Subject: Re: Evolution and Cognition

From: [email-masked] (Eyal Mozes)
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:18:11 -0400

Bryan Caplan writes:
>What instincts do I think human beings possess?  First, I suggest
>that humans incline instinctively to a crude Hobbesian egoism
>, modified only to include concern for blood relatives.  Modern
>humans rarely live exclusively by these instinctive drives, but
>I find it interesting that no matter how altruistic an individual's
>announced philosophy, his or her practical actions tend to focus
>on personal and kin survival.

I am puzzled as to what Bryan is referring to. I certainly don't see
the empirical evidence for his claim, and I would ask him to be more
specific.

It may be true that many actions of people *in modern, western society*
- holding productive jobs, saving money, buying a house, obtaining life
insurance to provide for their children, etc. - can be seen as "tending
to focus on personal and kin survival". But if this were the result of
instincts, then you would expect such "tendency to focus on personal
and kin survival" to be the *weakest* in modern western society, and
the *strongest* in primitive societies; which seems to be the opposite
of the truth. So I think this tendency is more plausibly explained as a
result, not of instincts, but of ideas, i.e. of the remnants of the
enlightenment philosophy still operating in our culture.

>In
>particular, it is interesting to note that all over the world
>and throughout history, people have been killing, looting, and
>enslaving one another;

I find this statement confusing, since Bryan here is stating the
strongest evidence against his statement in the previous paragraph. All
over the world, and throughout history, people have been killing,
looting and enslaving one another, even though doing so usually
requires putting their lives at grave risk, or even throwing their
lives away; this is the opposite of what you would expect if Bryan were
correct about an instinctive "tendency to focus on personal and kin
survival".

>and this tendency [to kill, loot and enslave] seems to have little
>relation to the presence or absence of altruistic ethical philosophy.
>operating in this culture.

I disagree. Throughout recorded history, most societies held some
version of an altruistic ethics, ranging from the primitive tribal
ethics held by most hunter-gatherer societies, to the sophisticated
altruism of Christianity; and most of the killing, looting and
enslaving can be directly traced to people acting on this ethics. The
enlightenment period, up to the late 19th century, in the west, was the
one period of history in which some ethical views centering on
self-interest - including that of Hobbes - were partly accepted; and it
was also the most peaceful period in history. I think the historical
evidence completely supports Rand's view that altruism is a morality of
death, and bears a direct relation to people killing, looting and
enslaving one another.

>I don't disagree with Rand's view that _sometimes_ our emotions
>are determined by our moral values; but I don't think that moral
>values are the _only_ source of emotions.

That was not Rand's view. Rand held that moral values - or, more
generally, ideas - are the source of an individual's emotions *to the
extent that a person chooses to think*. To the extent that a person
chooses to evade the effort of thinking, his emotions and actions will
not be the result of his own thinking or moral values; they will be the
result of unconscious absorption of the culture around him. Since such
emotions have an unconscious source, not subject to conscious control,
you might call them "instinctive"; but the individual has these
"instincts" not necessarily, by his nature, but as a result of his own
default.

The most profound explanation I have seen for the nature of the tribal
mentality, with all of the killing, looting and enslaving that it has
brought about throughout history, was given by Rand, in her articles
"The Anti-Conceptual Mentality" and "Global Balkanization". I think
Rand demonstrated conclusively that this mentality is rooted, not in
any inborn instincts, but in people's volitional avoidance of the
effort of thinking.

				Eyal Mozes