Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-428

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ## ## ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ## ####### ####### [ Genetic Moralism ] [ By The GNN ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ GENETIC MORALISM by THE GNN/DualCrew-Shining/uXu Contemporary studies of the inner part of nature, the genes and their codes (DNA), and their implications for our lives, have during the 20th century been very 'successful' in terms of 'understanding' the world. We are now able to modify certain codes so that vegetables may grow under harsh conditions, cows produce more milk and meat, humans avoid certain hereditary diseases, to mention a few rocks on the pile of progress. Out of these scientific fireworks, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that 'everything' around us has more or less something to do with genes. Some people have done this jump. An old trend that constantly appears in a new costume is to mix theories of genes and evolution with normative moral systems. Faithful readers of uXu are probably well aware of the conclusions put forward by Mr. Leon Felkins in some of his essays. His and his mentors' (especially Richard Dawkins) opinions concerning the human geist are well- familiar: Those moral theories that aim to make humanity more 'altruistic' (as opposed to 'egoistic') are deemed to fail since - and here follows the heavy argument - studies of the genes (and the evolution in general) has _scientifically proved_ that man is a 'natural biological egoist'. Man is in 'reality' (a central term in this context) completely controlled by her genes, an egoistic selfish elitist who only aims for personal survival, and the avoidance of death as a terminal state by refining and spreading the genetic code to further generations. The conclusion to be drawn out of this, it is said, is that it is hard (and even dangerous to the well-being of the world) to follow moral systems that run counter with this 'natural egoism'. If altruism is good or bad is not really a problem for the discussion I am about to enter in this text. The question I am interested in is more fundamental: is it really 'scientifically proven' that man is an egoist? Or is the term 'scientific' used in these discussions nothing more than a rhetorical tool, empty of content? What makes a theory 'scientific'? Several suggestions are available, not all of them compatible with each other. But a trivial feature they all share is that such a theory is partly constituted by a _criterion of falsifiability_; it must be possible to show that the theory to be false with the help of certain controlled experiments, tests. Prima facie, this might sound quite strange. After all, if a theory cannot be shown to be false, does this not show that it is true? Certainly. But this is something that is the case _after_ the tests in question have been performed. _Prior_ to the tests being conducted, the theory must be so constructed that it can be shown to be false. If a theory is formulated in a way that it is impossible to falsify it _under any condition_, the theory is not scientific. It is then more of a groundless speculation which belong to the area of metaphysics. "God initialised the Big Bang", "without knowing about it, all people want to commit suicide", or "there is an invisible rhino outside space and time under my desk" are all examples of theories which cannot be made false with empirical investigations. They always 'win', no matter what we say and see. We cannot test the hypotheses, because they are so constituted (formulated) that they are impossible to test. Even if all people around the world said that they were not interesting in killing themselves, the suicide-theory wins anyway, because of the addition of "without knowing about it". The invisible rhino cannot be discovered, since scientific instruments are not designed to observe objects which are said to exist outside time and space. And so on. Gene-moralists seldom hesitates to claim that their theories of 'natural egoism' are supported by scientific observations. So, if these moralists are not conceptually confused on what the very term 'science' implies, we must accept that their theories are well-grounded facts, the results of careful empirical investigations (with positive answers regarding their thesis). Well then, how does these observations look? In the literature around genetic-ego-moralism, we find no obvious answers. It seems like the writers presupposes that the reader has studied the scientific experiments that supports the conclusion in question. How certain genes have an indisputable influence on how we behave when it comes to alcoholism, looks and resistance to low temperatures, is clearly documented. But the claimed 'egoism' is not really tested. The writers mostly speak about how it was billions of years ago, when Earth was habituated by self-copying organisms; and conclude that we, today, have the same non-intentional intention of self-preservation as those organisms, with the exception of being of a slightly more complicated structure. Nothing however stops us from performing the observations necessary ourselves, using the literature of gene-moralism as a complement. We need no technically advanced equipment for succeeding with this task. After all, we are not really interested in if the genes 'themselves' are egoists (as it would be equally uninteresting, and worthless, to study the atomic structure of the brain to find out if we have a free will) but merely if the genes _makes us_ behave egoistic, without exceptions. Let us therefore, in a true scientific manner, perform some simple observations of the world, and its human inhabitants. Unfortunately, we quickly discover that the hypothesis seems to be false (or at least hard to prove). All around us, we see how people act like they were altruists. They open doors for others, they jump into dark waters to save drowning strangers, they sign up as military soldiers even though they know this will eventually lead them to a painful death. Actually, we will find so many exceptions (which a theory of this kind cannot afford) that we ought to conclude that the hypothesis is false. By now, the hard-core gene-moralists begin to speak. They claim that have not been careful enough in our observations. We have not understood the simple fact that we all are egoists, _but naturally acts unselfish because it in the end will favour our selfish interests_! This sounds like an acceptable explanation to why we could not immediately find the hypothesis to be true. Our genes are more cunning that one could firstly believe, despite their non-intentionality. Our seemingly unselfish acts are nothing more than the result of an advanced selfish strategy. We open doors, jump down in dark waters, and so on, because, in the end, someone will do the same thing for us. Following from this, we find a powerful argument to the question of why we refrain from breaking social conventions (sometimes referred to as 'memes'), even though it would occasionally favour our personal interests to do so. Most of us follow simple rules as 'do not steal bikes' or 'do not perform genocide', because we (our genes) have learnt that breaking them would, through complicated networks of other egoists, sooner or later strike back on ourselves. That the human race would be more 'moral' than other animals in is, then, only fine words which lack connection to the objective reality as put forward by the reliable method of modern science. As a final remark to the above, some gene-moralists fancy putting forward the assumption that there are defect versions of the human race; unnatural rebels whom fail to conform to the rules of the evolutionary ladder. They are not many; after all, nature have a firm grip over us. But nature is not perfectly perfect, thus open to mistakes. People whom does things which cannot, no matter how far we stretch the explanations, be explained in terms of egoism are sparkling clear examples of things that have gone wrong. The fact that there are adults without children whom commit suicide out of no apparent reason, cannot be anything else than signs that there are defect genes in the 'pool'. Have we now found enough evidence to conclude that the hypothesis concerning the human evolutionary gene-egoism is true? Yes, the gene- moralists say. But it does not take a genius to realise that something is wrong with this conclusion. How could we from the hypothesis 'all humans are egoists' via empirical observations which did _not_ support this theory come to the conclusion that it is true? Something is obviously wrong. But what? The answer is simple. If we look closer at the above arguments, we discover that they are nothing more than improper _additions_ to the thesis we tried to prove. Instead of performing the scientific method from the _question_ 'is man egoistic?', the additions slowly transferred the question into the _statement_ 'man is egoistic!'; and from this statement we merely formulated other theories which were said to support it. They sure support the statement. But they are of no use for the _original_ question, for which the examination was conducted in the first place. In other words, we have not presented any 'scientific theory' after all, merely a groundless speculation. The criterion of falsifiability vanished in the process, leaving us with a 'theory' which cannot be empirically tested under any conditions. Since the line of arguments coming from gene-moralists always takes this form, their serious claim of being scientific ought to be discarded. Sure, we can still argue that man ought to be an egoist. Nothing I have said in this text prevents us from this. Perhaps the world would be a much better place if people acted less altruistic. But to jump to this conclusion with the help of a highly dubious theory concerning our genes is to truly misconceive what the scientific method is - and, more importantly, is not. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #428 Underground eXperts United 1998 uXu #428 ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/texts/uxu ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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