What hope is there for humanity if we are products of natural selection

Great Debates
1

I’ve been reading evolutionary biology (hi EvenSven) and it is pretty depressing. I already knew most of the info but E. B. has really put it into my face to the point where I can’t ignore it.

Good emotions like empathy, sympathy, justice and compassion are just tools to support our survival, or the survival of our group. Organisms that are not a part of the group or that are a threat to the group generally do not elect sympathy (notice how little we americans give to 3rd world charities compared to our own american charities, or how easy it is a crush a bug). Even if you look at charity, what charities accomplish is what supports the survival of our group. If I give $500 to the Ronald McDonald house, I am giving $500 to help someone who is part of my group (in this case americans) avoid medical problems which would lead to physical disability, death or abnormality (being a cripple, etc). When I give money to 3rd world charities to lower death rates, I’m promoting the survival of people who are part of the group I identify with.

Anyway, when you really realize what bullshit it is it becomes sad. What hope is there for us if everything we have (good and bad) is just a tool to propagate our species as individuals and as small groups? There is no objective definition of good. What is good is just what promotes survival of individuals and of groups. What is bad is just what threatens it. Think about it for a minute. Where can we get meaningful morality from?

Even look at our technology. Technology is creating a much better world, but you have to admit that by and large it is used to promote genetic survival. Childhood mortality ratings have gone down dramatically in the last 200 years. We did it out of pain, fear of pain and empathy. However isn’t that exactly what we are designed to do, to crave to end the pain of people we relate to? People’s whose pain is only there to torment them into doing anything to find a way to keep their kids alive? It reminds me of an old twilight zone episode where aliens were offering to fix all the world’s problems and they were percieved as saviors. Nobody believed they could do it and a little girl says ‘yes, they can fix all these problems, they are the ones who created them’. Natural selection creates the horror and pain that comes with things like disease, or mental illness or shame or loss or whatever, then it creates the empathy and drive to improve the situation through technology that comes with trying to fix them. Look at human utopia, isn’t it just a world of perfect genetic survival? No child would die, nobody would get sick, nobody would have their home destroyed in a fire (ie, nobody would lose prescious resources), nobody would suffer from shame (ie, being divergent from the social group where conformity is a necessary glue). So where do we get meaningful morality if all we have to moralize on is based on amoral genetic self interest?

2

Just because we got dealed some crappy cards, that doesn’t mean we can’t play our hand any damn way we want.

Nature doesn’t use tools; it doesn’t design, or make plans, or have any purpose. Nature is stupid. We’re much smarter, and if we want to invent morality out of whole cloth, who’s to stop us?

The reason something came to exist and the use we choose to make of it, need not be connected.

3

Granted. My problem is that even concepts like good & evil are rooted in evolutionary psychology. We’d have to invent something totally foreign, probably something along the lines of ‘you must not take away the liberty of other conscious beings and if another conscious being is having any discomfort in any form you must do whatever is reasonable to help them recover’.

That is actaully my view. But as technological progress increases (Ray Kurzweil feels technological progress doubles every 10 years and by the mid 21st century will become basically too fast for human comprehension) we’re going to have to face this issue. A ‘utopia’ of a world free of disease, illness, pain and misery that at the core of it is nothing more than a world of unconditional obedience to amoral genetic code is nothing more than living in hell with an air conditioner.

4

Well, it’s better than the alternatives. If we were the creation of a god, then our flaws and suffering would be his will, and there would be no hope at all for any of us.

If the nurture-over-nature people were right, we’d be the puppets of whomever had the best propaganda machine. The Soviet Union explicitly tried to remold it’s people into a “new Soviet man”. They failed because our genes grant us an innate, largely selfish nature that renders us at least somewhat resistant to the control of others.

As far as your complaint that genetically based good behavior is based on “amoral genetic self interest”, it’s only amoral if you let it be. There are many ways my and/or my genes self interest can be served, after all; some are far more moral than others.

5

I don’t understand this at all.

6

Alright. A utopia would be a world where there was no pain, and there’d be no pain because nobody did anything that would cause pain, or because the social organism was vast enough to tolerate a wide range of behaviors (ie, homosexuals wouldn’t have suicide rates far higher than heterosexuals in this society due to massive tolerance for diversity, for example).

If you look at all we’ve accomplised medically (at least physically) I would say it is safe to say we are 80% to utopia medically. It may sound dumb considering all the medical problems we still have but we can either cure, prevent or help stop the spread of virtually every physical illness out there. There are tons of illnesses neither of us will ever get due to medicine. And of the diseases we don’t have cures for yet (AIDS or cancer for example) we are well aware of what causes them, how to avoid them, and how to treat them when they happen.

Basically, a utopian world would be a world where there was still brutal psychological torture meted out for acts that threatened our survival as individuals and as a species, but where technology was so advanced that nobody ever did anything that would bring the wrath of their own brains down upon them. It is hell when your kids die. It is supposed to be, because if you didn’t care about your kids dying you probably wouldn’t have spread your genes as pervasively as people who did care and were protective of their kids. So watching your kids suffer and die is horrible. However in a utopia, your kids would never be sick, they’d never feel shame, etc. But at the end of the day, the brain pathways that would allow brutal mental torture still exist, they just aren’t activated.

Your life could go to hell in an instant. You can cut your leg with a sharp knife and feel intense pain for example, or you could be framed for child molestation and watch your life crumble. You don’t feel intense pain now, but the mental pathways that make intense pain possible are active and ready to fire if you do anything that would cause them to activate. A utopian world is just a world where these brutal brain pathways exist, but they are never activated. It is like living in North Korea with its concentration camps, but the camps are empty because nobody disobeys Kim Jong Il. Our brains are still capable of torturing us immensely for watching our kids die (childhood mortality was in the 50-80% range for most of human history), or for getting polio or for a zillion other medical problems, but due to technology we can avoid those problems. The mental pathways to torture us still exist, they just aren’t being activated.

7

It is amoral. Amoral implies no basis in morality. Genetics and existence at large are amoral. Our current moral system isn’t based on any respectable morals (concern for others based solely on altruism for example), it is based on behaviors that encourage survival of individuals and of groups. Even if we don’t let ourselves act amoral, it still is amoral just as a chair being used for a coatrack is still a chair. The basis for it all is still nothing more than survival with no concern for the well being of the individuals doing the surviving.

Besides, not only is our morality based on amoral principles of evolution, so are our emotions like pain and misery. So the whole system is corrupt and morally repugnant.

8

OK, I think I understand. However, here’s where I differ. I think that many of the more basic genetic tendencies we have are right; trying to survive, trying to avoid damage, protecting children are all good things, genetically mandated or not. They can be bad if you let such urges run away from you, but that’s what minds are for. IMHO that’s why such drives are so powerful; in those cases, genetic drives, cold rationality and culture ( usually ) are all pushing in the same direction.

If the good, sensible genetic drives are satisfied in some utopia, that’s a good thing. Whether or not the original impulses are genetic or not doesn’t matter to me, what matters are the results.

Well, that’s pretty much inevitable, since moral behavior is ( as a rule ) better for everyone. I fail to see how altruism ( or anything else ) done regardless of whether or not it’s beneficial is morally superior.

9

I prefer to think that our morality is a product of social and biological evolution. It scares me when people look to a book for morality as though there is no innate moral sense built into us. What if someone discovers an older version of the Bible and we realize that the tenth commandment is really “Thou shalt covet thy neighbor’s wife’s ass”.

10

What you’re saying, basically, is that since we’re genetically designed to be unhappy, we can never be happy all the time? An so, utopia is impossible?

I agree, but I don’t really see the problem. I haven’t been unhappy all my life, but I haven’t been unhappy all my life, either, and I will probably see my life as a success if, in my final accounting, I realize I was happier more often than not. Perfection is unattainable - it probably shouldn’t even be attempted - but that doesn’t make the absence of perfection failure. Mankind will never be truly happy, yes. But we can be occasionally happy, and that’s good enough for me.

11

I don’t see it that way. I have both a rational system of morality I chose to follow and feelings of empathy that affect my decision process. I don’t care where they come from - evolution, God, the Hoggfather, who gives a shit? I like them, they work, I’ll keep 'em.

12

How would you even measure something like that?

Okay, I’ll ask; Why?

The third sentence doesn’t follow from the first.

You’ve never come out and said it, but your prevailing assumption seems to be that morality cannot derive from natural phenomenon. That’s objectively just a silly thing to say; in point of fact morality does seem to exist, and it does derive from natural phenomenon. Your objection, at least as far as I can tell, seems to be wholly qualitative - that anything with a basis in nature must be amoral.

Well, I don’t see how that follows. That we’ve constructed morals from evolutionarily determined desires doesn’t mean they aren’t morals. Actually, if anything, it’s what MAKES them morals, since it give morality a basis in reality. A “moral” that has no basis in the natural world isn’t a moral at all, it’s an arbitrary rule. Morality with no connection to what human beings would be nothing more than theological nattering, the sort of angels-on-a-pinhead nonsense that can overwhelm the discussion of real morals.

If you want a real moral code, to my mind it has to be based on, structured around, the fact that we’re animals.

13

Obviously, that first “unhappy” should be “happy.”

14

Wesley, the two mistakes people make about evolution are to either dismiss it outright because they think it contradicts their belief in God (as with creationists) or else to make it an omnipotent God-substitute, which you seem to be close to doing.

Evolution is nothing more than a mechanism that operates without any reference to purpose, direction or morality. Simply put, it is the explanation of how things work, and nothing more. I may explain to you how a power mower works. The fact that that a careless user of that mower may someday take off a kid’s foot has nothing to do with that mechanical explanation.

May I tell you what I consider to be one of the most charming and amusing theories in present evolutionary science? At one time, it was assumed that in human evolution, human females developed larger birth canals to let through babies with larger heads (with more brains in them). Even today, if you have ever seen a cat or cow or dog give birth, you will notice that letting out the head of their newborn is no problem at all. Now just ask a human female who has given birth what it is like letting out our giant mellon-heads!

In other words, it was assumed that the trend to larger brains put pressure on the species to develop wider birth canals because (horrible as it sounds) every time a small-opening female tried to give birth, she died in labour with the big-headed kid still stuck in her. Over many generations, wide-canal females survived better and had more offspring with big brains.

Since walking upright requires a wider pelvic gridle, it was assumed that two-legged walking was a result of this same evolutionary pressure, because females with wide pelvises could BOTH walk upright more easily AND died less in chilbirth .

That was the old theory: Bigger brains require wider pelvis to keep females from dying in childbirth, and wider pelvis lets members of that species walk upright more easily. It seemed to make sense.

Imagine our surprise when discoveries of fossils of early ancestors and proto-humans in Africa showed that they walked perfectly upright millions of years before their brains started to get bigger! The upright stance and the wider birth canal are there, but the offspring’s heads were just as small as before. Females of the period must have just popped out those newborns like a pit out of a boiled peach!

So upright posture led to wider pelvic openings, but just as a side-effect. The babies popping out of those wider openings would not have much larger brains until many generations later. Kind of like a garage with a two-car door and all you park in it is a motorcycle. But over the years, the advantage of larger brains in survival started to favour bigger and bigger brains. And luckily, the larger birth canals acquired eons earlier did not prevent this development.

But then why did the two legged-stance develop at all? Well, it is now believed that it was the result of forests disappearing in a drier climate that favored grasslands. Apes almost always walk on all fours. But in tall grass they can stand up to see if a predator is coming, or to look for a nearby tree to run to, and even take a few poorly-executed steps on their hind legs.

As our ancestors started living more and more in grasslands the ability to stand up and to stay standing, and even to walk upright, was heavily favoured by evolutionary survival needs. Four-foot “conservatives” did not see the leopards and lions coming and could not spot places to run to. They could not see the other members of their group above the grass to see how they were reacting and where they were fleeing. And two-legged apes can sprint faster than four-legged on flat ground.

So why do I find this story so charming? Because it is so typical of the completely random and unplanned nature of evolution. We like to think that human intelligence was something “meant” to happen. In fact, our larger brains are only the accidental by-product of two-legged walking that developed for a reason entirely unrelated to brain size.

So here is the punch line to this rather long story. The reason we have moon landings and space exploration, the reason we have Newtonian phsics and computers, medical science, the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, the theory of relativity Beethoven’s Ninth symphony and Plato’s Republic is that a few million years ago, some ape-like creature wanted to keep from getting his/her ass chomped by a leopard. Hilarious, is it not?

But that is just how evolution works.

15

It seems to me, Wesley, that the very fact that the issue bothers you so much is a clear indication that we’re able to resolve the problem.

16

:confused:

It is in the overall nature of a species such as ours (individually cognizant, socially organized) that we as a species survive and thrive best when we embody the values that we do, in fact, celebrate (even if we tend to run afoul of them) — all that altruistic compassionate sharing and mutual caregiving stuff. Natural selection will affirmatively select in favor of homo sap if we better embody those values, whereas if we don’t we’re going to earn a Darwin award on a species-wide basis sooner or later.

17

I think the problem is that the OP is defining morality as some objectively determined
“good”, without reference to human beings as human beings. Imagine the situation before humans had evolved-- let’s go back 5M years. Would our current definition of good and evil make any sense? I don’t think so. Our morality evolved out of our nature, as human beings. Had we evolved differently, our morality would be different. What’s wrong with that?

18

Whatever hope we choose to build. Same as it always has been. Hope is something people build, just like meaning.

(Mind, “what hope is there for us” strikes me as suggesting that there is some sort of inescapable flaw to be corrected here, which is a premise I would note that I do not share.)

19

Wesley, posit for a moment that god and evil are objective realities. Would there be an adaptive advantage to recognizing these realities?

I’d say that there would be: creatures who can recognize them have more information about the world in which they exist and can make more comlex social structures. Just as an ability to sense differences in air temperature is adaptive, the ability to ascertain morality could be adaptive.

Evolutionary psychology might suggest that we arrive at moral conclusions based on our evolutionary background, but it doesn’t mean that morality itself is determined by evolution, any more than the temperature of the air is determined by evolution.

That said, there’s hope for us if we continue to see more and more entities as part of our group. I just read The Blank Slate recently, and Pinker talks about this as a tendency in human development: as time goes on, humans tend to see more and more people, and even animals, as part of their family and therefore deserving of protection.

Daniel

20

I don’t know. I guess it just takes some adjustment to realize good & evil are the side effects of our evolution, because natural selection is totally amoral and I have trouble accepting a value system based on such an amoral concept.

Even if we are successful within these parameters of good & evil given to us, and create an extremely good society, it is still based on our own evolved viewpoints of individual & group survival. A world free of childhood disease and death is only a paradise from a natural selection viewpoint because we get to pass on 2-4x more of our genes in that environment (since childhood mortality was 50-75% for most of human history, now 100% of children would get a chance to reproduce, instead of just 25-50%). And our normal moral values are not inclusive enough to really qualify as moral in any meaningful sense. The only really good universal moral viewpoint would be the one I listed earlier that no conscious being should take away the liberty of another conscious being, and that beings should attempt to assist each other within reason when one is having troubles.