Toward an Explanation of Skepticism and Critical Thinking

My required self-adminsistration of some grains of salt.

Omne Ignotum Pro Magnifico:

Everything unknown is taken for magnificent.

For an encore:

Toward Open Mindedness

First Cause or First Strategy?

A question prompted by musings on strategy, such as this latest thought:

It seems necessary that in defining what we mean by "life" we recognize that all life forms need to have some learning capacity to predict and expect future events.

The initial forms had to learn to seek out energy. It's not likely that the first such forms didn't learn by happy accident that the first acceptance of energy was something that bore repeating. And when its source inevitably waned, had to have "learned" that effort had become needed to search out more or receive it from a different source.

So shouldn't we now use a definition more as follows:

Life: A self-sustaining chemical reaction (or energy system) with strategic parameters and learned expectations. (Predictive becoming redundant in that context.)

Prompting what some will see as the greatest of all heretic suppositions:

Is it possible that the universe itself is no less than a collection of infinitely short term strategic operations all acting with the most immediate of purposes that form an infinite tapestry of unintended and unpredictable longer to longest term consequences?

I made some notes as a guide to what I hoped to add later, and then decided why not just store them here in the interim and see what that action does for my creative process.

Meaning of the universe, or in the universe, or to the universe ??

The universe seems to be a vast questioning organism, strategies developed in a trial and error series, that resulted in incremental advances in the nature of new questions structuring the strategic functions as they multiply, with what we have had to label "energy" as both their material and their "fuel" (hence the hypothesized entropy of the available supply? - which may in reality be inexhaustible?).

"Cause and effect" could just as well be the metaphorical first question, first problem, first option, first strategic choice, first strategic decision leading to next question, in an exponentially expanding omni-dimensional pattern of a trial and error progression throughout all of time's metaphorical existence.

Whatever potential the universe has had for the application of natural law, that law would have developed in concert with the strategies that found them controlling - laws that concurrently gave these strategies their operational parameters.

Rather than string theory, etc., think strategic geometry. Think a constrained randomness.

Nature of universe not predetermined, not deterministic, but yet deterministically random with an unpredictable progression of incremental inevitabilities.

Or not.

Moron Strategies?

We seem to have arbitrarily labeled certain opposing behavioral strategies as separate traits under the assumption that the behaviors are in themselves satisfying rather than (or perhaps because of) being means to a satisfactory end that the supposedly divergent traits can have in common. We thus fail to see that the so-called traits may in fact represent different levels of strategic abstractions devoted to the attainment of the same overall goal. Example in point, the designations of selfishness and altruism as traits that have a separate genetic origin - as if there is a gene for one that is somehow separate from the gene for the other.

Except that it seems more likely that any perceived differences between the way individuals seem to express these "traits" are due to differences in the way they perceive the problems to be solved rather than in more discrete differences in their genetic tool kits.

The differences may just as well be in the heritable range of their strategic options, just as some have differences in the range or levels of abstract conceptualization in general. Because the ultimate goal to be attained by "altruistic" behavior can often be the same as one that a different entity has learned to seek out through a more direct or "selfish" process.

The abstractions used may also reflect different assessments of short versus long term necessities and/or perceivable and thus expected consequences from use of the respective strategies. Plus each strategy will also have some elements of the direct and indirect approaches, as that's why we call the process "strategy" to begin with.

It's My Copy, Right?

Musings to put on the record as mine, and whether for my good or my bad, from no-one else's muse that I know of:

Life: A self-sustaining chemical reaction (or energy system) with predictive expectations.

These are purposive expectations, the interaction of which is causative in forming a strategy or strategies, as well as in adjusting all of these, as expectations are changed through trial and error experience. Their goal(s) would initially be to acquire and restore energy - because the impetus to attain that goal is thus purposive.

The strategies that develop from the mix of purpose, expectations and environment can account as well for abilities of organisms to have divergent traits and be amenable to natural selection.

Excerpted from comments about The Origin and Evolution of Life on NASA's Planetary Biology Program website, http://cmex.ihmc.us/VikingCD/Puzzle/Evolife.htm:

"Interactions between various substances and energy yielded the autocatalytic systems capable of passing information from one generation to the next, and the thread of life began."

So is a life form also to be defined as an entity that needs or has a strategy for the survival of its species? Is not this "information" a component of strategy - does not a strategy require information as a determinant for action as well as information being the determinant of strategy?

And then can we not, for fairly obvious reasons that I intend to expand on at a later date, add to our definition as follows:

Life forms - self-sustaining strategic entities. Their forms and constituent elements are all a part of that strategy.

The implication being that evolution involves a selection for successful strategies as much as for anything else.

So if added to the initial definition here, we get something like this:

Life: A self-sustaining chemical reaction (or energy system) with strategic parameters and predictive expectations.

Putting it (in my view) succinctly:

Life forms are strategic constructs. The forms shape their strategies and strategies in turn shape their forms. The accidental juxtapositions with time and place shape their differences.

And tell me that red crest isn't a strategic component of that little moocher on the upper right.

(Proviso: This was not intended as a semantic retooling of the autopoiesis or "auto (self)-creation" concept - which, although supportive, is not in my view similarly concerned with the reciprocity of strategic processes, or with the underlying strategic intelligence dynamic that I will be proposing.)

And then there's Carl Zimmer's book on parasites, Parasite Rex : Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, where reviews have his descriptions of how adaptive parasites are. Once considered similar to other predators, it's now evident they have developed the talent of making "prey" come to them. Unlike animals we are familiar with, most parasites have greatly varied body forms as they go through the phases of their lives. It was first thought these changes were representative of different species, until it was recently demonstrated that "these creatures changed shape and function dramatically as they changed living environments."

In short, it seems we have in these parasite behaviors some of the best examples available of strategic forms matching up with other such strategic structures, all manipulating each other and themselves in the process, some gaining an advantage (or so it would appear) but nevertheless with all strategies and their material entities evolving - and clear evidence that intelligence is the driving force of evolution, as strategies are nothing if not intelligent.

And here's a teaser, as a portent of things to come:

http://www.micab.umn.edu/courses/8002/Rosenberg.pdf

Bacteria with Culture?

I'm presently reading the marvelous book, Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm, where on page 224, he refers to humans, and to variations in their phenotypes, as "dealing with a species that, through morality, can radically manipulate its own behavior." (Having inferred elsewhere that morality represents a system of cultural values shared more by humans than by their ancestral primates.)

But isn't that another way to describe how all us animals use intelligence to adapt our strategic "phenotypes" to new situations? And how organisms purposively (using their versions of "intelligence") drive their own evolutionary adaptations - or how they affect the odds of the selective process, whatever it will turn out to be?

Because we humans didn't invent morality. Morality in effect invented us. Life's basic strategy is one of "moral" choice making. Simply put, whatever reliably increases odds for survival is seen or felt on some level as right, prudent, and therefor moral. Whatever we have learned to trust as viable strategies, whether cultural or instinctive, have become the foundation of our human morality, (Often ironically hardening the concept to represent the essentially immoral, when changing circumstances should have otherwise required changing strategies - or reversing the labels when referring to the identical strategies of a predator or successful competitor.)

And coincidentally, I've just found this related article, Scientists Show Bacteria Can 'Learn' And Plan Ahead, at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090617131400.htm

Excerpts: "Their findings show that these microorganisms' genetic networks are hard-wired to 'foresee' what comes next in the sequence of events and begin responding to the new state of affairs before its onset."

"--- implying that bacteria have naturally 'learned' to get ready for a serving of maltose after a lactose appetizer."

"Further analysis showed that this anticipation and early response is an evolutionary adaptation that increases the organism's chances of survival."

"After several months, the bacteria had evolved to stop activating their maltose genes at the taste of lactose, only turning them on when maltose was actually available."

So, in my view, using the term "evolved" means they passed on to successor bacteria elements of a strategy that they had learned from experience. They remembered results of trials and errors and "calculated" diminished probabilities, formed expectations and reacted or declined to react accordingly, and enabled the replication of those revised strategies.

And with no ritualistic ceremony to stand on in the bargain.

(It wasn't intended that this should be a demonstration of the Baldwin effect, but a purposeful effort can serve more than one purpose. Check this article by one of our better philosophers: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ip/davidpapineau/Staff/Papineau/OnlinePapers/SocLearnBald.htm)

Riddle or Schmiddle

I've made mention of Daniel Dennett earlier on my blog, but I've not read any of his books cover to cover, so can't say I'm in any position to make a critical assessment of his thinking. (What he's quoted as having said about memes, however, makes me wonder about what else I'll find.) But I did note that in his reference to a riddle demonstrating that circumstances will sometimes fail to pinpoint the "real" cause of an event, it turns out he's really showing (perhaps inadvertently) that our present conception of proximate causation is in fact illusory.

(Proximate cause: A cause which immediately precedes and produces the effect, as distinguished from the remote, mediate, or predisposing cause.)

Except the riddle that follows doesn't quite demonstrate either aspect of this conjecture:

"A case in point is the classic law school riddle:
Everybody in the French Foreign Legion outpost hates Fred, and wants him dead. During the night before Fred's trek across the desert, Tom poisons the water in his canteen. Then, Dick, not knowing of Tom's intervention, pours out the (poisoned) water and replaces it with sand. Finally, Harry comes along and pokes holes in the canteen, so that the "water" will slowly run out. Later, Fred awakens and sets out on his trek, provisioned with his canteen. Too late he finds his canteen is nearly empty, but besides, what remains is sand, not water, not even poisoned water. Fred dies of thirst. Who caused his death? "

Dennett argues that there aren't any facts shown that will settle the issue.

But I presume to say otherwise.
Because the "real" question to ask is who caused Fred to die of thirst?
And that person was Dick, because regardless of what Tom did earlier, or Harry did later, it was Dick that fully emptied out the water. Harry's intentions in that respect were not causative as the water was already gone, it's future rate of leakage no longer to be determinant. But neither were Tom's intentions a part of the reality chain, because even if Fred had drunk the poisoned water, he might have died of the poison, but not of the thirst that Dick both intended to happen and was the proximate cause of that happening. Within the given set of facts, he was the most immediate producer of the given effect.

So I think at least two things are demonstrated: There is always, by definition, one pivotal cause that can be found proximate to an observed effect. But that even while you think it's been found, something or somebody may have hidden their own proximity to the effect.. Tom, for example, may have seen Dick pour out his poisoned water, and found it wise to keep silent - that silence nevertheless an act of omission that aided and abetted Dick's purposes. And did Harry really fail to look for signs of leakage?

So do we then revise or clarify the definition of proximity to exclude such sins of omission?Otherwise all events have the potential of being discovered, in some yet undiscovered manner, as proximate to all others.

What also seems going on is an attempt to confuse causality with responsibility, and that gets us into the right versus wrong category which has more to do with the influence of intent on causation than does proximity. But as we have seen here in our riddle, the links between cause and effect may not include intention. As Omar might have said, the moving finger can write to no particular purpose.

Would Tom have been right to keep silent, for example, or did all have some deviant role in promoting the hatred? And even if any of this had influenced Dick to act on his intent, it was Dick that made the real and final choice that determined and caused the nature of the death. Did he determine the entirety of its causation? No, but he put the events that sealed Fred's fate in what was to be (barring the intervention of "lucky" accident) their inalterable sequence.

Adding more reasons to assert that causation as a function of proximity IS as of now an illusory conceit.

And who would ever expect the false premise to be hidden in the question?

(And who would have thought I'd go to these ridiculous extremes to prove I solved the riddle?)

But to prevent this effort from being a total loss, here's a verse from the Rubáiyát that begs me to include it:

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

Maybe I'm Wrong But

Some of this carp from evolutionary biologists or sociobiologists about altruistic and selfish genes and related strategies has been getting on my nerves, as I've commented elsewhere. It's much too reminiscent of the behaviorists, and their theorizing - observing, rationalizing, testing, hypothe-sizing more or less in that order - with less concern for the why of the matter than the what.
Such as when first they assume altruism must be genetic, then find what appear to be "sacrificial" genes in microbes - and while they haven't found the same in humans, the assumption is that where there is sacrificial behavior, the genes must be there. (http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/msl016v1.pdf)
Case of this foolishness in point, their analogous comparisons between microbial, insect, and animal strategies. But microbes can evolve almost at will with strategies fitted to, or activating, small differences in physiology, resulting in one such strategic form of the species carrying out specific duties that benefit the survival of the species as a whole - the choice of carrying out the needed and specific assignments not being an option. The version of this dynamic in insects takes longer to evolve, and with more distinctive differences in the physiological aspects of these strategies, often with main or central physiological entities [queen & drone?] carrying the gene pool that reproduces all the rest.
And microbes and insects don't know or anticipate their fates in advance. What we and some other animals with our multiple choice short and long term stratagems may see as sacrifice will be faced as simply a duty for the strategic entity that risks destruction as part of its function. It's long term-schmong term where their goals and purposes are concerned.

I'll have more to say on this later.

In the meantime, as to whether altruistic genes could or should exist, you might find this an interesting read: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/internal.pdf

Also look at this excerpt from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Biological Altruism:
"Another popular misconception is that kin selection theory is committed to ‘genetic determinism’, the idea that genes rigidly determine or control behaviour. Though some sociobiologists have made incautious remarks to this effect, evolutionary theories of behaviour, including kin selection, are not committed to it. So long as the behaviours in question have a genetical component, i.e. are influenced to some extent by one or more genetic factor, then the theories can apply. When Hamilton (1964) talks about a gene which ‘causes’ altruism, this is really shorthand for a gene which increases the probability that its bearer will behave altruistically, to some degree. This is much weaker than saying that the behaviour is genetically ‘determined’, and is quite compatible with the existence of strong environmental influences on the behaviour's expression. Kin selection theory does not deny the truism that all traits are affected by both genes and environment. Nor does it deny that many interesting animal behaviours are transmitted through non-genetical means, such as imitation and social learning (Avital and Jablonka 2000)."

You Sure We Aren't There Yet?

Here's the summation from latest declaration posted by Dr. Wilson at Huff Post:
'No matter how the groups are formed--at random, on the basis of experience, or through the funnel of genetic relatedness--no matter how flexible the choice of behaviors--altruism is locally disadvantageous and requires higher-level selection to evolve. It doesn't matter whether you call it group selection, kin selection, reciprocity, game theory, selfish gene theory, or anything else. All evolutionary theories of social behavior include the original problem and solve the problem only by identifying factors that enable between-group selection to overcome within-group selection. As Ed Wilson and I concluded at the end of our review article titled "Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology", "Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary."'

Here's a series of unanswered replies from yours truly. I think my last is the closest yet to the mark I'm trying to hit.

royniles
What you actually are observing is the mechanism of reciprocity in action, and since it's built into all species genetically, with different strategic aspects, as well as being fine tuned by their cultures, what you think you have observed by these experiments and exercises fails in understanding that the process isn't simply one of calculating advantages of selfishness versus altruism. Because these calculations have already been arranged algorithmically through a species' evolutionary experiences, and are based on factors of behavior more varied than a simple selfish versus altruism dichotomy. And they will be measurably different for each species and each cultural milieu of that species. You, Trivers, and others that see these factors as the key to social behaviors are simply mistaken - but your modeling is set up to be a self-fulfilling demonstration of these prophetic assumptions.
Posted 05:11 AM on 05/13/2009

royniles
You make the mistake of assuming altruism and selfishness are separate genetically based traits. They are not. If anything, they are optional choices in a spectrum of strategic responses regulated by a combination of genetic drivers.
Everyone has access to them by individually different measure, just as we differ individually in personalities. You can assign students roles to play in games, but the fact that the results will be then predictable tells us something about the effectiveness of the strategies, but nothing much about how the actual differences in individual personalties molds these strategies in "real consequence" circumstances. And nothing much about the entire range of strategies that make up the reciprocity tool kit.
Posted 06:02 AM on 05/13/2009

royniles
Finally, this is the claim that really bugs me: 
"Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary."
This faux axiom is fashioned to seem the paradoxical solution to some heretofore unsolvable conundrum. Thus by presenting the paradox we are meant to infer there's wisdom in there somewhere.
But the essence of paradox is that what often passes for wisdom is only an illusion. In this one, you portray a group as something formed by individuals for mutually cooperative purposes. Yet we are then told that for such a group to be successful, a majority of individuals in that group would have to be essentially non-cooperative.
You say your models have shown this to be true, as if no other rational explanation is needed - in any case I can't find where you have analyzed the "why" for this being the case in any clear and unambiguous fashion. Simply stating it's a valid conclusion based on several years of applying lots of math doesn't eliminate the feeling that presenting such authorittive statements as a substitute for a clear and reasoned examination of the "why" of the matter is at best suspect.
Posted 09:24 PM on 05/13/2009

royniles
And did you ever consider that if selfishness beats altruism within groups, it's when the goal is not to achieve success as a group but to achieve success as an individual within the group - the purpose of the group formation itself being more or less incidental to the purposes of these individuals.
But when groups themselves compete, and the altruistic appear to beat the selfish, what you seemingly designate as an altruistic group is in actuality a group of individuals acting altruistically among themselves to create a group that will be, in effect, the more competitive. Making it therefor more selfish than the competing group of strategically selfish individuals, who by failing to cooperate for a common goal, lose as a group. 
And thus if you create groups that can work toward a goal as one individual, you have much the same dynamic in group competition as you do in indiviidual competition. When the goal is selfish, the selfish always win.
 Paradox dissolved.
Posted 03:01 PM on 05/16/2009

All life is about purpose and the strategies that evolve to best accomplish it. Groups may be formed for a purpose or find themselves in service of one by accident. Strategies are adapted accordingly. Anything not concerned with such purposes is irrelevant commentary.

We're Getting Close

The Huff Post now has further articles from Sloan Wilson concerning group selection. The latest essentially asks and answers the following: "What is the result of the modified haystack model? It turns out that altruism can evolve by group selection - even when the altruistic gene is initially rare in the total population. The model that led to the rejection of group selection is favorable for group selection after all."

I made a series of comments that I've decided to post here to remind myself I may be getting somewhere with my own take on the general subject (these had to be done in increments due to word limits imposed per post):

royniles
If in fact there is no such thing or nothing equivalent to either a selfish gene or an altruistic gene, but that these so-called traits rise from a combination of other "genes" that recombine differently in different types of groups and environments to achieve different results, then the whole modeling structure and the math devised to measure and predict its development become useless.
In my view, you have mistaken strategies that emerge in life forms as representing some sort of fixed algorithmic structures, readily heritable with predictable results that affect circumstances more than circumstances effect them. A bit too much like evolutionary psychology fantasma or meme mythologica. 
Posted 01:33 PM on 04/17/2009

royniles
Here's some excerpts (and my comments) from an article that references some work connected with your theories that shows to me some serious problems with assumptions:


"Why it Pays for Cheaters to Punish Other Cheaters
A new theory for why we put up with adulterers, steroid-using athletes and the mafia
ByMarina Krakovsky

It's the altruism paradox: If everyone in a group helps fellow members, everyone is better off yet as more work selflessly for the common good, cheating becomes tempting, because individuals can enjoy more personal gain if they do not chip in. But as freeloaders exploit the do-gooders, everybody's payoff from altruism shrinks.


(My comment: This presumes that there are just these two main alternatives, and even with that, not several mixtures of these operating successfully in groups.)


All kinds of social creatures, from humans down to insects and germs, must cope with this problem; if they do not, cheaters take over and leech the group to death. 


(My comment: Not so. Cheaters have to mimic cooperators and hide their strategies to succeed - if they proliferate, they can't stay hidden and can't receive the cooperation that depends on two-way trust to function.)
Posted 03:09 AM on 04/18/2009

royniles
More excerpts: 
What keeps the selfish punishers themselves from overexploiting the group? (Sloan) Wilson readily acknowledges this limitation of the selfish punishment model. Although selfish punishers allow cooperators to gain a foothold within a group, thus creating a mix of cheaters and cooperators, "there's nothing telling us that that mix is an optimal mix," he explains. The answer to that problem, he says, is competition not between individuals in a group but between groups. That is because whereas selfishness beats altruism within groups , altruistic groups are more likely to survive than selfish groups. So although selfish punishment aids altruism from within a group, the model also bolsters the idea of group selection, a concept that has seen cycles of popularity in evolutionary biology.

(My comment: That's basically silly, since all punishment is selfish. How this becomes part of a mechanism for group selection is not at all clear. Because first such a group has to first cooperate openly with other cheaters, and they will need to trust the members that will make up the dominant force needed to succeed as a competing entity. And rather than cheaters, they will have become rebels and/or predators.)
Posted 03:54 AM on 04/18/2009

David Sloan Wilson - Huffpost Blogger
Thanks to royniles for his interesting comments. Quickly...

1) The Scientific American article that he quotes profiles the work of my own recently minted PhD student, Omar Eldakar, who has developed a concept called selfish punishment that results in a mix of selfish and altruistic individuals on the basis of within-group selection. This mix is not necessarily optimal for the group, however. 

2) More generally, punishment is itself a form of altruism when the costs are born by the punisher and the benefits of social control are shared by everyone in the group. Economists call this a 2nd order public good. Causing others to provide a public good by rewarding and punishing them is itself a public good. 

3) It is a common modeling strategy to begin with the simplest possible assumptions and add complexity as needed. I have shown in numerous publications that more complicated models (e.g., genes at multiple loci with epistatic interactions) can shift the balance between levels of selection either way. 

Please remember the most basic point that I am trying to make in T&R VIII and IX: The sweeping claim that group selection is theoretically implausible, and that the search for plausible models had been exhausted by the 1980's, is ridiculous. I don't think that royniles disagrees with me on this point.
Posted 10:10 AM on 04/18/2009

royniles
No, I don't disagree with you there. I just disagree on the dynamics. There was another segment of the article that read: 
'What is more, altruism sometimes evolves without selfish punishment. In a software simulation, Eldakar and Wilson have found that as the cost of punishing cheaters falls, so do the number of selfish punishers. "When punishment is cheap, lots of people punish," Wilson explains. And among humans, there is no shortage of low-cost ways to keep others in line from outright ostracism to good old-fashioned gossip.'


My comment was to be: Note no mention at all of trust as a factor, and no details as to the nature of punishment, which always involves something that signals the withholding of trust, actively or passively. Even the so-called cheaters will join in with punishment because they are still posing as trustworthy and need to protect that image as well as protect themselves from the less prudent among them.


I greatly appreciate the response from Dr. Wilson, and will cut short further musings here - except to add that in my view computer modeling breaks down when one tries to simulate the sense of trust that is the glue allowing cooperative organisms to function at all successfully.
Posted 01:27 PM on 04/18/2009

Dance or Die to Evolution's Beat

"This everyday lizard has recently made the news by making a radical change in its behavior to deal with invasive fire ants.
When threatened, the Eastern fence lizard normally holds still so it can't be easily spotted by predators. Around fire ants, however, the tactic means the ants can more easily attack and kill the lizard.
So what's a lizard to do? Those who are oddly and fortunately wired to jiggle, jerk and escape fire ant attacks rather than sit there and be bitten to death are surviving and passing that ability on to their offspring.
Oh, and some lizards are also growing longer legs, which makes it harder for the ants to get to them. Our prediction? More and more lizards will turn up with longer legs."
Credit: Virginia Tech
http://dsc.discovery.com/earth/slideshows/rapid-evolution/index-05.html

I posted the above to illustrate my contentions posted below. Which would infer that "oddly and fortunately wired" doesn't so quickly occur by the fortunate stroke of serendipity. In my view, there's an "intelligent" feedback system involved in these changes that we have only begun to understand - or perhaps that should read only I have barely begun, etc..

But these systems, to which we owe the existence of instinctive behaviors, have doubtless been themselves evolving over the millennia into more and more complex and efficient functional structures.

Another Puff at Huff

In addition there's a very important factor in the evolutionary process that few biologists will mention out loud - it's not politically correct in scientific circles to refer to anything that may connect life with purpose. But in every organism, and presumably super-organisms as well, there's a form of intelligent intent to carry out an organism's purpose, without which no evolution at all would be possible. And life acquires that element of purpose by virtue of its very existence.

Aren't We There Yet?

I did end up in an exchange with Dr. Wilson, but not the one I had expected.

Posted 05:51 PM on 01/13/2009
- royniles
If groups such as superorganisms contribute to evolution, supposedly in addition to or separately from individual adaptations, it's likely that the "experience" of individuals within the group caused strategies to be developed that various individuals were able to pass on, just as we have always known that there were one or more mechanisms that had to be facilitating this. So it could be that in groups such as social insects, the strategies were passed on in some ways as individual traits combined with physical characteristics, while in some animals and especially humans, there were multiple strategies that were passed on, not necessarily in conjunction with physical differences in individuals.

Posted 11:37 PM on 01/25/2009
- David Sloan Wilson - Huffpost Blogger

Thanks for this comment. I want to emphasize that what I call "the original problem" in T&R II must be kept in mind to make sense of the group selection controversy. The central issue concerns how traits such as altruism can evolve when they are selectively disadvantageous within groups. These traits can appear "individual" in other respects. For example, altruism can be expressed by a single individual, can be coded by a single gene, its effect on the group can be additive without any non-linearities and when it evolves, the average altruist is more fit than the average non-altruist in the total population. Despite these elements of individuality, the evolution of altruism requires a process of group-level selection to overcome its selective disadvantage within groups. Discussions of group selection frequently lose sight of this elementary fact by focusing on other criteria for individuality. In this comment, for example, it is difficult to tell what traits are being identified, how the term "individual adaptations" is being used and distinguished from something that counts as "superorganisms," and so on.

Posted 01:03 PM on 01/25/2009
- royniles
The key to understanding how this works is to identify and understand the strategies themselves - a complicated process since without the understanding, the identification itself will be difficult. You almost have to go back to the beginning and look at the strategies that have allowed life to survive from the outset. You have to acknowledge, and perhaps you do, that strategies become experience and experience IS heritable. We are just beginning to fully realize that and understand something of the process.
When I speak of individual adaptations, I'm referring to the accepted view (and perhaps the one you are rightfully questioning) that evolution in effect involves accidental mutations that by a series of magical strokes of luck turn into genetic material that contains these exact strategies, therefor allowing the equivalent of these experiences to be passed on and become instinctive systems.
But if in fact we are simply (or not so simply) passing on the results of our various experiences, then that would include passing on our experiences within a particular group, and passing on the effects of those group dynamics on the individual members in turn. Because in the end the group can only be reborn through the rebirth of its individual members.

Groups where there is a "supreme" individual through which these strategies are, it seems, relegated to individuals whose forms are made to best apply them, will evolve in a different fashion from groups that are a collective of basically similar individuals and no "queen" is involved to determine their complete nature. And then we have to consider that there may be groups that use a queenlike process in ways we have yet to identify. But it still comes down to the necessity for one or more individuals to facilitate group selection.
As to the nature of these strategies, I'm working on it. And in a way, I've picked you to help me in that endeavor.


Posted 04:13 PM on 01/25/2009
- royniles
And if you offer a counter argument that groups could be reborn by a reconstitution of their individual memberships, that is of course a form of group selection if there are specific membership requirements within which the evolution took place. But I don't think that's what you will be proposing.

Is Dodging the Issue Cheating?

Evolutionary biologists talk a lot about cheating, but are unclear about the mechanics and utility of what they presume is an evolutionary trait or strategy. I am presumptuous enough to have been working on an essay about the mechanics involved, but not confident enough to publish any of it at this time.
However, I did recently comment on an upcoming article by David Sloan at the Huffington Post as follows:
"I predict you are going to discuss {George C} Williams' tentative observation that "no matter what your opponent does, you do better by cheating." Which, in light of the fact that everyone cheats to some extent, only means that the winner needs on average to be the better cheater.
Cheaters can also cooperatively out-cheat a group of less skillful cheaters. And then one needs to consider the shared purpose of each group in relation to the rewards involved and the short term versus long term consequences expected. Williams didn't go much into these aspects of what "better" entails, especially as it applies to humans and their like."

So stay tuned for further developments or lack thereof.

Did Russell plus Whitehead make a pair a docs?

Someone actually read the comments previously posted and inquired as to whether any writer of note (or any writer at all) had ever said anything that could even remotely trigger such speculative mumbo jumbo. So my reply was somewhat as follows:

I presume (that) you are aware of the writings of Alfred North Whitehead, scientist, mathematician and philosopher. I’m informed that the evolutionary history of life suggested to Whitehead that there is an ever present urge which can be interpreted as purposive. It can be seen as an aim to greater richness of experience or “higher modes of subjective satisfaction.” This doesn’t mean every step in evolution involved an increase in richness of experience of the entity being evolved. It does infer that from the foundations of the universe there was the possibility (not the inevitability) of all sorts of experience, including self-conscious experience that we know in ourselves. Whitehead comments that "Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study."

Actually I hadn't known until I looked it up that Whitehead had said anything remotely relevant to my musings here, but it's nice to feel I'm not as far out as others might have somewhat accurately assumed.

Although I mentioned Russell in the heading for no particular reason.

Reckless or Feckless Musings

The default or (as far as we're aware) unanticipated purpose of the universe may simply be to expand and increase its propensity for the creation of undirected or self-directed purposefulness.  

But, paradoxically, might we then anticipate the proliferation of separately purposeful mechanisms to arrive at a stage where their cross-purposes come into serious play - and hence the necessity for mutually recognized strategic directives? 

And should we then expect or at least hope for a further stage to be a largely cooperative universe consisting of the ultimate in superorganisms?

And if we aren't anywhere near this stage in this wee corner of the cosmos, can't we still presume that such supremo organisms already exist in other corners, given the endlessness of space and time?

Free Will - Choose It Or Lose It?

More thoughts on choices, freely made or otherwise, and as a follow-up to my previous post, The Devil Made Me Do It:

Even if all events are predetermined - purposefully or simply inevitably - our mechanisms as life forms are required to go through the motion of calculating probabilities involved in selecting from our available options before action is taken - and it's that process we call choice. To argue that the choice may not have been free and therefor not a choice at all begs the question of what to call the process, if not one of engineering that choice. So free or not, we are required to choose our actions, consciously, automatically or by any measure of predictability.
And can't we say, for example, that a mechanical object such as a computer makes choices?  Based on differences in input, different results have become, in effect, choices.

What does this have to do with the question of will?  Only a realization that choice and freedom of choice are not the same concept.

Because it seems that every time the question of free will comes up, for whatever current reasons, the profoundly silly idea also recurs that we may not then be responsible for our actions - and thus not deserving of punishment for things we couldn't have helped doing. But responsibility refers to choices made, and the basis for such choices that, if altered, could have brought different results.
And predetermined or not, the introduction of both possible and probable consequences, short or long term, as options available to our calculating processes, will effectuate commensurate changes in the outcome of those calculations and of any actions to follow.

So even if it has been "predetermined" that we will want to alter the prospect that certain behaviors will be attempted or repeated, we will nevertheless be able in some degree to affect that behavior of others accordingly, even if that is part of the process some would like to call their destiny.  Because most of us at least have sensed no predetermined motivation not to so  choose.

Free or not, choices will continue to be made and consequences considered in that making.

Pair of Dice Lost?

There were discussions at two sites recently concerning decision making in the brain and how the results might help us in answering the philosophical question of the existence or non-existence of free will.

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/04/unconscious_brain_activity_shapes_our_decisions.php

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?p=273

My comment on the first site and repeated on the other was as follows:

There’s no reason to assume we don’t have free will just because we aren’t conscious of the decision making process. There’s still a decision process that our brains are just as free, or not free, to make one way or the other (assuming they were at all free to make decisions to begin with). The ability to consciously choose what information to look at, that then becomes part of the basis for making unconscious inferences, is where the nexus of the free will dilemma sits. Are those conscious choices predetermined, or at least an inevitable consequence of physical laws governing cause and effect? That’s the real question, and there has so far been no reliable answer except that on balance we can expect to be better off by acting as if we have free will, regardless of our philosophies.

Comments on both sites inevitably turned to the themes dealt with in these philosophies - determinism, pre-determinism, non-determinism, inevitability, dualism, the supernatural (et cetera). I also referenced an article on the following site indicating physicists still could not agree on whether nature is inherently random or only appears that way:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726485.700-quantum-randomness-may-not-be-random.html

In no way do I intend to dig into any of these areas in this post, except to note I had also pointed to some aspects of these concepts directly related to any free will hypotheses:

Both dualism and determinism allow for the supernatural.
Free will and the uncertainty principle ultimately, in my view, don’t.
Because supernatural concepts will invariably posit an omniscient or omnipotent presence in nature.

One can agree or disagree, but for purposes of this post, I'm going to assume the above are correct (despite some odd quibbling that omniscience can give itself limits). And also assume we cannot be 100% sure that the universe is either determinate or indeterminate - even though we can be closer to sure it was not predetermined than that it was.

And I'm going to propose my own framework for the unraveling of this great "free will" conundrum. And it is not at all the same as, for example, the proposal by Daniel Dennett that “determination is not the same as causation, that knowing that a system is deterministic tells you nothing about the interesting causation - or lack of causation - among the events that transpire within it,” - thus making a distinction between determined and inevitable, although I can agree with that proposition. (Nor did I get any initial input from the John Searles of this world - the need to behave as if our wills were free has been with me since before most of these others were born.)

Here, in sum, is my proposition:

What we most likely have is a universe of non-determinant and non-predictable inevitability.

Why I propose that the above will lead us closer to an understanding of what has seemed an unresolvable paradox from any perspective will be a subject of subsequent posts. And I don't doubt that others can have made a similar proposal somewhere, but if so, I haven't found one and am not knowingly copying someone else's concept. Certainly my reasons will be my own as much as any of our thoughts are independent of their prior influences.

And will those reasons be as good as I may have deluded myself into believing they are? Can I really depend on a certain facility to unmask the obvious? Stay tuned.

Fast forward to some notes I made elsewhere relevant (I hope) to the above questions:

My view of the key to the free will versus inevitability paradox:
Even if the future was inevitable (and the uncertainly principle would argue otherwise), that "inevitability" could only be known in retrospect. And this only means that whatever could have been avoided, and resulted in a different "inevitability," was not avoided. But also this present state of being was doubtless the result of some things that were in fact avoided that would have otherwise led to a different "inevitability."

(People such as the philosopher Daniel Dennett would perhaps call this consistent with the views of a compatiblist. And looking at some of the material about him will no doubt inspire me to think of aspects of my proposed dissertation that I might not have otherwise - but that's the whole idea and legitimate purpose of any research of other's opinions.)

So the concept of inevitability does not in itself require that there is no free will - yet also does not eliminate the possibility that free will is nevertheless an illusion. It simply, in my view at least, affirms the necessity and the wisdom of continuing to act as if we do have that type of choice.

And in any case we are ultimately concerned with predictability, and in that endeavor we have to factor in a certain amount of probability as to cause and consequence and a certain understanding that our choices are constrained by the same limiting factors.

Eden's Paradox?

I had proposed earlier that we, and life forms before us, have evolved calculating mechanisms which, when predicting future consequences from an assessment of their causes, have assumptions built in that causation in nature is purposeful - that we have in effect the will of nature to contend with. I should have added at the time that these mechanisms (some call them cognitive modules) need to operate from the further and somewhat contradictory assumption that we have the freedom to contend with nature's will.

So we seem always at cross purposes when these conflicting "wills" inevitably complicate attempts at an accurate determination of the future. This may also add up to a certain built-in distaste for paradox. Especially as we can't know when or even if either of these assumptions is correct.

Let's complicate this even further: If the assumption of purpose has led to a belief in gods or spirits, then you are virtually compelled to consider them as part of the explanation for any questions concerning life and nature. You "can't not" involve them in any of your calculations. Worse, they will have become factual considerations - no longer possibilities.

So would you then be able to ignore both these "facts" and the assumptions that "made" them into facts in any attempt to re-examine the correctness of your original programming, or even accept there was such a program from the beginning? Just how do you question a "truth" you know for a "fact" to be self-evident?

It would appear there is only one answer to this and perhaps to any other paradox: You (and I) can know nothing to any degree of certainty unless we concede that nothing at all is certain. (Probably.)

But if we have a will that can contend with nature's offerings, we'd be wise to see that as both our and nature's purpose - as life forms are likely nature's only construct with both will and purpose.

And as they say here in the Garden of Hawaii, "that's why hard."

Hyperactivity Afoot

Dr. Wilson's response posted below, raised a question that made me think of a possibly helpful answer. I'll post that here as well.

"But if there ARE these biologically based presumptions that natural events have a purpose, then they have in effect posed questions about what is behind that purpose and why. So these detection devices may now appear as costly byproducts for reasons that involve their misuse over the ages as attempts to understand our own purposes as necessarily connected to some purpose in nature. Religious mythology has so far appealed to many of us as having the best answer, but it has given us answers to the wrong questions. Because in the process we have been unaware of what there is within us that has prompted these ongoing questions and their so far unsatisfactory answers.

If we can come to understand that we already have what amounts to a built in belief that nature has a set of laws that do effectively govern us and "punish" us when we don't follow directions, and to understand what is prompting the search for a purpose behind these laws, rather than for, perhaps, the laws that serve our own human purposes, then this detection device won't turn out to have been a costly byproduct after all.It will have eventually led us to asking the right questions and the possibility of answering them through a more scientific process."

Well, I know what I was trying to say, even if you don't.

But I do need to point out that after reviewing at least some of the literature, the concept Dr. Wilson referred to as the hyperactive agent detection device postulates that we do have a bias toward suspecting such causative agents at work, supernatural or otherwise, but this concept doesn't envision the origin of such bias being from the same biologically built in "premises" (perhaps as cellular algorithms) that I have proposed exist, and would have existed since calculating mechanisms devoted to predictions sprang into life (pun intended).

Better Belate than Never

OK, I got a reply from Dr. Wilson today that makes me feel a lot better about my ideas. Here is the response:

DavidSloanWilson
Dear RoyNiles, There is nothing dumb about the issues that you raise. Everyone should know that when I don't reply, it is for lack of time, not lack of interest, and certainly not because I regarded a comment as dumb. With respect to memes, they are defined in a variety of ways, some broad and others narrow, as I describe in my first blog. There is definitely a process of cultural evolution (not everyone agrees, in part because the concept has a complicated past), which involves some cultural variants spreading at the expense of others, but these cultural variants need not be like genes in every respect. See Richerson and Boyd's "Not By Genes Alone" for the best discussion of memes and cultural variants, in my opinion. I usually avoid the term, although I used it in my blog to say that religions (and other cultural systems) are good at managing their internal environments.
Continuing my response to your comment, your point about built-in calculating mechanisms is also well taken. Numerous evolutionists think along these lines, such as Scott Atran (In God's we Trust) and Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained). These are broadly classified as "byproduct" theories of religion, because the elements of religion are hypothesized to evolve by genetic evolution for reasons that have nothing to do with religion, and then become the basis of religion. Your idea (if I understand it correctly) is close to what is sometimes called a "hyperactive agent detection device." I regard these ideas as quite plausible but a major issue needs to be addressed: Even if these elements of religion are byproducts as far as genetic evolution is concerned, how are they functioning (or not functioning) in their CURRENT form? One possibility is that they continue to function as costly byproducts without delivering any benefits to the religious believer, like a moth to flame. Another possibility is that they have been woven into highly adaptive current-day religious systems. Most current-day adaptations were the byproducts (or exaptations, to use a word coined by Stephen Jay Gould) of past ages.

*****
There was no response to some of the other stuff that I had added - mainly to be provocative - and that's probably all to the good. It was the feedback in general that was sorely needed and has now been gratefully received.