SULPHUR

You sit back and then take it apart Lets see you post a thread of your own.

JB01

It seems to me that one of the stumbling blocks to Albert's acceptance of the naturalistic explanation of the origins of altruism (an extension of kin selection) is a confusion between the reason a certain behavior might be favored by natural selection, and the reason a person engaging in that behavior would give for it.

For example, he said that it was anachronistic to speculate that Neanderthals might bury their dead (or at least avoid eating them) because of the high probability of contagion, since they presumably had no germ theory of disease. But this misses the point. Natural selection favors behaviors that avoid disease, and we can engage in an anthropomorphic metaphor and claim that it causes an aversion to cannibalism "because" that can cause disease. But this says nothing about what might be going through the mind of the Neanderthal. The way in which genes manipulate the behavior of complex organisms such as ourselves, with flexible mental processes, is by creating drives and aversions. All the genes have to do is to make dead bodies (and their smell) seem sufficiently unpleasant, or otherwise "unclean"-seeming, and the Neanderthals will naturally do whatever it takes to get them out of sight. No germ theory required.

Similarly, even if kin selection results in the spread of genes that tend to result in altruistic behavior, it doesn't follow that people would have to consciously engage in cost-benefit analyses of inclusive fitness before deciding whether to behave altruistically. If it were of adaptive value to behave this way, genes would promote the behavior by making it emotionally desirable, i.e., by making us feel love for (certain) other people. And they do.

This means that (A) "selfless" acts done out of pure love can nevertheless be under the control of genes evolved through kin selection, and (B) the indirect nature of this control both allows the sort of human flexibility Albert values so highly and makes it susceptible to "error" in the strict sense of going outside the bounds of immediate kin.

Albert Cipriani

Dear JBO,
Thanks for the smart post. You are right on as to the crux of our differences.

O, if only natural selection could talk?! Then what you say might have a semblance of truth to it. We could compare its reasons with my reasons. Alas, behavior favored by natural selection is not reasonable, it just is. To the degree it guides our actual behavior, it does so as irrational drives and blind instincts.

You’ve confused rationalizations for reasons. No doubt, the blind irrational drives that motivate a rapist to do what he does may be explained by him after the fact as: “She had that come and get me look in her eyes.” That is a rationalization. Such self-excusing justifications for our behavior must not be taken seriously as the rational cause of our behavior.

But when I appeal to my sense of justice for my willingness to lay down my life for an ideal or for my God, that justification can only be perceived as the real reason for my martyrdom, not a rationalization. Why? Because I feel no drive or instinct to be martyred. Indeed, I must resist my instinct for self-preservation in order to allow the mere abstractions of God or justice to motivate me actualize my death wish.

Your are correct. “Drives and aversions” are the means whereby genes can control our behavior. Neither are intellectual processes. We may try to rationalize these irrational drives and aversions after the fact, but that’s transparently disingenuous to all concerned.

Genes can’t “make dead bodies seem sufficiently unpleasant.” Don’t you realize that you are ascribing to genes an intellectual role here? Neanderthals risked life and limb to turn live bodies into dead bodies for food. Ergo, dead bodies were not unpleasant to Neanderthals if they were willing to endure unpleasantness to obtain them.

There must have been some other motivation, some non-genetic rational motivation. I suggest that Neanderthals were motivated to burry their dead rather than eat their dead out of love for their kin and hope in their kin’s resurrection. Just as they could see that all living things grew out of the ground or were dependent upon the living things growing out of the ground, they could imagine that burring their kin in the ground was the means of their coming back to life.

Correct. Some other non-naturalistic theory is required, the theory of supernatural origins to some of our seemingly unnatural behaviors and emotions.

Then you belong to a different species than I. People (very few at that), not my genes, make me love them,. And when I act lovingly by giving alms to people for whom I do not feel love, that too is a rational, not gene-induced act. It is predicated upon a domino series of abstractions and assumptions related to God and justice.

Ergo, your conclusion: Is just an assertion. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Doubting Didymus

Obviously huge slabs of human intellectual behavious are not 'caused' by genes. Influenced by them? Perhaps, but when I choose to 'give alms' as albert puts it (always the poet ), It is mostly because I chose to do so. I am applying the functions of my complex brain, not obeying gene-driven instincs. I know this because I would find it just as easy to ignore the beggar, as evidenced by the many others who do so, and the occasions I have done so myself.

My question for albert is why do you suppose it is impossible for this behaviour to exist without supernatural explaination?

GunnerJ

SULPHUR: Your continued harassment of peez is neither warranted nor appropriate. Cease and desist.

-GunnerJ, E&C Moderator

SULPHUR

Please take all concerns over moderation policy to the Bugs & Complaints forum.

-GunnerJ, E&C Mod

MrDarwin

Not at all. If a person has genes that makes a dead body smell nauseating to him, then that person is probably not going to go around eating dead bodies. It's one of the reasons why we tend not to eat animals that have already begun to decompose, whereas some other animals absolutely adore such delicacies.

Albert, I do have to wonder to what species you belong, if your mother made you love her, or your newborn infant made you love it, or your girlfriend (or boyfriend) made you love him or her. Did you choose to love any of these people? Humans certainly seem to have an innate ability to form this kind of pair bonding, and it strikes me as quite unconscious and involuntary. Surely you have met those occasional people who (precise reasons aside) seem to be incapable of loving another person? Do you think this is always a matter of conscious choice? Do you think you could make this person love you?

JB01

With all due respect, Albert, how exactly do you propose you can tell the difference? This is a critical question, because obviously, if you're not willling to at least grant the supposition that human behavior in its broad outlines has a genetic basis, no evolutionary explanation will be meaningful to you. And yet the only evidence you offer to support your objection to this idea is that you would somehow be able to distinguish between "gene-induced" and "voluntary" behavior.

So, how? Aside from your philosophical preconceptions, what makes you so sure that your sense of (for example) justice has a supernatural, and not genetic, base?

Oolon Colluphid

Nope, not irrational, just blind. That is, unconscious: no thought required. It is not ‘irrational’ to want to have children, for instance... yet why we want them is due to all our ancestors wanting them. Not one of your ancestors, remember, died young or without issue. We all, every one of us, comes from a very long line or successful reproducers.

But not all of our ancestors’ contemporaries were so successful. If any part of their lack of success was heritable, it was lost from the population with them. And conversely, anything that made our own ancestors better at reproducing -- anything from an eficient immune system to a brain wired so as to want children -- did get passed on. That, in a nutshell albert, is natural selection.
Again, what’s irrational about wanting children?
Oh come on Albert. You’ll be telling us next that Richard Dawkins thinks genes are actually being selfish what he calls a book ‘The Selfish Gene’!

Cheers, Oolon

Deke

Albert writes: If Nature is responsible for our species, what business does our species have being morally responsible?

Albert, I hope you’ll agree w/me that human beings are animals, yes? I mean, we’re not plants or rocks. Are other animals morally responsible? Do lions kill antelope for sport?

Albert wonders why, if there is no thing other than nature, we should act in a manner some call “morally”:

It makes us feel good? It’s how your mommy raised you? It furthers our species’ success? I don’t get it. None of these answers are meaningful.

Really? They are meaningful to me. Indeed it does ‘feel good’ to treat another living thing with kindness and compassion because this improves the chances that such treatment will be returned. And yes, I was raised by my parents to act with kindness and compassion. And yes, look at any social species, cooperative behavior increases survivability.

If you don’t get it, it is because you were taught otherwise, not because it IS otherwise - in my opinion.

Albert offers:…evolutionary success has no meaning, no significance to us as human beings, for random mutations and the brute fact of natural selection are autonomous processes that are the antithesis of meaningfulness.

Really? You’re here, right Albert? You’re alive to ponder such questions, isn’t that ‘significant’ to you? And didn't you come into being via a natural process? Conception and birth? Just like frogs and sparrows?

Albert implores: Caged in by an exclusively natural world, you must admit that you have no meaningful (i.e., rational) justification for morality. That is, the morality of an atheistic evolutionist is properly perceived as sentimentality.

Ah but I do, it seems perfectly rational to me to think that if I treat others well, I’ll be the recipient of well treatment in kind. This certainly isn’t always the case, but it definitely seems rational, and requires nothing ‘super’natural to provide this sentiment (if you wish to call it that) with meaning beyond it’s simple truth. And Albert, can you point to anything in this world that is ‘un-natural’?

And finally Albert gives us: Likewise, since morality cannot be detected as an evolutionary process and evolution is responsible for us, we are being irresponsible when pretending to believe in morality.

But then ‘morality’ is evident everywhere in the natural world – in fact, the existence of the natural world, and you yourself Albert, implies nature was ‘moral’ enough to survive destroying herself all these billions of years. Ironically, Nature was kind enough to herself to survive long enough to allow Albert the chance to speak against her.

Enjoy,

Deke