Socrates, Gravitic Determinism, and Other Worries

• Welcome to the BOL Forum on Evolutionary Psychology by John Grohol, 3/19/97
  • Clinical Sociobiology: A Rationale by James Brody, 9/7/97
    
    

Dangerous Ideas

You will meet 3 rejections from other people (aside from those you may get from your neighbors at the corner church) ... that evolution is strictly about killing, that genetic determinism is wrong and evil, and that some ideas are too dangerous for the populace unless carefully monitored.

The 2nd Law vs. Reciprocity

There are functional parallels between the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and common stereotypes of evolution. Both, simply, are about death, about succumbing to oblivion whether imposed by many small events over a long time, by "internal clocks," or by a sharp blade. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics describes the crawl that all of us make to entropy. We creep to its muted drum roll because all matter does so. Energy is forever lost in any transaction and breakdown -- whether from fungi and worms or from energy loss -- occurs.

We walk up a Down escalator when we travel the opposite direction in order to maintain a given level of organization. Continuity through time requires beating the 2nd Law in order to restore loss, fix damage, or increase resilience to varying settings. Cooperation (nurturance, altruism, and mating) is one tool for achieving that continuity in organisms.

It is my point of view that "cooperation" can be applied to molecular attractions as well as those of dating teenagers. "Competition" is the obverse, when an existing form resists assimilation into another one. (And it's likely that a phase transition exists between the two, a narrow zone -- a very narrow zone in the case of humans -- of physical and temporal proximity, wherein neither cooperation nor competition occur, where neutrality exists.)

Morality is one more instance of principles that also act between nonliving units. It -- whether Darwinian, Neodarwinian, or otherwise -- influences the expression of self interest, cooperation, and eventual reproduction between organisms. Both cooperation and self-interest are needed for continuity through time. Entities that cannot form alliances will not travel long, likewise, creatures that do not assert their own boundaries will be rapidly taken over.

The outcome is that "nature" is not immoral or amoral. The features that we call "moral" in ourselves have the same functions and outcomes for us that other rules -- chemical or physical -- provide for nonliving forms. Furthermore, it is not the case that entities existed and rules came to be in order to maintain a particular organization. Rather, the organization is possible only because it is able to incorporate the rules. Organizations that do not incorporate them have a very transient existence. Cooperation and competition are interwoven with each other. A nursing kitten is a fluff of self-interest. The mother cat will pull one aside for a private feeding session (perhaps motivated by self-interest, to silence a complainer) but the effect is one of nurturance. Cats have claws that make the kitten possible. Just as a crystal of salt is a lattice of sodium and chlorine.

Darwin was puzzled by the "fact" of altruism, it seemed inconsistent with notions of "survival of the fittest," a phrase given to him by others and very late in the game. Huxley and Darwin both viewed human morality as an apparent contradiction to other principles of competition between individuals. Emotions clearly had animal equivalents; still, at the level of morality, humans were felt to be unique and obligated to overcome their origins.

The Neodarwinians (Haldane, Williams, Hamilton, and Trivers) used "genes" as the selfish device that benefited from our being altruistic. A gene that "codes for" altruism may sacrifice one of its carriers so that 10 other carriers survive. A lineman crashes himself to make a hole for the quarterback because symbolically, the "team" carries the ball. Everyone benefits from sacrificing one or six players. Given the evident complimentary roles of altruism and selfishness, why the differential concerns -- whether from Darwin or from many others -- about nastiness? Tennyson, who wrote the "... nature red in tooth and claw" line cannot take all the blame. We need to ask a Skinnerian to understand why Kropotkin was ignored.

Sidman Avoidance

Murray Sidman designed a reinforcement schedule on which there are no overt warnings for an impending shock. Instead, shocks occur every 5 or 10 seconds if there is no response; a response delays the next shock for 20 or 30 seconds. It is logically possible to avoid all shock by hitting the key every 19 seconds.(1)

Still, lab rats often receive 10-20 shocks every 30-60 minutes and in every session that they perform. Rhesus monkeys get 3; some rhesus get only 3 in a lifetime. Avoidance behavior, particularly when there is no external signal, blossomed in primates. Barkley (1977) and Bronowski (1977) likely would see this as an example of "sensing the future" because a successful response tactic relies on internalized cues about the passage of time. The local newspaper is not even aware of Sidman or the rhesus but uses the phenomenon to sell papers; the television station follows monkey wisdom, "If it bleeds, it leads." (And, if it doesn't lead, then make it bleed!) Threats are on the top of the front page; good news is hidden inside or is listed in the sale papers.

Thus, there should be no great surprise about either popular and scientific preoccupation with the seamier parts of nature. Huxley once remarked to Darwin, "The indecency of the process is to a certain extent in favour of its probability" (Wright, p. 172). The operative psychological adaptations are likely the same, whether processing gossip about Liz, Leo, or Bill or attending to the spread of a germ in Africa on in a shipment of hamburger. The aspects of evolutionary theory that have impact are the same ones we see on the cover of the National Enquirer. Nature made nearly all of us to be great worriers about sex and aggression. You need to be detached and a bit skeptical to notice the crystalline lattice of altruism that permeates self-interest.

Genetic Determinism

"Determinism" annoys most of us. Ironically, the more "determined" we are, the more likely it is that we will object to the phrase. Proud, domineering, argumentive types -- whether academic, theologian, or construction engineer -- don't care for limits, whether from doctors or from nature. They are also suspicious that the details of their "free will" are being specified, the substrates identified, and that some of us vary in the amount of free will that we exercise effectively.

I'm a "genetic determinist," probably always have been. No other point of view makes sense to me. I'm also a "gravitic determinist," and probably always have been. Gravity tells me what to do. It's universal (I've been told), impartial, and never takes a day off. Yet, none of us -- a reflection of our modules? -- complain about gravity's impeding our free will. We respect it, we protect ourselves and our children from it. We also defy and break free from it when we hang glide or bungee jump.

Engineers and inventors discovered how to work with gravity but in alliances with other forces such as wind and lift. Thus, we fly. Despite gravity's power, we launch rockets and depend on gravity to pull them to their destinations, saving massive quantities of fuel while spreading us, our technology, and perhaps our genes beyond this solar system. I'm as optimistic and respectful about genes as I am about gravity. (2) Ideas Too Dangerous: Socrates and Lorenz It's been remarked that genetic determinism underlay difficult eras in American and European history. Konrad Lorenz in particular has been identified as producing ideas that contributed to the Third Reich's extermination campaigns. "Eugenics" affected medical thinking in America in the early part of this century (Sarason and Doris, 1969). We can blame Galton, the ideas, or our application of them. In any event, altruism balanced perceived self-interest; the grandiose types who attempted forced extermination were defeated not by the ideas but by the altruists who didn't care for the ideas. If evolution were only a tooth-and-claw process, there would have been no reversal. My suggestion is that "us/them chips" (Krebs and Denton, 1997, discussed later in "Universal Goods") are a larger problem than ideas from genetics. Bloom (1995), for example, describes systematic extermination movements by the many, many peoples ... none of whom knew about or believed in genetics.(3) Curiously, I didn't recognize ideas similar to both Lorenz and to those of "psychological adaptations."

I was accepted in 1960 into the Centennial Scholars Program at the University of Denver. We spent more than a little time on the Greeks; Socrates was and still is, a hero in our culture. Later, I was part of a different group of students that visited I. F. Stone in his home for 4 hours in July 1964. (4) "Izzy" Stone wrote his own weekly newsletter and spent a fair amount of time under government investigation because he published secret information. Stone had no leaks; he read 20 newspapers each day and pieced likely tales from a wide range of data. Like anyone with good cheater detectors, he sometimes hit target and was reinforced by governmental howls.

Stone's The Trial of Socrates came to my hands nearly a quarter-centry later, in November 1988. Stone had done his Pentagon Number again. He learned ancient Greek at age 70, checked original sources for 10 years, and published his greatest expose.

Socrates did not believe in democracy. He believed that power belonged only to those with "knowledge" and that such could not be taught. By no means was every individual born with it.

His students twice (411 b.c. and 404 b.c.) over threw the Athenian democracy, executing many in the process. Some of his strongest fans were Spartans.

His students made a third attempt that failed (401 b.c.) and resulted in Socrates' trial. Socrates taunted the jury; he refused to plead for a lesser penalty. Such would have entailed admission that the egalitarians were correct. The majority voting for execution was substantially greater than the majority that voted for conviction. (5) Grandiose, manic Socrates used the justice system to commit suicide and became our hero for sticking to his elitist convictions ... that only a few have the knowledge to rule and perhaps that only a few are qualified to ration and manage knowledge.

What's It All About?

First, the "tooth and claw" headlines about Darwinian thinking are more a reflection of our psychological adaptations than inherent to a theory of evolution. Even though Darwin's crowd might have fixated on blood, their so doing was not an outcome of the theory's demands but of their own evolved mechanisms. This effect was likely compounded by their audiences, also fascinated by the hostile aspects of nature. (6)

Second, we shouldn't put Lorenz in time out unless we do the same with Socrates.

Third, any person who emits large volumes of coherent verbal material will exhibit shifts in content over decades. Retrospective scholarship often allows interpretations that are convenient to the interpreter who may be led by the same psychological adaptations as writers for the National Enquirer.

Fourth, ideas have adaptive value for particular times and places. Memes will have any number of sources; primates are collectors, thieves, and assemblers, whether of bright pebbles or of shiny thoughts.

Finally, we should blame the "us/them" chip for man's inhumanity to man (and woman!) as much as "genetic determinism." However, the notions of "self" and "other" seems basic to life and occur in a wide array of functional relationships. I'm not sure how to regulate such a mechanism or about the long term consequences of doing so.

NOTES:

1) Sidman Avoidance was used (and may still be?) for assessment of various pharmaceuticals.

2) There are few examples of "a gene for ..." that withstand careful thought. Kauffman (1991) offers to phrase "parallel distributed regulatory network" which is perhaps more accurate. See the discussion later in "Granddad" and in "Universal Goods" in this manual

3) Murder continues, without a "genetics" banner. For example: "At the moment I'd bet that all of us are accomplices by default, for example, in the probable death of 300,000 black Christian Sudanese being starved to death by several years of bad weather cond(i)tions and, most important, (by) but a Northern Islamic government intent on wiping out non-believers so it can establish a country totally under the law of God, shariah" (Howard Bloom, Paleopsych List_serve, 6/5/98).

4) Under the auspices of the Lisle Fellowships, founded by Cy & Edna Baldwin who were with our group that summer in Washington.

5) I've since learned more about grandiosity and mania and can support the hypothesis that Socrates qualifies as possibly did Lorenz and Haldane.

6) T.H. Huxley and Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, each used the other to draw audiences and to drive himself to greater eloquence. Thus, their publicly hostile relationship had its symbiotic aspects. We remember their bombast but not their cooperative projects, including rescuing the Zoological Society from past bad management.

• Thanks - and some questions by bill, 6/10/98
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