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. |
You're entirely welcome, tpaine. I'm glad you found my little piece so entertaining. Now, my old and very dear friend, maybe you might want to put a little sweat into trying to understand what I actually said. Then maybe we can chat again if you feel like it.
And thus human life is reduced to whether there is fitness for survival or not, a condition about equally meaningful as whether the gizmos inside the slot machine line-up to trigger a pay-out.
Not my life. Presumably not anyone's life. Evolution doesn't teach this. Evolution *does* say that if you don't reproduce, your genes won't be part of the game. We know that even without Darwin's theory, don't we? Still, that doesn't mean your life is devoid of meaning. George Washington had no children. In purely evolutionary terms, his line is a dead end. So what? I regard his life as one of the most meaningful and valuable in all of human history. See the difference? Evolution and the meaning of human life are very different concepts.
Evolutionary theory doesn’t deal with life. And because it doesn’t, it can’t deal with consciousness. And it’s hostile to spirit.
Evolution deals with species, and how they evolve. That's life. Consciousness is partly biological, partly neurological, and parts as yet unknown. Still, species evolve. And I've said this before -- evolution is *NOT* hostile to spirit. Neither is plumbing. But they don't address it either. Silence isn't hostility.
Darwinism does not recognize consciousness: It does not appear in his theory at all.
It's not part of the theory. If we were to ask ol' Darwin, I suspect he'd admit that we all have consciousness. It's something he didn't work on. Still, evolution is a good theory. Einstein didn't explain consciousness either, nor did he mention it. So what?
I just don’t know how Darwinism can be justified as a comprehensive theory if it refuses to comprehend basic facts pertaining to a certain “physical object” that lies within its putative purview – that is, man. This failure, to my mind, discredits whatever else it has to say.
Comprehensive? Darwin made no such claim. Nor does anyone today. Evolution explains a limited aspect of nature -- the proliferation of species on earth. It doesn't answer every question we have about everything. It never will. Nor did Einstein. This "failure of comprehensiveness" objection just doesn't discredit evolution. The theory explains what it sets out to explain. And it does so very well. That's all it does. That is does no more isn't an objection to what it actually does.
For how can one have a theory of the origin and descent of species if all it can do is regard relevant specimens of same as fossils? And IMHO that’s exactly what Darwinism does: It makes its entire case pretty much on the evidence of fossils – artifacts that have been drained of life and whatever consciousness they may have had when they were alive.
All Darwin had, in his day, was the fossil record. It was very scanty then, far better now, and -- amazingly -- the theory *still* explains the now-expanded fossil record. We also have DNA to substantiate the fossil relationships, something Darwin never dreamed of, yet it supports his theory. Consciousness just doesn't play a role in that. It doesn't. Consciousness is a legitimate area of research, but it's not part of the theory of evolution, which explains only what it purports to explain.
I am always hopeful that my posts explain what I intend them to explain. On the other hand, that doesn't give me the right to demand that others explain things, particularly things that they explicitly disclaim any ability to explain within that particular framework, nor does it necessarily render the explanation worthless merely because it fails to meet my own pet requirements about what it ought to address. The alternative is that I can assume the theories of general and special relativity to be false and invalid, because they don't meet my personal standard of being able to explain the existence of hot buttered scones. When you put it like that, it looks exactly as absurd as it is, of course, and the demand that the theory of evolution explain everything that any random person decides to lard it up with is equally absurd. It's an error of scope, more than anything else, I think.
Anyhow, the distinction Heartlander raises is very interesting.
I have yet to see it shown that there is a distinction.
You can say that again; the scope of motion is perhaps too large if it need not distinguish between gravitational and molecular forces. Some day we can all work in the same lab. Or is the face of the living that is indistinguishable?
Hmmm. Certainly it is fallacious to say IBM is necessarily alive being composed of living things (at least partially), but, depending on your definition, it may be alive nonetheless.
Isn't it interesting how our often arbitrary categories get in our way. Of course they help us too.
Social forces are productive of systemic features that are not planned. See Hayek, The Counter-revolution of Science
It probably depends on what we want to describe about each of them. I'm sure there are enough common elements that we can at least colloquially fit them both under the heading of "motion", but we have to be careful not to force-fit concepts onto one from the other in the cases where they really do diverge. If there is such a distinction between the impersonal actions of gravity, and the forces of natural selection, we ought to try to specify what that difference is as exactly as we can - within the limits of what we can express in words, of course ;)
Indeed. The definition of life is such that we can find all sorts of perverse cases that seem to fall into a sort of twilight zone between "alive" and "not alive". I'm not so sure that describing any sort of process as alive is useful, though ;)
Dear PH, with these words you confess that you do not know how to escape from the net of purely intentionalist thinking. So what if DNA can corroborate or establish fossil relationships? You're still dealing with artifacts whose once-upon life "in the round" cannot be reconstituted as it was, or otherwise accessed or "analyzed" in any way. DNA cannot reconstitute lived experience -- of a plant or of a man. Fossils may resemble each other in certain critical ways, not because natural selection necessarily had everything or even anything to do with it, but because nature itself persistently displays "patterning behavior."
For instance, let's take the example of leafing/branching patterns in flora. Sure, you can object the lesson would come from botony. But a comprehensive theory that states that all of organic life rose from inorganic matter must somewhere include botany along the way, if not as a main intervening station of evolutionay "progress," than as a side development that follows the main rules (i.e., natural selection, survival of the fittest).
Anyhoot, as Stephen Wolfram helpfully noted, as diverse as the specific patterns of leaves that we see in nature are, observation (measurement) confirms that the presentation of new buds along the growing stem tends to show a successive rotation of roughly 137.5 degrees. Which also happens to be "equivalent to a rotation by a number of turns equal to the so-called golden ratio...which arises in a wide variety of mathematical contexts -- notably as the limiting ratio of Fibonacci numbers."
Now, if we were to have a fossil of a leaf, would it show us anything at all about this branching pattern -- which can only be demonstrated if we had the whole plant, in its alive state, right here before us, that we could observe in time? We can never recover that plant's once upon a time aliveness, if all we have to go on is its discrete fossilized leaf, further removed from meaningful significance to our problem by virtue of the fact that it is a fossil. Capice?
Seems the same rule must hold true for biology, as well.
More, should we drop the apparent connection to Fibonacci numbers down the rathole of insignificance -- because as an (unevolving) mathematical object, it can have no relevance for Darwinist (i.e., "natural selection") purposes? (It also happens that, Fibonacci numbers, as mathematical objects, are properly denizens of luminous, not intentionalist consciousness. Which Darwinist theory relentlessly tries to extirpate from its analysis.)
But in this case please notice that here we are speaking of how luminous consciousness "corrects" for the supposition that the fossil of the leaf tells us everything we need to know about the plant that died millennia ago. Intentionalist consciousness is happy to take one slim piece of evidence, and construct a universe out of it. Luminous consciousness tells us that we are fools if we do that.
Peace, my friend.
She critiqued the Ridley's talk of evolution. When she says "human life is reduced" you object to say evolution does no such thing. Why do you turn Ridley's view into her view? I don't know if there exists a temple that houses Evolution in pristine form, but fine, that can be another argument, and there's a lot to her post that can be disputed, but turning the tables is not an Aristotelian virtue.
Then she mentions talk of Darwin's evolution being used for a comprehensive theory. You claim nobody does this. This is false. Scientific reductionism was the feather and crown of the most homicidal movements of our time.
Then she points out the fallacy of naturalism, namely taking evolutionary processes as pure fact, when the theory is actually an interaction of human thought and the process. You don't answer to any of that--it is her best argument.
Peace friend, well do I understand what you mean. There are times when Voegelin seems to teeter on the brink of the unintelligible. But (masochist that I am), I've stuck with this guy for some 18 years now. Once you get used to him, he makes perfect sense. But the price you have to pay to get to that point is the shedding of copious blood, sweat and tears. (At least that's been my experience....)
You may wonder what I see in the guy. What I most respect is the fact that he was no "system builder." He never constructed a "doctrine." He never told me "what to think." He invited me as a companion along a journey, pointing out an abundance of interesting and exciting things along the way. Then he said: What do you make of it?
Now, there's a true philosopher for you! He's "the real thing," to my mind, the likes of whom has not been seen since the ancient Greeks. (And you know how much I revere Plato and Aristotle -- two more great "non-systematic" philosophers.)
But he's definitely not everybody's "cup of tea." I have simply tried to make him accessible to the general reader with my foregoing remarks. But I could never do the man true justice, and that's for sure.
Right, so Socrates understood it in the Symposium and the Phaedo and recognized that that success is the continuity of existence. This reveals the drive toward immortality and the identification of the animate and inanimate with the underlying "forces" of evolution.
And when we pinch off our minds against what is other than the "material" isn't that a reason without a rhyme? But evolution necessitates some kind of rhyme, because inherent in it's study is the functioning of things together (yea even when a bug eats a bug). Tell your pet dog that it doesn't have a purpose, when it stands at its empty dish and barks at you -- or when you try to take its bone away! So, why is there this study of the development of life based upon biology, based upon behavior patterns of interactive functions for the purpose of sustaining life, when this leads only to death?
Enter Bacchus and the grossly twisted irrationality of the Hindu pantheon and rock stars who moan and writhe and then kill themselves (and people who make money from it all).
Purposelessness makes for a pretty poor purpose.
Sci-what?
There is no such thing as anti-purpose, when one studies life.
I agree with bb, if you find it put it in a bottle and cap it and show it to me. Otherwise, I'll go with that man who was born of a virgin, killed, rose, ascended, and sends his spirit down into those who are humble enough to "allow" him.
Botany is not exempt from evolution, BB.
But a comprehensive theory that states that all of organic life rose from inorganic matter must somewhere include botany along the way, if not as a main intervening station of evolutionay "progress," than as a side development that follows the main rules (i.e., natural selection, survival of the fittest).
Dear BB ... what shall I do with you? Have we not discussed this before? Evolution does *NOT* claim that live arose from inorganic matter. It explains *only* how *living* things evolve. The theory of evolution does not even *pretend* to explain: (1) where life originally comes from; (2) where consciousness comes from; (3) how man should live his life; (4) what we should think about God; or (5) anything else, other than how species proliferate on earth.
As for Wolfram and Fibonacci numbers, I'm not familiar enough with his work to discuss this.
The theory of evolution does not even *pretend* to explain
How many pseudoscientists take potshots at God and anything supernatural then hide back on the other side of "well um... I's only talkin' 'bout scence..." rock? Why I think I may have seen you do that, from time to time. Don't you adhere to objectivism? Please set me straight, where it is according to the integrity of all you have written out your agreement with in black in white.
I thnk betty boop is familiar with the terms 'abiogenesis' as well as 'macroevoluion,' both of which as we keep pointing out over and over are not scientifically founded.
Then there's all the prevarication again that would claim things about matters of the spirit....
Integrity is your friend.
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