Phil Roberts, Jr.  wrote:

> John Wilkins wrote:
> > Phil Roberts, Jr.  wrote:
> > 
> >>
> >>I agree with you about logic.  One of the brightest among us (Aristotle
> >>for instance) managed to cognize the order in the manner in which we
> >>cognize order.  But unlike my read of you so far, I believe who ever
> >>this individual was, he had intellectual acuities that went far beyond
> >>rote learning and trial and error, the so-called
"darwinian" approach
> >>as you have deemed it, I believe.
> >
> > 
> > Well, all I can say is that there is no way I can conceive of for this
> > to occur, apart from noetic rays or clairvoyance or divine revelation.
> > 
> 
> Nah!  It just presupposes that there's a little more to reasoning
> than rote learning, that perceptiveness, intuitiveness, brilliant
> insights that just pop up with Aha! experiences are central
> to scientific progress, and that most of this occurres at subconscious
> levels and about which little is currently understood.  But I think
> Hume at least gave us a nudge forward in his recognition of the
> centrality of the role of comparing.  We'll just have to agree to
> disagree on this.  But your contention that my claim that a central
> feature of reaoning is 'the capacity to cognize abstruse similarity
> and difference' requires invoking divine creation to explain its
> presence is one hell of a stretch, if you don't mind my saying
> so.

Then how do you account for that ability? In other words, where does the
cognitive power come from? Why do brains work when they model their
environment? I can't think of any other ways to ask that critical
question...
> 
> > 
> > I am not in this sense a Kantian (which is whence we get the pure and
> > practical reason distinction, and the means and end contrast).
> > 
> 
> Actually, the paradigm for the rationalty of ends is not the
> categorical imperative but rather 'the equal weight' criterion:

I wasn't referring to the categorical imperative.
....
> 
> Notice that this criterion entails two assumptions:
> 
>     1. That rationality entails self-interest.
>     2. That within the perimeter of self-interest, rationality
>        entails VALUATIVE OBJECTIVITY.
> 
> I believe 1 is highly suspect, as exemplified in the Parfit quote
> on self-interest I posted last time.

You read widely, but I'd appreciate page numbers, so I can check the
context of the discussions.

Might I note that "self-interest" in our context merely requires the
maximisation of the fitness of a particular allele? The interests of the
constituted person are different. Genetic self-interest is not, so to
speak, transitive all the way to social behavior, in large part because
genes are not rigid determinants of behavior.


> > 
> > The rationality here is one of a course of action to be taken in a
> > situation of agreed value and conflict of interest. But this is a very
> > limited form of rationality. 
> 
> Its also a "theory" of rationality that is self-defeating (e.g., see
> p. 12 of Parfit's 'Reasons and Persons' and sanctions rational
> irrationalty.  So, although of practical value, from an epistemic
> perspective such theories of rationality are non-starters.  There
> also lots of other limitations,
> as Coleman points out, in addition to the long standing acknowledged
> ones (Newcomb's problem, prisoner's dillema, etc.).  BTW, all these
> paradoxes and contradictions can be circumvented if you simply assume
> that 'being rational' is a matter of 'being objective', not only
> cognitively, but valuatively as well.  You also arrive at the conslusion
> that the increased valuative objectivity observable in man (increased
> intrinsic valuing of non-related other juxtaposed with an incrased
> volatility in self-value) constitutes evidence that our species has
> become TOO RATIONAL (too valuative objective) relative to the
> "ruthless selfishness" predicted by our formal models.  It doesn't
> explain the anomality in our valuative profile, but it at least
> offers us a new way of looking at the problem.

I'm a bit lost here. How is one to be objective in valuation? Is there a
gold standard? In biology, valuative assessments (by biologists about
the organisms, not by the organisms themselves) are always relative to
alternatives - strategies, genes, forms, traits, whatever - in the
competitive population. There is nothing to be objective about a priori,
only ever post hoc, although there are clearly objective physical facts;
how they play out is generally unknown ahead of time.
> 
> > This is why game theory is applicable to
> > evolution - the "rational egoism" is specified in a
very specific sense
> > - of maximising the number of copies of a gene. But this does not
> > transfer to social behaviors directly. Social action is not selfish
> > because we can model genes as if they were selfish (something Dawkins
> > notes quite explicitly in the Afterword to the 1989 edition of The
> > Selfish Gene).
> 
> But this gene selfishness should almost always translate to plain
> old selfishness.  The exceptions are "limited" and
"special".
> IOW, far from resolving the enigma of human morality, as Wilson
> seemed to be implying in the last chapter of Sociobiology, our
> fomral models have ONLY SERVED TO DEEPEN THE MYSTERY.
> 
> Your confusing co-operation with true concern for others.  The
> first can be explained, the second isn't so simple.

The second is not entirely proven to exist :-) I believe it is an
illusion, myself. We have mechanisms (I hesitate to use the evpsych term
"module") that enable us to imagine ourselves into the subjective states
of others with some reliability; call it empathy. The reason we have
this is not so that we can be saintly and care for all God's chillun,
but because in having that we manage to maximise our fitness in our
social environment.
> 
> This is tricky stuff, but in general you should be able to get lots
> of instrumental valueing of others out of intellignece, but
> extremely limited intrinsic valuing of others (immediate kin) out
> of natural selection, at least to the extent that
> natural selection operates in the manner in which it has been
> mathematically modeled.  Humans are wildly outside the parameters
> predicted by these models by the way, which is precisely why Dawkins
> has thrown up his hands and declared the need for a full fledged
> addendum to the theory in order to accomodate the benevolent
> selfishness found in man (e.g., concern for a bird with a broken
> wing) and to a lesser extent, in species phylogenetically proximal
> to man.

I agree that the current models don't go all the way, but I think that
has more to do with the problems of conceptualisation of what and how,
than of the underlying logic. I think that we have genetic strategies in
place for maximisation, not merely of parental investment, but of social
investment. In short, we evolved a reciprocal altruistic strategy in
order to ensure that we assist each other's progeny, so long as they are
suitably related. The problem comes in when we try to apply that stratgy
outside the EEA.
> 
> > 
> > Genes can be considered *as if* they were selfish players in a game, and
> > the end result of this selection can be apparently altruistic behavior
> > on the part of the organisms, due to kin selection, and the fact that
> > iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas (uncommunicative dilemmas where either one
> > player loses out or both do less well than the optimum) will, if the
> > initial population is suitably composed, evolve into equilibrium
of "tit
> > for tat" strategies. 
> > 
> 
> This is all pretty old stuff.  Axelrod is the authority most often
> cited that I'm aware of.

Yep. Sorry for patronising you, but it's hard to know what people know
over the internet.
> 
> I agree with you that you can get lots of co-operation and social
> contracts out of intelligence.  And I agree that most of this
> will be adaptive.  But I disagree that that automatically
> constitutes an explanation of the VALUATIVE ANOMALIES in our
> species valuative profile (an inceased intrinsic valuing of
> non-related others juxtaposed with an increased volatility in
> self-value).  That's an entirely different subject
> altogether.  And so far nothin you have brought up even scratches
> the surface on the topic I assumed we were discussing (valuative
> anomalies).

OK. What anomalies, in detail? Are they anomalies from the environment
of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) or are they anomalies in modern
society (agrarian and later), which is not at all what we adapted to
when our strategies went to fixation for whatever reason?
> 
> > In short, cooperation can evolve through the maximisation of genetic
> > fitness. It won't always, but there is absolutely no justification for
> > the direct transference of selfishness from the level of the gene to
> > that of the individual or social group, contrary to Ghiselin's sarcastic
> > and cynical comment, "scratch an altruist and watch a
hypocrite bleed).
> > It's all about keeping your levels straight when determining the
> > interest bearers.
> > 
> 
> Agreed.  But when do we get to start talking about the subject I
> am interested in, anomalies in our species valuative profile.
> 
> >> 
> > 9/11 poses nothing we didn't already know from a couple of millenia of
> > documented fanaticism. It just hit America hard, that's all (from a
> > theoretical perspective; it hit me hard as I had friends near there, and
> > I had just been there a couple of months prior). There is no anomaly to
> > deal with, but a well-known fact of cultural dynamics.
> > 
> 
> True.  But I'm not looking at 9/11 though my fellow human being
> glasses, but rather through my natural scientist glasses.  There's
> one hell of a difference between what I have come to expect from
> my fellow man and what I have a right to expect from an organism
> designed by natural selection.  The latter is not a free ride, but
> comes equipped with some fairly SEVERE CONSTRAINTS on what we have
> a right to expect.  If flying planes into buildings is evidence
> to you of genes that have been endlessly honed to maximnize
> reproductive success, maybe you ought to think about going into
> a different occupation, John.   :)

Certainly I won't try to maximise *my* genes that way. But we want an
explanation of the modules (damn! I used that term!) that, when placed
into the modern situation, generate that behavior. I believe that what
is adaptive is not the behavior, but the strategy that makes cultural
"kin" take the place of genetic kin. Once upon a time (i.e., in the EEA)
there would be no distinction between genetic relationship and cultural
identity. It follows that if we evolved our defence of culture as a way
of defending our genetic relatives, when the two were coterminous, the
mere fact that modern social evolution has prised the two apart is
irrelevant.
> 
> What would an organism have to do before you finally got around
> to considering its behavior anomalous?  Or are you suggesting we
> simply adopt nat selection as an unfalisifiable dogma.  Hey.
> If we're going to start a religion here, I got dibs on being
> the Pope.    :)

Well, it is a truth by definition that what we see around must be able
to remain around. But this is a slightly less truistic approach. I am
making a claim that social structures are the result of particular
strategies that once enabled us to maximise our genetic fitness, and
which are still not so deleterious as to be the subject of massive
selection against them. Few Muslims, for example, have blown themselves
up in the Jihad, and their immediate kin are treated with respect. I
think that this is a pretty nonanomalous case.
-- 
John S Wilkins PhD - www.wilkins.id.au
  a little emptier, a little spent
  as always by that quiver in the self,
  subjugated, yes, and obedient.  -- Seamus Heaney
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