Civilizing Altruism

(Click the title, above.)

Watching the HBO special about John Adams at work among The Founders, I was struck by how inspired they were towards sharing a civilizing purpose (founding a republic of free citizens), which they deemed important beyond their physical bodies. "In their bones," they were animated by more than mere desire to survive and reproduce. Rather, they wished to create and leave to posterity something of worth which led beyond themselves. In what way, then, should Darwinism be conceived to explain why such an altruistic cause so inspired them?



REGARDING Edward O. Wilson —
(Tainting Words, Rejecting Ayn Rand, and Driving Dawkins Bonkers?)

REGARDING Sociobiology and Multilevel Selection Theory (is there a clear conceptual definition — either of “gene” or of “evolution”?):


QUOTE SNIPPITS:

See http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/522809?cookieSet=1:
Current sociobiology is in theoretical disarray, with a diversity of frameworks that are poorly related to each other. Part of the problem is a reluctance to revisit the pivotal events that took place during the 1960s, including the rejection of group selection and the development of alternative theoretical frameworks to explain the evolution of cooperative and altruistic behaviors. In this article, we take a “back to basics” approach, explaining what group selection is, why its rejection was regarded as so important, and how it has been revived based on a more careful formulation and subsequent research.

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Multilevel selection theory:
From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15wils.html?em&ex=1216267200&en=0c430acc141c196e&ei=5087%0A
Dr. Wilson, changing his mind because of new data about the genetics of ant colonies, now believes that natural selection operates at many levels, including at the level of a social group.



[COMMENT: There is a lag between the time consciousness of a decision is sensed and the time the brain-holography had actually already made the decision. So, (including group selection) provides an elegant theoretical foundation for sociobiology in the future, once its turbulent past is appropriately understood. What is IT that accounts for evolution in our habits and modes of thought, in respect of what occurs prior to consciousness of such thought? Is IT a same ineffable Quality/Aspect/Thing that accounts for evolution of emerging and social behaviors, patterns, and memes, beyond genes? Might IT "school minds like fish," in some sort of existentially shared mass-angst? ]

....


It is through multilevel or group-level selection — favoring the survival of one group of organisms over another — that evolution has in Dr. Wilson’s view brought into being the many essential genes that benefit the group at the individual’s expense. In humans, these may include genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior. Such traits are difficult to account for, though not impossible, on the view that natural selection favors only behaviors that help the individual to survive and leave more children.


OF TAINTED WORDS:


From http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/522809?cookieSet=1 :

It is a natural human tendency to avoid associating oneself with people or ideas that have acquired a bad reputation in the past. Thus, there are evolutionists who study social behavior, but avoid the term “sociobiology,” or who study psychology, but avoid the term “evolutionary psychology,” because of particular ideas that were associated with these terms in the past, including their supposed political implications. At a broader scale, there are people who avoid the word “evolution” because of past negative associations, even though they are clearly talking about evolutionary processes. We think that this very understandable temptation needs to be resisted in the case of scientific terminology, because the short-term gain for the user (avoiding negative associations) results in long-term confusion for the field as a whole (a proliferation of terms that mean the same thing). The problem has been especially severe for multilevel selection theory because many evolutionists have felt that their very careers would be jeopardized if they invoked group selection. In some cases, their fears were well founded; we could provide numerous examples of colleagues whose articles and grant proposals were rejected when stated in terms of multilevel selection theory, and then accepted when restated using other terms.


[COMMENT: Shades of “Expelled”!]


The rejection of group selection in the 1960s was based on three arguments, like the legs of a stool: a) group selection as a significant evolutionary force is theoretically implausible; b) there is no solid empirical evidence for group selection as a distinctive, analytically separable process; and c) alternative theories can explain the evolution of apparent altruism without invoking group selection.


[COMMENT — Well, I suspect the primary reason may have been this: ASSUMING everything can be reduced to computation, there seems no way to test the compute-ability of group selection. (If so, and so long as non-group selection also remains inadequate in itself, what is the implication of that, regarding the original ASSUMPTION?) Until we plumb individual selection, to encourage shared conceptualizations of group selecton too quickly may lead us to overlook other avenues of scientific manipulation, even if while expediting appreciation of limits of conceptional applications.]
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The closest that Williams came to a rigorous empirical test was for sex ratio, leading him to predict that female-biased sex ratios would provide evidence for group selection. The subsequent discovery of many examples of female-biased sex ratios, as well as evidence of group selection in the evolution of disease organisms, brought him back toward multilevel selection in the 1990s.
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Field studies of social vertebrates are seldom as precise as laboratory experiments but nevertheless provide convincing evidence for group selection. The following description of territorial defense in lions (Packer and Heinsohn 1996:1216; see also Heinsohn and Packer 1995) is virtually identical to Darwin's passage about human morality that began this article: “Female lions share a common resource, the territory; but only a proportion of females pay the full costs of territorial defense. If too few females accept the responsibilities of leadership, the territory will be lost. If enough females cooperate to defend the range, their territory is maintained, but their collective effort is vulnerable to abuse by their companions. Leaders do not gain ‘additional benefits' from leading, but they do provide an opportunity for laggards to gain a free ride.” In this field study, extensive efforts to find a within-group advantage for territorial defense failed, leaving between-group selection as the most likely—and fully plausible—alternative.
....

“.... to offer the following one-foot summary of sociobiology's new theoretical foundation: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”” (COMMENT: Might this help explain the result of WWII?)


[COMMENT: So, how should a viable civilization inspire altruism?
I think, not entirely or merely with Ayn Rand’s philosophy. For moral purposes, rather than choosing between "either-or" thinking (individual or collective, singular or plural), we must reconcile "I" with "we." Each must value his or her own integrity, even while appreciating derivation in respect of empathy beyond. That is, "Mind" is not entirely or only individual or collective. Rather, Mind/Will ("Elohim"), in moral sense, is not only individual (singularity), but also capable of infinity (plurality) of perspectives.

Empiricists, becoming stunted in indisposition to imagine beyond "either-or" scientific boxes, often become, for moral purposes, maddeningly myopic --- if not quite morally hollow.

Minds shoehorned into strict "either-or" habits of thought for empirical reasoning come easily to transfer similar habits of thought as if appropriate for moral reasoning, coming comfortably to deny that Ayn Rand's "moral philosophy" (being incomplete) can never suffice.

Note: Ironically enough, Gary Cooper starred not only in a film based on Rand's "The Fountainhead," but also in another film, showing another side of altruism, i.e., "Meet John Doe."]


From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15wils.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5087&em&en=0c430acc141c196e&ex=1216267200

Morality and religion, he suspects, are traits based on group selection. “Groups with men of quality — brave, strong, innovative, smart and altruistic — would tend to prevail, as Darwin said, over those groups that do not have those qualities so well developed,” Dr. Wilson said.
....

Looking back at the “heavy mortar fire” that rained down on him over “Sociobiology,” he said he had risked his academic career and feared for a time that he had made a fatal error. His admiration for the political courage of the Harvard faculty is not without limits; many colleagues told him they supported him, but all did so privately. Academic biologists are still so afraid of inciting similar attacks that they practice sociobiology under other names, like evolutionary psychology.

.... he says: “Stop quibbling — I’m willing to say ‘Under God’ and to hold my hand to my heart. That’s recognition of how this country evolved, and that we are using strong language to strong purpose, even if we may not agree on how the Earth was created.”
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....it is back to the ants and the writing and the endless quest to understand how the hand of evolution has shaped every aspect of life.

....

[COMMENT: Theorists of “emergence” seem interested in reducing the apparent “evolution” of multilevels of patterns to mere epiphenomena, lacking “real” source substantiveness in themselves. But, are theorists of “multilevel selection” interested in expanding the concept of evolution to encompass synchronizing agents of cause?

I need to consider WHY Dawkins is so frothy against those he deems to be messing with his conceptual scheme.

May Dawkins be troubled that multilevel evolution is more readily conceptualized for implicating a Unitary Synchronizer?

What does Dawkins think about George C Williams's concern that, only by a theory of between-group selection could we achieve a scientific explanation of group-related adaptations”? Does the possibility of multilevel selection render any ultimate unifying theory of biology so “non-computational” as to drive Dawkins and Company bonkers?

Must Something-Noncomputable "exist," beyond science, which synchronizes, facilitates, and guides evolution across multi-levels, based on ITs appreciation of feedback on holographic scales, rather than merely scales relating to survival and replication of individuals?] :

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OF MORAL INTUITION:

Moderates should think logically and experientially about what are limits of science and beginnings of moral judgment and intuition. Challenges multiply as hedonists assert there are no “oughts” beyond personal, bodily, physical gratification and as scientists jealously assert “intuition” is devoid of meaning (i.e., that there are no worthwhile or meaningful concerns beyond logic and empiricism.

For annihilating social traditions and mores, Scientists and Hedonists seem often to align against Moderates, like Nihilist Libertines against responsible society.

In empirical sense, “intuition” may subsequently be evidenced to have been or not to have been descriptive of the case. However, in moral sense, “intuition” (or judgment) may be meant to pertain to that which one applies in endeavoring to effect choices in managing among moral uncertainties.

“Objective” minded persons, when unaccustomed to moral responsibility for decisions outside parameters of safe calculation, may grow agitated when pressed to discuss moral terms or ideas not readily reducible to cold, replicable measure, statistics, control, or prediction. Of course, much that is not trivial challenges us concerning our futures, being not reducible to certain knowledge. Beyond rough parameters of measurable or predictable accuracy, little that is not trivial is rigorously reducible to certainty.

In hindsight, one may imagine what could have been deduced from what was knowable, had one known it. By what strategy, however, does or should one approach decision making responsibilities when data or knowledge is uncertain or seems insufficient? And, when one does somehow muddle through to make non-trivial decisions or choices, by what label or name should the process or moral choice making be referenced --- if not “Intuition?”

Surely, such process “exists.” How then, may or should it be termed? For such term, what does an Objectivist offer? Should such process be named only in respect of its result, as in: “stuff happens?” Depending upon context, does an Objectivist offer anything better for terming such process than: hunch, guess, judgment, will, choice, intuition, or insight?

If, in non-trivial situations, Objectivists do not exercise something like “intuition” (an oft disparaged word among them), what then are they doing? If they are not “doing,” is “Nature” (Gaia?) then making “random” choices? Or, “should” Objectivists presume all is predetermined by indifferent and irrelevant “Original Cause(s)?” Is Nature (or Science) practicing science (Meta-science)? Is everyone and everything mere manifestation of experiment of ever higher orders of experiments (or Experimenters)?

When any choice is intuited, decided, or embarked upon as may be thought “best,” by what “objective” test, then, may any mere “empiricist,” not having access to the universe of the alternative, assert gnosis in respect of evidence gathered either in support or to the contrary? And, the instant an Objectivist deigns to care enough to attempt to gather such “evidence,” does he not thereby show his “objective indifference” to be NOT THE CASE?

To empiricists of little practical, moral responsibility who presume to disdain either "altruism" or “intuition”: GROW UP!