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Contents : Research Topic White Paper #5 Institute for Research on Unlimited Love Altruism Compassion Service EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES ON OTHER REGARD Jeffrey P. Schloss Ph.D. Professor of Biology Westmont College Santa Barbara CA I. Introduction One of the discomfiting often lamented but potentially fruitful tensions in modern intellectual life is the gulf between the meaning-affirming perspectives of traditional knowledge systems and the mechanism-inferring perspectives of the natural sciences which vary from each other not only with respect to methodology but not infrequently with respect to conclusions on important issues. A quintessential example of this entails the nature of human love widely regarded by religious and wisdom traditions as both an essential means toward human flourishing and a crucial end of human fulfillment but largely ignored as an object of inquiry or explicitly rejected as a significant feature of life by scientific study over the last century. This may be understood at least in part as a general consequence of the objectivist aspirations of natural science which provoked a reticence to employ interior experience or personal agency in any causal explanation and also as a specific consequence of (prevailing interpretations of) Darwinian biology which since Huxley (1894) and Spencer (1897) have tended to view altruism and sacrificial other regard as incommensurable with the process of natural selection. In the last several decades however biological sciences in general and evolutionary theory in particular have witnessed an upsurge of interest in altruism and other forms of love because they have been recognized to constitute an unresolved evolutionary quandary because we have important new theoretical and methodological tools for their elucidation and because there is increased acknowledgement that the sciences should not indeed cannot flourish in isolation from the valuational disciplines which inform and give meaning to their findings. It is the purpose of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (IRUL) to foster scientific research and interdisciplinary scholarship which advances our understanding of the origin nature conditions and consequences of the manifold forms of other regarding attitudes and behaviors. The term "unlimited love" is intended to stimulate and not truncate breadth of inquiry and by it we mean caring that is a) extensive with regard to domain (e.g. caring for outsiders enemies or others unable or unwilling to effect compensatory return) b) intensive with respect to motivation (e.g. love for near and dear that is unconditional in its offer and inextinguishable in its persistence) or c) auto-catalytic or emergent in its outcomes (e.g. other-regard that stimulates rather than attenuates further caring by synergistically promoting health or other aspects of well being in the giver and/or recipient). While an explicit goal of the Institute is to promote constructive scholarly dialogue between scientific and religious understandings of love and to support scientific investigation of religion's role in enhancing and/or impeding love the IRUL is not simplistically concordist in its agenda: we are not seeking to use science as a confirmation of traditional religious "answers" but rather we seek to fund and empower scientific investigation of open-ended questions with religious significance. Central Disciplinary Themes The field of evolutionary biology is widely regarded has having been instrumental in the historical transition from Romantic to Victorian reformulations of love's role in nature (Gliserman 1975 Oates 1988) and has arguably played a leading role in influencing the most recent understandings of human love as well. Subsequent to the initial Darwinian disenfranchisement of love as "Creation's final law" (in Tennyson's marvelous phrase) there was a nearly century-long hiatus in evolutionary engagement with this issue until E.O. Wilson (1975) declared it "the central theoretical issue in evolutionary biology." Over the last several decades there has been a succession of widely divergent explanatory epochs each with very distinct and profoundly significant implications for our understanding of the conditions for constraints on and consequences of love in human flourishing. Kin selection (Hamilton (1964) and reciprocal altruism (Trivers 1971) constituted the first break throughs in our ability to make sense of cooperative and sacrificial behaviors from an evolutionary point of view. The theoretical and empirical fruitfulness of these theories plus the widely accepted refutation of group selection (Williams 1966) ushered in the ascendance of selfish-gene theory (Dawkins 1976 1982) and sociobiological reductionism (Wilson 1975 1978 Barash 1977 Alexander 1979 Ghiseln 1974) both of which sought to deconstruct all ostensible other regard in terms of reproductively self-interested benefits to kin or compensation via reciprocity. While widely critiqued for its cynicism and naive triumphalism the initial formulations of sociobiology have been influenced sometimes nuanced sometimes extended - by animal behavior studies (Wrangham 1997 1996 DeWaal 1996 Dugatin 1997 2000) and game theoretic models (Axelrod 1985 Skyrms 2000). And a second generation of sociobiological theory has emerged which is no less adaptationist but which emphasizes the unique importance in human communities of indirect reciprocity (Alexander 1987 Frank 1989) sexual selection (Miller 2000) theories of mind (Alman 2000') and self-deception theory (Cosmides & Tooby 1992 Trivers 1985 1991). These are all competing accounts though they are not mutually exclusive and have in common the assertion that all cooperative behavior must still generate though not always optimize reproductive benefit for the individual actor. In contrast to the above approaches and in an attempt to both explain and make provision for the existence of behavior that appears to be unconstrained by individual reproductive benefit (one manifestation of what we might regard as "unlimited love") a large number of population geneticists Darwinian anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists have been exploring various versions of hierarchical selection theory. Some have revisited previously discredited notions of group selection (Sober & Wilson 1998 Boehm 1999) postulating that group level benefits can compensate for individual disbenefits. The upside of such theories is that they provide a plausible account for the establishment of genuinely sacrificial attitudes and behaviors within groups. The downside is that such behaviors are promoted by inter-group competition and therefore we cannot account for or even allow for the existence of outgroup care and in fact outgroup hostility becomes the necessary adjunct of within group commitment. In an attempt to make sense of distinctively human behaviors that appear to confer neither individual nor group level reproductive payoff numerous workers have been exploring coevolutionary or dual inheritance versions of hierarchical theory (Durham 1991 Plotkin 1999 Blackmore 1999 Cronk 1999). These notions posit nested levels of material (genetic) and ideational (memetic) replicators which are differentially reproduced and transmitted by selective processes that may interact but have been at least partially uncoupled from one another. This represents a landmark development in modern biological thought because first the efficacy of ideational causation is reaffirmed after a century of Marxist Freudian and Skinnerian materialism and second it is conceded to have power "over" or at times in "opposition to" (Durham 1991) genetic influence. There are many variants of these theories which differ vastly in their views of the existence or non-existence of human volitional agency and whether memes or minds constitute the telos of human cognitive function. However an upside of all these theories is they make provision for the reality of genuinely counter-reproductive sacrifice biologically transcendent behavior. The downside is that to the very extent they make this provision the most radical human altruism becomes in a sense the least deeply "human" -- an imposition upon rather than a fulfillment of our biological natures. We have no proposal for how these two streams of genetic and memetic information interact neurologically developmentally or culturally and therefore no template for conceiving of love as an appropriate means toward and end of human flourishing. Long-term Significance It is an unusually exciting time in the development of evolutionary theories of human nature in general and altruistic love in particular because the explanatory resources are highly varied extensive but empirically under-determined. We are arguably at the threshold of important theoretical break-throughs yet in need of fundamental empirical and experimental studies to test competing hypotheses. Moreover each of the above accounts has profoundly contrasting theological implications but also has verifiable empirical correlates. And provocatively it should be noted that the above-described continuum in evolutionary theory corresponds to longstanding differences in traditional theological understandings of love. On the one hand those traditions that emphasize grace as the refinement or fulfillment of nature and see altruism or agape' as an extension of the God-honoring natural loves which are part of the human legacy via creation (Singer 1966 1986 1988 1995 Pope 1994 Post 2002) -- have much in common with adaptationist perspectives that posit both the constrained extensivity and interior reward of human cooperativity. On the other hand those theological traditions that emphasize human selfishness and the concomitant need for radical redemption and which view agape' not as an extension of our natural loves but as a reformulation of them upon a recalcitrant biological substrate (Nygren 1984) have much in common with the dualistic or emergentist hierarchical accounts. These are not idle speculative controversies for they have concrete implications for how we understand and seek to promote love itself and how we understand the role of familial bonding friendship mate recruitment group cohesion symbolic systems and religious experience in cultivating and being cultivated by unlimited love. As is often the case in intellectual history recurring perspectival differences may crop up in varying conceptual garb at different times and these tensions may reflect intrinsic ambiguities in human nature itself (Boehm 1999 Schloss 2002). As is not often the case though the present conceptual wardrobe of these fundamental perspectives entails genetic neurological developmental psychometric correlates that are empirically testable and theoretically distinguishable. With ensuing research we may be able to adjudicate between them or we may develop synthetic new paradigms in light of which the ancient dichotomies appear contrived (Chisholm 1999 Oyama 2000). Major questions for research are described below. These questions are grouped by theoretical paradigm and not by discipline e.g. many paradigms raise questions that have distinctly interdisciplinary research implications. Fields involved include population genetics mathematical modeling ethology & animal behavior anthropology neuroscience and molecular & cognitive development. II. Key Research Questions A. Foundational Empirical Questions Because natural selection requires fitness differentials (selective transmission) in heritable traits the two most crucial and currently unresolved questions in the evolution of all forms of love involve the habitability and fitness impacts of other regarding behavior. Question 1 To what extent are differences in other regarding attitudes and behaviors heritable This question has not only substantial practical significance (in terms of the cultivation and transmission of loving behaviors and their attendant virtues) but is theoretically significant to the development of any empirically-grounded evolutionary account. If variance in attitudes capacities or care-related activity is not demonstrably heritable it favors accounts that emphasize emergence of this capacity as an epiphenomenon or incidental by-product on which selection does not act. If there is a heritable component we may then assess the dynamics of heritability to address question of whether the stream of transmission is genetic and/or cultural. This is crucial to evaluating traditional Darwinian dual-inheritance and emerging "holistic" developmental accounts of altruism. There are few studies in the heritability of altruism and those that exist reflect methodological limitations of earlier genotype-phenotype models that do not have a nuanced understanding of developmental interactions (Rushton 1989). This area of research is in need of methodologically imaginative solutions to two complicated problems. First measuring a behavioral or attitudinal altruistic phenotype is made difficult both by problems of ontology i.e. how to demarcate behavioral characteristics that are not as observationally distinct as anatomical traits discerning as it were "the correct typology of description the natural suture lines along which the phenotype of the individual is to be divided" (Lewontin et. al. 1984: 247) and also by problems of ontogeny i.e. however we define the phenotype it is likely to be highly inconstant across developmental life history. Second while we can distinguish between heritable and random environmental influences on phenotype by pedigree twin and correlational studies it turns out to be very difficult to tease apart genetic and cultural sources of heritability since they may ride on or mask each other. With respect to altruism as a hypothetical example there could be any number of genes or gene complexes that influence basic physical characteristics which in a given social environment positively or negatively influence acceptance into a cooperative social matrix and therefore attend the development of prosocial affinities. This would generate phyletic or correlational data indicative of genes "for" altruism even in mono & di zygotic twin studies but in fact would be a heritable artifact of social mediation. Religious implications include a) the way in which differing religious belief and experience might mediate expression of varying genetic legacies and b) the extent to which and mechanisms by which religious beliefs that influence altruisms are heritable and selectively transmitted. Question 2 To what extent is variance in altruistic attitudes or behaviors associated with fitness differentials This may be the single most important and most difficult empirical question in evolutionary theories of altruism and human behavior. Even if we can distinguish and reliably measure appropriate behavioral phenotypes and demonstrate they are heritable we must determine whether phenotypic variance results in differentials in fitness. A starting point in such analysis would be to ask whether there is an association between various manifestations of altruism and morbidity mortality mate recruitment social status resource acquisition inclusion in reciprocal alliances or even fecundity. There are virtually no systematic studies on these topics. But none of these measures not even fecundity translate directly into fitness which especially for a kin-selected species must integrate individual reproductive output and inclusive fitness resulting from kinship reproduction. Virtually all of the contrasting and speculative explanations of altruism from the adaptationist accounts of indirect reciprocity sexual selection or self deception theory to group selectionist and dual inheritance theories are based on hypothetical but untested scenaria of the positive or negative effects of various behaviors on factors related to fitness. Monroe's (1996) comprehensive sociological study is probably the most significant in its suggestion that major patterns of altruistic aid do not conform with empirical predictions of adaptationist theories but the fact is we are in desperate need of empirical biological studies. What we really need here are not only specific empirical studies of various forms of altruism and fitness-related parameters but ultimately we need a comprehensive demography and natural history of altruism: under what social and environmental conditions does it flourish and how if at all does it vary as a function of life history i.e. across age gender social status family structure birth order In addition to constituting an empirical question that is significant for evolutionary theory this issue has two important implications for religion. First the empirical question of whether and to what extent humans are capable of counter-reproductive or "biologically transcendent" behaviors is intrinsically significant theologically. Second however this comes out there is room for biologically informed theologies of embodiment that do not anchor imago dei in the transbiological but root it more hospitably in the organic creation. B. Traditional Sociobiological Accounts

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