The Lamarckian Buddy System

(Previously posted on MySpace May 13 2010)

As a preface to this essay, I'd like to clarify something I wrote in a previous one. I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that E.O. Wilson thinks that evolution and genetics affected behavior. What he wrote was that how easily one learn certain behaviors as opposed to other seemed to have a lot to do with the epigenetics behind one's nervous system.

Epigenetics is concerned with how genes express themselves beyond what's written in the DNA. It goes into why although the DNA in every one of your cell has the entire "blueprint" for your entire body, you don't have eyeballs growing on your fingertips no matter how cool that would look. Or why you don't have a foot growing out of your mouth unless you're Joe Biden or Pat Robertson.

Anyway, what Wilson seemed to have been saying was that evolution might have had a hand in determine what behaviors one's brain would have an easier time learning, impulsiveness vs careful reflection for example. But he was very clear in "Consilience" that he was not advocating any kind of one-to-one deterministic relationship between neurons and behavior. Environment could still play a role in what behavior that particular person actually does choose to learn, although some behavioral choice may come more easily than others. Science doesn't seem to let us escape free will just yet.

So now on to the essay itself. Whereas the ideas of the "selfish gene" and the game theory work of von Neumann, Morgenstern, and Nash suggest a model of the world in which people act mostly in their own self-interest; there's a body of research that suggest that there may also be evolutionary benefits to altruism.
Here's an article about it. Google "altruism in animals" and you should find others.

Now this may conflict the libertarian spirit of some of my other writings, but as I've explained elsewhere, I adhere to Thomas Jefferson's idea of reason in service to the truth. I'm not about to ignore a possible truth just because it conflicts with my notion of reality. I've seen too many other people do that and I don't want to go down that road.

Moreover, there still plenty of debate about this idea among scientists, so everyone can just relax or not.

Anyway, what piqued my interest in this study was how some philosophers and theologians reacted to the study. Initially, I thought altruists would have been tickled pink to have science give their ideas some back up with this to poke to the eye of Ayn Rand enthusiasts. Instead, some of them seem to me to be WHINING.

What? They're whining because morality might get reduced to just another evolutionary tool and lose all its transcendental "specialness". Hell, if I were one of them, I'd be happy that the conscientious and logical search for truth gave at least a partial confirmation of my worldview rather than ultimately reduce my belief system to nonexistence. Me, I LIKE the idea of everything being eventually understood with enough study.

Guess there's just no pleasing some people.

© Copyright 2006-2010 Anthony Anderson