Dawkins' Fair Share
07/06/11 19:55 Filed in: Human Nature
"But, as we have already seen, some individuals are better life insurance risks than others. An under-sized runt bears just as many of his mother's genes as his more thriving litter mates. But his life expectation is less. Another way to put this point is that he needs more than his fair share."
-- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 125
Dawkins claims in his book that he is not setting out to make moral or political claims. He is simply trying to explain the biology of selfishness and altruism. He claims that his argument shows that seemingly altruistic behavior arises as a way for selfish genes to propogate themselves, insuring the survival of the genes.
In reading his book, however, we comes across passages like the above. Note the last sentence: the individual runt needs more than his fair share. In the context of biology, what counts as a fair share here? Why even use the term "fair" which is laden with various moral and political meanings? Would it not be better to write something like, "He needs more than what would be evenly proportioned between him and his siblings"? By using the term "fair share" here, Dawkins has, intentionally or not, introduced moral claims into the science he is presenting.
This example does not stand alone in the book. The very use of the term "selfish" has a lot of moral and political meaning behind it, despite Dawkins' claims to the contrary.
The more general point, however, is that science cannot be separated from morality (nor vice versa), and that science occurs within a system of shared understandings that include moral choices. This point is exactly the one Thomas Kuhn made with his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The point does not mean that science is not an attempt to find the truth. Rather, it shows that our attempts to get at the truth may always be limited and will always have presumptions that we need to examine carefully so we know exactly what truth we are believing in. That is both a scientific and a moral point.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 125
Dawkins claims in his book that he is not setting out to make moral or political claims. He is simply trying to explain the biology of selfishness and altruism. He claims that his argument shows that seemingly altruistic behavior arises as a way for selfish genes to propogate themselves, insuring the survival of the genes.
In reading his book, however, we comes across passages like the above. Note the last sentence: the individual runt needs more than his fair share. In the context of biology, what counts as a fair share here? Why even use the term "fair" which is laden with various moral and political meanings? Would it not be better to write something like, "He needs more than what would be evenly proportioned between him and his siblings"? By using the term "fair share" here, Dawkins has, intentionally or not, introduced moral claims into the science he is presenting.
This example does not stand alone in the book. The very use of the term "selfish" has a lot of moral and political meaning behind it, despite Dawkins' claims to the contrary.
The more general point, however, is that science cannot be separated from morality (nor vice versa), and that science occurs within a system of shared understandings that include moral choices. This point is exactly the one Thomas Kuhn made with his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The point does not mean that science is not an attempt to find the truth. Rather, it shows that our attempts to get at the truth may always be limited and will always have presumptions that we need to examine carefully so we know exactly what truth we are believing in. That is both a scientific and a moral point.
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Selfish Gene Mythology
06/06/11 17:46 Filed in: Human Nature
Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene back in 1976, and since then, over a million copies have been sold. Dawkins defends the idea that the unit of evolution, of natural selection, is, not the the group or the individual life-form, but the gene. Genes perpetuate themselves and do everything they can to secure their survival, and he calls such behavior selfish. The idea here is that genes compete against rivals and do what they can to make sure that they survive which often means that their rivals do not survive.
What I want to point out in this post is that Dawkins made a particular choice. He chose to use the word selfish to describe the activities of his genes, and that choice tells us two things. First, he tell us that Dawkins prioritized some types of behaviors over others in picking out his unit of natural selection and, second, that Dawkins thought it was "selfishness" is important for Dawkins.
We can easily question the first issue. For Dawkins, what is important is that some entities survive and some do not, that those two types of entities are rivals, or in competition, and that the ones who survive act to preserve themselves at all costs. This account presents what Mary Midgley rightly calls a mythology. The mythology of selfishness of genes, that nature is "red in tooth and claw" and that all of life is about "survival of the fittest" has proven very influential in the modern world, as evidenced both by the number of sales that Dawkins' book generated and also by the spin-off of Dawkins' work in the form of evolutionary psychology. What myths do is take facts and try to present an over-arching story about those facts.
Dawkins has done this for facts about evolution and about survival.
The thing about myths is that they often ignore experience that does not agree with the over-arching mythology and rests on points that it tries to sweep under the carpet. To wit, Dawkins divides the world into selfish entities and altruistic entities. Yet, he completely ignores cooperation. In fact, Dawkins' genes are able to create "survival machines" only because they cooperate with each other to produce such an entity. To explain this in terms of selfish acts/behaviors/choices masks something because cooperation need not be, and often is not, selfish in origin.
This point should give us a pause in how we understand, not only Dawkins' work and popularity, but how we understand evolution and science. We often think of science as "just the facts, ma'am." In fact, however, science, just like every other aspect of life, comes with a slant, which does not mean it isn't true. Just the opposite. But we need to be aware both of that slant and how the slant of science can skew our vision of the world and what we expect from it.
What I want to point out in this post is that Dawkins made a particular choice. He chose to use the word selfish to describe the activities of his genes, and that choice tells us two things. First, he tell us that Dawkins prioritized some types of behaviors over others in picking out his unit of natural selection and, second, that Dawkins thought it was "selfishness" is important for Dawkins.
We can easily question the first issue. For Dawkins, what is important is that some entities survive and some do not, that those two types of entities are rivals, or in competition, and that the ones who survive act to preserve themselves at all costs. This account presents what Mary Midgley rightly calls a mythology. The mythology of selfishness of genes, that nature is "red in tooth and claw" and that all of life is about "survival of the fittest" has proven very influential in the modern world, as evidenced both by the number of sales that Dawkins' book generated and also by the spin-off of Dawkins' work in the form of evolutionary psychology. What myths do is take facts and try to present an over-arching story about those facts.
Dawkins has done this for facts about evolution and about survival.
The thing about myths is that they often ignore experience that does not agree with the over-arching mythology and rests on points that it tries to sweep under the carpet. To wit, Dawkins divides the world into selfish entities and altruistic entities. Yet, he completely ignores cooperation. In fact, Dawkins' genes are able to create "survival machines" only because they cooperate with each other to produce such an entity. To explain this in terms of selfish acts/behaviors/choices masks something because cooperation need not be, and often is not, selfish in origin.
This point should give us a pause in how we understand, not only Dawkins' work and popularity, but how we understand evolution and science. We often think of science as "just the facts, ma'am." In fact, however, science, just like every other aspect of life, comes with a slant, which does not mean it isn't true. Just the opposite. But we need to be aware both of that slant and how the slant of science can skew our vision of the world and what we expect from it.
Anti-Dawkins by Dover
17/12/10 22:18 Filed in: Human Nature
I just read an article by Gabrielle Dover called “Anti-Dawkins” which both points out the fallacies of Dawkins’ selfish-gene theory and proposes an alternative to the selfish-gene theory. The argument and the new proposal rest on something biologists have known for some time: genes interact with each other. The fact that they interact with each other tells against the idea that a gene acts selfishly only to reproduce itself. It cannot do this when interacting with other genes, and genes never act in isolation. Second, we can see, so Dover argues, that through modularity, the ways genes interact gene within individual genotypes -- within individual organisms. These changes can be neutral with respect to reproductivity. Yet, if passed on through a population they might later on become important in responding to new environmental stimuli. So a once-neutral trait might be become an exaptation in a new environment. Ian Tattersall suggests that language is such an exaptation.
Part of our problem as a culture, as Dover nicely points out, and as has been pointed out before by the likes of Mary Midgley and Stephen Jay Gould, among others, is that we believe that each gene selects for one particular trait. We would do well to rid ourselves of this false belief which acts, in the case of Dawkins’ selfish gene, on which evolutionary psychology rests, as an ideology.
Part of our problem as a culture, as Dover nicely points out, and as has been pointed out before by the likes of Mary Midgley and Stephen Jay Gould, among others, is that we believe that each gene selects for one particular trait. We would do well to rid ourselves of this false belief which acts, in the case of Dawkins’ selfish gene, on which evolutionary psychology rests, as an ideology.