Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysics genius, speaks on discrimination.

[broncofan]

And I understand that genes don't directly encode behavior but proteins. But ultimately this has behavioral consequences etc.

[Stavros]

One should keep in mind that Dawkin’s point is not that evolution favors selfish individuals; his view is that genes are selfish (metaphorically speaking); i.e. they vie with each other and those which are propagated through the generations with greater flux are those with phenotypic expressions better suited to reproduction and survival. For Dawkins it is as if the essential competition takes place at the genetic level between individual genes - as if genes were themselves selfish.

On the one hand this science must be the key point of Dawkins' argument, but on the other hand is it not also the case that theories in science are often brought into the public realm to become part of political discourse, and is this not where many people felt Wilson went wrong with his theory of Sociobiology?

[trish]

Point taken. What I know is probably an inch deep but I would imagine that behaviors that ensure the propagation of one's genes will often be self-interested. A gene that encoded for a behavior that did not advance one's own interest would have to advance the interest of some other vessel carrying that gene for it to be a selfish gene. Is that right?

I understand your example in the case of kin selection for instance, where one may behave altruistically in order to benefit several siblings at their own expense. This would be altruistic at the level of individual behavior and selfish at the level of the gene. But in reciprocal altruism, a person is helping another at some personal expense. Wouldn't this be altruistic in the short-term but selfish in the long-term, both at the level of the individual?

Anyhow, I guess the point is that genes can confer behaviors that are cooperative among people and still increase the probability they are represented in greater frequency in the next generation.

I’m a birdwatcher Jim, not an evolutionary biologist! There a certain species of moth that tastes so badly that Blue Jays avoid them. I was always puzzled how that moth gene got started. Wasn’t the first such mutation eaten? Then there’s another species of moth that mimics the appearance of the yucky tasting ones. They gain the benefit of appearing to taste bad, but when the jays find out they’re actually yummy, the death-by-jay mortality rate goes up for the yucky species too.

What about those genes that code for sexual reproduction? Before sex was ‘invented’ a single-celled life-form could expect to live forever. Do the genes that code for sexual reproduction benefit the individual carrying them? Okay, the carrier gets to have orgasms; but is the trade-off worth it?

The genes that make language possible wouldn’t have served just one individual very well. Could it be that tribes are the proper unit of selection for natural language?

I don’t really have a opinion on any of these questions; just throwing them out as things that may be relevant to your post.

I don't know about him being an "astrophysics genius", but he seems likable enough. He just pissed me off when he went on the stump as chief excuse maker for the degradation of Pluto.

If God wanted Pluto to be a planet he would’ve given it more mass than 136199Eris.

On the one hand this science must be the key point of Dawkins' argument, but on the other hand is it not also the case that theories in science are often brought into the public realm to become part of political discourse, and is this not where many people felt Wilson went wrong with his theory of Sociobiology?

I’m not sure why Dawkins decided in 1976 to write a popular book (The Selfish Gene) or why Wilson decided to write his. I suspect their motivations were one part vanity and one part academic and nearly zero parts political; but I don’t know. Lewontiin was writing at the same time and Stephen Jay Gould had a monthly column in Natural History magazine in which he was pushing an idea that downplayed the just-so-stories that he felt overplayed the hand of natural selection in the course of biological evolution. Eldritch was putting forth his theory of punctuated equilibrium in the popular press. It seems to have been an exciting time for evolutionary biologists and everyone saw their chance to become a guru. I wouldn’t be surprised if economist of a libertarian and democratic socialist bent saw an opportunity to spin the excitement, although I’m not familiar with any particular examples.

[hippifried]

If God wanted Pluto to be a moon, He would've put it in orbit around the plane, He would've put it in orbit around a planet instead of a star.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=trish;1640345]

The genes that make language possible wouldn’t have served just one individual very well. Could it be that tribes are the proper unit of selection for natural language?

--Language is genetic? Never heard that before.

I’m not sure why Dawkins decided in 1976 to write a popular book (The Selfish Gene) or why Wilson decided to write his. I suspect their motivations were one part vanity and one part academic and nearly zero parts political; but I don’t know. Lewontiin was writing at the same time and Stephen Jay Gould had a monthly column in Natural History magazine in which he was pushing an idea that downplayed the just-so-stories that he felt overplayed the hand of natural selection in the course of biological evolution. Eldritch was putting forth his theory of punctuated equilibrium in the popular press. It seems to have been an exciting time for evolutionary biologists and everyone saw their chance to become a guru. I wouldn’t be surprised if economist of a libertarian and democratic socialist bent saw an opportunity to spin the excitement, although I’m not familiar with any particular examples.

--The deeper problem may be that Science has no interest in morality.

[trish]

--Language is genetic? Never heard that before.

Damit Jim, I’m a hungangel, not a geneticist! I wouldn’t say language is genetic, which I would take to mean there’s a single gene or a single, simple grouping of genes which directly confer language to the carrier of those genes (perhaps one mutation conferring Spanish and another Mandarin). There certainly are genes that make language possible in humans. There may be genes that make it likely. I would think there are certainly genes that in the right environment make the quick acquisition of language in developing children almost inevitable and that at some level these have been selected for. I’m just asking whether it’s possible the level of selection was necessarily higher than the level of individual genes.

--The deeper problem may be that Science has no interest in morality.

I don’t think Science is the sort of creature that can have interests. I can say that my interest in morality is not professional. Are there scientists whose professional work is in the area of morality? I’m not sure. As has been discussed here, there are evolutionary biologists who have presented just so stories that attempt to show how altruistic behaviors might have developed within tribes and species. But this wouldn’t be so much a science of morality as an attempt to provide a natural history of what some would call moral behaviors. There are psychologists who investigate what people think is the morally correct thing to do in certain circumstances. I believe the study is called trolleyology. But that’s really a descriptive investigation, more anthropology than philosophy (although a lot of philosophers seem to be interested).

Whether there’s a science of morality or not may depend on what you think morality is. Is there a science that attempts to tease out what is Good and what is Evil and locate these concepts in an absolute Platonic, religious or metaphysical realm? I would think not many scientists (if any) have a professional interest in that sort of thing. Is there a science of what you ought and ought not to do? Insofar as most scientists are professionally interested in describing and understanding what is, their speculations as to what ought to be remain non-professional, given Hume’s is/ought divide. Of course that shouldn’t prevent some ingenious investigators from describing and coming to a correct understanding of what ought is. Right?

[trish]

If God wanted Pluto to be a moon, He would've put it in orbit around the plane, He would've put it in orbit around a planet instead of a star.

Yeah, you're right. He put it in orbit around star along with eight planets and a billions of asteroids. Even though Pluto is massive enough to have naturally settled into a roughly spherical shape (geologists say it's in hydrostatic equilibrium) it's not massive enough to have swept it's orbit clear of those pesky asteroids. For some reason the International Astronomical Union (one of those fucking pinko unions trying to second guess God) decided that to be a planet it's not good enough to be round and orbiting a star...you have to be a fucking broom too. Some astronomers call Pluto a dwarf planet but still don't include it in the pantheon of planets. Yikes! That's like saying a dwarf human isn't a human!!

I like to think of Pluto as a reasonably good candidate who just didn't quite get the job because of it's poor debris sweeping skills. (Damn company should provide some on the job learning, don't ya think?)

[trish]

Addendum to Post#16:
On the other hand, scientists (like most people with jobs) have a professional interest in behaving ethically: with their students and their colleagues, as well as keeping their professional pursuits (experiments and writings) within ethical boundaries. But of course, this is not the same thing as having a professional interest in pursuing ethics or morality as research programs in and of themselves.

[broncofan]

But there probably is an ample history of scientists bringing biases to the table and attempting to justify social policies based on their findings. One could say they did not observe the scientific method or they transcended the bounds of their profession, but there's a circularity to that argument. Of course, science is supposed to employ certain methodologies and be more descriptive than normative, but that does not mean scientists are not aware of the social consequences of their research and allow this to bias them.

It would be difficult to study morality from a scientific standpoint...it's not exactly tractable or testable.

[broncofan]

Of course, science is supposed to employ certain methodologies and be more descriptive than normative, but that does not mean scientists are not aware of the social consequences of their research and allow this to bias them.

I realize this is the argument Republicans put forth when they talk about climate change! That's certainly not what I want to evoke. But scientists might want to write popular science books out of vanity, but there is the risk that they are really creeping towards domains of study that are not purely scientific but pretending they are. Or rather implicitly saying that their scientific credentials give them special insight into social problems.