CH. 1-The Selfish Gene

Having mulled this over I think what I am getting at is that there is a relationship between what cultures do and genetics, though I don't think it is a direct relationship abd certainly not a determinist one. But there certainly is one and taboos, for example, are ways of a society codifying this. A good example being societies having a pretty universal (I don't know enough to say it is universal) taboo against brother-sister relatinships, but no similar universal taboo about cousins. (and before the jokes about East Anglia/Royston Vasey/Tasmania start, we should perhaps remember that Darwin married his cousin, so it's not as alien to our own society as we might imagine).

I don't know about the Ibo example, but I would speculate that at some point in the past that society has gone through some sort of crisis where infant mortality became unsustainable and that this process became assimilated into the practices of the culture, possibly as strong as a taboo. A further speculation might be that twins are less likely to both survive anyway, because of the added stress on the mother feeding them. While multiple births are not a problem in the modern age, there wasn't formula milk a century ago, nor cows/goats/sheeps milk in plenty of other societies. Once the babies are weaned, this ceases to be an issue, but until then a crisis situation would be tougher for twins. *

Anyway, as a general rule, I think some behaviours in societies are genetically favoured, and genetically influenced, though not genetically determined. And, as Dawkins points out, we can over-ride our genes.

Regards,

(A hopefully clearer) Martin

*As an aside, I'm not a fan of boycotts but avoid Nestle products for the baby milk dumping they do on the third world. A company prepared to directly kill children for profit deserves all it gets.

Well I'd agree that there is no hunting by groups of animals who are not either closely related or have been in regular contact, that's fairly obvious. However, I think a selfish free rider would be dealt with by the group hunting - if an individual is just along for the ride, the self-interest of the others would be to exclude it from feeding. Everyone has self-interest - not just those who are "selfish". And the benefits of co-operation are clear - lions hunting as a pride can tackle prey like buffalo, hippo and elephant, as well as the larger antelopes. Single lions stick to the smaller game. A pride can defend its kill against other animals - a single animal can't. In fact, it's noticeable that the most solitary hunter among African fauna, the cheetah, is the animal most likely to have its kill stolen.

Regards,

Martin

sidebar:

dennett on sober and wilson "Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior." which is also of interest

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/untoothersppr.htm

shame dawkins never went for the "Immortal Gene" title option - might have avoided some confusion. he also points out the problems involved in using metaphors for discussing scientific problems - a necessary evil - see the work of george lakoff amongst others. the wiki will give abrief overview

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

but the metaphor can determine the way a subject is thought about.

as for dawkins, well i the whole group / individual / gene evolution argument seems a bit daft in a way - without the group the individual can't reproduce, without the gene there's be no impulse to reproduce, and without the individual there's be no way for the gene to reproduce.

so they all need eachother.

(as if things were that easy )

This is the case with animals as well, I would agree with you that this has a basis in genetics. I'm not saying that humans are never influenced by our genes.

So in what way is this genetic? They adopted a cultural practise of doing this because they saw the benefits. You still sound like you are talking about genetic folk memories to me. There is far more genetic variation within races than there is between them we don't all have different genes for different belief systems - complex behaviours such as leaving twins out to die are not evolved instincts IMO - the evolved instincts we have are more basic than that.

The Ibo example only came up because Jef used it as an example of a genetic adaptation which is clearly harmful to it's own replication. You are saying that it is a genetic adaptation that is useful. I disagree with both of you, though I disagree with you slightly less because at least you aren't arguing that evolution would select for behaviours harmful to their nown chances of replication.

Yes, I agree, many animals benefit from hunting in groups. These groups are always based around family groups, however, such as a pride of lions, pack of wolves, colony of ants etc. They are an example of kin-altruism, not social solidarity which I think was what we were talking about.

Genes aren't immortal though are they, they can and do go extinct all the time

Dawkins refers to the individual/gene evolution argument as two sides of the same coin, in that they are both true. He thinks that gene selection allows for clearer understanding, however, partly because it explains kin altruism (a gene that helps copies of itself in other bodies to survive) whereas individual selectionism does not. So out of the two, gene selectionism is 'truer'.

Groups selectionism, however, is completely wrong, as it gives a false impression of how evolution works. Essentially, groups don't reproduce, individuals do, and what is selected for is not the good of the group, but that of the individual or gene. I explained it on the other thread in terms of a group selectionist and indiidual selectionist would come to opposite conclusions about the evolution of selfish or altruistic behaviour in a hypothetical group of deer.:-

yes but Dawkins argues convincingly that the fundamental mechanism of inheritance takes place at the level of the gene. Genes that code for a capacity for sociability or group co-operation may prove advantageous to the individual and thus will be represented with greater frequency in future generations. But it's still all at the gene level.

Yeah, this argument is kind of interesting imho.

Erm, Magnifico. Seeing as libcom has got kinda "meaningful", I want to ask, what do you think is the meaning of the theory that we cannot have a genetic programming for co-operation.

Is it, a dissease, a curse, a defect? Something we ought to consciously challenege as a society/individual? Something to subvert?

I'm sure that this is a really stupid querstion, mind. I ask, because from what I've heard about Dwakins - we will build towering monuments to the power we have over our genes, or something. It seems kind of vulgar, to me.

Cheers.

Actually, this isn't the way I understood it at all. The way i remember reading Dawkins he argues that general sociability or group co-operation will always be undermined in evolution by genes for being selfish 'free riders' (except in the cases of kin-altruism and very limited tit-for-tat prisoner's dilemma-type co-operation). I'm sure he goes into great detail explaining how generalised co-operation/sociability is not an 'Evolutionarily Stable Strategy', even going to the lengths of claiming to have 'proven' that it is basically not possible. It's interesting that both you and Devrim have clearly read some of his stuff and appear to disagree with my interpretation.

It's meaning? Not sure - I've been persuaded that it is fact, and I'm not sure if it needs a 'meaning'. This is the point of the title of the first chapter of 'The Selfish Gene' that we are currently discussing - 'Why Are People?'. Darwinian evolutionary theory explains 'Why Are People' - because physics gave rise to (slightly innacurately) self-replicating organisms that eventually 'evolved' into people. This is the answer to the meaning of life - it has no 'meaning', it is the result of selective survival rates among random variations in the gene pool. It just 'is'. (you're right, we are getting 'kinda meaningful' )

I don't think I have an opinion on whether it is a 'disease' or 'curse' - as above, it just is, it doesn't need moral labels attached to it. I think that yes it is something we should consciously try to subvert. We should live in the way that brings us most pleasure, not the way that is most likely to lead to the replication of our genes. Our ancestors have been slaves to their genes throughout evolutionary history, we now at last understand why, and have the ability to put our well-being above the replication of strands of DNA.

Dawkins certainly believes that we can have power over our genes. I don't see this as vulgar, it's just what his studies have led him to conclude. He also believes that it is desireable, as do I. He is certainly very enthusiastic about this prospect (of us mastering our selfish genes, that is) so I gues that could be considered vulgar, but it never struck me as such. Richard Dawkins and myself both think that the fact that we can choose our own destiny and are not hidebound by selfish genetic determinism is amazing and wonderful, if that's what you're getting at.

Malfunction & xConorx - I think it would be better if we concentrated all our discussion on this thread, the other one I think was basically started to see if anyone would be interested in doing a kind of reading group discussion on the book, and this is that discussion. You're both making some very interesting points, but it's confusing to have them coming on two threads at once

Actually that part you quoted I hadn't intended to be a paraphrase of Dawkins - I was replying to the previous thread and basically what i was trying to get at was that Dawkins' fundamental premise, that the fundamental mechanism of inheritance is active at the level of the gene is compatible with sociability and group co-operation.

I've got an interesting book that has cross-cultural game theory studies (ultimatum games and dictator games) which found altruistic behavior in defiance of the 'Homo economicus' model in every case. Its very interesting from a libertarian commmunist point of view, but perhaps a distraction/irrelevant? If anyone's interested i'll dig it out and contribute what i can to the discussion.

Excellent discussion- thanks guys. I just got the book today and read the first chapter before reading this thread. I'll go onto the second one now.

Can we try and not bring into our discussion ideas that require us to have read the rest of the book to understand? Not that that has happened so much here, but it would undermine the collective learning that is going on...

One idea that did crop up when I read the chapter was that you can see why a (for want of a better term) hard gene-selection position when applied to society leads people to a red-in-tooth-and-claw competition position. The flaw in this argument is that it ignores the fact that humans have full control over our social structures, and these genetic pressures acting on our aggregate behaviour play themselves out within these structures.
A conscious understanding of Darwinian election could be used to argue in our favour: that these pressures need to be mitigated by organising society along lines that minimise these behaviours.

I would also just like to comment on something Devrim said in a throw-away line earlier on

This made me think about the decomposition of the nuclear family as advocated throughout the history of socialism. The implication to me is that socialised upbringing of children would lead via evolutionary mechanisms (over a long enough time period) to stronger social solidarity, completely abstracted from the social and political arguments about its utility.

Anyway, onto chapter 2.

I think that this is a very important point. Obviously human beings have the ability to go against their genetic programming. The decision of some people not to have children shows that. Just because we are programmed to behave in a certain way, it doesn't mean that we have to follow that programming. I think that the discussion about whether we are programmed to be selfish, or altruistic should wait until chapter 12, but it is clear here that he says that we can, and do go against our programming. Humans have the ability to make conscious long term decisions for the benefit of the species. Other animals don't have this.

Pardon me, but this is very much NOT agreed upon. The idea that we are "programmed to behave in certain ways by our genes" is quite contested on firm biological grounds. The very assumption of this discussion is that genes control us at some level, that our behaviour is programmed, but only within certain limits.

This is a purely ideological assertion, a metaphor and one that sociobiology frequently uses without grounding. It is ultimately a philosophical assertion resting upon Cartesian reductionism of the world as a machine. The point of view is that of developmental biology, which assumes a teleological unfolding. The environment is treated as a background, an enabling mechanism. It is in fact a pre-formationist or homuncular theory in which the organism is already present latently in the genetic blueprints.

This was not Darwin's notion. His is a variational model in which variations in individuals play out and those variants which leave more offspring create species variation and change over time.

Knowledge of the whole genome will not allow us to compute all of the variations in human beings, but this is what you are saying. Genes allow us to say why lambs are lambs, but not why they are nervous in West Virginia nor why there are variations between lambs. The genetic "map" will not tell us about variation within a species (for example, why there is greater genetic diversity within the so-called "races" of humanity than between them.

On the contrary, at a minimum, we must take into account genes, the temporal sequence of environments through which an organism is exposed in its life and random events of molecular interactions within cells.

The second aspect involves the fact that genes do not specify a unique outcome, but that they specify a norm of reaction to environmental variation, but if the environmental variation is near infinite, as it is for humans, then the reaction is also incomputable, especially as these impacts will never happen in the same exact way 2x. So while genes guide the organism's reaction (and it can lead to a monstrous or deadly development) to this interaction, it is not a map.

Finally, the 3rd element is sometimes referred to as developmental noise. That is, not every reaction happens at the same moment and a vary minor variation in timing of one reaction, or a random variation in the quality of that reaction, leads to a difference in the development of the organism that can have profound differences. For example, whether a fruit fly (ye olde Drosophilia which is the most widely used subject of genetic research) has more sensory bristles on the left or right side is determined by the time it takes for the cells on one side to develop relative to the other, but this time difference is not predictable, it is not environmental nor is it mapped in the genes. It is random.

Lest you think this minor, if it can explain the variation in sensory bristles on a fruit fly, it may also be part of the ke to variations in physical dexterity in humans, as merely one example.

The notion of genes as programming us is simply a metaphor which taken literally is bad biology.

While not agreeing with him on the specific point, it does allow for the possibility.

And this is a just-so story. I can just as easily account for human altruism as a product of the fact humans are not strong, fast, or otherwise terribly competitive as individuals, that survival of the whole organism requires sociality.

Which involves another fallacy of this stuff: that animals reproduce to spread their genes. Aside from being teleological nonsense and assuming that living things, including plants, have a conscious intent, its once again cheats the enormous variation within and between species for a monocausal explanation, much like God.

And so when Dawkins ays the following...

3)

It is important to note that he chose 1) ambiguous terms and that 2) he and his colleagues regularly fall into using the notion in exactly a subjective sense. This is why Edward O. Wilson talks in one of his books about the genetic disposition of people towards showy clothing as part of our mating drive, which once again wholly cheats us of the vast variation in human clothing, in cultural and social variation.

And this is a terrible statement, as if consciousness and action were so separated. This is a shabby dualism, another hand-me-down from Descartes.

The animal, including humans, has no idea which genes or even traits will be beneficial. You already have slumped into imposing consciousness on the organism of its genetic "blueprint", which as I have already addressed, it not even a blueprint.

This cannot account, for example, for why chimpanzees in East Africa do some things very, very differently from chimpanzees in West Africa, even though their genetic variation is nil.

But let us take another example, somewhat harsher. By the logic of this "behavioural" treatment of "selfish" and "altruistic", we have the foundation for the analysis laid out in the book "A Natural History of Rape", in which the authors stay rather rigorously to this idea to justify the use of rape of women by men as an apparently selfish or aggressive as actually "altrusitic" in that it allows a man who might otherwise not reproduce (even if he is somehow genetically the most fit) to reproduce. Now in terms of conscious politics, Dawkins likes to distance himself from this kind of thing, but methodologically it is the foundation of this kind of work (which has been rightly exposed as a very, very shabby piece of science by Jerry Coyne, a geneticist at the University of Chicago.) You will pardon me if I puke while you all talk debate "exotic" cultures like they were petrie dish specimens without even a clue as to the ramifications of this logic.

You uncritically accept the presuppositions. I am sure there is much you will now have no problem with, but it is based on frankly metaphysical assertions with an ideological pedigree handed down from Caresian reductionism (the whole is the sum of the parts and the parts can be treated separate from the whole in this case organism and even species) and dualism. This is especially wrong in relation to human beings.

The offshoot of this approach is the treatment of intra-species variation as genetically determined and to ignore the forms taken. It is as if one reduced all kinds of food, cooking, culinary development, etc to "eating" and ignored the ways in which people eat, what implements they use, what rituals go along with it, how people think about what they are doing when they are eating, what social relations are or are not established in the process, etc.

This rejection of the serious treatment of form, for those for whom this matters, is exactly the opposite of Marx, for whom the form is the mode of existence, the form of appearance, of the content and not merely an externality or illusion hiding the "real" beneath it like some Kantian noumenal, hence that money existing in the pores of feudal society was not the same thing as money in its form under capital where it is a part of value and value is also a form of social relations, and one with specific consequences, one of those being communism.

Sorry if this is so long, but I read 3 pages of commentary and not one piece of it genuinely critical or taking the issues at hand seriously but sucking down the idea of genes as blueprint as established fact when it simply is nothing of the sort.

This does not preclude sociobiologists (as biologists) being correct on some matters (Wilson for example is a brilliant entomologist), but Devrim nicely hit on where Dawkins' presuppositions are in fact bad biology with consequences.

Chris

"Humans have full control over our social structures"? Really? Do we live under capitalism? Or are you a Robinson Crusoe, a rational actor in full control of your social environment? That is so baldly wrong Pingtao that I am surprise any anarchist or communist could write it with a straight face.

And what "genetic pressures"? Our biolgoy, as a whole organism, makes it possible for us to be aggressive or not, but there is nothing in our genes that determines any specific behaviour and definitely not what triggers it.

Culture is the negation of biology, our ovrcoming of our biological limitations. This is certainly true. But it is not a set of equal and competing "structures".

Also, genes do not act as aggregates because genes reside in the individual. And they are not determinate in that way. That is simply crappy biology.

Chris

Pardon me, but this is very much NOT agreed upon. The idea that we are "programmed to behave in certain ways by our genes" is quite contested on firm biological grounds. The very assumption of this discussion is that genes control us at some level, that our behaviour is programmed, but only within certain limits.

This is a purely ideological assertion, a metaphor and one that sociobiology frequently uses without grounding. It is ultimately a philosophical assertion resting upon Cartesian reductionism of the world as a machine. The point of view is that of developmental biology, which assumes a teleological unfolding. The environment is treated as a background, an enabling mechanism. It is in fact a pre-formationist or homuncular theory in which the organism is already present latently in the genetic blueprints.

Yes but that is kind of a straw man as you are implying that by acknowledging a genetic component to behaviour one is immediately a reductionist. I don't think that Devrim was being particularly reductionist - he was saying that there was much more to behavior than genetics (at least that's my reading of his post and his Dawkins quote).
What about the capacity for social learning? Language?

It would help if you could expand on what you mean by when you say that the assertion that we have some genetic component to behaviour (which is tempered by social and cultural inheritance) is false - any references? I just think it would help at this particular point.

Hello Chris.
That was a fairly belligerent post, and also one that chose the least charitable interpretation of my comments.
I don't see what you find controversialabout me stating that human social structures are not "natural" but are a product of human decisions and chosen human behaviour. If you thik that human social structures are not within our sphere of control then why are you a communist? Mu understanding of communism is that it advocates that the humans take conscious control over society and change it in the interests of the majority. Perhaps I've misinterpreted.

Who suggested hard determinism? I didn't- I merely echoed Dawkins when he says

Which is why I said

I didn't suggest they were Chris- I pointed out that the behaviour that they can code for plays itself out at the aggregate level- i.e. at the level of human beings in groups rather than single people. This is entirely in line with Dawkins' argument as far as I see it.

I agree - redtwister you are totally attacking a straw man here. Neither Devrim nor Dawkins believe in 'genetic determinism' - indeed, Dawkins has gone into great detail (in other essays) on how environmental and cultural factors have a huge influence over human behaviour. Indeed he goes into this briefly in the opening chapter that we have been discussing, so maybe you should have read it instead of relying on misrepresentations of his views that you have heard from others. Devrim has also highlighted this aspect of Dawkins' theories and said that he agrees with it - on this very thread - so how can you accuse him of genetic determinism?

Or are you arguing that genes have no influence whatsoever over behaviour among animals or humans, and that to argue that they are even a contributory factor amounts to 'genetic determinism'? This argument doesn't make any sense at all to me, why would we have gone through millions of years of evolution evolving complex organs such as the brain, eye etc to aid survival but not during this time evolved any behavioural instincts to fulfil the same function? It sounds totally unscientific.

No-one is arguing that animals consciously 'reproduce to spread their genes'. But they will in almost every circumstance behave as if they do. This is because genes which cause animals to behave in ways that maximise their reproduction are the ones that are passed on to future generations, so these are the behavioural genes that become more common in the gene pool. (Note this isn't to say that genes are the onlyinfluence on behaviour.)

This is as you say similar to the idea of 'God' in that it explains how all living things came to be. The difference is that the scientific theory of evolution is demonstrably true, whereas the idea of 'God' is proudly based on 'faith' (see the parable of 'Doubting Thomas', who is held up for ridicule in the bible because he asked for proof of Jesus' resurrection) because no evidence can be produced for it. So if you simply oppose any explanations of anything on the basis then they are 'just another form of religion' then I suppose you have a point - however by doing so you abandon all hope of understanding the world.

indeed- and all those points are covered by Dawkins in the chapter we have been discussing. He specifically says that he is not suggesting that genes 'determine' behaviour, and he specifically says that he is not implying that there is any conscious intent...

redtwister- perhaps it would help if you read the book? It seems to me that you have read it in the past- but you have got a garbled interpretation of what it actually says.

In The Ancestor's Tale, Dawkins said he could have called his book The Selfish Gene, The Cooperative Gene and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference to the content. I find his friendship with Desmond Morris somewhat insalubrious though.

So, chapter two. I'll try to stick to the chapter this time, I think pingtao was right when he said that we (well, me mainly ) Were getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

Chapter two is basically entirely about the origins of 'life' and of evolution. I think this helped me greatly in understanding the rest of the book, in that it breaks natural selection down to it's simplest possible form (certain self-replicating molecules being slightly better at reproducing than others) and explains how all evolution is basically a more complicated version of this, with the basic principles unchanged.

Perhaps the most important part of the chapter is this provocative passage:-

Which I think sums up very well the way natural selection works - just like the primitive 'life' in the primordial soup, but with vastly more evolved survival techniques - ie us.

A couple more points - in the chapter Dawkins quotes someone called Jaques Monod saying:-

Certainly before I started reading Dawkins I thought it was a fairly self-evident and simple concept to grasp, but reading 'The Selfish Gene' changed my mind on a lot of things, and I think the disagreements on this thread bear out this idea that it is a lot more complicated and controversial than we thought!

Finally, I like the little dig at Christianity he makes when he casually throws in that the original bible had Mary down as a 'young woman' with no suggestion of her being a 'virgin'!

Isn't Desmond Morris the guy who wrote about body language in humans and dogs? My grandparents have a copy of his book 'manwatching' which I used to read when I was quite young and staying over at theirs - it seemed quite interesting, what's wrong with him?

It's more that his stuff falls into sociobiology really. I've only read bits of the Naked Ape and seen parts of one of his series so I'm no authority but from what I remember it was the genetic determinism as regards human social behaviour (rather than socio-cultural learning and inheritance mechanisms) that is the shite stuff.

Just wanted to add something regarding Redtwister's interpretation of Dawkins, Devrim and Pingtiao.
If there's anything as bad as hard genetic determinism it's blind behaviourism. The idea that there is absolutely no genetic component to human behaviour is rather absurd.

For example, one of the main reason that people find sex pleasurable is that we can orgasm (not to say that that is all there is to sex of course!). The biological capacity to have an orgasm is without doubt an inherited characteristic.
However, to echo what Devrim's interpretation was earlier, we of course know that we can have sex with a condom, engage in other forms of sexual activity that lead to an orgasm but not reproduction (and thus the passing on of genes) eg masturbation, bumming, auto-erotic asphyxiation etc etc etc.

I do apologise for getting off-topic and not sticking to the chapter readings. I must admit I haven't read Selfish Gene in 4 yrs and lent my copy to Angela ages ago so I ordered another 2nd hand one to catch up!

You must tell me how using Devrim's own phrasing is a straw man? The argument is that behaviour is programmed and my argument is quite simply that the development of culture, of what makes us human, means that we do not merely have some generic or scripted responses, but that our behaviour is rich not merely in content, but in form. The unique form of a behaviour, as it is expressed in unique social rituals, through unique social relations, in a unique language, etc. is more at issue than saying: woo-hoo, there is a genetic basis for "anger" or "violence". Anger at what? Brought on by what? What things do I associate expressing my anger with? What are acceptable and not-acceptable ways to be angry? To say that we have a genetic basis for anger (and this is merely an example) means that you must not only specify what the genes that do that are, otherwise you are merely saying that is an organism trait and genes play an important part in the shaping of the organism who has a multiplicity of capacities, but you must also be able to specify what counts as anger or an expression of anger. Beyond an increase in certain chemical produced, the actual expressions of anger or any other emotion are so social that even if you could really measure it by the chemical reactions, the expression of anger (its practice as a behaviour) would undoubtedly be very different in many, many ways between people from very different societies.

Scrap those differences and you destroy all human specificity over human history.

It is exactly in this way that sociobiology engages in crude abstractions and vulgar generalizations once it is faced with actual human behaviour and history.

There is nothing of a straw man in this, the sociobios themselves provide copious examples (see Philip Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition for a nice collection of these.)

Chris

But Devrim and Dawkins (and Pingtao) agree with you on this Chris. None of them ever said that genes are the only thing that shape our behaviour, or that culture and environment don't play a significant role in behaviour.

Chris you obviously haven't read the replies to your previous post, just as in that post it was clear that you hadn't read either the chapter we were discussing or most of the points made by the people you were attacking. We'd love to have you in this discussion as you seem to have some strong feelings on the subject but could you please read what other people have to say as well, especially if you are going to be so aggressive?

Well it's be strange if we showed a behaviour that didn't have a genetic component active in some level. Mainly because our very sociality and potentiality for culture is actually the product of our genes, and infact our genes themselves are inscribed with bilions of years of environmental selection.

What I mean is that when people like Dawkins say we can "resist" our genes, I think it's absurd because our genes don't express themselves as one input but rather their expression is through a whole matrix of social and environmental relations and to try and isolate the genetic component is reductionist bullshit. Our consciousness and culture is as much in our genes as is the hunger to eat and therefore to talk about going "against your genes" is to reinvent a reactionary binary between matter and conciousness.

My contention is that you do not understand very well what genes do and don't do. You take the metaphor of genes as programming, a map or the instructions set for the entire organism seriously. I don't claim to be a biologist, but I have at least familiarized myself with more than Dawkins' and sociobiology's take on genetics.

I took issue with very specific language from Dawkins on programming. Dawkins may in fact claim that he is not a hard determinist, and in some sense he prolly is not, but he does believe that genese have a certain pride of place in human social relations.

I understand and appreciate the argument for a little more genetic determinism with say ants, but even there I have my questions.

After all, the tendency of this outlook is set up along with a very hard adaptationist view of evolution. I do not share this view, and i think for good reasons. But I think that the view of genetics evinced here requires a hard adaptationist program and i think that shows its problems. It raises problems of the relation of organism to environment, for example.

But that might also be for later chapters and while you are begging me to take into account what has not yet been read, that hardly seems fair, does it? Which is why I restrained my comments to the quotes from the first chapter used by Devrim.

BTW, to answer your question on what I am arguing: I am arguing that genes play a key, but not solo role, in the development of the organism and that the organism has behaviours. I am also arguing that the more social the animal, the more capable of overcoming the limits of any given environmemt, the less and less they is their behaviour except at the most generic levels of possibilities, genetically controlled or conditioned and that this is certainly true for human beings. The flowering of the multiplicity of expressions and behaviours of human beings in the last 10,000 years cannot be accounted for in any genetic fashion beyond saying that genes are necessary for humans to come out as something identifiable at a species level as human. They do not account for a great degree of the biological variation, almost none of the behavioural and social variation.

Chris

My hostility is indeed very much in the scene in the US, where the sociobios are not largely reactionaries, but liberals who evince a very nasty brand of elitism that treats "sience" as the way and anything distrustful of "science" as bogus hocus pocus. And their "science" tells them that what we need is a liberal, tolerant capitalism, and they hate with all of their little liberal hearts the religious masses and the Marxist professors. And they hope to find genes for "criminality" and "anti-social" behaviours, which are suddenly defined by a bunch of high-end professors with a distinct love for liberal capitalism and their investment portfolios in bio-tech corporations.

My issues with them are very much in their elitist class stench and their general banality when they write about anything outside of their milieu.

To see it taken abroad as uncontroversial does in fact make me quite angry because it is not uncontroversial nor are their claims innocent and it frankly annoys me that in times like this, the tendency is to see anyone who is against the religious bigots as our ally, but to me they are not allies. Anymore than liberal NGO types or UN humanitarian agencies or the rest are.

I will happily stick to the text, I did not in fact leave it keeping my comments based entiely on Devrim and Pingtao's words (indeed, uncharitably so towards them which they do not deserve) and the quotes from Dawkins.

You may argue that he pleads against reading him in the fashion I do, but as i see it, if the shoe fits, it is not a matter or his intent.

Also, this is not about behaviourism or nature-nurture. Clearly, genes do determine the structure of our bodies, our brains, etc. Without opposable thumbs, our visual capabilities, the specific relation of brain size to body mass, etc., we would not be capable of things of which we are capable. They are biological prerequisites that genes play a central role in guaranteeing happens with some consistency over time.

But with behaviour, you enter into a rather different domain. There is no doubt that our biological selves as an organism are capable of many kinds of behaviours, but even there I am not sure exactly what makes the genes the site rather than the whole organism. What is so scientific about such a move?

I will stick to the text even more closely and I do promise to be less belligerent, but I see no reason to agree with your perception of this stuff as reasonable.

Chris

Dawkins is not a 'sociobiologist' in the sense that you are implying, and neither am I. Genes send out their 'instructions' at the chemical level - this is way too slow for them to control every detail of the behaviour of an animal. We have evolved nervous systems in order to react more quickly, these work using electrical impulses which clearly cannot be entirely under the control of genes. Dawkins' analogy is that the genes are like the recipe for a cake - the same recipe will produce variations of a similar cake when interpreted by different cooks in different circumstances. In terms of behaviour genes can only be 'determinist' in the sense of determining general rules of conduct, such as trying to have sex (but not with close family), running away from predators etc. If these general rules are beneficial to the reproductive success of the genes responsible for them then they will be selected for, but this is not to say that these genes are responsible for every minute detail of what an animal does.

If you disagree with this then please provide some examples of some common animal behaviours which are not beneficial to the reproduction of their genes.

The book we are discussing is avowedly not addressing this subject:-

So essentially this book is about the qualitative nature of the effect which genes have on human behaviour, but not on the quantitative extent to which these effects determine human behaviour. Granted he is pretty much a genetic determinist when it comes to animals - if you disagree with this then as I said above please provide some examples of common animal behaviours which are damaging to the reproductive success of the animal performing them. If you are right then there should be all kinds of strange (from a genetic point of view) behaviours in animals, just as there are in humans (eg choosing not to have children, spending time and energy helping out strangers etc.) - however I can't think of any, so I think the evidence supports Dawkins here. More to the point, why do you consider a scientist who believes that animal behaviour is very much genetically determined, but that human behaviour is not, to be a political enemy? Are you trying to organise a communist revolution amongst cows or something?

I have read an essay by him on the subject of nature/nurture in humans and he is very clear that environmental and cultural factors have huge impacts on human behaviour.

As I have said, the book is not about this, but your criticisms of it clearly are - you hate Dawkins because, you say, he is a 'nasty sociobiologist' who regards all human behaviour as a result of genes (nature) and not of the environment (nurture). This is a total misrepresentation of his views. Other scientists in the US may hold the views you are (rightly) attacking, but I don't see why you need to project this anger onto Dawkins who does not hold these views

How is our culture in our genes? Now you sound like a German nationalist from 1912