:-)

Ed

Post 55

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 6:35am

In this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1awucv2zywY&feature=related and at around the 12:14 mark , the guy with the glasses and dark gray hair responds to Diana in the exchange and says that humans have choice and she replies that we are animals and that all animals can make decisions.

I'm not sure who it was, but I think it was Steve who said that as moral agents we can make choices. Diana is saying here that animals can also make decisions.

I'm wondering if there is a distinction between those two points?
(Edited by Michael Philip on 1/25, 6:42am)

(Edited by Michael Philip on 1/25, 6:42am)

Post 56

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 9:36am

One might wish to take a sidereal approach to this, one which uses Darwin's other great theory [and one in which, unlike natural selection, he was the first to think of], sexual selection - The Mating Mind... while as frustrating in some aspects as what has been going on in these discussions, there is a wealth of interesting ideas which give pause to some usual 'solutions' as given... the major problem in this book is that the author, one Geoffery F. Miller, seems to consider the human mind as merely an extenuated version of those which in the other species preceded it rather than the unique by conceptualness it is... still, the idea of sexual selection as a major driving force in evolution is intriguing...

Post 57

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 4:15pm

toMichael,

I'm not sure who it was, but I think it was Steve who said that as moral agents we can make choices. Diana is saying here that animals can also make decisions.

I'm wondering if there is a distinction between those two points?

The background is that Diana seems to think that humans aren't in a better position than animals are regarding whether or not their species goes extinct.

She obviously alludes to the concrete-bound observance that animals "choose" things (e.g., that perhaps a lion "chooses" which gazelle or antelope to chase after). The difference is that humans are the only animals that can make choices based on a chosen standard or rule (i.e., on a principle). It's not enough to retort that humans can -- in understanding lion behavior -- that humans can re-interpret the behavior of a stalking lion as one that is based on principles, such as the principle of least resistance of a victim, based on the size of a victim.

There is a funny news story (posted here some years ago) about dogs chasing after frisbees thrown into the ocean, where they run a certain distance on sand, and then take a certain angle of turn through the water toward the frisbee. It stated that the canine brains are performing spur-of-the-moment calculus which would make any college freshman look stupid. But just because you can retroactively reinterpret something as if it were promulgated, ex nihilo, from a precise and complex equation -- does not mean that the acting agent uses anything like that equation in performing its action.

Humans are the only species that can actually formulate an action-algorithm based on the attainment of rational values. So Diana is wrong to equate human choice with animal choice. It's apples and oranges.

Ed

Post 58

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 4:50pm

Making a choice, in this context, is to act as a causal agent. We initiate the action by the way we choose to focus or not focus our mind. That is our primary choice and it is played out again and again and again - minute by minute as we steer ourselves from moral and ethical evaluations and from competing emotional urges or responses.

Other animals appear to 'choose' things. But if we put clothes on a human-looking robot and have the robot's programming make it look like it is deciding between two courses of action and then choosing one of them... it is not choice in the same way that we understand it for humans. We are mentally projecting our mechanism of choice 'on' that robots actions. And the same thing with a dog that 'chooses' to go to the right of the tree in his path, instead of to the left of it.

There must be a level of self-awareness, a level of conceptual abstraction, and a capacity to reason (all of which are all closely related), that are all required to be able to exercise choice in the uniquely human fashion.

The very essence of our being is to imagine what has never existed before (not just grand things life major inventions or great works of art, also little things like what we will do for the weekend), to reason about it's value and practicality in the light of costs and alternatives, to examine our emotional responses, and all of that is driven by our on-going choices on how, and to what degree, we are steering our conscious focus, and that process (which is very iterative) results in our externally observable choices. We automate much of this, and allow it to function at that automated, habit-based level most of the time, but each automated routine was initially created out of an explicit process of choices and is always open to a degree of change. Not even frisbee chasing dogs can do these things. Ed is right - apples and oranges.

Post 59

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 5:22pm