_In Defense of Instinct_ I was admittedly hasty when I wrote my piece on human instincts; so I am now going to state my thesis more clearly and answer my critics. 1. What is Hobbesian egoism ? First, let me explain what I mean by Hobbesian egoism. Egoism is of course the view that the only thing we ought to do is serve our own self-interest. Hobbesian indicates _what is regarded to be in our interests_: physical survival, material comforts, abundant sexual gratification, etc. Hobbesian egoism may be profitably contrasted with the egoism of Aristotle or Rand, which hold that what constitutes our self-interest is much richer and deeper. Rand implicitly contrasts her view with that of Hobbes when she writes that It [the survival of man qua man] does not mean a _momentary_ or merely _physical_ survival of a mindless brute, waiting for another brute to crush his skull. It does not mean the momentary physical survival of a crawling aggregate of muscles who is willing to accept any terms, obey any thug and surrender any values, for the sake of what is known as survival at any price, which may or may not last a week or a year. Mans survival qua man means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan -- in all of those aspects of existence which are open to his choice. Partly, Rand is stating that we should look to our _long-term_ rather than our _short-term_ interest (which the Hobbesian egoist would not necessarily disagree with), but partly she is stating that e.g. only a rational, purposeful, and dignified existence can _constitute_ our self-interest. What practical difference does this distinction make? For one, the Hobbesian egoist would remorselessly kill or enslave another person if the risks were low and the gain were large. For the Randian egoist, however, this predatory lifestyle would conflict with our interest in being productive, independent, and just individuals. The Hobbesian egoist, similarly, would happily steal if the gain were large and the punishment were small; but the Randian egoist would refrain. 2. The Puzzle The behavior counselled by Hobbesian egoism is widely condemned by most historical moral codes. The puzzle that I see is that it is nevertheless extremely common. Belief in Christian ethics could explain why Christians would try to murder Muslims or atheists; but how Christian ethics would justify enslaving or enserfing other Christians is difficult to see. And yet, throughout the entire period of Christian dominance in Western culture, slavery and serfdom and wars of conquest upon fellow Christians were extremely common. Of course some cultures moral codes endorsed slavery and wars upon foreigners. The puzzle, as I see it, is that this kind of behavior has been extremely common in almost _all_ historical societies, regardless of their announced moral views. Thus, while Marxist theory could easily justify murdering millions of people with a bourgeois background, it is unclear how Marxist theory would justify comfortable lifestyles, limosines, and caviar for the ruling elite. And yet, every Marxist dictatorship that Ive ever heard of swiftly developed the latter. Primitive despotisms of China or Egypt justified the rulers life of comfort and luxury by arguing that the ruler was divine; but comfort and luxury for rulers seems common in societies with announced egalitarian values. Why is peoples behavior so similar when their conscious convictions vary so widely? Why, in short, is altruistic moral theory almost always accompanied by hypocrisy? My answer is simply that we have an instinct, an innate predisposition, towards Hobbesian behavior. Why do I think that it is innate? (1) Hobbesian behavior is common in human beings in all societies and times. To prove this would take a great deal of work; a good start is _The Columbia History of the World_, which details mankinds sordid history of using one another as beasts of burden whenever it was convenient. (2) Hobbesian behavior is common regardless of a societys cultural background. Primitive Mongols moral values probably did not discourage them from killing and enslaving Christians; but Christians moral values probably did discourage them from doing so. And yet, both of them did it, and it is hardly clear that Christians did so less eagerly than anyone else. (3) Most importantly, there is our evolutionary background. Animals which dont try to survive tend to die off, leaving no offspring. Animals which do try to survive tend to live longer and leave more offspring. Every other animal species seems to have developed this self-interested instinct extremely well; and surely with animals at least, their behavior is instinctive. Why should this instinct, this innate predisposition, be any weaker in human beings? This is especially clear when we note that the primary exception to pure self-interested behavior is the care that animals and humans give to their blood relatives; and it is precisely this exception that evolutionary theory would predict. (See Dawkins _The Selfish Gene_.) 3. Answering Eyal a. Eyal mentions that if my view were true, then primitive societies would concentrate _more_ on survival (and their kins survival) than modern Western people do. And indeed, I think this is so: primitive people worked far harder to survive (often 16 hours per day, Ive read) than we do, and spent much less time on leisure. Maybe they worked so hard because they had to just to survive; but that is hardly evidence that they were less concerned about their survival than we are. But I can make my point much more clearly. Who would find it more difficult to murder a stranger for a pound of gold or enslave someone if it were legal or rape a defenseless woman? A primitive tribesman, or a member of modern Western culture? The main difference is that the tribesman does so unreflectively, while if the modern does it he violates his announced moral views. b. Eyal argues that if people were really interested in their self-interest, then they would not have risked their lives to enslave and kill other people. Well, frequently the risks were very low and the gain was very great. The Spanish conquered one-and-a-half continents and got a lot of gold and slaves at very little risk to themselves. Similarly, most slave-holders throughout history had about as little to fear from slave revolts as we do from auto accidents. Eyal is right that some kinds of wars are high risk, low gain (for most of the participants). Holy wars, proletarian revolutions, and wars of national liberation seem to qualify. But I think that these result from peoples _conscious convictions_ rather than any Hobbesian instincts. Wars with abstract (if irrational) motivations like these are a fairly late development in human history. Incidentally, one can interestingly see mankinds cultural development from instinct to acquired conviction in the Bible. The early books appeal to the material rewards and many offspring that Jehovah will give to the Jews if they obey Him; we have to wait for the later books to see any attempt to motivate the Jews out of love of God or justice. c. Eyal argues that almost all historical societies, from the primitive to the Christian, have held some version of altruistic morality. Well, I just have to disagree. Did pre-Christian barbarians or Mongol hordes loot and enslave weaker peoples out of moral conviction? Or did they just see a chance to live comfortably at other peoples expense? Do muggers mug out of a belief in altruism, or because they want to get easy money and dont care about the rights of others? Moreover, while Rand is perfectly correct that altruistic morality _sometimes_ justifies murdering a lot of people (e.g. Christians should go murder Muslims, or Bolsheviks should murder the kulaks), it _sometimes_ would seem to require _not_ murdering other people. While Christianity might justify Vlad the Impalers war against the Muslim Turks, it is hard to see how it justifies killing fellow Christians to get more gold from them. Why then, I wonder, havent societies with an altruistic cultural background lived up to their avowed precepts in _both_ respects? d. Eyal reminds me that Rand thought that our emotions are either determined by our conscious convictions (if we choose to think), or by default by cultural osmosis (if we dont choose to think). This is a perfectly fair description of her view; and it _does_ seem to deny that human beings have any instincts in the sense of _innate desires and emotional responses_. However, I agree completely with Eyals point that immoral behavior is rooted in the volitional avoidance of the effort of thinking. But what I am saying is that in additional to the need to question what our _culture_ tells us, we must also question what our _instincts_ tell us. Admitting that we have instincts no more commits us to genetic determinism than admitting that we have a culture commits us to cultural determinism. 4. Commenting on Brian Schwartz I think you would enjoy Dawkins _The Selfish Gene_, which sheds light on both of your questions. I would doubt that there is any strong tendency towards promoting the interests of our race, simply because the odds that a person shares a significant number of our genes in virtue of sharing our race is very, very low. Wolves that seek the interest of wolf-kind rather than the interests of closely related wolves will tend to have few offspring and die off. I would say the same for people. The danger is that abstract ideologies will take advantage of familial instincts and turn them to horrible ends. Nationalist and racist movements suggest that ideologies that try to build upon our instincts can be very successful. Probably because the leap to family loyalty to national loyalty is (as Rand pointed out) a sufficiently simple ideology that even very stupid people can understand it. 5. To Mike Hardy You are quite right that for most philosophers, _tabula rasa_ refers to no innate _knowledge_. However, I think that Rand used the concept more expansively. Indeed, in The Objectivist Ethics Rand writes that: Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but at birth, _both_ are tabula rasa. It is mans cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the _content_ of both. 6. Conclusion While I am on the topic, let me mention some other instincts. Many of the emotional differences between men and women are, I think, instinctive. For example, mens inclination to promiscuity is, I think, instinctive; just as womens inclination to domesticity is. Womens greater concern for the welfare of children is probably instinctive. There is a wonderful program on the Learning Channel, Desmond Morris _The Human Animal_, which provides grist for further speculation. Against an irrational age, Rand pointed out that we are _rational_ animals. All I am pointing out is that we are rational _animals_, and that we can understand mankind far better if we recognize that like all other animals, we possess instincts, i.e., innate desires and emotional responses. From objectivism-request@vix.com Fri Sep 1 04:41:04 1995 Received: from gw.home.vix.com (gw.home.vix.com [192.5.5.1]) by phoenix.Princeton.EDU (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id EAA20928; Fri, 1 Sep 1995 04:41:03 -0400 Received: by gw.home.vix.com id AA04366; Fri, 1 Sep 95 01:30:03 -0700 X-Btw: vix.com is also gw.home.vix.com and vixie.sf.ca.us Delivery-Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 07:15:43 -0700 Received: by gw.home.vix.com id AA15367; Thu, 31 Aug 95 07:15:41 -0700 Received: from euler.kodak.com by kodakr.kodak.com with SMTP id AA14285 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for <@kodakr.kodak.com:objectivism@vix.com>); Thu, 31 Aug 1995 10:14:53 -0400 Received: by euler.kodak.com (931110.SGI/931108.SGI.ANONFTP) for @kodakr.kodak.com:objectivism@vix.com id AA10956; Thu, 31 Aug 95 10:15:37 -0400 Date: Thu, 31 Aug 95 10:15:37 -0400 From: dempsey@kodak.com (Richard C. Dempsey) Message-Id: <9508311015.ZM10954@euler.kodak.com> In-Reply-To: "Bryan D. Caplan" "In Defense of Instinct" (Aug 29, 10:09pm) References: X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.0.0 15dec93) To: "Bryan D. Caplan" Subject: Re: In Defense of Instinct Cc: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: dempsey@kodak.com (Richard C. Dempsey) Status: RO > Against an irrational age, Rand pointed out that we > are _rational_ animals. All I am pointing out is that > we are rational _animals_, and that we can > understand mankind far better if we recognize that > like all other animals, we possess instincts, i.e., > innate desires and emotional responses. I am very uncomfortable with Bryan's essay. The source of my discomfort is the concept of 'instinct'. The concept is so central to the essay that it needs a careful development at the beginning, not a throw-away definition at the end. And by a careful development, I think that one has to start with Rand's question: to what in reality does this concept refer? Let me indicate what I mean by 'instinct': When I learned about instinct in grade school, we started with migratory behavior of birds and salmon, which is a difficult and complex phenomenon. We observed how many species of birds fly south in the fall and north again in the spring, how some species, such as the Canada Goose and the Arctic Tern, fly tremendous distances with incredible accuracy year after year, and how the Atlantic and Pacific Salmon return to precisely the stream in which they were spawned after five or more years of wide ranging travel in the ocean. Further, we saw that these animals could not have developed such capability in the same way that humans did, i.e. cognitively through the use of some rational method. They simply haven't the mental wherewithal to do so. It's clear that these capabilities operate via some mechanism that is distinctly different from the way that such capabilities are achieved by people. Not all animals show instincts; this is not an invertebrate phenomenon. The final point is that these instinctive behaviors are non-volitional. The Arctic Tern can no more stop off in Cancun for the season than the sun can rise in the west. Instincts are not tendencies; they are imperatives. Notice that in this development we are discussing a neurological, even a mental phenomenon that is a means to survival, just as rationality is Man's means of survival. The genus is 'means of survival'. However, in developing the concept 'instinct', we are contrasting it to 'reason'. Instinct is mandatory, reason is volitional. Instinct is unconscious, reason is conscious. Instinct is fixed, reason is adaptable. Instinct is followed uniformly by all members of the species, reason is not. The Arctic Tern has and lives by instinct. Man has and lives by reason. Instinct encodes the self-interest of the Arctic Tern, and cannot be overridden. Reason is a means to discover the self-interest of Man, is not encoded but must be discovered, and can be overridden (and is overridden more often than not, sad to say). Man's behavior is not instinctive. What non-rational behavior we observe in Man arises by other means. These means are worth study, and some show a wide commonality across cultures and time. But, however plausible a genetic explanation may be, it's more likely a rationalization than any clear understanding. Yes, Man is a species in the animal kingdom, with corresponding properties that must be grasped in order to comprehend our nature, just as rationality must be grasped. Instinct is simply not one of the key animal properties of Man. Rich Dempsey -- Richard C. Dempsey email: dempsey@Kodak.COM Computational Science Laboratory phone: (716) 477-3457 10th Floor, Bldg 83, RL fax: (716) 722-5350 Eastman Kodak Company Rochester, NY 14650-2205 -- From objectivism-request@vix.com Fri Sep 1 05:10:54 1995 Received: from gw.home.vix.com (gw.home.vix.com [192.5.5.1]) by phoenix.Princeton.EDU (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id FAA22268; Fri, 1 Sep 1995 05:10:53 -0400 Received: by gw.home.vix.com id AA04668; Fri, 1 Sep 95 01:31:11 -0700 X-Btw: vix.com is also gw.home.vix.com and vixie.sf.ca.us Delivery-Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 08:34:49 -0700 Received: by gw.home.vix.com id AA21305; Thu, 31 Aug 95 08:34:47 -0700 Received: from just.smarts.com by mail.smarts.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA06327; Thu, 31 Aug 95 11:34:22 EDT Organization: System Management ARTS - "Minds Over Networks" Received: by just.smarts.com (5.x/SMI-SVR4) id AA28016; Thu, 31 Aug 1995 11:34:22 -0400 Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 11:34:22 -0400 From: eyal@smarts.com (Eyal Mozes) Message-Id: <9508311534.AA28016@just.smarts.com> To: bdcaplan@phoenix.Princeton.EDU, objectivism@vix.com Subject: Re: In Defense of Instinct Reply-To: eyal@smarts.com (Eyal Mozes) Status: RO In contrasting "Hobbesian egoism" with "the egoism of Aristotle or Rand", Bryan goes into the survival-flourishing debate, on which much have been written in recent years by Objectivists and by neo-Aristotelians such as Douglass Rasmussen or Tibor Machan (for my own view on the application of this debate to the issue of respecting other people's rights, see my article "Deriving Rights from Egoism: Machan vs. Rand", Reason Papers no. 17, fall 1992). The key point where this debate is relevant to the current discusssion is in Bryan's statement: >What practical difference does this distinction make? >For one, the Hobbesian egoist would remorselessly >kill or enslave another person if the risks were low >and the gain were large. For the Randian egoist, >however, this predatory lifestyle would conflict with >our interest in being productive, independent, and >just individuals. The Hobbesian egoist, similarly, >would happily steal if the gain were large and the >punishment were small; but the Randian egoist would >refrain. I submit that this is an accurate description of Aristotelian or new-Aristotelian views, but not of the Objectivist view. The Objectivist view is that a rational egoist recognizes that it is not the case that "the risks are low" or "the punishment is small" for initiating force against others; even if in some concrete situation it seems possible to get away with such actions, a policy of living and dealing with others by means of force is likely to destroy one's chances for long-term survival. "Our interest in being productive, independent and just individuals" derives from the fact that such individuals are likely to survive for much longer; it is not an accident, but a necessary consequence of man's nature, that modern western culture, in which the values of productivity and justice are accepted to a large degree, has a far longer life expentancy than any other culture in history or any non-western culture in the world today. The actions of criminals may be explained as "Hobbesian egoism", i.e. as acting for range-of-the-moment gratification without considering the long-range consequences. But I don't think such an explanation can work for explaining wars. Bryan writes: >frequently the risks were very low and the gain was >very great. The Spanish conquered one-and-a-half >continents and got a lot of gold and slaves at very >little risk to themselves. This is a very strange reading of the facts. In order to conquer these continents, the Spanish had to cross the Atlantic Ocean, a long journey in cramped ships without adequate nutrition, with very serious risk of death from scurvy and other diseases; and then had to fight against natives whose weapons, however primitive, were still quite capable of killing. I don't know any precise statistics on this point, but my recollection from reading about the Spanish conquistadors was that casualties among their men, mostly during the journey and also while fighting, were very high. So, what made Spanish people willing to join the conquistadors? Certainly not "a tendency to focus on individual and kin survival". And you can't even explain it by failure to think about long-term consequences, since the dangers were actually *more* immediate and short-term than the gains. More generally, in order to support his thesis about a "Hobbesian instinct", Bryan would have to establish that most wars in history had few or no casualties for the aggressor side; i.e. that people generally only try to kill, loot or enslave others when this entails little or no immediate risk to their lives. My impression is that the historical record proves the opposite. So I think the evidence indicates that people throughout history were very willing to throw their lives away in the service of their tribe, nation or leader. People throughout history have also held an explicit morality of self-sacrifice, which puts the tribe, nation or leader above the individual; and their actions were completely consistent with this morality. Any form of self-interested behaviour, "Hobbesian" or Aristotelian, has always been rare. Eyal