Good and better
The opening of Steven Weinberg’s review of The God Delusion made me muse on something, not for the first time.
Of all the scientific discoveries that have disturbed the religious mind, none has had the impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. No advance of physics or even cosmology has produced such a shock…[A]mong the natural phenomena explained by natural selection were the very features of humanity of which we are most proud. It became plausible that our love for our mates and children, and, according to the work of modern evolutionary biologists, even more abstract moral principles, such as loyalty, charity and honesty, have an origin in evolution, rather than in a divinely created soul.
There is something both immensely fascinating, and highly disconcerting, about that possibility or likelihood or near-certainty. It is, really (and I think religious believers are missing something very rich if they reject this), genuinely interesting to consider the fact that the same kind of natural forces (predators, climate, availability of food or water) shaped whales’ ability to dive, and raptors’ ability to spot prey from a great height, and chimps’ ability to strip grass stems in order to fish for termites, and Bach’s Cello Suites and ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Las Meninas’. Really – it’s enthralling. Tracing it backwards is enthralling, and following it forwards is enthralling. Our minds are an adaptation. Thinking is adaptive. It’s a tool; it has survival value; if it didn’t, we wouldn’t have it. It has a lot of survival value; it has to in order to be worth its colossal expense. That’s what it is first of all; the poetry and music and charity and justice came later. That’s fascinating, and one could think about the implications for years. (It occurred to me just a couple of weeks ago how strange and in a way sad it is that humans didn’t know this about themselves until a little more than a century ago. Imagine – they just had no idea of even the possibility that human qualities and characteristics are shaped by selective pressures. To us now it seems such a basic thing to be unaware of.)
Yet as well as being fascinating it’s also disconcerting. In that sense it is not difficult to understand the resistance of religious believers. That’s because (I think) we want to think the things we think are good really are good, that what we think is better really is better. Realizing they’re all the product of a mind that is the activity of a brain that is what it is because of selective pressures seems inimical to that. Survival of course isn’t about good or better, it’s just about survival; it’s about what works. We don’t want to think that poetry or kindness ‘work’ – we want them to be more than that, and different – we want them to be special. Not just special because we think they’re special, special because we say so, special to us – really special, special in themselves, absolutely special.
Poignant, isn’t it.
Poetry a result of natural selection? I thought God created poetry when He wrote the Bible!
OB said, among other interesting things:
Actually, one could make an entire career out of thinking about the implications. Or at least, that’s my intention. That’s why I’m writing this pesky dissertation about understanding the connections between evolution and value and ethical theory. That’s why I’m working on a PhD at all, really. Because the implications of evolution for our self-understanding have really only begun to be tapped, and there’s nothing I can imagine more worthy of a lifetime of energy and effort.
Then again, I’m rather prejudiced on the matter.
;-)
And of course, the theists are not the only people threatened by these ideas – as you have pointed out elsewhere!
Pinker said in ‘The Blank Slate’, good atheist academics went totally apesh*t about evolutionary psychology from the start.
The false beliefs they were defending are still hidden in the grounding of large slabs of theoretically informed professional ideas – eg in teaching. (With a big eye-roll especially for Outcomes Based Education, as failed in implementation in our state last year)
may i offer a tiny note of caution regarding “evolutionary psychology” – and quite why they dropped the original discipline title of “sociobiology” I have noooo idea… :-)
Sometimes they can run the risk of falling into the old American Functionalist School of Social Sciences trap…
ie “Why does x behaviour exist? Well, it performs this function in society,etc. But why does x specifically exist, where did it arise from? Well, this is the function it performs…”
liable to go on ad bleedin’ infinitum
[Try some Talcott Parsons if yer feeling particularly masochistic, and love meandering sentences that last for page-filling paragraphs.]
Heh, I wanted to insert a comment on how evolutionary theory in no way explains music, love, poetry, etc. But Weinberg actually expresses himself quite carefully in that it “becomes plausible” that abstract moral principles “have an origin” in evolution. You’re running a bit ahead of that by mentioning thinking itself as an adaptation.
I actually broadly agree with what Weinberg says on the cosmological and ontological proofs. In that the first by necessity relates to something very abstract (God as cause, qua cause), the second tells us something interesting about God, were s/he to exist (God as either necessary or impossible).
I don’t have any problem with that trap Andy – I just love evolution, even more than plate tectonics. Two of the world’s great AHA! moments.
I think hypertrophic features show the functional model for the self-constrained thinking it is. The best example is birds of paradise. You don’t need a ‘reason’ to develop a feature – any probability change will drive selection. Once thinking and productive capacity exceeded that required for reproductive survival, the excess is available for art, sport and joy.
ChrisPer has come up (unconsiusly?) with a very interesting pair of paradigms, because:
All the real religious nutteres deny Plate TEctonics as much as they do Evolution(ary biology) …..
Mind you, I can think of two somethings that would easily knock the special-interest religious loons off their perch even more …
[1] Life elsehwere – Titan on Methane-ice bases, or remnant life on Mars would be good.
[2] SETI comes up with a positive result – the background computations are running on my computer as I type this, along with thousands of others across the planet.
BTW: If you want a glimpse of arrogant, bullying, frightened believers, try looking at:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/
Seriously out of contact with the world, and scary.
Doesn’t Pinker say in The Blank Slate that it isn’t clear that music is an adaptation; or that if it is an adaptation, it isn’t yet possible to reverse engineer it?
Jerry Fodor is quite scathing about the idea that the mind/thinking is an adaptation. How can it be, he asks (as far as I understand) if the brain is massively modular as it seems to be? Particular modules might adapt (the bit that deals with interpreting visual sense impressions for example)
Personally I am not as complacent as all that at the idea that the universe is entirely meaningless, that Bach’s music is just a pattern as empty of value as ringworm scabs or any other natural phenomenon. I think the godless world is pretty frightening and hard to look at straight on.
John M,
Even if you introduce God as the source of all things, you’ve only deferred the absurdity. You’ll always be left wondering why God should bother.
Bach’s music isn’t without value. Regardless of the religious meaning, it still has the power to stir and delight. We, as humans, value music more than ringworm because we’d rather experience complex patterns of sound than the harmful symptoms of parasites. Isn’t that enough?
“Bach’s music isn’t without value. Regardless of the religious meaning, it still has the power to stir and delight. “
That’s true, but this power loses a lot of its piquancy (for me and some others) when it is thought of as just a meaningless physical repsonse to a stimulus, like taking heroine. To continue enjoying it I have to force myself to ignore what I know: that may be why humankind cannot bear very much reality. And why bother trying to learn to like Bach if meaning is simply conferred by the experiencer? This makes the universe seem pretty chilly to me. It is worse when considering the plight of people I love, especially when they are suffering.
Your consideration for the suffering of loved ones is just as much a “meaningless physical response” as your reaction would be to heroine. I’m sure you don’t view it as that and you don’t need the imprimatur of a God to justify your feelings. You are a human and humans value humans. That’s it. The universe is largely chilly, but our tender feelings for each other – where they exist – provide the small circle of warmth we need.
“You are a human and humans value humans. That’s it. The universe is largely chilly, but our tender feelings for each other – where they exist – provide the small circle of warmth we need.”
Yes, but that bit of warmth loses its capacity for comfort when you recognise it as an illusion, doesn’t it? I shrink from regarding love for friends and family as a meaningless accident of my evolutionary history, like the fact that my gall bladder excretes bile in certain conditions, but that’s what it is isn’t it?
The vast grandeur of the universe is only ‘chilly’ because we grow up being fed stories which are at a more ‘cosy’ level. We are all made of stars. We are, it’s a physical fact. Utterly mind-boggling, and utterly wonderful. And I love Bach too.
BTW, I’m never too sure with this ‘evolutionary psychology’ lark. Are some things meant to be ‘adaptations’ and others not? I was rather under the impression that every fibre of our being was the product of evolution by natural selection. Trying to single out which bits exist because they are adapted to do this or the other — apart from the obvious, like eyes for seeing with [grandma], sounds more like a parlour-game than a scientific endeavour.
“I was rather under the impression that every fibre of our being was the product of evolution by natural selection. “
Not necessarily. Some things are not selected for but come to be anyway.
“Doesn’t Pinker say in The Blank Slate that it isn’t clear that music is an adaptation”
I don’t think I said it’s an adaptation – if I did I didn’t mean to. I said it had been shaped by the same kind of natural forces as other animal abilities. Maybe that amounts to the same thing, and is also wrong – maybe I needed another intervening step – the brains that produce music are shaped by the same kind of natural forces; is that what I meant? Anyway you get the basic idea (I think)…
Same reply to Merlijn. Weinberg was careful, I meant to be equally careful, but Weinberg is Weinberg and I’m not.
G,
Wo, are you?! That sounds like one interesting pesky dissertation. One could indeed spend an entire career – that’s much what I was pondering on.
“To continue enjoying it I have to force myself to ignore what I know”
Exactly. That’s what I meant. I tend to oscillate between the two – between finding it fascinating and finding it very disconcerting. I think it’s inescapably both.
Then I would agree. The key here I guess that one can plausibly hold that cognitive capacities – the ability to use reason, recognize beauty, etc. – evolved by natural selection, but that this does not in and of itself explain truth, reason, beauty. I suppose that holding true beliefs is generally adaptive. But I can think of some adaptive false beliefs (according to some, religion is one), and of some morally reprehensible but very adaptive ideas (particularly those involving the slaughter of people not holding those ideas). So the normative aspects of aesthetics, reason, logic, and I guess also language remain outside the scope of any evolutionary theory. But this in itself is quite compatible with materialism (as with a bunch of other philosophies).
Merlijn: “I suppose that holding true beliefs is generally adaptive.”
Is that a tentative to re-introduce teleology in evolutionary theory? Richard Dawkins would probably not approve…
‘recognize beauty’ – that one’s very tricky. Do we recognize it? Or do we just ascribe it? That’s what I mean about wanting to think what we think is better really is better, what we think is special really is special – it’s the same with beauty. We want to think sunsets and stars and apple blossom really are beautiful, not just beautiful to us. But are they? It seems highly dubious to say so.
There’s no better or worse outside the purpose of a thing. A human brain is better for doing algebra than a slug’s. Sunsets and stars are beautiful because light is generally better for us than darkness. Why do you need the validation of the entire universe to be able to find something special?
I don’t need it, I didn’t say I needed it, but I think we want it. I’m suggesting and pondering a thought, not asking for an aspirin. Is that okay?
“Sunsets and stars are beautiful because light is generally better for us than darkness.”
Well there’s a ridiculous answer. It’s ridiculous for about fifty reasons. Just for a start, if light is better for us (as of course in utilitarian terms it is) then why would that mean sunsets are beautiful? It should mean they’re hideous and terrifying. Just to go on, at that rate a 150 watt bulb would be thousands of times more beautiful than a crystalline night in the desert. In fact that’s downright funny – ‘stars are beautiful because light is generally better for us than darkness’ – but we can see them only when it’s pitch dark! They don’t give us light, apart from the one nearby star.
“There’s no better or worse outside the purpose of a thing.”
Right, that’s why everyone finds a hammer more beautiful than a rose, a frying pan more beautiful than a meadow full of wildflowers, a barrel of oil more beautiful than a butterfly, a set of directions more beautiful than Keats’s Nightingale Ode.
Goodness, what a bizarre comment.
It was careless of me to imply that light was the only criterion for finding sunsets and stars beautiful. I’m often too keen to post before writing carefully.
My point with regard to better or worse wasn’t about beauty but about function. I was addressing that part of your original comment where you wrote “we want to know what that what we think is better really is better”. I interpreted this to mean that you wanted to point to something and say that X is better than Y because it has some quality of “betterness” that it has in and of itself. I was writing that better is relative and I’m OK with that. I was making the point that a hammer, for example, is better than a rose for the purpose of putting a nail in wall.
We want to think sunsets and stars and apple blossom really are beautiful, not just beautiful to us. But are they? It seems highly dubious to say so.
Well spotted – I was running a bit ahead of myself, this time, by stating we recognize beauty rather than construct it. Theistic me of course very much believes that it is. But careful reasoner me would state that we cannot know either way. I don’t think that in terms of conceptual structure, “beautiful vs. beautiful to us” differs essentially from “true vs. true to us”, “reasonable vs. reasonable to us”, “morally right vs. morally right to us”. By reducing the concepts to evolutionary adaptability, the latter eliminate the normative aspect of truth, beauty, ethics, etc. – but would not doing so commit us to a position neither wants us to end up in, one of relativism?
Of course, it is much less open to discussion on whether or not a sentence is grammatical, or an argument logically sound, than whether an contextually situated action is reasonable or moral, or whether a piece of music is truly beautiful. But I don’t think that means that the latter is just a matter of taste. I would suggest that it has a lot more to do with the abstract structure of logic and grammar vs. the concrete situatedness of actions and things we consider beautiful. In case of the latter, I do believe it’s possible to specify some abstract principles (“balanced contrast” etc.).
So epistemically, I think we cannot reduce any normative systems to the non-normative workings of nature. Metaphysically, it’s certainly possible to believe that they are based on them nonetheless (but I think I would see less reason to hold such a position than you would).
I’m a bit behind the comment curve, but…
ChrisPer’s reference to atheist academics objecting to evolutionary psychology seems to imply that the basis for those objections were illegitimate, that they were based on feelings rather than reason and evidence. But in my reading, the vast majority of evolutionary psychology is widely considered and has been repeatedly criticized for being poorly argued, presupposition-laden, evidence-lacking BAD SCIENCE. They had to rename their discipline because they got such a rap for doing bad science, but when they changed the name and formed their own journals (where they would be reviewed only by sympathetic peers rather than objective scientists), they didn’t improve their science. The only reason ev-psych doesn’t get even more of a drubbing than it already does is that the socio-cultural prejudices it tends to reify (especially sexism) are invisible to many scientists who would otherwise be critical. Everyone likes to have their prejudices borne out by “science” and “research” – so much so that they very rarely bring a critical eye to such research.
“I interpreted this to mean that you wanted to point to something and say that X is better than Y because it has some quality of “betterness” that it has in and of itself.”
Ah, I see. (Sorry about the slightly brusque reaction.) No, that’s not exactly what I meant. What I meant is a little more nebulous than that…also more elusive. Basically I meant the whole sweeping thought (which surely I can’t be the only one to have) that human history and culture and achievement seem – significant, meaningful, in a way that goes beyond brute fact. It’s like consciousness, I suppose. Both seem more significant than mere products of survival, so it’s disconcerting to contemplate the fact that that’s what they are. It’s not that I have the faintest idea what the source of such significance would be, I don’t, and I don’t think there is one.
G: ‘only reason ev-psych doesn’t get even more of a drubbing than it already does is that the socio-cultural prejudices it tends to reify (especially sexism) are invisible to many scientists who would otherwise be critical. Everyone likes to have their prejudices borne out by “science” and “research” – so much so that they very rarely bring a critical eye to such research.’
What can I say – if the logic is bad, by all means correct it. To invalidate a ‘speculative theory’ such as evolution on the grounds that it ‘reifies sexism’ strikes me as… reason to believe they are on the right track.
A few false starts and bad conclusions can be the beginning of getting to better conclusions. Thats how science works, apparently unlike the self-referential world of victimological cosmology.
I would like to see new ways of modelling subtle effects of genetic variation against survival probability. Eg we might create new universes on different relative timescales, like Terry Pratchett did in ‘The Science of Discworld’ (possibly taking six days!)
According to ‘Why Truth Matters’ it has been done already for feminism and ‘black’ history, so I wait with high hope.
So I was right, ev psych is just a parlour-game?
OB wrote:”Both(human history and consciousness) seem more significant than mere products of survival, so it’s disconcerting to contemplate the fact that that’s what they are. It’s not that I have the faintest idea what the source of such significance would be, I don’t, and I don’t think there is one).”
I wonder if that’s because we have a dualist bias, even those of us who are materialists, when it comes to things connected with the mind. If the ultimate source of such things were something pure, rarified and intangible like the holy spirit or some set of Platonic forms then it would satisfy that bias, even as a brute fact. Explanations from evolution, however, are all about yukky meat, so we baulk at those sort of accounts . There’s also materialism’s assault on our autonomy: we want to believe that our abstract thoughts control our gooey bodies, not the other way round as seems to be the case.
Yeah. That’s basically what I mean, I suppose. I’m some kind of intuitive dualist even if I’m intellectually a monist. Something like that. I assume that’s true of a lot of people.
“Jerry Fodor is quite scathing about the idea that the mind/thinking is an adaptation. How can it be, he asks (as far as I understand) if the brain is massively modular as it seems to be?”
But you’d have to buy his modularity thesis first, which, for more cognitive (rather than sensory) domains is far from established.
But you’d have to buy his modularity thesis first, which, for more cognitive (rather than sensory) domains is far from established.
I think Fodors position is that the brain is not entirely modular (althougn it is largely modular), that consciousness works differently and beacause of that it cannot be an adaptation.
That is a bit circular.