GENIUS FORUMS

These people actually think - which I found very impressive.

Edward Wilson

John Maynard Smith

Robert Pollack

Daniel Dennett (more of a philosopher)

John Haught (Theologian)


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With regards to Pollack's argument that there is no scientific explanation for altruism. I find his argument spurious - and I think he suspects that it is.

He argues that sometimes we do something for others with no hope of any reward. But his mistake, seemingly, is in not knowing that cause and effect is always a two-way street.

Let's say a tourist stops their car and asks me for directions. I willl probably never see this person again, so any help I give them will never be returned by that person. However, because I helped them they will be more likely to help another person, and that person will help another, etc. So the next time I'm in another city and ask for directions I may meet one of these people down the line, and have the favour returned.

So Pollack was simply wrong on that score. Either that, or he considers this extended cause and effect explanation unsuitable fodder for science . . . perhaps the latter, if I give him the benefit of the doubt.

There is also the kind of altruism where a person does something purely because it serves their own purpose in the immediate sense. For example, I may have decided that my purpose in life is to give directions to tourists in need of guidance. So in helping tourists I am benefitting myself by that very fact, in that I am serving what I regard to be my purpose, and regardless of whatever else I might get out of it. I will be doing it because it feels good and feels right. I don't see what's unscientific about that.

We can think of altruism as the attempt by weaker people to (a) create a society in which everyone is helpful, thus hindering stronger people from causing them harm, as well as creating opportunities to be helped by others, and (b) formulate the comforting thought in their own minds that they are superior to the stronger people.

This has advantages from a genetic standpoint because it enables the weaker people to be less stressed about life and helps them pass on their genes. As such, it is a valid part of the evolutionary process. It is the weak exploiting a situation to become part of the survival of the fittest.

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David Quinn wrote: It is the weak exploiting a situation to become part of the survival of the fittest.

And if fit to survive from an evolutionary point of view this would make altruists actually 'strong', right?

Yes, strong from an evolutionary perspective, but weak from the standpoint of physical or mental strength.

In essence, the weak gain their strength by weakening the strength of others and, as a consequence, weakening the gene pool overall. This is what has happened in Western society over the past few centuries.

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Kevin Solway wrote:

Let's say a tourist stops their car and asks me for directions. I willl probably never see this person again, so any help I give them will never be returned by that person. However, because I helped them they will be more likely to help another person, and that person will help another, etc. So the next time I'm in another city and ask for directions I may meet one of these people down the line, and have the favour returned.

Middle aged Humans are also more likely to help out young people in aid because the older generation imagines that the person is their offspring, and they hope that someone would help out their offspring in the same situation.

As Quinn suggests, much of it comes down to the biological instinct to want to see their own genes thrive, and get live on successfully.

There is the biological drive to keep one's own genes alive, and pass them on, even if your genes are weak.

This is why families help out their offspring even if they do not especially enjoy their company.

When a son dies before the father, the father grieves for himself because his genetic continuity has been severed.

I finally got through the first video...

I like Wilson's explination of reductionism (although I would have preferred a text format) and I like his consideration that it isn't just a matter of breaking things down, but also putting them back together again. Unfortunatly from the video, it's not clear what, if anything, he has uncovered about the circular effect of cause and effect between an organism and the environment. He did address that as far as addressing free will vs determinism in concious decision in a broad sense, but then he went off into the ethics of what to teach people (addressed under a theological slant) but he didn't really address the biological aspect of the human organism as either the cause or the effect - much less both.

Actually the only bioogical aspect he mentioned was after the initial meanderings and only on single-cell organisms. Beyond that, he got pretty tangental on the history of religions, and barely even tried to tie it to an anthropological background.

I do give him credit, though, for maintaining a rational outlook regarding science vs religion at his age. The older a person gets, the more certain that death is coming sooner. This often puts a pressure on an older adult to hedge their bets about their belief. They start getting nervous about "What if there is a God?" and let the permeation of the church in society intimidate them out of their rational beliefs. He even mentioned "I'm not going to take Pascal's argument and join a church just to be safe."

A friend of mine once explained his beleifs to me as "If there is a God and I believe in Him, I'll be okay. If there is a God and I don't believe in Him, I'll burn in hell. If there is no God and I believe in Him, there's no major harm done - I was just wrong; but if there is a God, I'd better believe in Him. That's why I believe in God." He was in his 20's and a very durable guy when he said that. The elderly are under more pressure because their deadline is more definatly approaching sooner.

I did like his point that it is easier to be good without believing in a God because of internalization. I have long thought that Christians have a cop-out that they can do whatever and they feel they will just be forgiven by God and it's all okay. I brought this to the attention of some Christians who argued that you have to actually be sorry to get forgiveness and it isn't a carte blanche check to do whatever you want and just go get forgiveness on Sunday (although a number of "Christians" have demonstrated that behavior in my eyes), but to me, the externalization does not seem as effective as personal responsibility.

Determinism can have the same effect, though. If one can not bridge the gap between determinism and motivation, it is actually more deleterious than beleiving in an external God and assigning individual motivation to Him through the reward/punishment system.

Yes, I really enjoyed Edward Wilson.

Robert Wright is a good interviewer, he asks good questions and I find his preference for an intelligent designer of evolution/natural selection really obvious and amusing as hell.

His interview with Daniel Dennet was too funny.

Even though I have genes that have sent me in some pretty stupid and generic directions so far in my life, my reaction to epiphenomenalism was similar Dennet's. Months ago when I first learned about epiphenomenalism in philosohpy class, I couldnt believe that people, even for a minute, took it seriously, let alone groped on to it for over a decade now. In the context of how serious the concept is taken in by some people, I'd say EP is one of the most ridiculous concepts I'd ever heard of.

And check out Robert Wrights clash with Dennet following the interview. Too funny, and interesting. Wright wrote up and posted on the internet a sensationalistic article which interpreted some of Dennet's responses --- and according to Dennet, the interpretation was incorrect, sensationalistic, and in my opinion, hillariously desperate. however, I'm not convinced that Dennet explained consciousness, I have yet to read his book - - and I'm not sure if I really understand the reasoning behind Robert Wright's decision to interpret Dennet the way he did.

Here's a blurb from the home page of Wright:

Robert Wright wrote: Can Daniel Dennett, author of Consciousness Explained, really explain consciousness? You make the call ... And speaking of potential ironies: Did the famously atheist Dennett concede that the directionality he sees in evolution is evidence of higher purpose? He now swears he didn't commit this heresy, but he could have fooled me (and did!). Anyway, here's some background on the controversy over what he said in this segment of his meaningoflife.tv interview--along with a dissection of the subtle but momentous question he was answering. And, finally, here's what he said--the full-length videotape version as well as time-saving transcript excerpts.

A review from his book: Consciousness Explained:

“The book puts forward a "multiple drafts" model of consciousness, suggesting that there is no single central place (a "Cartesian Theater") where conscious experience takes place; instead there are "various events of content-fixation occurring in various places at various times in the brain" (p365). The brain consists of a "bundle of semi-independent agencies" (p260); when "content-fixation" takes place in one of these, its effects may propagate so that it leads to the utterance of one of the sentences that make up the story in which the central character is one's "self".

By the reviews I’ve encountered, Dennett seems to ignore the role of the body in the functioning of consciousness, and merely reduces it to entirely brain functions.

He ignores the fact that much of ones subjective experience occurs in the center of the body, He seems to believe that the brain is the total unit, but consciousness seems to require both the body and the brain to function as a whole.

I also find it ironic that Dennett gleefully denies the possibility of any sort of afterlife of the body to Wright, but then he is optimistic with a friend that science will eventually make men immortal through transferring the information in the individual’s brain into a robot – and I observed that a part of him was a little disappointed that he wouldn’t be alive when the technology was available – isn’t this a very similar desire in both men?

However, this technological feat is problematic because after the copying process, all that would be stored in the robot is dead unconscious information.

Furthermore, Dennett seems to ignore the role of emptiness in consciousness and the difficulty of trying to imitate that sort of state in AI.

Many times he seems to reduce consciousness down to the dominant thought(s) patterns that have control of the brain at one particular moment.

So a neuron net and the right configuration of information is all that Dennett thinks he needs to reconstruct consciousness, but I’m not so sure.

Dennett is a little too certain of some things he shouldn’t be so certain of. I think someone has been pigging out in the tree of knowledge again.

And as for Wright, well he is a little too eager for immortality, to the point of being an emotional little girl about it. He was basically begging Dennett like a dog just to get some immortality table scraps.

I thought Wright was stronger than that from prior interviews. Jeepers, he sure broke like a little woman, maybe Dennett is quite intimating in person, especially with that long academic beard of his.

To defend Wright, when he was trying to explain what he thought epiphenomenalism was, it seems that he didn’t understand the going definition, I think he had it confused with something else.

However, this technological feat is problematic because after the copying process, all that would be stored in the robot is dead unconscious information.

I don't think "copying" is a very good way to conceptualize it, because consciousness is a process rather than just a static arrangement of information. The transfer of consciousness would be like making a gradual transfer of a program between two computers *while the program was running*, not just copying the source code or executable file from one computer to another in a single stage.

Speaking of altruism did anyone read about those dolphins found dead off the shores of Cape Cod? I didn’t know this prior but dolphins rarely ever leave their fellow sick dolphins behind, in fact they usually die in packs because of this fact. From an evolutionary standpoint this doesn’t make sense because they would have a better chance of survival if they left the sick dolphin behind, especially considering that dolphins don’t understand medicine and surgery and the such and there’s not a fat lot they can do to save the fellow sick dolphin. Also there are numerous reports of dolphins saving humans, I don’t care much to inquire into that but it does support the case of dolphin altruism. Any thoughts about the evolutionary advantages of dolphin altruism? My theory is that the second coming of Christ is actually a dolphin!!!

But seriously I’ve been thinking a lot about evolution lately and I really appreciated those videos. I think I have learned more about morality by studying evolution than I have any other source (except maybe Taoism). This is the speech I give myself each morning when I look in the mirror, “Never forget that we are animals fighting for survival. How dare you look at nature and tell me that life isn’t a constant struggle? Look outside of yourself for two seconds, if you can, look at the world around you as it exists beyond just the human animals, look at the pattern of behavior, look at the constant failure which results in evolution. Life fails and fails and fails again, it learns, and learns, then it tries again. Constant struggle just to maintain itself. There is no ease in existence. No quiet peace in survival.” Well I really don’t tell myself that because I actually find life quite simple, so simple in fact that sometimes I don’t even want to live. Anyway, can someone recommend a good book that uses evolution in a moral/how to live your life context?

Philosophaster wrote:

I don't think "copying" is a very good way to conceptualize it, because consciousness is a process rather than just a static arrangement of information. The transfer of consciousness would be like making a gradual transfer of a program between two computers *while the program was running*, not just copying the source code or executable file from one computer to another in a single stage.

Yes, but that is assuming that consciousness is something that can be somehow captured and transferred by scientific instruments, and then transported into a machine, when in fact that consciousness only functions in unison with a biological body/brain. There are a lot of problems with the idea that remain unresolved, Dennett seems a little too confident to me, as most intellectuals are.

AlyOshA wrote:

I really don’t tell myself that because I actually find life quite simple, so simple in fact that sometimes I don’t even want to live.

Yes, I have been thinking about this as well, life is so easy and uneventful that sometimes I don’t see the point of why I should be living. This maybe due to thousands of years of struggle and conquest in the human consciousness, and now there seems like there is nothing to do.

Lately I have asked myself how is one to be useful in the world?

Perhaps, it is man’s destiny that enlightened groups will eventually unite and work on projects to make themselves feel useful.

However, the projects should be more like playing - experimentation. This is what I dislike about University - Scientific labs are so rigid and predetermined. It is disencouraging because of the lack of freedom to explore on ones own.

Alyosha wrote:Speaking of altruism did anyone read about those dolphins found dead off the shores of Cape Cod? I didn’t know this prior but dolphins rarely ever leave their fellow sick dolphins behind, in fact they usually die in packs because of this fact. From an evolutionary standpoint this doesn’t make sense because they would have a better chance of survival if they left the sick dolphin behind, especially considering that dolphins don’t understand medicine and surgery and the such and there’s not a fat lot they can do to save the fellow sick dolphin. Also there are numerous reports of dolphins saving humans, I don’t care much to inquire into that but it does support the case of dolphin altruism. Any thoughts about the evolutionary advantages of dolphin altruism?

When I reflect back on to my seemingly altrustic acts that I've done in the past and compare these acts with dolphin altruism, and vice versa - - it seems to me that altruism has a lot to do with the human tendency (and perhaps dophin tendency) to simply feel disturbed and bad by the sight of someone struggling. A generous act is a way of coping with the unpleasantness of being emotionally disturbed and/or sadened by witnessing/anticipating the struggling/suffering of the other.

Cory,

The above quote is from Adam.

Your response is a good theory about one reason why people, and perhaps dolphins, behave altruistically - but what is the evolutionary advantage of this?

Gratitude comes to mind. When one is sick or injured one would be less likely to fend off predators, but one can recover provided one is not killed during that time. When the individual recovers, the individual is likely to feel positive feelings for those who protected the individual during times of need, including the positive feelings that drive mating choices. The observance by others of altruistic deeds can also influence positive feelings in those others (other than the sick or injured individual) which also influence mating choice. These positive feelings may be a subconcious relation to seeing potential parenting skills, which would be an evolutionary benefit. Therefore altruistic deeds earn favor in the mate selection process and that individual's genes are more likely to be passed down to the next generation.

Elizabeth wrote: Your response is a good theory about one reason why people, and perhaps dolphins, behave altruistically - but what is the evolutionary advantage of this?

Feeling disturbed, sadened (and even guilty) about witnessing the struggling/suffering of a fellow tribe member perhaps keeps the tribe as a whole strong. A degree of Femininty/cooperation/empathy is perhaps what keeps a tribe functioning efficiently, and a tribe whose members are overly competitive amongst each other might not fare well against the tribes who are more sypathetic to each other as a unit.

understanding mirror neurons might shed a bit of light on why we feel bad or disturbed by witnessing another persons misfortune or by anticipating a potential misfortune.

Mirror neurons cause us to not only have a theory of what other people are feeling based on how they appear, but we tend to feel what our theory tells us they are feeling. If the feeling is unpleasant, then we may be caused by our mirror neurons to do something (the altruistic act) to change the feeling from disturbing to less disturbing or even happy by doing a seemingly altruistic act.

If it is indeed true that dolphins have saved humans, it might be because their schemas for empathizing with fellow dolphins, had somehow spilled over onto the image of a human struggling.

Just a guess.

I'm also curious as to why Dolphins have been known to, as a group, murder one particular dolphin, often the weaker one.

Who knows how complex the psychology of dolphins are. They could very well have inferiority complexes, jealousies, desires for revenge, etc.

Humans often unconsciosly deal with their desire for revenge by taking out their frusterations on an innocent person, rather than taking it out of the one who initially harmed them.

This is often the case with serial killers. Each person they kill is symbolically, in some weird way, a way of dealing with the wounds they were dealt by the particular one, or ones who originaly hurt them.

Cory Duchesne wrote:I'm also curious as to why Dolphins have been known to, as a group, murder one particular dolphin, often the weaker one.

Well, it could be that the group decided the weaker one served no porpoise.
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Elizabeth wrote: Well, it could be that the group decided the weaker one served no porpoise.

LOL

- big laughs coming from the Mathis department!

What a great moment!

The murdered dolphin was worth the disturbing feelings, for such feelings are the foundations of great wit.

- Mathis

Yeah. It’s true about dolphins murdering other dolphins as well. It's also true that dolphins in captivity have been known to attack humans without provocation. Unjust murder and altruism are definitely the children of consciousness. (But I had a cat once that loved to torture mice -- just for fun.)

“I MUST make one confession” Ivan began. “I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbours. It’s just one’s neighbours, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance. I once read somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry, frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from ‘self-laceration,’ from the self-laceration of falsity, for the sake of the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For anyone to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.”
...
"By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them—all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children,—too; cutting the unborn child from the mothers womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say."

Now I know you David Quinn types (who, it should be noted, I deeply respect) will disregard all of this as a simple case of cause and effect. This is all well and good but just because something is the result of a cause, does not pawn it off as insignificant and undeserving of in depth analysis. So what are the evolutionary advantages of “artistic cruelty”? Or maybe artistic cruelty is just a by-product of other evolutionary advances?

alyosha wrote: (But I had a cat once that loved to torture mice -- just for fun.)

Yes, I believe it. Cats can be so strange. My grandmother has a cat that will catch a snake, and by managing not to injure it, the cat brings the snake in the house, and drops it on the floor. A snake, when in this position, will invariably coil up like a cobra with its neck sticking straight up and its head staring straight ahead at the cat. I watched the cat and the snake just stare at eachother for over 15minutes. I wondered if there was any feeling of benevolence in the cat causing it to just 'hang out' with the snake. What feelings were causing the cat to be so hypnotized? Was it purely a sadistic powertrip?

I don't know how long the cat would have just sat there staring. My grandmother came and shooed that cat away, snatching up the snake and giving it to me to take care of.

She informed me that it happens all the time. I just put the snake in my garden.

Now I know you David Quinn types (who, it should be noted, I deeply respect) will disregard all of this as a simple case of cause and effect. This is all well and good but just because something is the result of a cause, does not pawn it off as insignificant and undeserving of in depth analysis.

Patriotism, biggoted, religiosity, alcohol, inferiority complexes, insecurity, intense fear, pressure, crude and highly abusive upbrining/conditioning, beastial instincts, these are all, no doubt, factors contributing to the scene involving the turks whose extravagent violence according to doestevsky, I actually find hard to believe (I'm not saying I don't believe it, its just that, since I never directly experienced much violence, and am, in some compartment within me, horrified by such violence, I find it hard to believe. Do you think Dovestesky was exagerating? If not, well then, I think we've collectively improved morally to a significant degree.

So what are the evolutionary advantages of “artistic cruelty”? Or maybe artistic cruelty is just a by-product of other evolutionary advances?

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you asking is there any evolutionary advantage endowed to a group, a culture that has within its literary folds a Doestevsky who illustrates violence in the way he did?

I seen a Movie a while back; 'City of God'. It was one of the most violent movies I've ever seen - - -but it was portrayed in a way where the violence was genuinely disturbing. After the movie you were left with a passion to find out how to make the world a better place.

On the other hand, we have violent Tarantino Movies, or mindlessly violent video games. I don't find this sort of art helpful.

Actually, a film that inspired City of God, but seemed even more sincere and effective at portraying the actuality and grimness of violence and neglect was a film called: 'Pixote'.

It had a similar effect. City of God was a bit more thrilling as there was a main character who overcame the conditions. A sort of triumphant ending, which was ok because it was based on real events and recollections by people of that era.

In Pixote, nobody won. Very bleak film, but powerful, and based on real events and recollections too.

Not to sound like the film Fight Club, but I really do think that violence is written in our genetic makeup. It has always been around and always will be around and it has nothing to do with advancing our species (as it would with other animals) it is really just an artistic (or maybe biological) pleasure. And violence can never be purely localized to having to do with upbringing, education, nationality, morality, or whatever.
Likewise I think discontent is an evolutionary trait, humans will always want more: money, power, spirituality, and sexuality. I think it has helped account for our rapid success as a species and it could very well account for our rapid demise. But now I am starting to loose interest in my words so I better stop.

AlyOshA wrote:

Not to sound like the film Fight Club, but I really do think that violence is written in our genetic makeup. It has always been around and always will be around and it has nothing to do with advancing our species (as it would with other animals) it is really just an artistic (or maybe biological) pleasure. And violence can never be purely localized to having to do with upbringing, education, nationality, morality, or whatever.
Likewise I think discontent is an evolutionary trait, humans will always want more: money, power, spirituality, and sexuality. I think it has helped account for our rapid success as a species and it could very well account for our rapid demise. But now I am starting to loose interest in my words so I better stop.

If scientists do discover a series of genes that are responsible for individuals that actively seek out violence, whether it be in bars or by watching things like the ultimate fighting championship, then perhaps the flaw can be corrected by science through some future genetic altering procedure.

One thing that I have been wondering lately is what is the relationship between neurological activity and genetics?

I started questioning my conclusions when I noticed that drunk people tend to be more aggressive and violent than normal.

The only explanation I can come up with is that the alcohol stimulates older more primitive parts of the brain, which in return activates genes associated with producing aggression related molecules, and both movements sustain each other.

So neurological activity causes genetic activity just as much as genetic activity causes neurological activity.

However, the problem is that an infant receives his or her neurological blueprint based on the genetic instructions passed on by both parents, so certain individuals can come into the world with a predisposition to be violent, overly sexual, emotional, susceptible to disease, and so on.

It doesn’t seem to be a one way street between genetics and neurology, there seems to be two way communication, but I am still unclear of some things.

I think the next big leaps in science will be explaining the subtle details of how the neurology interacts with the genome.

Can anyone recommend any reading material on this topic?

AlyOshA wrote:Not to sound like the film Fight Club, but I really do think that violence is written in our genetic makeup.
It has always been around and always will be around and it has nothing to do with advancing our species (as it would with other animals) it is really just an artistic (or maybe biological) pleasure.

I was with you insofar as you thought that there will always be violent creatures, seems reasonable, (although I am optimistic that non-violent, non-emotional creatures will emerge from humanity) but do you really think violence was written into our genetic makeup for artistic, aesthetic reasons, as opposed to violence being our genetic inheritance from the time when we were animals who were advantaged by being capable of violence? You really believe this? Or am I just misinterpreting?

Alyosha wrote: And violence can never be purely localized to having to do with upbringing, education, nationality, morality, or whatever.

A thing can never be purely localized to one particular thing period.

"but do you really think violence was written into our genetic makeup for artistic, aesthetic reasons, as opposed to violence being our genetic inheritance from the time when we were animals who were advantaged by being capable of violence?"

Aesthetic reasons, no. Artistic as in creative and illogical manifestations (manifestation is the key word) -- yes. Do I think it is just a lingering gene that used to serve a purpose but we have yet to grow out of it -- no I don't think so. And I don't feel that I've reached this conclusion through pessimism.
But I will support your case with one argument; inn regards to Argentine ants. Argentine ants are the largest growing swarm of species on the planet. Most ants of the same species are like clans and will fight each other over territory. Ants of different species will definitely fight each other. But the one evolutionary advantage of the Argentine ant is its ability to get along with other ants from a different territory and even a different species. So if you drop an Argentine ant amongst fire ants in China they will get along, similarly ants of other species and territories will join a team of Argentine ants and fight/work with them to overcome the world! So in this case I could see humans evolving in a similar way, but then our species would become so overpopulated we would loose all natural resources and eventually be forced to swim in our own shit.