Date: Sat, Aug 17, 2003 From: "Phil Roberts, Jr."To: evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [evol-psych] Kin Selection vs. Group Selection? Herbert Gintis wrote: > As I said in a previous posting, I refuse to > use the term "altruism" and its opposite "self-interest" in the way > biologists do. This is because there is no altruism in the biological > sense, so why waste a good word? I don't understand this remark, Herb. I agree there SHOULD be no biological altruism. But that's light years away from your claim that there simply IS no biological altruism, particularly in the light of Dawkins' discovery of an explanatory void (to be filled with memetics) in our naturalistic understanding of human nature, and which certainly appears to include lots of biological altruism (concern for the suffering of animals, 9/11 terrorists and rescue workers, etc.) as I have come to understand the concept: Unlike [Lorentz and Montagu], I think 'nature red in tooth and claw' sums up our modern understanding of natural selection admirably. (Dawkins). > I and my colleagues use "self regarding" and its opposite, > "altruistic," in the behavioral, observable way, applied to > phenotypes. If I'm taking you too literally here, I apologize, but I'm one of those lonely souls who thinks the tendency to equate 'behavioral' with 'observable' is more scientism than science if by that you mean to exclude introspection, self reflection, etc. from the mix, and has resulted in a grotesque underappreciation of the centrality of self-esteem in everything we humans think and do, at least to the extent that my own mind is not atypical. > If I save a baby from a burning building, at a risk to my life, > and then I disappear before being given a medal or being rewarded > with piles of money, I have committed an altruistic act. Note > also, that the word "self-interest" is ambiguous. If I get > pleasure from helping old ladies across the street they way you > do by eating caviar, my act is self-interested. But it is not > self-regarding. Rather, it is prosocial, because it increases > the payoff to group members. We call this altruistic, but only > in the sense that it is prosocial. Based on the assumption that man actually expends most of his effort and energy on EMOTIONAL concerns (self-worth) rather than physical concerns, I would say a better way of carving up this universe would be in terms of a distinction between emotional selfishness and physical selfishness. In particular, I don't like 'prosocial' because it too readily lends itself to the conclusion that these tendencies are present in us because they were biologically adaptive at the group level, making it all the more difficult for those of us who regard most human altrusim as maladaptive to get a word in edgewise: Even with qualifications regarding the possibility of group selection, the portrait of the biologically based social personality that emerges is one of predominantly self-serving opportunism, EVEN FOR THE MOST SOCIAL SPECIES, for all species in which there is genetic competition among the social co- operators, that is, where all members have the chance of parenthood (Donald Campbell). Phil Roberts, Jr. Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock: The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism http://www.rationology.net