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Underground eXperts United
Presents...
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[ Genetic Moralism ] [ By The GNN ]
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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.
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uXu #428 Underground eXperts United 1998 uXu #428
ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/texts/uxu
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