"Biological Basis Of Teleological Concepts"

[RosszValaki]

Has anyone read Harry Binswanger's "The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts"?

Could you tell me a little about it?

[BurgessLau]

Has anyone read Harry Binswanger's "The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts"?

Could you tell me a little about it?

I have read it (years ago) and took some notes. What do you want to know about it?

If you believe that it addresses issues in your central purpose in life (your career, basically), and your CPL is either philosophy or biology, then I would recommend buying it.

If your interest in philosophy is at the level of "philosophy for Rearden" (rather than "philosophy for Ragnar"), then I would not recommend it. Studying other works would be more helpful probably.

[Free Capitalist]

Well, this is the kind of book that, while not critical, is very interesting and useful for expanding of one's horizons and providing a lot of interesting food for thought and pondering.

[RosszValaki]

I've never hear it put like, "philosophy for Rearden" or "philosophy for Ragnar" before but I get it.

My CPL would be to "dive as deep into the pool as it goes and scrape the botton looking for more."

So I think that would be "philosophy for Ragnar."

[Thales]

Has anyone read Harry Binswanger's "The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts"?

Could you tell me a little about it?

The thesis of his book is that the actions of living organisms are "goal-directed", while the actions of non-living organisms are not.

He ties this to evolutionary theory and to Ayn Rand's ethical theory. Ones life is the source of values, not the group or herd.

The argument is fairly sophisticated, so get read to take out paper and pencil and draw diagrams and take notes.

[BurgessLau]

My CPL would be to "dive as deep into the pool as it goes and scrape the botton looking for more."

More what?

What you have described is not a central purpose in life -- unless you are speaking metaphorically. If you are speaking metaphorically, then what in the real world does the metaphor represent?

Are you familiar with Ayn Rand's thoughts on purpose, in particular, her thoughts about ultimate purpose in life and central purpose in life?

If not, the place to start is the "Purpose" article entries in The Ayn Rand Lexicon. You might also do a search for the phrase "central purpose in life" in OO.net. The subject has been discussed fruitfully in the past.

[RosszValaki]

More what?

More knowledge.

What you have described is not a central purpose in life -- unless you are speaking metaphorically. If you are speaking metaphorically, then what in the real world does the metaphor represent?

Yes, it was metaphorical. In reality I have been thinking about going to College and studying Philosophy. As an adult my academic drive is the highest it has ever been. Its like a painful hunger at the moment. The Moment I first picked up AS I was in love with Rand. I went through all her books in less than a year and started rereading them.

Are you familiar with Ayn Rand's thoughts on purpose, in particular, her thoughts about ultimate purpose in life and central purpose in life?

I don't know about you but the central purpose in my life is my own happiness. A life of quiet academic study might not look all that interesting or sexy to some but it sounds like a dream job to me.

[BurgessLau]

I don't know about you but the central purpose in my life is my own happiness.

It is clear you have not understood -- or do not agree with -- Ayn Rand's discussions of purpose, as I referenced in a previous post.

No, my central purpose in life is not happiness. Instead, happiness is my ultimate purpose, the one toward which all my purposes (central and "peripheral") are leading. Why is happiness my ultimate purpose? Because life is my ultimate value, and the issues of life and happiness are inseparable, as Ayn Rand explains. (See "Ultimate Value," The Ayn Rand Lexicon, as well as the entries on "Happiness" and "Purpose.")

My central purpose is my productive purpose, basically my career, the work I love to do. My other key purposes, all leading to happiness, are friendships and my favorite leisure activities. Those three purposes are like tent poles holding up the "big tent" of my life. The main one is the central one, but the others too are crucial to my full happiness.

A life of quiet academic study might not look all that interesting or sexy to some but it sounds like a dream job to me.

"Some" might not, but I can understand it. If you choose the teaching and discussion of philosophy in academia as your CPL, then you have certainly chosen a challenge. Based on indirect experience, I would say an academic career in the field of philosophy is probably the second most difficult career possible for an Objectivist today. (The other is fiction writing.) The stresses and demands are enormous, in most academic circumstances. But, as you imply, the satisfactions could be great. Of course, professors of philosophy don't get paid to "study," but to teach and publish, which are the consequences of study (research and thought).

Tara Smith is an outstanding example. Two others are John Lewis and Bob Garmong. I have great admiration for the students of Objectivism who have chosen an academic career. Some who have made that choice have made it very late in life -- for example, Professor Lewis obtained his PhD in Classics while in his fifties. That is a sign of love.

[Legendre]

After they hear about Richard Dawkins's "selfish gene" theory, many of my acquaintances tell me that, if it is true that ethics ("ought") can be derived from man's biological nature (what "is"), then the ultimate moral goal of a person should be to propagate his or her genes.

That's actually the point of the book The Science of Good and Evil by Michael Shermer. (Not surprisingly, this book whacks at many strawman representations of Objectivist epistemology. While Shermer claims to be a "former Objectivist," he makes it clear that he never understood the philosophy, given that his critique equivocates the objectivity of concepts with Intrinsicism, and falsely characterizes Objectivism as regarding all concepts as close-ended and unrevisable.)

In The Biological Basis, does Dr. Binswanger address the collectivists' claim that the propagation of one's genes is the ultimate moral goal for a human being?

[Hal]

After they hear about Richard Dawkins's "selfish gene" theory, many of my acquaintances tell me that, if it is true that ethics ("ought") can be derived from man's biological nature (what "is"), then the ultimate moral goal of a person should be to propagate his or her genes.

Its probably true that certain aspects of 'moral' behavior can be traced back to our evolutionary history (eg, the fact that most people generally value their families), but the idea that this somehow means we 'should' try to live in a way that increases the evolutionary fitness of our genes is nonsense. Any attempt to derive morality in this way will run into the same problem as all other attempts to introduce duty into ethics - there will be no good answer to the question "But why should I? Whats in it for me?". If a person feels that he would rather enjoy his life than do something that will help to 'propagate his genes', then what good reason is there for him to commit to something he would rather not do? If I dont want to ever have a child, then its no good telling me that my decision will result in my genes dying out, because I couldnt care less.

edit: from reading the amazon description of that book, it doesnt look like hes arguing that we 'should' behave in a certain way, just that we do. He seems to want to argue that altruistic behavior is compatible with natural selection, which is pretty uncontroversial stuff (see: kin-selection, game theory etc). But again, theres no valid argument from "X makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint" to "people should do X even if they dont think its in their rational self-interest".

Edited December 27, 2005 by Hal

[Thales]

In The Biological Basis, does Dr. Binswanger address the collectivists' claim that the propagation of one's genes is the ultimate moral goal for a human being?

Yes. He addresses many objections in the book. It's been a while, so I'm rusty on this, but here are the key points.

He addresses this under the question of "Is reproductive fitness, not survival, selection's goal?", ( page 153.) This, I believe, is the same idea as the claim that propagating one's genes is the ultimate goal for a human being.

He points out that there are two kinds of natural selection: "ontogentic" selection and "genetic" selection.

Ontogenetic selection refers to some feature of an organism that makes its life possible. The example given is the heart. An organism has a heart to keep it alive. An organism has a heart only because it allowed for its survival, due to preceding generations that survived. Ontogenetic selection is clearly based on survival of the individual. Your heart exists, because it's what allows you to exist.

Binswanger points out that this alone is sufficient to justify teleological explanation for those parts of an organism subjected to it.

The existence of our genes are explained by genetic selection. Contemporary biologists see survival as a requirement of reproduction. Binswanger says you can easily take the reverse perspective, and see reproductive success as a requirement of survival. To quote him: "If a genetic unit increases the probability of reproductive success, then ipso facto it increases the probability of the offspring's creation and development."

You probably should read his book for the full argument, which has a quite a bit to it.

I will add this, however. If you live like an altruist, you won't survive long. The human race would die out quickly if we tried to take that code of values seriously. This, to me, shows that nature doesn't promote altruism.

[Legendre]

Thanks for the replies, Hal and Thales!

Hal said,

from reading the amazon description of that book, it doesnt look like hes arguing that we 'should' behave in a certain way, just that we do.

That's true. Richard Dawkins's explanation was a descriptive one. It's just that a lot of other people try to invoke his theory to argue for altruism.

Thales wrote,

Binswanger says you can easily take the reverse perspective, and see reproductive success as a requirement of survival. To quote him: "If a genetic unit increases the probability of reproductive success, then ipso facto it increases the probability of the offspring's creation and development."

That's a great observation; I wish it occurred to me before you pointed that out! When altruism-espousers say that Dawkins's theory proves that evolution favors altruism, they are begging the question. They presume that individual survival needs some kind of justification, but they never ask themselves whether reproduction needs a justification.

People who invoke Dawkins's argument in the manner I described assume that individuals must exist for reproduction, but why can't we say that perhaps it is reproduction that exists for individuals?

Thanks a lot, Thales! Dr. Binswanger hits another one out of the ballpark!

Thales writes,

I will add this, however. If you live like an altruist, you won't survive long. The human race would die out quickly if we tried to take that code of values seriously. This, to me, shows that nature doesn't promote altruism.

I was under the impression that the "Dawkinsian" case for altruism was sort of like the utilitarian collectivist argument that conservatives and libertarians use to justify capitalist self-interest.

Conservatives and libertarians, following in the footsteps of Adam Smith, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Dinesh D'Souza, say that a businessperson should look out for his own self-interest, because that will then better enable him or her to improve industrial productivity, create new jobs, and provide more charitable services. The utilitarian free-marketer says that serving one's own self-interest is merely an ethical means to the "higher" end of serving other people.

Likewise, those who invoke Dawkins usually say that you should take care of yourself so that you will be better able to take care of your children. If you destroy yourself and your fortune, then your children will suffer. Ergo, they say, taking care of your own well-being is just an ethical means to the "higher" end of serving your kin.

I didn't buy into that argument on economics front, but I didn't have an answer to the "Dawkinsites" claim that an organism must exist for the sake of reproduction. It didn't occur to me that maybe it is reproduction that exists for the sake of the individual.

[Hal]

People who invoke Dawkins's argument in the manner I described assume that individuals must exist for reproduction, but why can't we say that perhaps it is reproduction that exists for individuals?

I think that comes from two different but related ways of viewing things - one from the point of view of individual animals, and one from the point of view of the species as a whole.

From an evolutionary viewpoint, individual creatures exist purely to ensure the propogation of their genes (note that this doesnt mean that their 'purpose' is to propogate their genes - evolution has no purpose since its just a physical process and this is why the attempt to derive ethics from evolution breaks down. Evolution cannot be normative, for the same reason that you cant use the law of gravity to argue that aeroplanes are immoral). As someone cynical once put it, animals are really just things that genes build in order to aid their chances of propagation.

However, if we look at things from the point of view of the species rather than the individual creature, then its true to say that reproduction serves the function of keeping that species alive (in the sense that the species would die out if none of its members reproduced). But this is potentially misleading, since reproduction could also 'eliminate' the species, in the sense that it would cause it to evolve into something else (which means "it would cause the animals to change to the point where we would no longer wish to refer to them as being members of the same species" - the concept of 'species' is a human creation, not one that exists in nature).

So yeah, you can say that reproduction exists as a way of ensuring the survival of genetic material. But reproduction is not the only way an entity can ensure the survival of its genes, and this a pretty central notion in the study of the evolution of altruistic behavior. Kin selection is an example of this - an animal is likely to share genes with close members of its family. Hence if this animal sacrifices its life to help its family survive, then it is indirectly helping its genes to propagate since the surviving family members have the same genes. The closer the relatives, the higher the probability there is that genetic material is shared, which can be summed up by the saying "I'd lay down my life for 4 brothers or 8 cousins".

Edited December 27, 2005 by Hal

[Liriodendron Tulipifera]

So yeah, you can say that reproduction exists as a way of ensuring the survival of genetic material. But reproduction is not the only way an entity can ensure the survival of its genes, and this a pretty central notion in the study of the evolution of altruistic behavior. Kin selection is an example of this - an animal is likely to share genes with close members of its family. Hence if this animal sacrifices its life to help its family survive, then it is indirectly helping its genes to propagate since the surviving family members have the same genes. The closer the relatives, the higher the probability there is that genetic material is shared, which can be summed up by the saying "I'd lay down my life for 4 brothers or 8 cousins".

Hal, I've only heard of one study that actually showed that kin selection exists, and even there the evidence was shaky. I can dig up the original reference if anyone is interested: it was done on some species of jaybird. Examples of kin selection may occur in nature, but I believe they are infrequent. Evolutionary biologists talk about it a lot, but it's still largely a theory and if it occurs it is a weak evolutionary force, from what I understand. Key examples of true kin selection are some social insects, but they clearly derive more genetic benefit from helping the queen to reproduce than to reproduce themselves. Clearly, truly altruistic behavior (in which one does not benefit more by the behavior than if one reproduced oneself) can survive evolutionarily only if it is directed toward other altruists. And that is why it is very uncommon in nature, if not non-existent. As regards altruism in the human race, I very much agree with Thales.

Anyway, there is a vast difference between the rest of biological life and human life, both in the purpose of life and in the means for pursuing that life. As Binswanger points out in this book, no other species has the capacity to act irrationally because they do not have the capacity to act rationally. Man is the only species that act self-destructively.

[Thales]

Thanks a lot, Thales! Dr. Binswanger hits another one out of the ballpark!

I really enjoyed his book. He actually goes at this at a deeper level, i.e. at an epistemologically deeper level, which make his arguments very effective.

Conservatives and libertarians, following in the footsteps of Adam Smith, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Dinesh D'Souza, say that a businessperson should look out for his own self-interest, because that will then better enable him or her to improve industrial productivity, create new jobs, and provide more charitable services. The utilitarian free-marketer says that serving one's own self-interest is merely an ethical means to the "higher" end of serving other people.

Yes, I know, but what it shows is that self-interest as the highest interest is what makes things work out for people. It makes sense when you realize how intimately connected with ourselves we are. We are distinct beings, with pleasure-pain mechanisms that function best at that level. When the guy across the way has a sore foot, I don't feel his pain. But, when I have a sore foot, I do, so I'd better attend to it.

I think Tara Smith makes this point in her book on politics, the title escapes me at the moment, something like "Individual Rights and Political Freedom".

Lirio,

...no other species has the capacity to act irrationally because they do not have the capacity to act rationally Man is the only species that act self-destructively.

Yes, we can choose to act badly. But, it's also true that we have to discover how to act, which is far from obvious or easy, as history attests. It takes great thought and effort to figure these things out.

[Legendre]

Thanks for the input, Hal, Liliriodendren, and Thales! My New Year's resolution is now to read Biological Basis.

I mentioned this before in the evolutionary psychology thread on the bottom of this post, but I'm quite uncomfortable with the Dawkinsites' misuse of the term altruism, which they seem to use for any action by an organism that benefits other organisms.

Matt Ridley observes that commercial transactions are "positive-sum games" in which all consensually participating parties profit, and then he calls this by a name coined by Robert L. Trivers -- "reciprocal altruism."

Well, that sure isn't reciprocal self-sacrifice. I imagine reciprocal self-sacrifice would be something like a suicide pact.

I propose replacing the misleading "reciprocal altruism" with something like "reciprocal profit" or "mutually self-interested beneficience."

[Boydstun]

 

Historical Background to Reductionism in Biology – Philosophical and Scientific

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reduction-biology/#HistBackPhilScie