Selfishness and survival.
A number of coinciding influences are bumping around today. I have been wrestling with a number of personal things, which I may try to get out in writing later, but I have also been distracting myself with related abstract issues. The question of 'good' has come up in others' journals, and in one instance, literary examples of 'good'.
It got me thinking about one of my favorite junk-food authors, Terry Pratchett. For those unfamiliar, he writes social satire in the form of comedic fantasy - Tolkien meets Monty Python. In one of his novels, one of the main characters finds himself cornered and helpless to the villain of the tale. And the character hopes that the person pointing the crossbow at him is an evil man. His rationale, is that the evil person will take time to gloat, to savor the power he has over his victim a little, possibly buying a few moments of time to create a plan. It's a fairly standard trope in fiction. Later, one of the other main characters who is well and truly good, after exhausting all non-violent methods and trying to negotiate, simply shoots the villain who is threatening the life of an innocent. This shocks the other character who reflects that when roused, good is far more terrible to witness than evil. It does what needs doing without the egotism that evil seems to suffer from.
The second related thought comes from what news I've been hearing on the American political front, with many prominent neo-cons now turning on Bush, some quite savagely. Separate from regular old conservatism, neoconservatism has as a typical trait, the belief in raw power, the belief that only they are strong enough to wield it, and a belief that their goals must be cloaked in comfortable lies of religion, international aid, ethics or morality to soothe the rest of us who are too weak to see things as they really are (taken straight from the writings of Strauss). A strange sort of self-conscious Machiavellianism, they really believe, by and large, in a sort of 'survival of the fittest' along with a need to soothe or lull the followers of the 'Outer Party' as an act of protection. Like many that espouse Neo-Darwinism (as an ideology, not the scientific theory) they believe that strength, selfishness, and the 'starkness' of life is more 'real' than beauty, kindness etc.
This is a common view, much of which comes from late twentieth century biology-as-ideology that also seemed to view 'evil' as more 'real' than good. Selfishness is 'real' - 'love' is an illusion that masks biological needs that are inherently self-orientated in nature. The proper response was thus self-centeredness, greed, power because these were more 'natural'.
It reaches a certain level of ridiculousness as C.S. Lewis pointed out in an example comparing a man who sees a work of art and declares its transformitive beauty. His critic friend says that it is 'only' a combination of light, perhaps diet or brain chemistry, and the transcendental sensation felt is false. He then goes on to talk about high diving, and he imagines how terrifying it must be. Here a totally imagined response (terror) is more 'real' than his friends actual experience (beauty) by virtue of the fact that we seem convinced that the negative emotions are the most real, and any positive ones can be reduced to shells covering ulterior motives.
When discussing this issue with a biochemist friend of mine, I refered to it as the 'only biological' fallacy of ideological-biology. Often a statement is made concerning compassion, kindness, civility or love that results in the critique that it is 'only or merely biological' in nature. As if it could be anything else! We see in the structure of the claim a hanging assumption. It implies the existance of something greater than 'mere biology' by the fact that it denigrates. However ideological-biology denies the possibilty of the very 'higher' notion that it indirectly compares to. Therefore it becomes a mechanism of lessening without any hope of appeal, maintaining a comparison that has been rendered impossible.
Outside of biology, and getting back to the current neo-con wrestling match that is occurring, what is most commonly referred to is the game known as The Prisoner's Dilemma. In it's simplest form, it seems to indicate that it is most advantageous to betray your friends. It is set up so that if one betrays the other, he gains greatly. If both co-operate, both gain a little. If both betray, neither wins, but they lose less than the betrayed individual. Once again, this was commonly used to show how, in natural settings, competition was smart, altruism was dumb. And it greatly informed the general consensus of 'intelligent' behaviour for quite some time, including (I would wager) those currently struggling to see who can turn on the President quickest to save their reputation.
While many have heard of the Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory and act accordingly, I am surprised at how few are familiar with the scenario called the 'Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma'. The set up is the same, however the game is played over a longer period of time so that other players have a chance to observe the strategy of the others (as would exist in any learning setting).
Surprise - in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, the selfish players are very quickly weeded out and greatest success goes to the altruistic team players.
The problem with the prisoner's dilemma is that if both decision-makers were purely rational, they would never cooperate. Indeed, rational decision-making means that you make the decision which is best for you whatever the other actor chooses.
-From 'Prisoner's Dilemma' article on Principia Cybernetica.
In other game modeled environments and those involving artificial life modeling, there is a very successful 'type' of program or strategy that emerges when various a-life models are placed into competition. The 'Tit-for-tat' model will duplicate the behaviour it receives. If treated 'nicely', it responds nicely. If treated harshly, it retaliates. However, what makes it really work is that it is programmed to default to a trusting, 'nice' initial behaviour when first interacting. Meaning 'Tit-for-tat' creatures often form huge mutualy co-operative 'cultures' in their simulated environment very quickly out competing rapacious or 'mean' programmed behaviour even though early on, individual 'Tit-for-tats' may suffer at the hands of harsher computer organisms.
So it is becoming increasingly difficult, as the sciences advance, to view altruism as 'unnatural'. Certainly, there are those that will argue that this can still be reduced to selfishness - these organisms solely do it to survive. To this I would respond that a very tenuous definition of 'selfish' is being relied on. One that closely coincides with my 'only biological' fallacy of reduction. Arguing that a creature 'only' does something to survive (even if many who hold this argument on Neo-Darwinistic grounds must change it so that the individual 'only' does it to help the greater species - an even stranger form of 'selfishness') is to forget something very fundamental about creatures - that they by definition struggle to thrive. To call this selfishness is to create a definition that is little more than a tautology flavoured in a way that is ideologically appealing. It's not a wrong argument, only a very, very weak one that is sustained by what can increasingly only be called a faith in the power of selfishness.
Meanwhile, life moves on.
It got me thinking about one of my favorite junk-food authors, Terry Pratchett. For those unfamiliar, he writes social satire in the form of comedic fantasy - Tolkien meets Monty Python. In one of his novels, one of the main characters finds himself cornered and helpless to the villain of the tale. And the character hopes that the person pointing the crossbow at him is an evil man. His rationale, is that the evil person will take time to gloat, to savor the power he has over his victim a little, possibly buying a few moments of time to create a plan. It's a fairly standard trope in fiction. Later, one of the other main characters who is well and truly good, after exhausting all non-violent methods and trying to negotiate, simply shoots the villain who is threatening the life of an innocent. This shocks the other character who reflects that when roused, good is far more terrible to witness than evil. It does what needs doing without the egotism that evil seems to suffer from.
The second related thought comes from what news I've been hearing on the American political front, with many prominent neo-cons now turning on Bush, some quite savagely. Separate from regular old conservatism, neoconservatism has as a typical trait, the belief in raw power, the belief that only they are strong enough to wield it, and a belief that their goals must be cloaked in comfortable lies of religion, international aid, ethics or morality to soothe the rest of us who are too weak to see things as they really are (taken straight from the writings of Strauss). A strange sort of self-conscious Machiavellianism, they really believe, by and large, in a sort of 'survival of the fittest' along with a need to soothe or lull the followers of the 'Outer Party' as an act of protection. Like many that espouse Neo-Darwinism (as an ideology, not the scientific theory) they believe that strength, selfishness, and the 'starkness' of life is more 'real' than beauty, kindness etc.
This is a common view, much of which comes from late twentieth century biology-as-ideology that also seemed to view 'evil' as more 'real' than good. Selfishness is 'real' - 'love' is an illusion that masks biological needs that are inherently self-orientated in nature. The proper response was thus self-centeredness, greed, power because these were more 'natural'.
It reaches a certain level of ridiculousness as C.S. Lewis pointed out in an example comparing a man who sees a work of art and declares its transformitive beauty. His critic friend says that it is 'only' a combination of light, perhaps diet or brain chemistry, and the transcendental sensation felt is false. He then goes on to talk about high diving, and he imagines how terrifying it must be. Here a totally imagined response (terror) is more 'real' than his friends actual experience (beauty) by virtue of the fact that we seem convinced that the negative emotions are the most real, and any positive ones can be reduced to shells covering ulterior motives.
When discussing this issue with a biochemist friend of mine, I refered to it as the 'only biological' fallacy of ideological-biology. Often a statement is made concerning compassion, kindness, civility or love that results in the critique that it is 'only or merely biological' in nature. As if it could be anything else! We see in the structure of the claim a hanging assumption. It implies the existance of something greater than 'mere biology' by the fact that it denigrates. However ideological-biology denies the possibilty of the very 'higher' notion that it indirectly compares to. Therefore it becomes a mechanism of lessening without any hope of appeal, maintaining a comparison that has been rendered impossible.
Outside of biology, and getting back to the current neo-con wrestling match that is occurring, what is most commonly referred to is the game known as The Prisoner's Dilemma. In it's simplest form, it seems to indicate that it is most advantageous to betray your friends. It is set up so that if one betrays the other, he gains greatly. If both co-operate, both gain a little. If both betray, neither wins, but they lose less than the betrayed individual. Once again, this was commonly used to show how, in natural settings, competition was smart, altruism was dumb. And it greatly informed the general consensus of 'intelligent' behaviour for quite some time, including (I would wager) those currently struggling to see who can turn on the President quickest to save their reputation.
While many have heard of the Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory and act accordingly, I am surprised at how few are familiar with the scenario called the 'Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma'. The set up is the same, however the game is played over a longer period of time so that other players have a chance to observe the strategy of the others (as would exist in any learning setting).
Surprise - in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, the selfish players are very quickly weeded out and greatest success goes to the altruistic team players.
The problem with the prisoner's dilemma is that if both decision-makers were purely rational, they would never cooperate. Indeed, rational decision-making means that you make the decision which is best for you whatever the other actor chooses.
-From 'Prisoner's Dilemma' article on Principia Cybernetica.
In other game modeled environments and those involving artificial life modeling, there is a very successful 'type' of program or strategy that emerges when various a-life models are placed into competition. The 'Tit-for-tat' model will duplicate the behaviour it receives. If treated 'nicely', it responds nicely. If treated harshly, it retaliates. However, what makes it really work is that it is programmed to default to a trusting, 'nice' initial behaviour when first interacting. Meaning 'Tit-for-tat' creatures often form huge mutualy co-operative 'cultures' in their simulated environment very quickly out competing rapacious or 'mean' programmed behaviour even though early on, individual 'Tit-for-tats' may suffer at the hands of harsher computer organisms.
So it is becoming increasingly difficult, as the sciences advance, to view altruism as 'unnatural'. Certainly, there are those that will argue that this can still be reduced to selfishness - these organisms solely do it to survive. To this I would respond that a very tenuous definition of 'selfish' is being relied on. One that closely coincides with my 'only biological' fallacy of reduction. Arguing that a creature 'only' does something to survive (even if many who hold this argument on Neo-Darwinistic grounds must change it so that the individual 'only' does it to help the greater species - an even stranger form of 'selfishness') is to forget something very fundamental about creatures - that they by definition struggle to thrive. To call this selfishness is to create a definition that is little more than a tautology flavoured in a way that is ideologically appealing. It's not a wrong argument, only a very, very weak one that is sustained by what can increasingly only be called a faith in the power of selfishness.
Meanwhile, life moves on.