Lawrence J. Kramer, for the Grice Club
What follows is largely speculation. I don’t have the background to say any of it authoritatively. But you can look up anything that looks like a fact and think through for yourself anything that looks like a guess. This post is essentially a thought experiment in the logic of intergenerational persistence, so if anything doesn’t correspond to how things really are out there, the discrepancy is relevant only to the extent that it is inconsistent with the logic it is adduced to illustrate.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with HPG. I’ll leave that to JLS, who is quite creative on that score. I’m just trying to stimulate his pattern matcher to see what he sees.
In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins argues that genetic material is what replicates, so what matters from an evolutionary perspective is how selective pressures affect the replication chances of relevant genetic material. That’s all he argues. He does not argue that genes are “selfish” or that they do or do not “cooperate,” whatever that would mean. He calls them “selfish” because they, and not their carriers evolve, because they, and not their carriers are the product of natural selection.
This distinction is difficult to grasp because it seems that a gene cannot survive if its carrier does not. And, indeed, for most genetic material, reproduction of its individual carriers is a pretty good proxy for genetic material’s replication. Think of the genetic material responsible for any trait bowler in my spot-bowling model. The genetic material rolls its ball at the “spot” of individual survival. If the genetic material hits the spot – if the individual reproduces – the genetic material gets to replicate. But it is the replicating genetic material, not the reproducing carrier, that Dawkins would describe as “the fittest.”
To illustrate that individual reproduction is just one spot on Darwin’s bowling alley, Dawkins offers up a bit of genetic material that rolls its ball over another spot. That material programs an individual to sacrifice itself. What type of genetic material gets to replicate if its expression prevents the individual who carries it from reproducing? The answer, the key fact underlying The Selfish Gene, is any genetic material that the altruist shares with a population that is saved by the individual carrier’s altruism.
Altruism permits a trait (including, but not limited to the trait of altruism) to persist if, and only if, (i) the trait is widely distributed in the population (so that saving the population saves the trait), and (ii) acts of altruism are necessary to save the population from an otherwise extinguishing threat. But these two facts are not independent. If altruism is necessary to save a population, then that fact creates a selective pressure in favor of a style of reproduction that causes the trait of altruism to be widely spread in the population.
Bees are altruistic – individuals sting and die, and the colony survives on account of it. Bees live in hives. They do not run from threats; they drive threats away. Nor do bees’ enemies kill one bee at a time. Bees’ “enemies” are, for example, bears, who want the honey and don’t care how many bees they discommode to get it. So, in some situations, the colony of bees will survive only if individual worker bees sacrifices themselves.
All of a worker bee’s traits, including a fortiori, altruism, are widely distributed in the population. Worker bees are closely related. They have the same mother and many the same father, who has only one set of chromosomes and so generates uniform sperm. One can speculate, then about a feedback loop: the genetic material encoding a form of reproduction (genetic homogeneity) that promotes altruism persists in bees because they live a life that depends on altruism and the genetic material encoding their reproductive strategy (which is preserved by altruism) assures that they have the genetic material to be altruistic. The whole thing fits together like a geodesic dome. (Bee genetics is quite complex, and if you’re wondering why the survival of “sterile” worker bees matters to the persistence of their traits, it’s because worker bees actually produce drones – don’t ask – so their genetic material does replicate.)
Unlike bees, antelopes are not altruistic – they run, and the lion takes the hindmost. But the lion only eats one antelope at a time. If antelopes were altruistic, the sacrifice of one antelope would provide no benefit to the population as a whole. Thus, the homogeneous reproductive style of bees, essential to the spreading and persistence of altruism, and, therefore, to survival of the genetic material encoding that reproductive style, offers nothing to the antelope. A more otherwise adaptive form of “normal” sexual selection and reproduction emerges among them, and the genetic material encoding flight and speed, not sacrifice, is rewarded with replication.
Relating this discussion to PERE vs. Cooperativeness, I believe that Efficiency and Cooperativeness are both useful traits and that humans carry genetic material enabling both. (On the latter, see, e.g., Schermer, The Science of Good and Evil.) Cultures have memes that reinforce those traits to varying degrees. Gould argues in one of the pieces that Smith complained about that memes don’t respond to natural selection, as they evolve too quickly. I think he missed the point that competitive selection, of which natural selection is merely one example, operates at all levels of adaptation, whether Darwinian or Lamarckian.
In one of their cutest bits, the Smothers Brothers are singing a song (“Boil that Cabbage Down, Boys,” I think). At an appropriate point, Dicky shouts to his brother, in the way musicians do, “Take it, Tommy!” and Tommy, feigning complete surprise, responds “No.” Well aware of that example, I say “Take it, JL!”
Posts
Excellent, L. J.
ReplyDeleteI think we've commented on this elsewhere, but for the record here is chapter and verse. In chapter 8 of _Grice_, 'Metaphysics and value' Chapman quotes Grice on Dawkins. Dawkins is incidentally, omitted from the name index: it's p. 162. Well, I'm not surprised it's omitted, because Grice failed to mention the author of the book.
Chapman writes:
"(For Grice) every living creature [a pirot. JLS] possesses a set of capacities, the fulfilment of each of which is a necessary condition for the continued possession of that capacity, and indeed of all others. Here, the results of Grice's interest in biology are apparent. On the plane on the way to Oxford in 1979 [to deliver the John Locke lectures. JLS] he had been reading books on the topic. In 1981 he made a note to himself: '_Read_ [emphasis Grice's] "Selfish Gene", "chimp" lit.' In other notes from this period he lists 'mandatory functions', including 'Reproduction, Ingestion, Digestion, Exretion, Repair, Breath (why?) Cognition."
----
As I wrote in the Gricean Gene, this blog, Popper saw Dawkins as indeed along the wrong track in finding that the gene was not selfish but cooperative (or altruist) But I think I prefer Kramer's idea of being egoless.
The problem to me with dealing with these areas is that I see no _reason_. I.e. I may see a pattern, as we may say, of a _ratio_ essendi, but I do not see the reason cognoscendi. To me, reason and rationality start with a certain level of pirots, and so I cannot see what can be reasonable or unreasonable with a bee hive or a 'school' of antelopes. But I'll try to elaborate.
Grice did try to formulate certain general 'pirotological' stages, but he was so Aristotelian it hurts: e.g. first pirots do not move (plants), then pirots move (animals). Then pirots internalise content (not bees, but antelopes). Wharton has examined bees in his book on non-verbal behaviour but in connection with their communication habits.
Re: the sacrifice etc., that's pretty much a general strand, right? I mean, we are not being asked to sacrifice every day, but the occasion may well arise.
As for the moral global aspects of human cooperation, I don't see that the Griceans can say much! But they should!
I see Kramer has commented on my thread on the bowling, so I'll have a look at that and perhaps return with some ideas to this thread!
--- At least we know that Grice thought he had to read Dawkins. And we see that T & C call Gould an anti-Gricean scientist (but we know they were exaggerating and he should be let to rest in peace). Etc.
I retrieved from CHORA (a philosophy listserv managed by Clark where I contribute often) the stages of evolutionary pirots, as per Grice. As you see, he is concerned with pirots already endowed with levels of sociability, in a way, and he is willing to provide evolutionary justification to more advanced ways of 'social being' as it were.
ReplyDeleteThe first three stages of pirotic evolution.
ReplyDeleteStage 0. We start with a Pirot (P) equipped to satisfy unnested judging and willing (i.e. whose contents do _not_ involve judging or willing). 1ST ORDER. It would be advantageous to P if it could have judging and willing,
which relate to its own judging or willing. Such a pirot could be equipped to control or regulate its own judgings and willings. It will presumably be already constituted so as to conform to the law that CAETERIS PARIBUS
if P wills that p and judges that ~p, if it can, it makes it the case that p [in its 'mind']. To give it some control over its judgings and willings, we need only extend the application of this law to its judging and willing. We equip it so that caeteris paribus IF A wills that it doesn't will that p and judges that it does will that p (if it can) it makes it the case that it does NOT will that p (and we somehow ensure that sometimes it CAN do this). Grice writes: "It may be that the installation of this kind of control would go hand in hand with the installation of the capacity for evaluation; but I need not concern myself with this now."
2nd ORDER. P2's intentional efforts depend on the motivational strength of its considered desires at the time of action. So far we have been seeing the process by which conflicting considered desires motivate action as a broadly CAUSAL process, a process that reveals MOTIVATIONAL strength. But P3 might itself try to weigh considerations provided by such conflicting desires in DELIBERATION about the pros and cons of various alternatives. In the simplest case, such weighing treats each of the things desired
as a prima facie justifying end. In the face of conflict it weighs such desired ends,
where the weights correspond to the motivational strength of the associated, considered desire. The outcome of such DELIBERATION will match the outcome of the CAUSAL motivational processes envisioned in our description of P2. But since the weights it invokes in such deliberation correspond to the motivational strength of the relevant considered desires (though perhaps not to the motivational strength of the relevant considered desires), the resultant activities will match those of a corresponding P2 -- *all* of whose desires, we are assuming, are considered. To be more realistic we might limit ourselves to saying that P2 has the capacity to make the transition from unconsidered to considered desires but does not always do this. But it will keep the discussion more manageable to simplify and to suppose that *all* its desires are considered.
3RD ORDER. We shall not want these pirots to depend, in each will act in ways that reveal the motivational strength of considered desires at the time of action, but for P3 it will also be true that in some (though not all) cases it acts on the basis of how it weights the ends favoured by its conflicting, considered desires. It is time to note that P3's considered desires will concern matters that cannot be achieved simply by action at a single time. It may eg want to nurture a vegetable garden, or build a house. Such matters will require organized and coordinated action that extends over time. What it does now ill depend not only on what it now desires
but also on what it now expects it will do later given what it does now. It needs a way of settling now what it will do later given what it does now. The point is even clearer when we remind ourselves, what we have so far
ignored, that P3 is not alone. It is, we may assume, one of some number of such creatures; and in many cases it needs to
COORDINATE what it does with what others
do so as to achieve ends desired by all participants, itself included.
The fourth stage of pirotic evolution:
ReplyDeleteThese costs are magnified for a creature whose various plans are interwoven so that a change in one element can have significant ripple effects that will need to be considered.
So let us suppose that the general strategies P4 has for responding to new information about its circumstances are sensitive to these kinds of costs. Promoting in the long run the satisfaction of its considered desires and preferences. P4 is a somewhat sophisticated planning agent but it has a problem. It can expect that its desires and preferences may well change over time
and undermine its efforts at organizing and coordinating its activities over time. Perhaps in many cases this is due to the kind of temporal discounting emphasized by (among others) G. Ainslie. So for example P4 may have a plan to exercise every day but may tend to prefer a sequence of not exercising
on the present day but exercising all days in the future, to a uniform sequence the present day included. At the end of the day it returns to its earlier considered preference in favour of exercising on each and every day. Though P4, unlike P3, has the capacity to settle on prior plans or plaices concerning exercise, this capacity does not yet help in
such a case.A creature whose plans were stable in ways in part shaped by such a
no-regret principle would be more likely than P4 to resist temporary temptations.
Higher stages of pirotic evolution:
ReplyDelete5TH ORDER. So let us build such a principle into the stability of the plans of P5 whose plans and policies are not derived solely from facts about its limits of time, attention, and the like. It is also grounded in the central concerns of a planning agent with its own future, concerns that lend special significance to anticipated future REGRET.
So let us add to P5 the capacity and disposition to arrive at such hierarchies of higher-order desires concerning its "will".
6TH ORDER. This gives us a new creature, P6. There is a problem with P6, one that has been much discussed. It is not clear why a higher-order desire--even a higher-order desire that a certain desire be one's "will" -- is not simply one more desire in the pool of desires [Berkeley God's will problem] Why does it have the authority to constitute or ensure the agent's (that is, the creature's) endorsement or rejection of a FIRST-ORDER desire? Applied to P6 this is the question of whether, by virtue solely of its hierarchies of desires,
it really does succeed in taking its own stand of endorsement or rejection of various FIRST-ORDER desires. Since it was the ability to take its own stand that we are trying to
provide in the move to P6, we need some response to this challenge. The basic point is that P6 is not merely a time-slice agent.
It is, rather, and understands itself to be,
a temporally persisting planning agent,
one who begins, and continues, and completes temporally extended projects. On a broadly Lockean view, its persistence over time consists in relevant psychological continuities (e.g. the persistence of attitudes of belief and intention)
and connections (eg memory of a past event, or the later intentional execution
of an intention formed earlier).
Certain attitudes have as a primary role
the constitution and support of such Lockean continuities and connections.
In particular, policies that favor or reject various desires have it as their role to constitute and support various continuities
both of ordinary desires and of the politicos themselves. For this reason such policies are not merely additional wiggles in the psychic stew. Instead, these policies have a claim to help determine where the agent, i.e. the temporally persisting agent, stands with respect to its desires. Or so it seems to me reasonable to say.
Highest stages: the pirots starting to look like us:
ReplyDelete7TH ORDER. So the psychology of P7 continues to have the hierarchical structure of pro-attitudes introduced with P6. The difference is that the higher-order pro-attitudes of P6 were simply characterized as desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal was made to the distinctive species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like attitudes. That is the sense in which, following Grice, the psychology of P7 is an "extension of" the psychology of P6. Let us then give P7 such higher-order pollicies with the capacity
to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over time. P7 exhibits a merger of hierarchical and planning structures. Appealing to planning theory and ground in connection to the temporally extended
structure of agency, to be one's "will". P7 has higher-order policies that favor or challenge motivational roles of its considered desires. When P7 engages in deliberative weighing of conflicting, desired ends it seems that the assigned weights should
reflect the policies that determine where it stands with respect to relevant desires. But the policies we have so far appealed to-policies concerning what desires are to be one's will --do not quite address this concern. The problem is that one can in certain cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and yet these
not be policies that accord what those desires are for a corresponding justifying role in deliberation.
We get to the 'very intelligent, rational pirot": US.
ReplyDelete8TH ORDER. A solution is to give our creature--call it P8--the capacity to arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated by a desire by
way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in deliberation, a justifying end for action. P8 has policies for treating (or not treating)certain desires as providing justifying ends--as, in this way,
reason-providing--in motivationally effective deliberation. Let us call such policies
self-governing policies--I will suppose that these policies are mutually compatible and do not challenge each other. In this way P8 involves, as Grice would want, an "extension"
of structures already present in P7. The grounds on which P8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such self-governing policies will be many and varied. We can see these policies as crystallizing complex pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in other policies or desires. These self-governing policies may be tentative and will normally NOT be immune to change. If we ask what P8 values in this case, the answer
seems to be: what it values is constituted in part by its higher-order self-governing policies. In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise even right now, and even given that it has a considered (though temporary) preference to the contrary.
Unlike P3-5, what P8 now values is not simply a matter of its present, considered desires and preferences. NOW THIS MODEL OF P8
SEEMS IN RELEVANT RESPECTS TO BE A (PARTIAL) MODEL OF US. So we arrive at the conjecture that one important kind of valuing of which
we are capable involves, in the cited ways, both our first-order desires and our higher order self-governing policies. In an important sub-class of cases our valuing involves reflexive polices that are both first-order
policies of action and higher-order policies to treat the first-order policy as reason providing in motivationally effective deliberation. This may seem odd. Valuing seems normally to be a first-order attitude. One values honesty, say. The proposal is that an important kind of valuing involves higher-order policies. Does this mean that, strictly speaking, what one values is itself a desire--not honesty, say, but a desire for honesty? No it does not. What I value in the present case is honesty; but, on the theory, my valuing honesty in art consists in certain higher-order self-governing policies. An agent's reflective valuing involves a kind of higher-order willing.
This scheme sounds cybernetic rather than biologic to me. But then, I don't know what process this staging of "pirots" is supposed to model - or what question this thread is supposed to answer - so I don’t know how germane my comments may be.
ReplyDeleteRather than "judging" and "willing," I would start with "detecting difference" and "reacting" thereto. Here’s an edited version of something I wrote some time ago:
1. In the beginning…
The earliest life forms had four basic abilities: nourishment, motion, reproduction, and a mecahanism [not worthy of the terms "judging" and "willing"] to trigger the first three. If the thing detects that the water is warmer than it should be, it moves. If it detects that it lacks nutrients, it absorbs them. If it detects whatever difference from “normal” prompts it to divide, it divides. Detecting deviation from a prior state is pretty much the only thing the creature can do by way of experiencing its environment. And restoring things to the ideal state – eliminating the “difference” – is the only useful consequence of all its action.
2. Adding complexity
Simple organisms consist of one cell. More complex ones consist of more than one cell. But there is no reason to think that the cells in a multi-celled organism have any more talent than the ones that make up a one-celled thingy. Indeed, the opposite would seem true: a one-celled organism has to be able to eat, run, and divide, whereas the cells of more complex organisms may have only to eat and do the one thing the organism needs them to do, with an immune system to defend it and a factory like the bone marrow or spleen to make new ones when the old one’s die.
What those cells do is react to differences in their environment from some resting state. For example, an antibody cell might have a receptor that “identifies” a particular pathogen. When that receptor “receives,” the immune cell becomes different from the way it was before contact. The difference triggers action. Similar mechanisms set other cells into action. Lots of cells have receptors for proteins manufactured in the body. When those receptors register “difference,” the cells react in a way that, by its effect at the micro or macro level, will restore the status quo ante, when the receptors were not being activated.
Detecting and eliminating difference is an evolutionary strategy. The selective pressure on an organism that cannot get hungry, scared, or horny is tremendous. But reacting to difference is such an effective evolutionary strategy that it operates all the way up the evolutionary chain.
But I don’t want to overstate the case for “natural” reaction. One of civilization’s most important functions is to moderate the reaction to difference so that the fruits of mutual cooperation among us and “others” can be created and enjoyed. Thus, detecting the obsolescence of a given response to a given difference is a form of detecting a difference from an ideal state. Cooperation is so antithetical to the competitive nature of, well, nature, that it requires special attention, and so it is, essentially, what civilization is about.
A solution is to give our creature--call it P8--the capacity to arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated by a desire by way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in deliberation, a justifying end for action.
ReplyDeleteP9 - the capacity to arrrive at policies that express its commitment to arrive at the capacity to arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated by a desire by
way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in deliberation, a justifying end for action.
P10...
This thing started with nested judging and willing that shouted "infinite regress," and it seems to me to end there as well. Don't we have to develop a capacity for self-reference, so that we understand that wanting to want to do something is an instance of wanting to do something? And having developed that capacity, aren't many of the "stages" described about just the predictable realizations of a self-referentially capable pirot?
But again, I don't really grok pirots as models, and I'm hoping that my critiques may reveal how I don't grok them and enable JL to explain better the role they play.
You are perfectly right. And I'm going to read your thoughts on the one-cell thing, nourishment, etc, which seem to have a better biological grasp about thing than the pirot-project. Myself, with the aid of Ian Cargan, have developed pirotic-processes (elsewhere, in fact, in CHORA) for the LOWER stages, so I'll see if I can retrieve them. I.e. pirots such as plants, one-cell pirots, etc.
ReplyDelete----
The Grice approach as cybernetic.
Yes, you are right. The programme comes from just ONE lecture he gave in 1975 but which was luckily reprinted by J. Baker when she edited Grice's posthumous lectures in 1991. So it's now in book form, under Conception of Value (Oxford).
Grice is clear that he is into Aristotelian philosophy, and wants to analyse the 'soul' or LIFE, as a 'gradual series', I think he calls it. (I have not been able to find the Aristotelian for this, but yes the context: Aristotle says that 'life' gets to be understood as a 'sequence' -- like 'number'). In this context your Dawkins examples of antelopes and bees may confuse the Gricean (or me), in that they seem like stabled forms of life, while we want to trace the evolution of man (not how stable bees and antelopes have become -- via their egoless genes).
I cannot see how the success in evolutional stablity of bees can say things to _us_: although it says things to Italians: I recall an old Italian film called The Bee Hive, I think -- where the male actor is just the victim of the queen bee: he is kept as a drone. Apparently, it's a very cruel film. I cannot see a direct application of the antelope thing to human life, etc.
---
Cybernetic vs. biologic:
Grice was careful to consider different things here. He sees (as a philosopher, or theorist) as a DESIGNER (God, actually -- this is part of what theorists call the 'ideal-observer' approach, where one sees traits of society and looks for their rationale).
But Grice was clear that his 'cybernetic' designs had to have a basis in what
THE ENGINEER
might want to say. So, he is like saying that whatever he says about pirotic advances or advancements, they have to be provided, to use your wording, 'neural' schemata. In the case of higher order pirots, it's just a sort of abstract neural schema we intend: we cannot think that a flea will have the abilities of your P10 (I loved him) although they have been seen to dance (if not sing).
In the lower stages (plants, etc, maybe bees and antelopes) the biological requisites involve MORE than the brain: notably the LEGS in the antelope!
So I'll re-read your one-cell, nourishment, thing which do seem like they connect very well with Grice's thoughts on the 'mandatory' functions of biological units -- (the idea as to how to define life, as in "A brief history of life" also seems Gricean). And one may think (as I do) that Grice is waxing metaphorical when calling these 'mandatory' (excretion). Commanded by who? Etc.
Further to Grice vis a vis people like Dawkins or Gould. Grice seems to REJECT simplistic PHYSIOLOGICAL (mechanical) explanations. The rason for this rejection: ADAPTIVENESS. He writes:
ReplyDelete"the adaptiveness of pirots may well be such as to make it very much in the cards that different specimens of the same species even may, under different environmental pressures, develop different sub-systems (even different sub-systems at different times) as the
physiological under-lay of the same set of
psychological instantiables, and that a given
physiological property may be the correlate in
one sub-system of a particular psychological
instantiable, while in another it is correlated with a different psychological instantiable, or with none at all. Such a possibility would mean that a physiological property which was, for a particular specimen at a particular time correlated with a particular psychological instantiable , would be neither a NECESSARY nor a sufficient condition for that instantiable."
For Grice, for a pirot to live is for the pirot to operate. And what are evolutionists concerned BUT with 'life' (who say they are not?)
Grice writes: "An operant may be for present purposes to be taken to be a pirot for which there is a certain set of operations
requiring expenditure of energy stored in the operant, a sufficient frequency of each operation in the set being necessary to maintain the operant in a condition to perform any in the set (i.e. to avoid becoming an ex-operant). Specific differences within such sets will determine
different types of operant [vis a vis] their
survival (continued operancy). If a specimen
is not survival-oriented, there is no basis for supposing it to exist at all." (Grice, p. 37)
"Some operants, because the sources are
not CONSTANTLY ABUNDANT, have to locate
those sources -- and probably a good deal later in the sequence we'll have OPERANTS which are MAXIMALLY equipped to COPE with an INDEFINITE variety of physiologically TOLERABLE environments."(p. 38).
It's at that point that Grice cares to quote from Aristotle on the 'developing series' for which I have not been able to find the Greek.
ReplyDelete-- For Aristotle it was an alternative to definition per genus et differentia specifica. The 'soul' he said is VEGETAL-ANIMAL-HUMAN. Where each refers to a 'developing series' as per natural numbers -- and NOT as species of the same genus.
On p. 39 he notes that what philosophers mean by TELEOLOGICAL (final cause) could very well ("in a more positivistic vein", he says) be called "SURVIVAL-UTILITY" (p. 39).
Then he deals with the Camus conflict, "Why go on surviving?" Grice notes, optimistically, that the 'pirots' which are operants like
that, "will see themselves with a view to their own surivival"
-- not just in a selfish way?
"In virtue of the operant's rational
capacities and dispositions each specimen of the species will have both the capacity
and the desire to raise the further question,
'Why go on surviving?' "and (I hope) will be able to JUSTIFY his continued existence
by endorsing (in virtue of the afore-mentioned rational capacities and dispositions) a set of criteria for evaluating ends."
"Such ends will not be necessarily
restricted to concerns for himself. The justification of the pursuit of some system of ends would, in its turn, provide
a justification for his continued existence."
He does mention 'reproduction' at one point,
metaphorically,
"If an operant is not survival-oriented, there
is no bassi for supposing it to exist al all.
If operants are to have the staying power
(and other endowments) required for
specimen production, the specimen being
of the same type, must be given the same
attributes, some provision for the continuation
of the type is implicit."
--- Regarding communication, "it would be advantageous to pirots if they
could have judgings and willings which
relate to the judgings or willings of other pirots".
"To minimise the waste of effort ..."
they will have privileged access to their
judgings.
"There will be room for counter-examples: in
self deception, for example".
He reaches the 'talking pirot' on p. 48.
-- cfr. the chatter class! (recall that 'pirot' while used by Carnap to mean 'anything' Grice finds homophonic enough with Locke's "parot" -- talking parot.
---But he is VERY CONCERNED with pirot-physiology, which is the topic of
the ENGINEER. Indeed, he has a polemic between the ENGINEER and the GENITOR
(or designer) -- who'd better keep an eye on the real world -- who wants his designs to be futile, he says.
But the ENGINEER may think he is _God_, and criticise the Genitor:
"You are the last gasp of Primitive Animism: the attempted perpetuation of the myth that animals are animate!"
Grice considers plants -- living things indeed, but no psychology needed.
Just physiology. These don't move. Then we have pirots who adopt 'postures' (some 'plants') indeed, then movable pirots, etc.
In her notes, Chapman (Grice, Macmillan 2006) notes that Grice was obsessed with physiological processes, or rather the point of them:
breathe -- why?
excretion
--- he wrote on a little card while travelling to Oxford
-- So as Kramer and Grice point out: for each adaptive function there _is_ a rationale and if we are able to reproduce that rationale in our thought, that may be the way to prove how egoless was our gene, etc.
Sorry this is picky, I'd love to read through this stuff properly and make a real contribution but this is not the moment for me to get into this.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as to what Dawkins said, according to my
notes:
"Dawkins claims that genes can be expected to have the quality of ruthless selfishness and that, except in special and limited circumstances this leads the individuals carrying the genes to be selfish."
This is a note on the stuff right at the beginning of "The Selfish Gene" so I don't think it would be
hard to substantiate if that were necessary.
So I think he is more radical than you take him to
be.
I don't know whether this has any sigificance for
the Grice connection, but I think it is significant
for an understanding of Dawkins.
Roger Jones
A good way to trace a Gricean is by using the pirot as a silver herring (red herrings are fake, silver herrings are genuine herrings). So, if an author uses 'pirot' he is Gricean enough. A google search for 'pirots' and evolution retrieves one cite from Levinon's monumental _Conversational Implicature_, MIT, p. 29 googlebooks:
ReplyDelete"It is quite clear that pirots ... would find a way around the articulatory bottleneck
(just as, AS A MATTER OF FACT, *evolution* has)".
(inference is cheap, articulation is not).
Etc. This is back to the PERE: principle of economy of rational effort. As it happens, I'm not sure articulation is not cheap, inference is:
A: Did C see the programme last night?
B: He was in NYC (+> No)
B's reply seems faulty on a couple of fronts: it depends on the common-ground status (as Grice calls it, regarding NYC having been blacked out yesterday -- and I'd like to know from what time to what time? What time was the programme?). Plus, if the "No" is only IMPLICATED, it can be 'defeated' or cancelled. So, inference may be cheap (which I doubt) but articulation, knowing some pirots, may well be cheap too, etc. And what you do say it's hardly cancellable in ways what you implicate is. Note that Grice introduces the PERE precisely in terms of his explanation for 'implicit reasoning'. Although he thinks syntactic parsings, etc. are also a matter of 'implicit' reason, i.e. rational effort econmised via the substitute of an explicit pattern. For we have to formulate the PERE at some time. (I think it's done on the blog, but I'd need to search: it means that when there is an implicit way of achieving a goal, which by virtue of its being implicit will cost less than the equivalent explicit, provided the stakes are not too high, the implicit pattern or course is to be preferred on economy grounds. Etc. We don't NEED to make explicit every step in a reasoning chain. In fact, Grice notes that mathematicians (Hardy) would almost NEVER make explicit all the steps in reasoning. His work on implicature is another application, but again, as I say, some inferences are 'defeasible': "He was in NYC, but I do not mean to imply that he may not have seen the programme, as I _THINK_ he has an auto-generated tv set that will allow him to connect with a solar-equipped thing that allowed him, no doubt, not to miss "Star Trek"", or something.
Kramer will reply to Jones's comment. I would think Kramer may agree with me that Dawkins could well do to read a treatise on analogical predication.
ReplyDelete_ego_ is 'self', as Kramer notes. But -less is more. I.e. egoless does not mean that the gene doesn't have an ego (or an inflated ego) but rather that the question of 'ego' as applied to 'gene' does not apply.
'self-ish', on the other hand, does not trade on 'ego' but 'self'. But what other antonym for 'selfish' can you think of? Selfless? I don't think Kramer is saying, alla Carnap, that Genes are Cooperative. As I said in "Gene Kelly, The Cooperative Gene: The Gricean Gene: Was Grice Kelly", THIS BLOG. Popper is waxing rhetorical when he says that genes cooperate.
Anyone who's seen Woody Allen's "How to be a spermatozoa and die in the attempt" (Everything you wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask) knows that genes _CAN_ be, metaphorically, selfish.
What _background_ does Dawkins have? Is he careful with his choice of words? Does he care? Are scientists to abide by transcategorial, analogical predications like that?
What Jones notes is very intersesting, because an individual CAN be said to be selfish (a bee, an antelope, a lion, a man, a human, a person, a tiger). When is the _ego_ constituted. Why do pirots need to _gaggle_. Is the author of "The evolutionary basis of cooperation" a closet Dawkinsian? Etc.
Roger - I think your notes also answer your question. You write:
ReplyDelete"Dawkins is very definite about what he means by 'selfish'. Something is selfish if it behaves in such a way as to increase its own chances of survival at the expense of some others chances of survival."
There is no animus in Dawkins's use of the term; it's all about behavior. I agree that the term is pernicious because of the connotation of moral judgment, but, as JL might say, the implication of such judgment is canceled by the explicit definition. I'm not sure how "ruthless" applies in this context - I don't think a gene can be ruthless any more than a decent man can stop beating his wife. The kind of selfishness Dawkins defines can neither show nor withhold mercy, as it has no will.
I do not see a logical nexus between the selfishness of genes and the selfishness of their carriers, even under Dawkins's definition. I see a congruence in fact between survival of the individual and survival of its genome (as in the antelope case), and because such selfishness is usually the most effective way to boost one's genome's chances, I am not surprised that most individuals are selfish most of the time. I don't know that Dawkins is claiming more than that. (JL - Genes are egoless and humans are egoistic, but the adjective "selfish" as used by Dawkins applies to each without regard to ego, as Dawkins's definition allows only for behavior and not animus.)
I like your point that Dawkins's argument is a tautology. I have always thought the same thing - that all he is saying is that genes persist because they persist. Yet so much talk about evolution seems to focus on the individual or the group that a reminder of the tautology seems worth the trouble. It's as if people have been doing geometry on the assumption that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and some guy comes along and says "Dudes, the whole is EQUAL to the sum of its parts." The typical response should be a round of slapped foreheads, but instead it's "prove it," and we get books like The Selfish Gene.
On the other hand, the tautology does explain why altruism persists even though altruists die. You've seen parlor tricks where you pick a number, do some arithmetic on it, and the trickster tells you the result without knowing the number. How did he do it? Well, he took advantage of some tautologies about casting out nines or some such. It is not a waste of time to point those tautologies out, because not everyone realizes everything that can be derived directly from things everybody knows.
Plus, in Dawkins's definition, he is trading on 'behave'. I don't know what Grice could have thought _had_ he read "Selfish Gene". I suppose I can (is it google.books?) and surmise what he might.
ReplyDeleteGr91 is very careful (this is Gr75 really) that 'behaviour' canNOT apply to things which are _less_ than a full-blown organism. "A fire" does not _behave_. Tissues don't behave magnanimously as they close to heal a wound. Etc.
His point about 'behaviour' is Wittgensteinian and he cares to Agree with Wittgenstein on that. I see a man approaching me with a poke (Wittgenstein). I take his behaviour as dangerous because first I take the whole thing as 'behaviour'.
The other passage where Grice cites Wittgenstein is in the ability of humans (best creatures bearing best genomes) to think specifically: an animal can expect a draught, but a man can expect a PARTICULAR draught. I will have to find the right quote for this.
Re: Kramer on 'ego' 'egoless', 'egoist' (there's such a word!), egotist, altruist, alterless, alter, ... I'm fascinated.
Behaviour vs. animus then is tricker than perhaps Kramer or Dawkins realise. I'm not sure how Kramer may take this idea that 'behaviour' applies to _some_ sort of things which genes possibly are not. (Amoebae yes, they behave).
One of my mother's favourite songs (as played by me in the ukelele no doubt as she taps-dance) is Cole Porter's "Let's misbehave". What a glorious lyric. Surely my mother will say that such a selfish, _wicked_ gene, is misbehaving all the way up.
I would reply that 'mis-' is perhaps the right word! I once discussed this with Horn, because we were reading Austin's "Plea" and "Other minds" on negative prefixes, and Austin has 'mis-' which got a rather hyper-reaction by Horn: "surely not negative!"
Etc.
Animus and ego. I don't know. Anscombe wrote extensively on the "first person", so I would think there is more to ego than the animus. I tend to think an ego is what ego makes it. I.e. if ego can say "ego" he has an ego. (Parrots notwithstanding). It _is_ a mouthful of a word, and I cherish the fact that the last Devonian lady who used 'itch' instead died in 1896, I think. It's "I" in present English!
What fascinates me is that "I" and "me" are said to belong to the same 'semantic field', but then WHY the different form? I would guess that for the old Aryans (who coined the ling), "I" and "me" were _not_ co-referential!
Etc. I would ask the selfish gene about it.
Mind, 'selfish' can have a good ring to it. Mother Theresa was immoral. Altruism tends to be immoral if it's just supererogatory. We want heroes, not saints (Urmson). And we don't want _any_ old hero: we want _football_ heros only (C. R's variety song, "I may not be a football hero, but I'm a bear in a lady's beaudoir" -- Banned songs of the 1920s and 1930s, BBC). Etc.
L.J.,
ReplyDeleteNot clear where R. B. says the thing is a tautology.
Mind that R. B. is _very_ Carnapian in the excellent sense of that word. We are discussing meaning-postulates elsewhere (he holds a couple of open mailing lists in his website).
The proposition being
A gene persists if it persists.
Etc.
Indeed, the form being
If p, p.
---
But one may need to use quantification here. For any x such that x persists, x persists, or something. Note that in quantified logic, it is, I think, more problematic to speak of tautologies. I think you have to assume a non-empty domain (which Grice does NOT, in "Vacuous Names").
If it's
no ego-carrier can be JUST altruistic.
That looks tautological enough. Perhaps we can stick to 'contradictions' which can be more fun, on occasion:
He is such an altruist!
--- Grice actually puns on this one. In WoW:ii, he has Albritton commenting on things like:
"What an egoist [he has egotist] you are: always giving yourself the satisfaction of doing things for others!"
-- This is extremely genial.
Grice wants to say: "If when you have just performed some conspiscuously disinterested action I say (i) I am expressing something like what might be the reaction of an extreme cynic."
Or dog, as I prefer.
Grice disbelieved (mistrusted?) altruism, but then I can be wrong. The best thing I can point to, perhaps, is Judith Baker's contribution to the PGRICE festschrift which goes by the title of the rhetorical question,
Do one's motives have to be pure?
--- This is serious Kantian stuff of the most purely philosophical breed, or pedigree. Grice analysed this in detail in lecture 5 of "Aspects of reason" (The Kant Lectures). As Baker sees it, for Grice so-called 'pure' motives do cash in impure ones: morality (or duty, alla Prichard) cashes out in desire. Etc. The way to go is iterating propositional attitudes.
Grice died of emphysema because he was a chain-smoker. Does this mean that he non-faciliated his chances of survival? Well, for Dawkins, once the young Grice had passed the 'breeder' stage (breeding his daughter and son), Dawkins would not care. But I do. So I would think that Grice smoked, but he willed to smoke. And perhaps he did will to will to smoke. But there must have been the plausibility that he would have willed not to have willed to have willed to have willed to smoke. In fact, the last episodes of his life are pretty moving, as he never touched the Navy cigarette box he kept in his house. And he would regret privately, that while he did stop smoking, it was "too late". Etc.
Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Behavior's not behavior that alters when it alteration finds. (Or words to that effect - WS, Sonnet 116.)
ReplyDeleteI believe Dawkins uses "behave" as Grice uses "operates." Rather than fuss about what "behavior" means, I will simply offer to say "operate" wherever I said "behave," because genes are mindless and goal-less, I am looking for a descriptor of mechanistic action and inaction, and I have used "behave" because Roger used it. Roger may have used it because Dawkins used it, but if Dawkins did, he didn't have Grice and you in mind, and I'm sure he'd have gone with something more mechanical if he had understood who'd be parsing him.
---
In my reply to Roger, I tried to link the words "your notes" to Roger's on-line notes. For some reason, the software instead removed the address and supplied a "rel=no follow" tag. Here is another try. The Preview function shows the link as a blank space, so I have no idea if it will fire. So here's the url:
http://tinyurl.com/yla34zk
Look at Point 2 in Roger's conclusions. On re-reading, I now see it is Dawkins who calls his claim a tautology, and Roger who dismisses it as a trivial one. So what I said in my earlier comment is sort of dumb. I should have said that I agree with Dawkins as to the nature of his claim, but disagree with Roger as to its triviality.
I hesitated to use the term tautology because it is a term of art, and I am not sure I am using it correctly. But I don't think it matters whether it is a tautology or a theorem, or anything else. The question is whether it helps.
As for what Dawkins says, I haven't read the book in a while, so I'll just take ownership of the substantive claims in the main post as if they were my own speculations, not because I believe I thought them up, but because I subscribe to them and am willing to try to defend them as made. Thus, rather than claiming "Dawkins says X" I am saying "As I believe Dawkins argued, but even if he didn't, X." (Think of my post as a charitable reading of Dawkins to the extent one might ordinarily read it otherwise.)
I would prefer to hold forth further on Dawkins on my own blog rather than here, as my interest in the subject extends beyond its relationship to HPG. I'll let you know if I do that.
Sure, and thanks for the link. Will have a look, and do let us know if you post something on Dawkins on your blog and want to cross-refer.
ReplyDeleteYou are right that tautologies should help. The problem here may be Wittgensteinian. For him, and for me, and for my Grice, tautologies don't speak about the world.
Grice is serious about this:
Women are women
War is war
-- What an uncooperative thing to say! We all know that! Wittgenstein goes on to say we don't, for it's a vacuous thing ("Women are women even if they are all extermined"). Wittgenstein deals with tautologies (in predicate logic) versus contingencies, which are another bother.
So I'll see what Dawkins said. I'm not surprised Jones found it _trivial_. The man, Roger, uploaded the 4,390 page-long treatise by Locke on "Humane Understanding", making it the best place to search for this work. And Locke was enamoured with calling this or that a _trifle_. Impediment of marriage, indeed, etc. True _best_ minds.
I think Grice was a meme.
Responding again to Lawrence on the question of whether Dawkins' central thesis is a tautology.
ReplyDeleteI didn't myself intend to express an opinion on it, my main intention was to make the point that:
if it is tautology then
you can't infer from it synthetic claims
about whether evolution can yield particular
character traits.
However, its also my belief that if you do try
to formulate the thesis in a way which is demonstrably tautological you will have a difficulty
in coming up with anything which sounds right.
RBJ
As I understand Dawkins, his approach is Euclidean. He has one axiom:
ReplyDeleteEvolution occurs at the genetic level.
and one "common notion:
Only genes that get to replicate persist.
From so humble a beginning, Dawkins "proves" theorems about bees and altruism. Because "evolution occurs at the genetic level" is a synthetic fact, application of logic to it should allow us to infer synthetic facts.
So, I don't think Dawkins, speaking carefully, would say that his "central thesis" is a tautology, but that, in addition to something everybody knows - that evolution happens at the genetic level - one need only apply tautological statements to extract some pretty cool stuff.
If you read Euclid's axioms and common notions, you say "Of course, you can draw a line and a circle and there can only be one line parallel to another through a given point, and of course if a=b and c=b, a=c. Duh." And the next thing you know, the sum of the squares on the hypotenuse is staring you right in the face and you're saying "Wow."
I like this. Kramer has now expanded with subscripts which I enjoy:
ReplyDeleteBees, after all, are altruistic-D. And they may be altruistic-K, too.
That is
altruistic-LJK.
We need a proper subscript.
And we may need a time chronology:
altruistic-LJK-2010. Surely we can change our minds!
---
We may need to postulate what bees we are talking about.
Yesterday, I was watching (for a change) TV: and all those idiotic news programme were carrying this STUPID thing in Panama: football match interrupted by African bees.
I can't see what altruistic motive they had in disseminating those soccer players all over the place. That should serve them right, though. Playing football in Panama.
---
So we have an axiom and a synthetic truth. Let me revise them.
A1.Evolution occurs at the genetic level.
CN. Only genes that get to replicate persist.
Perhaps we can elaborate on CN (common notion). I understand the synthetic claim of A1 alright, sort of.
R. B. Jones may be interested to know that Kramer and I discussed the fourth postulate (as per blog entry in Kramer's blog) in THEORIA for (I think) a week or so. We _love_ Euclides!
A1.Evolution occurs at the genetic level.
CN. Only genes that get to replicate persist.
Shouldn't A1 be qualified? Evolution-g occurs at the genetic level.The whole point of memetic evolution (*) is that there is such thing (as memetic evolution).
The marvel of the genetic duplication (isn't re- redundant?) (cfr. Iterated Prisoners Dilemma, 'iterate' is what we may need?) is that I'm never understanding it. The CODE gets duplicated, or plicated, or iterated. Not the _matter_. Is it the _same_ gene? I tend to think it is! I.e. kin-and-kith-wise I AM my Father (I am also my mother). This brings some Gricean issues:
JL is his father.
(it's like the "The Japanese flag is red" -- that's only 50% of the story, but I say it's a true claim).
"CN. Only genes that get to replicate persist."
Let's talk or concentrate on Dawkins's genes only. I am a squintessential Dawkinsian.
Dawkins ("Ethnicity: English", wiki) looks for a mate who is distinctively English-genetically encoded (I forget her surname, I think she died, but they had Barbara, together). So Dawkins's gene GOT 'plicated'. But not PURELY. For that, he may have gotten a 'clone' rather. I think his mamma's surname is "Vivian". The Dawkins-gene of his papa got 'plicated' but only 50% in Dawkins junior. Anyone who has studied genetics (I did, at high school, the 6th form, as it were, and was fascinated by it), there's dominance and regression. The Dawkins gene actually looks, by the extended phenotype of it, to be _very_ regressive: that Nairobi-tourquoise eyes _won't_ replicate so well.
Never mind 'character traits'! "Temperament traits" at most! The whole point of character is that it's blatantly the responsibility of each parent to have it grown in the offspring.
As I was reading, I think, in Oxford Bk of Hum. Quot.
Dr. Spock I think. (but not quite):
"Parents are the least elligible people to be allowed to have children". Tell Dawkins _that_!.