Do all morals come from necessity?

[jay gw]

It seems like many "morals" like being kind to your neighbor, are really just done out of necessity, for example, being nice will manipulate him to leave you and your property alone - you're not doing it because you love him as a human being.

Necessities are turned into morals to make them easier to teach to others...."Thou shalt nots." Without the threat of ostracism, legal threats or other punishments, people seem not to care about morals anymore - the need to do it because you'll be punished if you don't - has disappeared.

If morals spring out of some other source than needs, from whence do they spring? (I love using the word "whence" and use it whenever possible, even if it's inappropriate.)

Are there any morals that don't arise out of, without the root cause being, a need?

Necessity is the mother of invention - are morals just another kind of invention?


Moral

Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character: moral scrutiny; a moral quandary.
Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior: a moral lesson.
Conforming to standards of what is right or just in behavior. Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong.

Need/necessity

A condition or situation in which something is required; a requisite.
As an inevitable consequence.
Something dictated by invariable physical laws.

[billydkid]

Yes and no - certainly the practical implications of sharing the earth with each other dictates that we develop ways of coexisting without destroying each other. But one must factor in the those aspects of character that must necessarily have have developed over the course of our descent - evolutionarily speaking. If we developed a genetic disposition to be inclined as a matter of course to kill each other (I consider the inclination toward war to be an inherited characteristic, but an anomalous one relative to normal, typical daily behavior.) we would not have survived as a species. Of course, I am assuming by morality you are talking about those behaviors that actually harm others and not issues like nakedness or appreciation of sexual pleasure or other harmless inclinations to which so many have attached moral baggage.

[stamenflicker]

I think CS Lewis addresses this best in Abolition, the POM thread from last month.

The answer is no for a variety of reasons. One of the most poignant is Lewis' observation that while instinct might have us necessitate care for our young and the community caring for our young, but there is no real practical or "Darwin-istic" reason to care for one's aged parents.

To the extent that our parents are severely aged and nearing death, it would be better to have instincts of eliminating them from a population which is consuming limited resources.

Nevertheless, caring for the elderly is fundamental to most religions and most societies. That is only one example of a handful in which we select compassion as a fundamental point of ethics.

Now the real ethics question would be, what if you were stranded away from all food sources for an extended time, who would you eat first and why, if anyone at all??? :) :)

Flick

[FireGarden]

Hi Flick,
One of the most poignant is Lewis' observation that while instinct might have us necessitate care for our young and the community caring for our young, but there is no real practical or "Darwin-istic" reason to care for one's aged parents.
The aged are useful for their experience.

But even if they weren't....
History proves that caring for our aged has not made us unfit for survival. It's not survival of the fittest, it's survival of anything which is fit enough to survive. There is probably no practical reason for peacocks to have huge feathers. There is no practical reason for moths to fly into flames. Look up the explantions for these things.

Evolution is deceptively simple enough to have many surprises!

[MRC_Hans]

I think the answer is yes. But it is not so simple as to say: "Being nice t omy neighboor gives me such and such advantage", or "caring for the old and diseased gives us this payback".

Of course, we can point out that it is udeful to have a reasonable relationship to out neighboor, and that aged people might carry valuable information and experience, but I feel the reason lies deeper. The great advantage of humans over other animals is our powerful brain. However, that brain, which is in many ways costly to maintain, is only utilized effectively in a society. A solitary intelligent being may have certain advantages over less bright animlas, but only when intelligence can be used to cooperate, to share difficult chores, to communicate gained information and experience, does it give us a real head start.

Therefore Man has evolved into a social animal. .... Or rather, intelligence evolved in already social animals. And one trait of any social animal is that not all its actions are guided by strictly egoistic motives. While an act on behalf of the society may not be an advantage to the individual, in fact it might even be a disadvantage, it is a benefit to the species a such. Those groups of animals that have good social behaviour (which we have chosen to call morals), will have a better overall survival than those that do not.

Hans

[Beancounter]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
The answer is no for a variety of reasons. One of the most poignant is Lewis' observation that while instinct might have us necessitate care for our young and the community caring for our young, but there is no real practical or "Darwin-istic" reason to care for one's aged parents.

To the extent that our parents are severely aged and nearing death, it would be better to have instincts of eliminating them from a population which is consuming limited resources.

Nevertheless, caring for the elderly is fundamental to most religions and most societies. That is only one example of a handful in which we select compassion as a fundamental point of ethics.


Flick

I think there is also a selfish reason behind caring for the elderly. Humans (and other animals?) have developed an enjoyment of life and, in general, a long life is seen as a desirable thing. Therefore, if we started to bump off the OAPs, we too would be subject to the same euthanasia - something that we would patently not wish to happen.

Therefore the active support of the elderly is indirectly necessary for us to enjoy a long life.

[Dagny]

Originally posted by FireGarden
There is probably no practical reason for peacocks to have huge feathers.

Handicap theory (a form of sexual selection) answers the mystery of peacock feathers. Males use the brightly colored display to (honestly) signal females that they are*so* fit that they can afford such a ridiculous display. Despite the fact that the males are not as individually fit as they could be, if females respond to the signal the gene will be passed on to the next generation.
I know this wasn't exactly the point.

Do all cultures care for the elderly? If there are exceptions we can't assume there is a genetic basis for evolution to act on.

[Ladewig]

Originally posted by jay gw
It seems like many "morals" like being kind to your neighbor, are really just done out of necessity, for example, being nice will manipulate him to leave you and your property alone - you're not doing it because you love him as a human being.

Necessities are turned into morals to make them easier to teach to others...."Thou shalt nots." Without the threat of ostracism, legal threats or other punishments, people seem not to care about morals anymore - the need to do it because you'll be punished if you don't - has disappeared.



No. Or more precisely, for civilized people the answer is no. Are you seriously suggesting that the only two reasons you have for not raping a neighbor are "I don't want to be raped" and legal punishments? If so, then you must be quite an a-hole and I most assuredly don't want to live anywhere near you.

[Mercutio]

Lots of genetics arguments here, but I think we can be simpler than that.

Transmission of social behaviors need not be genetic; we call it teaching and learning. It is, however, still subject to natural selection--that is, there is parent-offspring similarity, variability, and selection pressure from the environment. Just not genetic.

Cultural practices evolve, and like physical characteristics, they represent what worked for our ancestors. Religions that made virtue of abstinence from sex (like the Shakers) are likely to pull themselves out of the metaphorical gene pool. Other moral issues, like sacred cows or kosher laws, codified practices that were beneficial. They need not have been beneficial--evolution of physical traits demonstrates to us that there are many ways to address similar problems. Our cultural moral codes happened to work for our ancestors. They may or may not work for us, because our environment is vastly different. But, like a taste for fats and sugars in a world where ice cream is readily available, they are part of our history with an awful lot of momentum.

[ReFLeX]

Originally posted by jay gw
Necessity is the mother of invention - are morals just another kind of invention?

That is basically a simplified version of social contract, ¿no es?


Moral

Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character: moral scrutiny; a moral quandary.
Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior: a moral lesson.
Conforming to standards of what is right or just in behavior. Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong.
Like I explained to Yahweh in the vegetarian thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58709), the root word of moral is more (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mores):Mores refer to a collection of strongly held norms or customs. These derive from the established practices of a society rather than its written laws.So I would say morals are more inevitable than necessary. For all we know, Hobbes' state of nature has never really occurred, and perhaps social contract is rationalization after the fact for existing "norms or customs"...

[Beancounter]

Originally posted by Mercutio
Lots of genetics arguments here, but I think we can be simpler than that.

Transmission of social behaviors need not be genetic; we call it teaching and learning. It is, however, still subject to natural selection--that is, there is parent-offspring similarity, variability, and selection pressure from the environment. Just not genetic.

Cultural practices evolve, and like physical characteristics, they represent what worked for our ancestors. Religions that made virtue of abstinence from sex (like the Shakers) are likely to pull themselves out of the metaphorical gene pool. Other moral issues, like sacred cows or kosher laws, codified practices that were beneficial. They need not have been beneficial--evolution of physical traits demonstrates to us that there are many ways to address similar problems. Our cultural moral codes happened to work for our ancestors. They may or may not work for us, because our environment is vastly different. But, like a taste for fats and sugars in a world where ice cream is readily available, they are part of our history with an awful lot of momentum.

I believe meme is the technical term.

"A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another" (From thefreedictionary.com)

[Kaydens]

Originally posted by Ladewig
No. Or more precisely, for civilized people the answer is no. Are you seriously suggesting that the only two reasons you have for not raping a neighbor are "I don't want to be raped" and legal punishments? If so, then you must be quite an a-hole and I most assuredly don't want to live anywhere near you.

I may be misunderstanding you Ladewig but it appears as though you are saying that this kind of moral philosphy is deficient or wrong. Is that the case? If so I have to say that I find this position just a tad pompous.

You note that someone living by this kind of a code must be "quite an a-hole". Just out of interest how would you differentiate between someone who didn't steal things because they believed it was wrong to steal and someone who didn't steal things because they believed that by stealing things they would necessarily create an environment where theft is more common and acceptable (thus increasing the chances of them becoming a target of a thief)?

You seem to me to be attacking this kind of philosophy with a misrepresentation of the argument (a straw man if you will). My impression of the philosophy mentioned by Jay GW would be as follows: People commit acts for one of 2 reasons, 1, it would be a violation of the law of the land to act in another way (although this has less basis in morality than if we were discussing those laws I feel); or 2, acting in such a fashion makes it more likely that you will be treated in a similar fashion.

To give an extreme example of the second point: if I go around killing people to take their desirable things (and assuming that there is no law against such an act) then an environment is fostered in which this behaviour is more normal or even acceptable. At this point it becomes increasingly likely that people I meet will want to kill me to take my desirable things and thus increasingly likely that I will be killed. Assuming that I don't want to die and that it is currently not the accepted norm to kill people and take their desirable things then it is not in my interests to embark upon this form of behaviour.

Taking this model and applying it to a multitude of behaviours will give a general character of person that, as far as I can tell, would be indistinguishable in their behaviour to one who thought in terms of moral absolutes.

Of course that assumption is dependant upon the person applying it to all aspects of their life and having a dislike of potential consequences of their actions. However I would say that comparing objective moral standards (or those that claim to be objective) are prone to similar assumptions (namely to what extent they extend their moral codes).

I'm sorry for this being a touch incoherent, but I'm trying to do a few things at once here and I've not quite finished working through these issues in my own mind. If any clarification is required then please ask.

Kaydens.

[Ladewig]

Originally posted by Kaydens
I may be misunderstanding you Ladewig but it appears as though you are saying that this kind of moral philosphy is deficient or wrong. Is that the case? If so I have to say that I find this position just a tad pompous.

OK, I'm pompous. Now I have to ask if I am as pompous as someone who says that he knows other people's motivations for acting moral. In the opening post, Jay GW says that no one acts in a moral manner out of love of other humans.

Originally posted by Kaydens
You note that someone living by this kind of a code must be "quite an a-hole". Just out of interest how would you differentiate between someone who didn't steal things because they believed it was wrong to steal and someone who didn't steal things because they believed that by stealing things they would necessarily create an environment where theft is more common and acceptable (thus increasing the chances of them becoming a target of a thief)?

How would I differentiate between them? I would not be able to at all. However, you are making a big assumption about the opening post. Jay GW didn't say "create an environment where theft is more common," he said "many 'morals' like being kind to your neighbor, are really just done out of necessity, for example, being nice will manipulate him to leave you and your property alone." He was referring to simply being the target of theft by someone who was the target of your theft.




Originally posted by Kaydens
You seem to me to be attacking this kind of philosophy with a misrepresentation of the argument (a straw man if you will). My impression of the philosophy mentioned by Jay GW would be as follows: People commit acts for one of 2 reasons, 1, it would be a violation of the law of the land to act in another way (although this has less basis in morality than if we were discussing those laws I feel); or 2, acting in such a fashion makes it more likely that you will be treated in a similar fashion.

You're putting words in Jay GW's mouth. He didn't say that people are moral because they have respect for the law (your first reason), he said that people act in a moral fashion out of fear of legal punishments. That is different.

So the question becomes, if you could murder someone and be certain that there would be, as Jay GW put it, no "threat of ostracism, legal threats or other punishments," would you do it? If you could murder someone in such a way as that no one would suspect that it was murder (thus eliminating your second reason), would you do it? If the answer were yes - then I maintain that you would be an a-hole that I would not want to be near.

[c4ts]

Again. Social contract.

[Kaydens]

Originally posted by Ladewig
OK, I'm pompous. Now I have to ask if I am as pompous as someone who says that he knows other people's motivations for acting moral. In the opening post, Jay GW says that no one acts in a moral manner out of love of other humans.

I must be missing something here because I don't see the words "no one" in JayGW's post. Nope, just checked a third time to be sure and I don't see it. Sure, Jay's talking in generalities (probably oversimplified too) but I interpreted the OP as a question in the nature of "this is what I see, would you agree?" you however appear to have interpreted it as a moral manifesto and a universal one at that. Which of us is correct? Only Jay can answer that.

---SNIP---
However, you are making a big assumption about the opening post. Jay GW didn't say "create an environment where theft is more common," he said "many 'morals' like being kind to your neighbor, are really just done out of necessity, for example, being nice will manipulate him to leave you and your property alone." He was referring to simply being the target of theft by someone who was the target of your theft.

Since you seem to be so tuned in to Jay's frame of reference, I must be wrong I guess! Jay, did you litereally mean tit for tat behaviour (i.e. steal from me, I steal from you) or were you referring to a more general social contract (i.e. being nice to others makes them more likely to be nice to you)?

---SNIP---
You're putting words in Jay GW's mouth. He didn't say that people are moral because they have respect for the law (your first reason), he said that people act in a moral fashion out of fear of legal punishments. That is different.

That's quite a harsh accusation given that you took the entirity of Jay's opening post and boiled it down to a desire to rape the neighbour mentioned. Given that when I read the post I came to a radically different interpretation to you, would you say that there was some ambiguity there? If so, isn't it "putting words in Jay GW's mouth" to say "Are you seriously suggesting that the only two reasons you have for not raping a neighbor are "I don't want to be raped" and legal punishments?" given that the only mention of said neighbour was "being kind to your neighbour..." the word rape was not even in the post. Also, whilst I acknowledge that my wording left matters open to interpretation, you have misunderstood me when you characterise "[my] first reason" as being "respect for the law. I meant it in terms of fear of legal retribution, since I would consider that "respect for the law" in terms of 'admiration of legal conventions' would fall under the umbrella of "acting in such a fashion makes it more likely that you will be treated in a similar fashion." These are just my conventions though.

So the question becomes, if you could murder someone and be certain that there would be, as Jay GW put it, no "threat of ostracism, legal threats or other punishments," would you do it? If you could murder someone in such a way as that no one would suspect that it was murder (thus eliminating your second reason), would you do it? If the answer were yes - then I maintain that you would be an a-hole that I would not want to be near.

Since you ask this question I'll try and answer it sincerely, however I would like to clarify one point first: is there any reason for me to kill this hypothetical person?

I use the word kill since I don't feel that the word murder is appropriate given the climate that you specify. I would also maintain that most well adjusted people would not do anything that was not to their immediate or at least long term benefit, regardless about how much punishment they'd be likely (or unlikely) to face.

Feel free to be thankful that you're on the gulf coast and I'm an ocean away.

Kaydens.

[stamenflicker]

FG,

History proves that caring for our aged has not made us unfit for survival. It's not survival of the fittest, it's survival of anything which is fit enough to survive. There is probably no practical reason for peacocks to have huge feathers. There is no practical reason for moths to fly into flames. Look up the explantions for these things.

But there is really no reason necessitating that at all. Two of my favorite Star Trek TNG episodes (I know I'm a geek) were about this very topic.

One had counselor Troy (betazoid) returning to a pre-wake for one of her parents or a family member-- if I'm remembering it right. The person (and Picard took a liking to them) had invited the crew to a birthday party after which they were to be eliminated from society.

The second, more popular episode, had Worf injured in a battle. He is can no longer move his legs. According to Klingon tradition, a warrior without the capability of fighting should be killed by his best friend. Worf chose Riker and gave him a ceremonial blade to kill him with. Riker debated back and forth and chose to accept this moral responsibility of killing his friend for the sake of his defined cultural values.

The point of those two stories from my perspective is that we as humans have come to value certain things not from necessity but rather because it seems proper to us at another level.

Beancounter,

Therefore the active support of the elderly is indirectly necessary for us to enjoy a long life.

That's a fine example, but it doesn't really say much to why any one of us would have great difficulty aiming a gun at our mother's head. It's not like there is any rationality to our decisions regarding caring for a parents. We don't "weigh the options" so to speak. It is deeply intrinsically wrong to kill our parents and we know this so deeply that any real thought of doing so would produce cold sweats and trembling hands. In that sense, it is not "necessary" that we care for them at any rational level... there is something deeper in our guts that says "No way." I find it difficult to believe that "whatever" that is in us pushing us toward this ethic has a root in our instinctual make-up after years of unconsious yet rational evolving.

Flick

[Beancounter]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
That's a fine example, but it doesn't really say much to why any one of us would have great difficulty aiming a gun at our mother's head. It's not like there is any rationality to our decisions regarding caring for a parents. We don't "weigh the options" so to speak. It is deeply intrinsically wrong to kill our parents and we know this so deeply that any real thought of doing so would produce cold sweats and trembling hands. In that sense, it is not "necessary" that we care for them at any rational level... there is something deeper in our guts that says "No way." I find it difficult to believe that "whatever" that is in us pushing us toward this ethic has a root in our instinctual make-up after years of unconsious yet rational evolving.

Flick

I would agree that my argument is weak (or irrelelvant even) from a Darwinian perspective.

We would have great difficulty popping off mom becuase if we did there would be repercussions - back to the point being made in the OP - which over time have led to murder being morally unacceptable. This is not a genetic (Darwinian) thing it is memetic (such a word?).

BTW Is it any harder to point a gun at the kid next door than it is to point it at your mother? I doubt it. Remember that most murders are committed by someone that knows the victim (or so we keep being told on CSI etc!)

[Kaydens]

Ok, so I've looked at my above post (specifically the answer to Ladewig's last question) and the response is fairly glib and uninformative. Since I've inadvertantly left the post long enough that I can no longer edit it I'll correct and clarify now.

When I ask if there's a reason to kill the hypothetical person, I would be evaluating whether or not the reward outweighed the risks associated with the act.

Let us examine a few possibilities:

Firstly society is as we have it today, except there is no prohibition on murder. In this society people rarely kill each other (for whatever reason, the behaviour is not widespread). The rational I would be looking at is: "assuming that my behaviour in this instance were to spread throughout the population, the risk of my death at the hands of another increases. Thus, would I benefit sufficiently by this act to outweigh the increased risk that this kind of behaviour would incur?" Under these circumstances the reward would have to be very great.

Looking at a society where anarchy reins, the social order is broken down and people are killing each other anyway, the increase in risk is greatly reduced and therefore the reward could be substantially reduced and still be a net gain.

At this point however I have to chicken out of th question. These are theoretical issues for me. I do not know how I would react in these situations.

Looking at a completely different scenario (one that I feel is closer to Ladewig's question): myself and one other person are trapped in the wilderness (atop a mountain for example). The calculation now becomes something that can be quantified. Assuming that there is no source of nutrition and we will starve before rescue I see very little that is morally questionable about killing my companion in order to eat them however I do not know if I would do it. Certainly I may hesitate long enough that my companion would kill me. Taking another angle though it would be foolish to kill my companion if there were no chance of rescue or we could cooperate to find sustenance.

I can reason out a stance that most people would find morally reprehensible and I would have very little compunction about defending such a position. Whether I would commit such acts or behave within that frame of morality is a question I feel unable to answer.

I guess my real response to Ladewig's question is simply

I don't know

Kaydens.

[stamenflicker]

memetic (such a word?).

I'm not sure if its an actual word, I think it is; nevertheless I think I understand what you mean. Was meme theory Dawkins or someone else?

The problem with meme theory (my opinion here) and say Lewis' the "Tao" is that essentially they provide explanations as to current moral norms, but both operate from undemonstrable assumptions.

I think an interesting subject for an essay would be "The Social Construction of Memes" because there isn't a whole lot of difference between the two approaches to social norms. It would be philosophically like an essay on the Social Construction of Social Construction, which again I would find very intriguing philosophically speaking.

Flick

[stamenflicker]

I don't know

A good answer... I'm not sure any of us can know.

Flick

[FireGarden]

Hi, flick
I thought that Riker declined, but I'm no expert.
The point of those two stories from my perspective is that we as humans have come to value certain things not from necessity but rather because it seems proper to us at another level.
I agree to an extent. But often that "other level" has enough pull on us to make it seem like necessity. IE: we find it hard to go against deeply ingrained values - except for the following get-out clause!

Worf eventually decided to "go down fighting" by allowing an experimental surgical procedure. No honourable death with a ceremonial blade, instead an honourable fight against paralysis. Which illustrates my point: You can decide what you want to do, then find the value that supports it.

Don't agree with the war? do it for king and country!

[FireGarden]

BTW,
If anyone wants to reconsider the effect of evolution, this site talks about some of the "Virtual World" experiments into altruism.
http://www.amasci.com/weird/hevolv.html

We are discovering that cooperation is one of the most powerful evolutionary forces around. We are finding that creativity wins over strength. In the battle to survive, creatures who collaborate with each other can burst ahead of the selfish and brutal "WINNERS." Those who team up and work to create the best food, mates, or environmental niches, are the ones who succeed.

[...]A very successful creature is a simple one known as Tit-for-Tat. When dealing with other creatures, Tit-for-tat first assumes that the other creature is unselfish and "good," and so it attempts to cooperate. Then, after the first interaction, Tit-for-tat will remember the behavior of its opponent, and will turn their behavior back against them. If you screw with a Tit-for-tat creature, then Tit-for tat will screw you right back during the next negotiation. But if you treat Tit-for-tat nice, then Tit-for-tat will remember this when next you meet. However, there is an additional and interesting effect. Because Tit-for-tat always gives other creatures the benefit of the doubt on the first meeting, teams made of Tit-for-tat creatures don't try to hurt each other. In the artificial battlefield, Tit-for-tat societies can quickly grow large and wipe out their bad-ass "Meanie" opponents.
Lots of examples of symbiosis in nature. Also plenty of successful psychos in nature. So being cuddly isn't inevitable.

MRC_Hans gave a good argument regarding why brainy creatures would probably be social. But I still wouldn't say inevitable.

[Kaydens]

Interesting little site.

I find it bizarre that it declares Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker to be a book from the opposition, do they have an axe to grind?

Anything beyond a cursory examination of the works of "neo-Darwinism" typified by Dawkins popular writing will show that the sites characterisation of Natural selection as "biggest, baddest [@ssholes] are the winners" is quite erroneous.

In fact reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins would show that this very experiment (conducted by Robert Axelrod as an investigation of Game Theory) is detailed and discussed in the text. Incidentally the chapter is titled "Nice Guys Finish First?"

And this is the opposition to this school of thought. Neo Darwinism is greatly indebted to game theory and its ability to explain Evolutionarily Stabe Strategies or ESSs.

See this website: http://www.holycross.edu/departments/biology/kprestwi/behavior/ESS/games_intro.html

This was just brought up by Googling: Game Theory ESS

Kaydens.

Edited for incorrect URL

[FireGarden]

Hi, Kaydens
A lot of links at the end of that page that are new to me. (I haven't read the page since a few years ago!) I may delve into them over the weekend.

They do apologise for listing Dawkins as "opposition"! The following, while not entirely against the page in my previous post, does offer a counter-example to the idea that we can devide everything into saints and sinners. Or the idea that saints are more/less successful than sinners.

In his "Extended Phenotype" (1982) chapter 7 "Selfish wasp, selfish strategy" Dawkins discusses ESS - Evolutionary Stable Strategy. That's a strategy that is successful when competing against itself. An improtant quality: there's no point becoming successful if doing so means you become less successful.

The example used is wasps that dig/steal nests, provision them with food, lay eggs, seal the nest, then go on to the next nest. The difference in behaviour is dig/steal. Obviously stealing saves some energy but invites retaliation and risks injury. Which strategy is best? Too much stealing would mean too few nests to compete over. But stealing is sometimes beneficial. Suppose the optimum is, say, 70 percent of nests were dug by the user rather than stolen.

First of all, they couldn't find a conditional type of strategy. EG: If you are bigger than the digger, then steal.

More interestingly, it turns out that wasps aren't divided into diggers and thieves. Instead of 70 percent of wasps digging the nests they use, each wasp has a 70 percent chance of digging a nest for a particular clutch of eggs. The first nest may be stolen, the next dug. Seemingly at random.

Dawkins is using this as an example of why it makes sense to consider the genes (and the behaviour they program) as the units selection operates upon. The wasps aren't optimising their own individual sucess. It's the success of a "society" of competing wasps that is optimised. The behaviour of wasps in that society being decided not by genes for digging and competing genes for stealing. A gene that says "dig and steal in these proportions" has conquered the entire population because it is the best at competing against itself.

I'm not sure I've explained that well.

[Iacchus]

Originally posted by jay gw
Necessity is the mother of invention - are morals just another kind of invention? What's the point in passing laws, if not to protect us from ourselves?

[Kaydens]

A minor derail but....

From what I recall of the ESS discussion I've read, the explanation is less that it does well against itself but more that it cannot be successfully invaded by another strategy.

This means that whilst a certain strategy may not yield maximum results to all participants, no strategy can do better than it if the ESS is already in place. It's quite hard to explain without examples but if you imagine a situation where absolute cooperation yields good results to everyone but one individual could come out ahead by being selfish then everyone cooperating would not be ESS because it could be invaded by selfish individuals.

So anyway, returning to that page, it does apologise for listing Dawkins as an opponent but it also seems to erroneously characterise these findings as damaging to the concept of evolution by natural selection and neo-darwinism particularly. Of course these findings are not in any way troublesome to this concept as neo-darwinism deals with selection at a genetic level rather than an individual level. It's the general tone of the page that makes me think that it's got things the wrong way around.

On the other hand there is this statement that I'd missed
While the above might be a severe distortion of the Neodarwinian viewpoint, I find that many science-oriented people seem to believe it.
So it may be that they are merely misunderstanding Dawkins' views. Contrary to popular belief he is not a genetic determinist in philosophy.

Kaydens

Edited for grammar and spelling

[FireGarden]

Kaydens,
The definition of ESS I gave was the one that Dawkins used. I had the book to hand. He does admit that it's a simplification.

I lightly skimmed the webpage you linked to. I'll read more deeply later.

But my first thought is that if an ESS doesn't compete well with itself, then its fitness will be reduced as it becomes more widespread. So it would actually work better if it were less widespread, ie: prefer to be invaded if it had already conquered the entire population. I could be wrong.

In the wasp example, the best strategy is one requiring a particular proportion of digging/thieving. If wasp type A has a probability 0.7 of digging, but does badly in a population of type-A wasps, then it would do better if some other types of wasp were introduced. So if type-A isn't ESS in my definition, then it could not be an ESS by your definition either.

[FireGarden]

My last post is a load of bunk. The invader needs to do well to become established as a rival. Type-A can't prosper from rivals unless those rivals prosper of their own accord. Or have I got it wrong again?

if type-A doesn't compete well with itself, then its fitness will be reduced as it becomes more widespread. You'd end up with mixed ESS, rather than pure ESS, as defined on Kaydens' webpage. I think!

[Jyera]

Do all morals come from necessity?

Yes. But only from one type of necessity.
Moral comes from the necessity to judge.

[Kaydens]

I quite see your point about an ESS having to compete successfully against itself Firegarden and I was probably a little dismissive of it in my post. You are correct that an ESS must do well against (or with, they could be cooperative strategies) but that doesn't quite go far enough.

The way I have seen ESS explained (again in a Dawkins book, I really should probably look outside one man's work but I've already got 2 books on the go and 2 more lined up for when I finish) is in terms of an iterated prisoner's dilemma. For this example choose the payout as follows:

Both betray (-1 to both)
Both cooperate (+3 to both)
One ooperates, one betrays (0 to cooperator, +5 to betrayer)

From this you can see that Always Cooperate is a strong strategy in relation to "competing with itself". In fact it doesn't work except in an environment dominated by this strategy. You can also see though that a society composed of this strategy only would be easily invaded by a strategy of Always Betray as they would always do better than those who Always Cooperate since they would rarely meet someone who would betray them. Thus whilst Always Cooperate does well "against" itself and has the best average payout of all strategies, it is not an ESS since it could be invaded by Always Betray.

OK it's a little simplistic but that's how I remember it from The Selfish Gene.

As far as Mixed ESS for a strategy that thrived on rival strategies you are quite correct in your explanation. The requirement for this is that the fitness for an ESS varies with frequency and that there is a point where the frequencies of the competing strategies make their fitness equal. This would mean that in your case you would be looking at 2 strategies whose fitness was reduced as they became more common, so at some point you would find that the 2 competing strategies would form an equilibrium and a mixed ESS.

Worth noting though that a strategy 0.7 dig 0.3 steal would not be a mixed ESS if all individuals used it.

Kaydens.

[FireGarden]

Thanks Kaydens, that example makes things a lot clearer.

I passed up on "Selfish Gene" because I already have "Blind Watchmaker" as well as "Extended Phenotype". I thought "2 by one author is enough".... It's never enough! :)

[Kaydens]

Well I haven't read the Extended Phenotype yet but having recently finished the Selfish Gene it's definately on my list for the future.

I read The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene and I'd say that while they explore the same issues (broadly speaking) the do focus on different pasrticulars. The Blind Watchmaker focuses on natural selection and it's power in terms of cumulative alteration whilst The Selfish Gene explores the genetic side of the theory of evolution. Both are excellent books that have enhanced my understanding of the subject endlessly and given me a real appreciation of it. At some point I will be diving into The Extended Phenotype as I understand it focuses on the ideas of genetic evolution affecting trends and traits beyond the host body (e.g. parasites). This will have to wait though because I'm currently reading A Devil's Chaplain (selected essays by Dawkins) and Flim Flam (I finally got hold of a copy). Next up it's Chaos by James Gleick and Human, All Too Human by Neitzsche.

Kaydens.