A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation (Darwinism Today) [Hardcover]

 

 

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It was thought not too many years ago that the architects (so to speak) of the modern world were Marx, Darwin, Einstein and Freud. Now that the postmodern era is upon us, a reevaluation has been made and Marxist ideas have been largely discredited. Einstein has suffered a correction (from quantum mechanics), Freud has been reclassified as literature, and it is only Darwin's reputation that has survived unsullied.

Furthermore during this period the right has taken Darwin as its own, believing that the competitive biological nature of human beings as revealed by evolutionary biology is what leads to the inequalities that exist in human societies while justifying the war of one against all, etc.

But what Peter Singer is crowing about (and is the occasion for this lengthy essay/short book) is that the "red in tooth and claw" (Tennyson) interpretation of biological evolution that prevailed throughout the modern era is now coming under fire. No longer can biological evolution be seen as simply the strong taking advantage of the weak (a notion understandably obnoxious to the left). The larger truth now emerging from biology is that cooperation plays an important role in being fit and has, especially for humans, great adaptive value. It is becoming clear that Richard Dawkins's idea of the "selfish gene" is only part of the understanding, and that natural selection operates on groups through the individual, leading to an understanding that one (more cooperative) tribe may be selected over another, and that it is through cooperation within the tribe that Darwinian fittest may be most strongly expressed.

Now this is an idea that the left can appreciate. Consequently Singer's enthusiasm. Marx is dead, long live Darwin!

My problem with this intellectual enterprise is one that Singer points to on page 38, namely that we cannot form an argument from what IS to what SHOULD BE. Singer opines that we can instead through an appreciation of evolution gain "a better understanding of what it may take to achieve the goals we seek."

Beginning on page 31 with his second chapter, Singer compares behaviors across societies. This allows him to note which practices are universal or nearly so and which are highly diverse. The conclusion is that the more universal the behavior, the more it is a product of our biological nature and not a construct of society. To the extent that this process is valid, the information gotten is valuable. This is indeed one of the tools of evolutionary psychology that some people on the Darwinian left would like to discredit. They fear that an emphasis on our genetic endowment will work against our ability to nurture positive values and behaviors. They want nurture trumping nature.

However, in my opinion, the entire argument is passé and invalid. It is now generally understood in biology that nature gives us a predisposition to certain behaviors that develop in concert with our environmental experience so that our behaviors are an intimate product of both our nature and our nurture and cannot in any way be separated. The old "nature vs. nurture" debate is now seen as based on a false dilemma.

Also, it should be appreciated that today's scientific understanding of human nature as derived from biology, genetics and kindred disciplines, is just that, today's understanding, and as such is tentative. Consequently any oughts, shoulds, etc. drawn from such an understanding--even if such a practice were logically valid--would also be of a provisional nature.

Having said all this, I want to note that Singer's argument is well presented and his prescription for a Darwinian left in Chapter 5 well worth reading. If adopted it would work toward relieving the left from its fear of what evolutionary psychology is discovering about human beings. As Steven Pinker (not exactly a leftist) cheerfully notes, "Singer challenges the conventional wisdom that a recognition of human nature is incompatible with progressive ideals..."

He does, and indeed Singer demonstrates that the discoveries of evolutionary biology can be completely compatible with the traditional values of the left. This is an important understanding, since evolutionary biology is not going to go away, nor are its discoveries. We must learn to live with who and what we are without necessarily condoning our less attractive tendencies or attempting to sweep them under the rug.

Bottom line: the opening chapter which concentrates too much on the well-known Marxist delusions and the Soviet doublethink might well be skipped. The meat of Singer's essay begins with Chapter 2, and works very well by itself.

"In the 20th century the dream of the perfectibility of humankind turned into the nightmares of Stalinist Russia," Singer writes. In the course of this pamphlet, Singer exhorts the Left to wake up.
Although Social Darwinism survives only as a straw man and despite the attachment of some conservatives to creationism, a Darwinian view of human nature is perceived as more compatible with conservatism than socialism: Women are naturally suited to child-care; men have greater status-orientation; the theory of kin selection reinforces faith in the family; and viewing humans as self-interested confirms the underlying assumptions of classical economics (see Darwinian Conservatism (Societas)).
If we are innately predisposed to care more about ourselves and our families than unrelated third-parties, this presents a problem for egalitarian utopianism for 3 reasons:
1) Individuals inevitably strive to promote themselves and their kin above fellow citizens.
2) Only coercive state apparatus can prevent them so doing and the individuals in control of this apparatus will themselves use it corruptly to promote the interests of their own self and kin.
("What egalitarian revolution has not been betrayed by its leaders?" Singer laments. As HL Mencken observed, the "one undoubted effect [of revolutions] is simply to throw out one gang of thieves and put in another".)
3) Egalitarianism would remove the incentive of self-advancement which lies behind the production of goods and services which benefit us all, not to mention of works of art and scientific advances.
(Adam Smith: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher... that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest".)

Animal Liberation

Singer argues our common evolutionary origin precludes a difference in kind between humans and animals (say, in the ability to suffer) sufficient to justify the different treatment accorded to each. "By knocking out the idea that we are a separate creation from the animals," he writes, "Darwinian thinking provded the basis for a revolution in our attitutes to non-human animals". However, he conviently neglects to observe that our evolutionary continuity with non-human species also renders implausible anti-vivisectionists' argument that medical research on non-human subjects has no applicability to humans.

Further, if humans are subject to the same principles of natural selection as other species, this suggests, not the elevation of non-human species to the status of humans, but rather the relegation of humans to that of animals. Finally, acceptance of human nature, entails recognition of carnivory as part of this nature. That meat-eating is natural does not mean it is right. However, given that Singer is an opponent of the distinction between acts and ommissions (see Writings on an Ethical Life (ISNM) xv-xvi), it does presumably mean that, if it is wrong for us to eat animals, we should also take positive steps to prevent lions from eating gazelles.

Reciprocity

Singer observes that financial interest is not synonymous with Darwinian fitness. Indeed, in novel environments, the 2 may not even correlate (Vining 1986). Neither does wealth always lead to greater happiness. "Self-interest" Singer argues "is broader than economic self-interest".

In chapter 4 ("Competition or Cooperation?"), Singer argues that, although both competition and cooperation are natural to humans, it is possible to create a society that focusses more on cooperation and that this is more consistent with the values of the left. However, although it may be true that some societies foster altruism and cooperation more than ours, Singer is short on practical suggestions as to how a culture of altruism is to be created. Changing the values of a culture is not easy, even for a totalitarian government.

Furthermore, Singer is wrong to see competition as in conflict with cooperation. Extreme altruism often occurs in the context extreme competition (e.g. self-sacrifice in war).

Trade (a form of cooperation) is as fundamental to capitalism as competition. In The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, Ridley advocates unregulated free markets on the ground that reciprocity allows humans, as natural traders, to produce efficient systems of exchange without central planning.

Whereas economic trade is motivated by self-interested calculation, Singer envisages reciprocity mediated by emotions such as compassion and guilt. However, these emotions have evolved through the rational calculation of natural selection (Trivers 1971) and, while open to manipulation, especially in evolutionarily-novel societies, are limited in scope.

Eugenics

In response to the claim that welfare encourages the unemployed to have children and thereby promotes dysgenic fertility patterns (see Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations), Singer argues, "even if there were a genetic component to something as nebulous as unemployment, to say that these genes are 'deleterious' would involve value judgements that go way beyond what the science alone can tell us". However, although viewing traits as desirable or undesirable certainly does involve extra-scientific value judgements, virtually everyone would accept some traits (e.g. generosity) as more desirable than others (e.g. selfishness).

Furthermore, while it may not be meaningful to talk of unemployment itself as heritable, twin and adoption studies of the sort pioneered by behavioural geneticists have demonstrated a heritable component to personality traits of the sort that may underlie unemployment (e.g. intelligence, conscientiousness). (Actually, for the purposes of deciding whether certain indivuals should be allowed to reproduce, it does not matter whether traits such as unemployment are biologically inherited or whether the correlation between the behaviour of parents and their children results from child-rearing practices because, unless one is to propose taking children from their natural parents on a massive scale, children generally get their genes and their parenting from the same persons.)

Given Singer argues Darwinism can help us how achieve, but not select, social goals, eugenics may provide a useful means of achieving the goal of producing more altruistic people. Given the incompatibility of human nature and egalitarianism, perhaps the only way to rescue the dream of socialism is to genetically-reengineer human nature itself. (It is perhaps no accident that, prior to World War Two, eugenics was typically identified as a 'progressive' cause. Early twentieth century socialist eugenicists such as HG Wells, Sidney Webb, Margeret Sanger and George Bernard Shaw may have tentatively grasped what eludes contemparary leftists: namely that reengineering society requires reengineering man himself.)

At the book's conclusion, Singer follows Dawkins in suggesting our capacity for Reason enables us to revolt against 'selfish genes'. However, Reason (like the desire to revolt) is itself a product of the same genes and evolved to enable us to pass on our 'selfish genes' more efficiently. Reason can enable the development of eugenic technologies allowing the genetic-engineering of altruism. However, the humans controlling eugenic programmes (governments or corporations) will, given human nature, have less than altruistic motivations themselves (see Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals).

What's Left?

Singer defines 'the Left' in unusually broad terms, namely as "on the side of the weak, not the powerful; of the oppressed, not the oppressor". However, few conservatives would admit to being on the side of the oppressor. On the contrary, advocates of the free-market claim that their policies benefit everyone and that socialist reforms naïvely hurt those they aspire to help.

Indeed, many conservatives would share Singer's aspiration to create a more altruistic culture. This aspiration seems more compatible with the libertarian notion of voluntary charitable donations replacing taxation, than with the coercively extracted progressive taxation typically associated with the left.
(This broad conception of the left has also been unpopular with Singer's fellow leftists, both those rejecting evolutionary psychology (The First Darwinian Left: Socialism and Darwinism 1859-1914) and even some of those receptive to the field (As We Know it: Coming to Terms with an Evolved Mind.)

Singer accepts that not "all inequalities are due to discrimination, prejudice, oppression or social conditioning". Wisely avoiding the political quagmire of the innate race diffences, he instead uses the example of sex differences. "If achieving high status increases access to women," Singer observes, "then we can expect men to have a stronger drive for status than women" and that this, rather than any supposed discrimination, may explain the disproportionate number of men in high status positions. (He neglects to mention the related factor that women are also innately programmed to invest more heavily in offspring and that this may also impede their career advancement. For a more detailed discussion of the biological and psychological factors underlying the gender pay gap see Biology at Work:... Read more ›

As laudable an aim as Singer has, to reconcile Darwinian thinking and the left, he commits the same fallacy of equating natural processes with social processes that the right has so often been criticised for.

This is highlighted in his use of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the work of Axelrod to show that there will always be cheaters in a system of cooperation. Now as an evolutionary game the Prisoner's Dilemma will indeed always evolve cheaters to exploit suckers but in the social world we are not talking about evolution at all but behaviour. Will there always be people who become cheaters if there are suckers to exploit? That is an open question of human nature unrelated to evolution as the time frame doesn't allow any effect on reproduction to become apparant (if, indeed, humans are still evolving in a classical Darwinian way).

In his rejection of Marxist and sociological ideas of society being the primary determinant in human social behaviour Singer throws out the baby with the bath water. Human nature is certainly not a tabla rasa but nor is it 100% genetically predetermined, we have to be careful not to push the emphasis too far the other way.

There is no doubting that evoutionary processes have lead to the development of mankind and the human brain. However much of our morality and social rules are embodied in our brain through our interactions with the social world rather than being purely predetermined genetically.

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5.0 out of 5 stars At last, common sense!
What Singer is proposing is this. We know what the left wants: social justice. We know what we are: evolved creatures (a type of ape!) with an evolved adapted mind. Read more

Published on 11 Sep 2000

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