From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 



Owleye wrote:
> 
> "Phil Roberts, Jr." wrote:
> 
> 
> >
> >     Like Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in
> >     some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive
> >     world.
> 
> This may help tell me that genes have some functionality to them.  Though I 
> believe that in order to draw any conclusions about it, since "nature" did the 
> selection, I would want to ask what was it about nature that can regard it as 
> being functional.  For example, the genes for roots and stems have different 
> functions such that one serves to find nutrients in the soil whereas the other 
> serves to gather energy from the sun.  Presumably the sun and the soil are
> part of the natural world to which nonidentical genes that presumably respond 
> to nature by playing the same functional role can compete with each other and 
> presumably "win the day," though I confess that ridding organisms of genes is 
> not performed at the same rate as its acquisition.  However, competition, 
> implies this kind of similar functional relationship.  There are other ways in 
> which this is played out and compeition is not the only game in town.   Indeed 
> cooperation is rather rampant in natural selection, making the concept of self
> rather amorphous.  Indeed, what could more cooperative than a multicellular 
> organism, comprised of clone cells cooperating?  Indeed, even sexual reproduction 
> involves a kind of cooperation even if the cells cooperating are otherwise 
> treated as being in competition.
> 

You're doing a rather common form of arm chair speculating here.  I have provided
you with a host of quotations which suggest some rather different conclusions
on the part of those who have spent most of their adult lives thinking about
the matter.  I don't know what more I can do at this juncture, other than to 
advise you to obtain a copy of 'The Selfish Gene', or 'The Sociobiology Debate',
or some other suitable copy.  BTW, there has been a bit of a resurgence in the
group selection thesis (Wilson and Sober), but most of the heavy weights (e.g.
Hamiltion, Smith, Dawkins, Dennett) remain unimpressed.  It is also important
to understand that such terms as "selfish" and "gene" are metaphors for what 
is actually a simple matter of mechanics and mathematical analysis.





> >      This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our
> >     genes.  I shall argue that a predominent quality
> >     to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness.
> 
> This is my problem.  Why pick on the gene to be the self that has an interest?  
> Why not the organism, population, or some other?
> 

Because organisms are insufficiently stable associations for natural selection to
do its work on.  The co-operations between the cells in your body isn't 
co-operation, its "gene" "selfishness".  All the cells in your body carry the
same DNA, so in helping another cell a cell is helping itself.  In other words,
its not the physical copy of DNA which is selfish, but rather the formal DNA.

> >
> >     This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness
> >     in individual behavior.  However, as we shall see, there are
> >     special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own
> >     selfish goals best by fostering a limited form
> >     of altruism.  'Special' and 'limited' are important words in
> >     the last sentence.  Much as we might wish to believe otherwise,
> >     universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are
> >     concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense (Dawkins).
> 
> This may be the reason for his throwing up his hands in dismay.
> 

Yes.  The conclusions that these folks have had the courage to stand behind
have two major problems.

  1. They are contrary to what we observe in homo sapines (although it is
     highly compatible with what we observe in non-human species)
  2. The conclusions are emotionally repugnant.

Is it any wonder that these guys have had to take a lot of flak for standing
behind their conclusions.  But I always thought that was PRECISELY what a 
scientist is supposed to do, to focus on the WARTS not on the successes.

> >
> >   Clearly from a gene's point of view it is worthwhile
> >   to deprive a large number of distant relatives in order
> >   to extract a small reproductive advantage. (W. D. Hamilton)
> 
> I confess not reading this one.  Why is it clear?  

It isn't crystal clear.  In some cases it may take a lifetime of study
to come to fully appreciate the rationale underlying these conclusions.
I do not claim to be an expert.  But I have read enough of their work
and that of their critics to be fairly impressed so far.


> My reading of Hamilton is that his metric
> is based on the genome, not the gene.
> 

Sufficiently stable strands of DNA for natural selection to operate
on, to be a bit more specific.

> >
> > That's because they run into problems with genetic determinism
> > assumptions, both because humans don't look very biologically
> > determined (e.g., benevolent selfishness as opposed to ruthless
> > selfishness) and because what natural selection predicts is
> > emotionally repulsive.
> 
> That's not the reasoning I would have attributed to them though they 
> might have agreed with your assumptions about human behavior.  I think there 
> is a great deal of emphasis today on an reciprocity-based genetic account of 
> animal behavior (from a researcher I've forgotten).  

Recprocal altruism is a misnomer for delayed self interest.  It can account
for the presence of INSTRUMENTAL valuing of others.  But to the extent you
believe, as I do, that we value other INTRINSICALLY on many occasion, we
have a naturalistic enigma.  BTW, the best work in this area is Axelrod's 
'The Evolution of Co-operation'   More involved strategies are not a problem
for natural selection (e.g., co-operation).  Its when the ends are no longer
compatible with pertuating ONE'S OWN (formal) DNA that you get into a bit of
a sticky wicket.



> In
> any case, I'm getting a glimmer of where I think you are heading with this.  
> That is, it is
> making more sense to me now.
> 
> > My theory bridges the gap by showing
> > how genetic indeterminism could come into the universe as
> > a result of natural selection.  It steers neatly between
> > the Scylla and Charybdis, as they say.
> 
> Actually there has been in existence for many years your so-called genetic 
> indeterminism, where studies of bacterial clones raised in identical environments 
> exhibit a range of behavior.  Apparently individual genes can produce a range 
> of differing behavior across a population having the same gene.  Diversity has 
> always been a possible source of advantage in natural selection.  This idea too, 
> makes it difficult to identify a "self" that has an interest.
> 

This is interesting.  But there is a major difference between organisms which
exhibit diversity in terms of going for blue light instead of green light and
diversity in degrees of selfishness/selflessness.  Green light attraction may
not always be detrimental to perpetuating fromal DNA, but selflessness is,
or at least that seems to be the conclusion of the folks I have quoted for you.


-- 

                  Phil Roberts, Jr.

       The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism:
Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock
     http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/