Posted on 06/02/2003 1:46:54 PM PDT by Heartlander
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Blinded by Science |
| Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, by Matt Ridley HarperCollins, 336 pp., $25.95) This is a very strange book, and I am not quite sure what the author is attempting to achieve. At the very least it appears that he wants to shore up genetic determinism as the key factor in understanding human nature and individual behavior. Genetic determinism is rational materialism's substitute for the religious notion of predestination; taking the place of God as puppet master are the genes, whose actions and interactions control who we are, what we think, and how we act. This reductionist view received a body blow recently when the mappers of the human genome found that we have only about 30,000 genes. Because of their understanding of human complexity, the scientists were expecting at least 100,000 -- and that means there are probably too few genes for strict genetic determinism to be true. Ridley, a science writer and former U.S. editor of The Economist, tries to ride to the rescue. In doing so, he adds a twist that he hopes will overcome our apparent genetic paucity: Yes, he says, our genes decide who we are, what we do and think, and even with whom we fall in love. But, he posits, our molecular masters are not rigidly preset when we are born. Rather, they change continually in reaction to our biological and emotional experiences. Hence, 30,000 are more than enough for a soft genetic determinism to be true -- which means that the battle between those who believe we are the product of our biology (nature) versus those who believe we are the result of our environment (nurture) can now end in a truce in which both sides win. We are indeed controlled by our genes, but they in turn are influenced by our experiences. Ridley says that the mapping of the genome "has indeed changed everything, not by closing the argument or winning the [nature versus nurture] battle for one side or the other, but by enriching it from both ends till they meet in the middle." To Ridley, the core of our true selves isn't soul, mind, or even body in the macro sense; we are, in essence, merely the expression of our genes at any given moment. If this is true, then my perception of Nature via Nurture as so much nonsense was the only reaction I could have had, given my original genetic programming, as later modified by my every experience and emotion from my conception, through the womb, childhood, high school, college, practicing law, the death of my father, indeed up to and including the reading of this book. If that is so – if I was forced by my gene expression of the moment to perceive this book as I have -- what have we really learned that can be of any benefit to humankind? We are all slaves to chemistry and there is no escape. Even aside from such broader issues, Ridley does not make a persuasive case. Maybe it is my legal training, but I found his evidence very thin. He doesn't present proofs so much as resort to wild leaps of logic predicated on questionably relevant social science and facile analogies based on a few animal studies. These are simply not strong enough to be the sturdy weight-supporting pillars that his thesis requires to be credible. Let's look at just one example. He cites studies of monogamous prairie voles to suggest that humans only think they fall in love, when, in reality, what we call love is merely the expression of genes resulting in the release of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin. Claiming that he is not going to "start extrapolating anthropomorphically from pair-bonding in voles to love in people," he proceeds to do just that. Citing the vole studies and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream -- in which a love potion makes Titania fall in love with a man with a donkey's head – Ridley writes: Who would now wager against me that I could not do something like this to a modern Titania? Admittedly, a drop on the eyelids would not suffice. I would have to give her a general anesthetic while I cannulated her medial amygdala and injected oxytocin into it. I doubt even then that I could make her love a donkey. But I might stand a fair chance of making her feel attracted to the first man she sees upon waking. Would you bet against me? But shouldn't it take far more than measuring the physical effects of oxytocin on prairie voles to prove that something as complex, maddening, unpredictable, and wonderfully and uniquely human as romantic love can, in reality, be reduced to the mere expression of genes leading to chemical secretions? Not, apparently, to Ridley. "Blindly, automatically, and untaught, we bond with whoever is standing nearest when oxytocin receptors in the medial amygdala get tingled." Gee, if he'd known that, Bill Clinton could have purchased fewer copies of Leaves of Grass. The most fascinating thing about this book is that Ridley inadvertently makes a splendid argument for intelligent design. At this point, I am sure Ridley's "I am utterly appalled" genes are expressing wildly. He is, after all, a scientific materialist in good standing. Yet, throughout the book, in order to make his arguments understandable, he resorts explicitly to the imagery of the guiding hand. He even gives it a name: the "Genome Organizing Device," or "G.O.D." Ridley claims that the G.O.D is "a skillful chef, whose job is to build a souffle," consisting of the various parts of us and all other life on the planet. Note the language of intentionality in his description of the evolution of the human brain: To build a brain with instinctive abilities, the Genome Organizing Device lays down separate circuits with suitable internal patterns that allow them to carry out suitable computations, then links them with appropriate inputs from the senses. . . . In the case of the human mind, almost all such instinctive modules are designed to be modified by experience. Some adapt continuously throughout life, some change rapidly with experience then set like cement. A few just develop to their own timetable. But according to my lay understanding, this violates the theory and philosophy of evolution. The hypothesis of natural selection holds that species origination and change are promoted by genetic mutations. Those mutations that change the organism to make it more likely than its unchanged peers to survive long enough to reproduce are likely to be passed down the generations. Eventually, these genetic alterations spread among the entire species and become universal within its genome. It is through this dynamic evolutionary process of modification, the theory holds, that life fills all available niches in nature. It is also the process, although the details are not known, by which the primates now known as homo sapiens became conscious. The philosophy of Darwinism posits that this evolutionary process is aimless, unintentional, purposeless, and without rhyme or reason. This means it has no biological goal: It just is. Hence, G.O.D. would not want to "build a brain," develop nature via nurture in species, or do any other thing. Yet, throughout the book, Ridley seems able only to describe what he thinks is going on using the language of intention. Could this be because Ridley's theories would require interactions that are so complex and unlikely that they would seem laughable if described as having come together haphazardly, by mere chance? So what are we to learn from his insights? In terms of how we live our lives, not much beyond what common sense already tells us: Parents matter and should engage with their children; human teenagers enjoy doing what they are good at, and dislike doing what they are bad at; and so on. That much is harmless; but Ridley's deeper point is subversive of human freedom and individual accountability. He denies the existence of free will: Our actions are not causes but effects, "prespecified by, and run by, genes." Indeed, he claims unequivocally, "There is no 'me' inside my brain, there is only an ever-changing set of brain states, a distillation of history, emotion, instinct, experience, and the influence of other people -- not to mention chance." Ridley asserts this as if it would be a good thing to learn that the complexity and richness of human experience could accurately be reduced to merely the acts of so many slaves obeying the lash of chemical overseers acting under the direction of our experience-influenced gene owners. "Nature versus nurture is dead," Ridley concludes triumphantly. "Long live nature via nurture." Sorry. Maybe it's my genes, but I just don't buy it. |
Very interesting insights, Consort. I think this puts you in the Erasmus Darwin camp of evolutionary theory, and decidedly not in his son's. The former recognizes and is open to intellect and free will; the latter is relentlessly deterministic, "blind." It has been observed that Charles Darwin's theory is the secular twin of the Christian dogma of predestination, as it is commonly understood.
I'm still waiting for Darwinists to explain this paradox to me.
Evolution does not move "towards" anything, at least not anything knowable, because there is no static state that can be known as "fitness". Whatever works and whatever succeeds succeeds. Most of the living mass of the planet, by weight, is made up of bacteria. Evolution does not compel any "upward" trend towards "complexity".
Dispite what any given authority might say, evolution is compatible with any concrete definition of free will. The utility of the mind is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future -- a task that remains and will always remain incomplete and unfulfilled. It is this attempt to predict and manage the future that gives us the "feeling" of free will. It is the impossibility of predicting the future that makes the feeling of freedom consistent with reality.
Evolution, in fact, turns the usual cause and effect paradigm upside down. In the world of living things, cause operates from the future backwards, rather than from past to present. That's really, in a nutshell, what evolution means.
LOL brings me back to my college days in the dorm when for no reason at all someone would yell "SCIENCE" when things got too quiet.
I guess you had to be there.
Then it probably moves towards the unknowable. And, it seems that a paradox is merely something that we are not smart enough to understand yet.
The utility of the mind is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future...
It seems to me that most of what the mind is concerned about is what is happening right now. We don't dwell in the future.
Evolution, in fact, turns the usual cause and effect paradigm upside down.
Why would they be mutually exclusive? Cause and effect can be everyday occurrences as we evolve.
Do you have a problem with that. I understand your assertion that the universe doesn't change, but the complexity of the universe far outstrips our ability to understand it. Hence the evolution of our understanding. Should we stop trying because we'll never reach the end?
what we do is based on what we expect. It isn't rocket science to realize that different people have different horizons, and concern themselves with short and long term goals, based on their level of intelligence and their education. but even one second from now is the future.
I was invited to this thread by betty boop. My views are well known to her. It is also my opinion that telling the truth about what we believe is a conservative virtue. I could, like Clinton, just say what I think you want to hear.
Sounds like a teleology to me, but more like the old time religion: god is on the winning side. That's what Homer and Herodotus touted long ago: the Greeks win because the gods favor them with success.
But what, after all, is success? Success is of a particular kind, right? The description of success moves our attention from the fact of evolution to the value of evolution. But in your supposed teleology, the value is actually coeval with the fact! Now there's a matrix. It was with this that Socrates long ago took issue, because he couldn't accept the ol' positivism que sera, sera. Nor does politics, never has, never will.
Maybe you are going in the wrong (( anarchy // evolution )) direction!
Yes, but when the unexpected comes up, we have to deal with it now. And later, what we planned for and what we didn't plan for will become the now that we have to deal with. It's all happening...now.
If the utility of mind "is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future," then the genius of mind must consist in the ability to freely conceive a desired future, and then to work toward securing it. The future isn't just something "out there" beyond our will that we humans need to "adjust to." It also can be something imagined, even created by us on the strength of decisions we make.
Charles Darwin has us living entirely in/for the former type of process, for that's the best that his brand of determinism can do. But in fact, we humans live in the latter type as well, which is the sphere of intellect and free will that no infinite random series (in theory or practical fact) of material cause and effect can either anticipate or explain.
It seems clear to me that man is both "creature" and "creator," within his sphere of competence. Darwinist evolutionary theory has nothing to say about man in this second capacity. Of the artist, the poet, the saint, the theoretical scientist intuitively groping for new visions, new insights -- of these Darwin has absolutely nothing to say.
Presumably because the creative consciousness of man complicates the elegance of the system, all such considerations are omitted. Human consciousness is assumed to consist in being "reactive to stimuli," just like any "lower" creature, such as jellyfish, paramecium, dog, cat, tweety-bird, etc., etc. But to say that animals (including man) "react to stimuli" doesn't mean that a clear concept of "future" need necessarily be present.
Thus a contradiction seems to slip in: If utility depends on notions of the future -- for something to be "useful," to have utility, it must accomplish a specified purpose, and the purpose's fulfillment lies beyond the present moment -- how do we know whether the lower orders of animal mind even conceive the idea of "future" at all? There must be something more to the human mind than simple "animal mind" -- for humans seem to be keenly aware of, even at times anxious about, this thing called "future."
Does the inchworm, progressing along his planar existence, reacting to stimuli all along the way, have any "idea" that he is moving in time -- from the "now" of Point A to the "future" of Point B?
But humans seem to do more than react to stimuli; and they can "react" to "stimuli" that are not occasioned by things in the exterior world (in the sense of sense impressions caused by physical objects). They can also reflect them in consciousness, and choose alternatives on the basis of those self-reflections.
Charles Darwin turns a blind eye on this problem. Darwin's world is a vast machine populated by other machines that just happen to have a "biological basis." And we humans, just as all other "evolving" concatenations of materialist "stuff," are all just "passing through," meaninglessly, and creating no meaning ourselves as we move in time.
In the matter of consciousness, what happened in the evolution of mind from muck to Einstein? How did man get "here" from "there?" I'm groping for language to express where I think Darwin's theory is deficient. To me it is so clear that he is leaving something truly vital and necessary out of his concept -- a mistake his father did not make. And its lack, to my mind, puts his entire theory in doubt. FWIW
Thanks so much for writing, js1138.
I don't have time to give this post the detailed response it deserves, but I will respond to the inchworm problem. The worm doesn't need to have ideas. It has a rudimentary nervous system that supports behaviors that result in the species surviving. Whatever "point b" is, it is statistically likely to have some survival value. Selection is the cause of the nervous system's form.
I understand that this looks like a paradox, which is why the concept of selection is so difficult to analyze and "prove".
Back later with more.
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