Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Apikorus:
Admittedly this seems a million miles away from a theory of ethics, but I wonder whether the logic of the IPD problem might somehow be encoded in our DNA. From an evolutionary point of view, there are some clear advantages to cooperation.

Well, not in our DNA so to speak, but certainly in the evolved processing mechanisms we've developed for handling social situations. There has been extensive work on this in evolutionary psychology and related fields. Look up Tooby and Cosimedes' The Adapted Mind. You mgiht enjoy this <a href="http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html" target="_blank">Primer on Ev Psych</a>. Pay particular attention to the section at the bottom on built-in strategies for solving logic problmes.

Michael

tronvillain

Stabby:
You can get extremely far using genetic evolution to explain altruism - I recommend The Origins of Virtue for an entertaining read on the subject. I don't really have anything against memes, but trying to base an explanation of altruism or morality solely on them is misguided.

Vitae

tronvillian;

Who is the author of the book you are recommending?

Thanks in advance

Worldcitizen

Secular Pinoy

I think it's one of them M. Ridleys'.

&lt;edited to fix quote&gt;

[ January 19, 2002: Message edited by: secularpinoy ]</p>

tronvillain

It's Matt Ridley, though I'd recommend reading Mark Ridley's stuff too.

Dr Rick

[i]"It is possible that yet another unique quality of man is a capacity for genuine, desinterested, true altruism.  I hope so, but I am not going to argue the case one way or another, nor to speculate over its possible memic evolution.  The point I am making now is that, even if we look on the dark side and assume that individual man is fundamentally selfish, our conscious foresight -- our capacity to simulate the future in imagination -- could save us from the worst selfish excesses of the blind replicators.  We have at least the mental equipment to foster our long-term selfish interests rather than merely our short-term selfish interests.  We can see the long-term benefits of participating in a `conspiracy of doves', and we can sit down together to discuss ways of making the conspiracy work.  We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination.  We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism -- something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world.  We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our own creators.  We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
...it is perfectly possible to hold that genes exert a statistical influence on human behaviour while at the same time believing that this influence can be modified, overridden or reversed by other influences.  Genes must exert a statistical influence on any behaviour pattern that evolves by natural selection.  Presumably Rose and his colleagues [critics of Dawkins] agree that human sexual desire has evolved by natural selection, in the same sense that anything ever evolves by natural selection.  They therefore must agree that there have been genes influencing their sexual desires -- in the same sense as genes ever influence anything.  Yet they presumably have no trouble with curbing their sexual desires when it is socially necessary to do so.  What is dualist about that ?  Obviously nothing.  And no more is it dualist for me to advocate rebelling `against the tyrammy of the selfish replicators'.  We, that is our brains, are separate and independent enough from our genes to rebel against them.  As already noted, we do so in a small way every time we use contraception.  There is no reason why we should not rebel in a large way, too."[i]
from
<a href="http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html" target="_blank">The Selfish Gene</a>