The Nature V. Nurture False Dichotomy

[Dave B]

Hi Adam I think that was my point when I mentioned the fillip to social ensemblies. However there is, you would think, a pretty important analytical differences or the way you think about it. As in the Marxist model behaviour is mediated through acquired culture and consciousness of one type or another and or ‘rational thought’. The problem these geneticist in general have is that for decades they have been scoffing at Lamarkism. In fact Lamarkism is held up, even in the general scientific community, as a classic seminal example of dingbat science.  Just like the SPGB used to be the Marxist laughing stock for saying Russiawas state capitalist under Lenin I still remember it from my A’ level biology text books and as the star pupil of the class, I also remember arguing with my teacher about it and the black peppered moth thing. I wasn’t a Christian by the way. This epigentics thing is a bombshell; equivalent to the quantum mechanics thing in the early 1900’s. Except the chemists and physicists have got more balls and took that on the chin after the Copenhagenconference thing. Unlike the Dawkins like biologist who responded first by sacking the first researchers from their posts. I think when it comes to behaviour in general the way people think about is incorrect. [ I suspect that I am beginning to understand Wittgenstein of Manchester university better when it comes to language prejudicing thought or philosophy- he was substituted for Karl Marx in the monty python Greeks versus the Germans in the philosophers football cup final. And Karl was correct Socrates was offside!] Instinctive behaviour is a reaction to a stimulus or a response to something in the environment. However in higher animals or humans I would say that we don’t just mindlessly react to stimuli. We first assess and appraise, perhaps incorrectly, the ‘something in the environment’ and that can potentially become an albeit modified stimuli to which we can, in part, instinctively react. Uhh? So assuming for the moment cooperative social instincts with an element of group or for that matter class content. Another group of anti social bastards, are bayoneting babies in Belgiumor chucking them out of incubators in Kuwait etc. [ You could argue rationally and egotistically that well that is nothing to do with me really but they could come here next and I need to nip that thing in the bud now.] However there is another social instinct ‘altruistic punisher theory’ that anyone who is perceived to start to behave anti socially (to other ego’s) is going to get there arse kicked even if it means me taking a bullet in the process. [Which is different I think to a sense of insult and indignation to cultural precepts like cartoons of Mohammed, questioning the sexual activity of your sister or taking the piss out of Newcastle United. That kind of thing can be very interesting but does require another kind of, albeit related I think, analysis.] Social instinct ‘altruistic punisher theory’ actually quite unexpectedly dropped out of the Hamilton tit for tat computer programme game theory experiments when the computer programmes were allowed to observe the other computer programmes football matches or contests. [It was just like a football league, each ‘team’ or computer programme in a league of I think it was of about 30 played each other. Success was measured by how many goals you scored. When two cooperating teams went onto the field the score was 120 all. But you just needed two in the league to get it that precept going. The co-operators like Liverpool,would first go onto the pitch and invite the opposing team to kick the ball in the back of their net, and give them a chance to get the idea by letting them do it again and again. But gobshite ‘defector’ teams, like Sunderland, would be bastards and try and stop them scoring goals. Newcastlewould observe and learn from this and break their legs when they went up against Sunderland and would have a high scoring match when they met Liverpool. It is not as trivial as it sounds and the ‘algorithm’ was logically laid out.] There is lots of horrid negativity about this following kind of thing.  Thus when we come to obnoxious human and chimp behaviour is there something communistically ‘positive’ about it? There is an obvious I think propensity to persecute people who don’t ‘conform’, and an instinctive desire to want to conform, and ‘stress’ when you don’t etc. There have obviously been several classic ‘psychology’ experiments on this. But is the desire to conform an expression or form of a co-operative instinct? [This ‘manifestation’ or ‘Hegelian’ form and  content thing is great I think now that I think I understand it] When we had the filet mignon eating and hoarding Deleonists on the forum we were all happily queuing up to send them, in socialism, to Coventry and talking enthusiastically about social revenge and not inviting to our cocktail parties etc. If you are going to shit on another group dehumanise them first, or throw them outside the category of us, and turn them into ‘another’. The three essential philosophical paradigms or options from which all flows are; I and the me The we and the us. And the us and the them

[Anonymous]

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ALB wrote:

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Meel wrote:As you know by now, I am fascinated by human behaviour and have quite an interest in genetics.  You should also know that I am not a “genetic determinist”.  I have to state this more or less each time I make a contribution; such is the “blank slate” theory of human behaviour still in vogue within the SP, and the consequent assumption that anyone who mentions genes and behaviour in the same sentence, must be a “genetic determinist”.

Not true, the so-called "blank slate" theory is not in vogue in the Socialist Party.

So you say, in one breath, but in another,  under the thread “Marxist Animalism”, post number 52, you say the following, commenting on humans and meat eating (my emphasis):

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That's a good point Briana Pobiner makes. Human behaviour is culturally not biologically determined so we can eat a wide variety of foods.  

By the way, I do agree that we evolved eating a wide variety of foods –  but here you seem to be saying very clearly that human behaviour is culturally determined.  Determined by culture – full stop.  No mention that our genes might be making a contribution as well.This seems to me to be the “blank slate” theory clearly stated – so can you blame me for being confused?So, are you therefore happy to identify as a “cultural determinist” as far as human behaviour goes?

[Anonymous]

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ALB said:I would have thought that epigenetics, in showing that how some genes have their effect on the body is influenced by the environment, undermines the genetic determinists' case that we are the prisoners of our genes. This was obvious anyway but the scientists working in the field of epigenetics seem to be coming up with the way this works.

We did not have to wait for the scientists working in the field of epigenetics to know that the environment influences the outcomes of humans, other animals and plants. The epigenome itself is a genetic trait, of course.  How else would it know how to go about setting itself up?I think being a “determinist” of any kind is part of a kind of black/white thinking which is just plain wrong; whether “genetic determinist”, “environmental/cultural determinist” – and who knows, eventually some people might self-identify as, or be accused of being,  “epigenetic determinists”.Incidentally, who are all these “genetic determinists” you seem to be extremely worried about?

[ALB]

For instance, Konrad Lorenz, Desmond Morris, Robert Ardrey, E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, sundry "sociobiologists" and "evolutionary psychologists" and all the others who encourage (and reflect)  the prejudice of the person in the street that socialism is against human nature. Wilson and Pinker state explicitly that this is the conclusion to which the theory they have put forward leadsHere's EO Wilson in 1978:

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"The perception of history as an inevitable class struggle proceeding to the emergence of a lightly governed egalitarian society with production in control of the workers is ( . . . ) based on an inaccurate interpretation of human nature" (On Human Nature, Penguin, 1995, p. 190).

And here's Steven Pinker:

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"One of the fondest beliefs of many intellectuals is that there are cultures out there where everyone shares freely. Marx and Engels thought that preliterate peoples represented a first stage in the evolution of civilization called primitive communism, whose maxim was 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs'" (How the Mind Works, Penguin, 1998, p. 504).“Those who believe that communism or socialism is the most rational form of social organisation are aghast at the suggestion that they run against our selfish natures” (The Blank State, Allen Lane, 2002, p. 161)

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[Anonymous]

I cannot comment on authors whose books I have not (yet) read cover to cover.  I have read Pinker and Dawkins, and whilst not always in 100% agreement with either, I do not believe they are “genetic determinists”.

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“Those who believe that communism or socialism is the most rational form of social organisation are aghast at the suggestion that they run against our selfish natures” (The Blank State, Allen Lane, 2002, p. 161)

This quote is taken out of context.This is not Pinker's opinion; he is putting this argument in the mouths of those in favour of socialism or communism.  (Bear in mind that Pinker’s idea of communism is the Soviet Union, Maoist, Pol Pot variety).  Pinker's own opinion appears higher up on the same page (161): "A third vice with political implications is selfishness.  If people, like other animals, are driven by selfish genes, selfishness might seem inevitable or even a virtue.  The argument is fallacious from the start because selfish genes do not necessarily grow selfish organisms."(my emphasis).Here are some other sundry quotes from the Blank Slate which shows Pinker’s nuanced views – they show clearly, in my view, that he is not a “genetic determinist”:“Though no book on human nature can hope to be uncontroversial, I did not write it to be yet another "explosive" book, as dust jackets tend to say.   I am not, as many people assume, countering an extreme "nurture" position with an extreme "nature" position, with the truth lying somewhere in between.  In some cases, an extreme environmentalist explanation is correct: which language you speak is an obvious example, and differences between races and ethnic groups in test scores may be another.  In other cases, such as certain inherited neurological disorders, an extreme hereditarian explanation is correct.  In most cases the correct explanation will invoke a complex interaction between heredity and environment: culture is crucial, but culture could not exist without mental faculties that allow humans to create and learn culture to being with.  My goal in this book is not to argue that genes are everything and culture is nothing – no one believes that – but to explore why the extreme position (that culture is everything) is so often seen as moderate and the moderate position is seen as extreme.”  (Preface)"Richard Dawkins showed that a good way to understand the logic of natural selection is to imagine that genes are agents with selfish motives.  No one should begrudge him the metaphor, but it contains a trap for the unwary.  The genes have metaphorical motives – making copies of themselves – and the organisms they design have real motives.  But they are not the same motives.  Sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is wire unselfish motives into a human brain – heartfelt, unstinting, deep-in-the-marrow unselfishness.  The love of children (who carry one's genes into posterity), a faithful spouse (whose genetic fate is identical to one's own), and friends and allies (who trust you if you're trustworthy) can be bottomless and unimpeachable as far as we humans are concerned (proximate level), even if it is metaphorically self-serving as far as the genes are concerned (ultimate level)."  (I’ve lost the page number on this one)“People sometimes fear that if genes affect the mind at all they must determine it in every detail.  That is wrong, for two reasons.  The first is that most effects of genes are probabilistic.  If one identical twin has a trait, there is usually no more than an even chance that the other will have it, despite their having a complete genome in common.  Behavioural geneticists estimate that only about half of the variation in most psychological traits within a given environment correlates with the genes.  In the chapter on children, we will explore what this means and where the other half of the variation comes from.” P 48“In assembling a brain, a complete genetic blueprint is out of the question for two reasons.  One is that a gene cannot anticipate every detail of the environment, including the environment consisting of the other genes in the genome.  It has to specify an adaptive developmental program that ensures that the organism as a whole functions properly across variations in nutrition, other genes, growth rates over the life span, random perturbations, and the physical and social environment.  And that requires feedback from the way the rest of the organism is developing. ……..The other reason that brains cannot rely on a complete genetic blueprint is that the genome is a limited resource.  Genes are constantly mutating over evolutionary time, and natural selection can weed out the bad ones only slowly.  Most evolutionary biologists believe that natural selection can support a genome that is only so big.  That means that the genetic plans for a complex brain have to be compressed to the minimum size that is consistent with the brain’s developing and working properly.  Though more than half the genome is put to work primarily or exclusively in the brain, that is not nearly enough to specify the brain’s connection diagram. ……”  p 90I am not always in agreement with Pinker, I just don’t think he is a “genetic determinist”, nor do I think he is someone who revels in defending a system “red in tooth and claw”.  Listen to what he says in the chapter named "Reflections" towards the end of his book, “the Better Angels of Our Nature”: "A final reflection.  In writing this book I have adopted a voice that is analytical, and at times irreverent, because I believe the topic has inspired too much piety and not enough understanding.  But at no point have I been unaware of the reality behind the numbers.  To review the history of violence is to be repeatedly astounded by the cruelty and waste of it all, and at times to be overcome with anger, disgust, and immeasurable sadness.  I know that behind the graphs there is a young man who feels a stab of pain and watches the life drain slowly out of him, knowing he has been robbed of existence.  There is a victim of torture whose contents of consciousness have been replaced by unbearable agony, leaving room only for the desire that consciousness itself should cease.  There is a woman who has learned that her husband, her father and her brothers lie dead in a ditch, and who will soon 'fall into the hand of hot and forcing violation.'  … "Also, in this book (“the Better Angels of Our Nature”), he uses environmental arguments to show how we have managed to progress – in terms of increased women’s rights, decline of the death penalty, etc., etc.As regards Dawkins, I would like to submit the following link which is in line with my opinion on the subject.  The blog is not written by right-wing apologists for the capitalist system, but was set up to defend universalism and human rights:http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2002/misunderstanding-richard-dawkins/

[ALB]

Meel wrote:

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“Those who believe that communism or socialism is the most rational form of social organisation are aghast at the suggestion that they run against our selfish natures” (The Blank State, Allen Lane, 2002, p. 161)

This quote is taken out of context. This is not Pinker's opinion; he is putting this argument in the mouths of those in favour of socialism or communism.

I don't think this is either taken out of context or is Pinker describing some others' argument. Why, for instance, would those in favour of communism or socialism argue that the sort of society they wanted was against human nature? I think it is Pinker's opinion that our biological nature is "selfish", even if he thinks we can do something about it.As to Dawkins, here's what he wrote in the opening chapter of The Selfish Gene:

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Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

Ironically, he has ended up with the same basic position as Christian theologians: that we are born sinful but can overcome this ! OK, he is not saying that socialism is impossible because of  humans' "biological nature", only that because of it there's only an outside chance of it succeeding. I think he's a supporter of the pre-Corbyn Labour Party or the LibDems or the old SDP, that sort of thing.In the original 1976 edition there was a note in which he condemned as "selfish" workers for going on strike against the then Labour government's "incomes policy". I've tried to find the exact quote on the internet but can't but will see if i can find a copy of this edition. In the meantime, maybe somebody else here can help. It is true that he later dropped this, another example of him backtracking. As is the inclusion in the 1989 edition of a new chapter entitled "Nice Guys Finish First", an attempt to argue himself out of this implication of his theory which he himself expressed as:

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The selfish gene view follows logically from the accepted assumptions of neo-Darwinism. It is easy to misunderstand but, once understood, it is hard to doubt its fundamental truth. Most of the organisms that have ever lived failed to become ancestors We that exist are, without exception, descended from that minority within every earlier generation that were successful in becoming ancestors. Since all we animals inherit our genes from ancestors rather than from non-ancestors, we tend to possess the qualities that make for success in becoming an ancestor rather than the qualities that make for failure. Successful qualities are such things as fleetness of foot, sharpness of eye, perfection of camouflage, and – there seems no getting away from it – ruthless selfishness. Nice guys don't become ancestors. Therefore living organisms don't inherit the qualities of nice guys (The Listener, 17 April 1986).

[rodmanlewis]

It may be true that we inherit a “selfish/competitive” gene from our parents which helps us survive. This exists on two levels:The inherited advantages which help us survive in competition with other species.The inherited advantages which help us survive in competition with other humans.I imagine that most people would find the first one acceptable, but the second a flaw in our makeup.Everything we do could be described as selfish: even including giving to charity; rescuing someone at the risk of losing our own life; donating an organ… All these acts can make us feel good. The “selfish” gene could just as easily apply to understanding how to survive through co-operation rather than competition with other humans. If we were as selfish as some would say then why is the working class generous to a fault to their capitalist masters, and allow them to keep a chunk of the fruits of the labours? Is it because they have inherited a "dumb" gene which condemns them to remain within the ranks of the working class for their whole lives, or that they haven't passed the right door at the right time to hear alternative ideas about organising society like socialists have?Many survival acts are pre-programmed (often mistakenly called instinctive), but these are not absolute. We run from danger, but can also override the situation if our reasoning abilities take charge.The ultimate “selfish” would be bringing about a world of co-operation, not competition.Competition grew out of the scarce sources available, and co-operation was probably not an option.  Even with a world that has potential abundance and no need for competition, history is still repeating itself, only now it’s on a loop…

[ALB]

Actually I wouldn't deny that there is a sense in which we are "selfish", only that this is determined by our genes rather than the social environment in which we grew up or live. As we say in our pamphlet Are We Prisoners of Our Genes?:

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Nor does socialism require us all to suddenly become altruists, putting the interests of others above our own. In fact socialism doesn’t require people to be any more altruistic than they are today (a behaviour which is greater than biological determinists like to admit and which presents them with the insoluble theoretical problem of how a gene for such behaviour, which they have obliged themselves to believe in, could have evolved). We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. No doubt too, we will want to “possess” our toothbrush, our clothes and other things of personal use, and to feel secure in our physical occupation of the house or flat we live in, but this will be just that—our home and not a financial asset.Such “selfish” behaviour will still exist in socialism but the acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist. Under capitalism we have to seek to accumulate money since the more money you have the better you can satisfy your material needs, and as an insurance against something going wrong (like losing your job) or as something to hand on to your children or grandchildren. People are therefore obliged by their material circumstances to seek to acquire money, by fair means or foul and if need be, when push comes to shove, at the expense of others. This is why capitalism has earned the name of “the acquisitive society”.Socialism won’t be an "acquisitive society" and won’t need to be, as everybody will be able to satisfy their material requirements as of right and without needing to pay money.

[Dave B]

I think these two points are really important. The inherited advantages which help us survive in competition with other species. The inherited advantages which help us survive in competition with other humans. So lets take them and analyse them using the standard Darwinian model mixed with archaeological evidence and with the more recent sensational mitochondrial and y chromosome DNA analysis. What we do know from the archaeological evidence of modern humans from circa 100,000 years ago onwards is that we know little. But that is actually important because what it means is that we were for much of that period as rare as hens teeth and probably living in widely scattered bands that rarely came into contact with each other. The main or only Darwinian challenge for any animal in that situation is to survive in competition with other species and (new) environments through co-operating with members of the group. Not robbing someone else’s recently caught woolly mammoth. What we also do know now from two separate sets of data, mitochondrial and y chromosome DNA analysis,  is that about 100,000 years ago modern humans started to migrate north from southwest Africa reaching the Gulp of Aden and the Red Sea about 70,000 years ago? when the Sarah belt was known to be wetter and greener and the sea levels quite a bit lower. About ‘4000’ of them managed to cross the Red Sea perhaps sand bank hopping on rafts to an area now under water on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula that probably then had an environment like Sri Lanka now. That,  as one theory I think goes, 1000 year  migration was then cut off by the warming of the climate desertification and rising sea levels. They then moved north through Iraq and into the Caucasus. Before spreading out into Europe etc and east towards the Bering Straits. Then a group of between ‘17 and 24’  individuals (calculated from the DNA data) it is assumed crossed over somehow the Bering straights maybe 20,000 years ago?  Before they were themselves probably later cut off by other climatic events for sometime. That group went on to populate the whole of the American continent. Dates and numbers vary a bit between the two separate sets of data as it depends on different interpretation on the rate of mutations on the male y chromosome and female mitochondrial DNA. The thing is still moving but I believe that the female mitochondrial DNA analysis set seems to tie in better with what is known about climate etc. I went to a lecture in Manchesterabout 5 years ago by one of the people who did most of the mitochondrial research and I asked him a question about the numbers involved etc and he said that there were most likely ball park numbers but most likely.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitochondrial_DNA_haplogroup  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve  But what should be clear is that this was unlikely to have been achieved by 4,000 bickering humans fighting each other over territory.  Thus from another just randomly selected perspective from the first page of a google search?; The eruption of a super volcano, MountToba, in Sumatra 70,000 years ago may have led to a 'nuclear winter', followed by a 1,000-year ice age   This sort of event would have put immense pressure on humans. It may be that humans were only able to survive these extreme conditions through cooperating with each other. This may have led to the formation of close family groups or tribes and the development of some of the modern human behaviours we are familiar with today, such as cooperation. Between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago another wave of humans migrated out of Africa. These humans are likely to have been ‘modern’ in terms of their appearance and behaviour. Due to their newly cooperative behaviour they were more successful at surviving and covered the whole world in a relatively short period of time. As they migrated they would have encountered earlier, primitive humans, eventually replacing them. Genetically, the six billion people of today’s world vary very little from these earlier Homo sapiens that ventured out of Africa. http://www.yourgenome.org/stories/evolution-of-modern-humans Actually the knew something odd had happened in human history in 1980’s from basic analysis of mitochrondrial DNA. What they suspected then was that there had been in the past some sort of catastophic event in human history that had reduced the world non Africahuman population down to several thousands.  The lowering of the cost of DNA analysis and better techniques along number crunching computers has enabled this scientific interpretation.

[Dave B]

there another link here, there is still quite some squabbling about dates within that school and resistance from more traditional interpretations which it challenges. the Dating: pre-or post-Toba can be quite central to the debate  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans 

[Anonymous]

An interesting couple of contributions from you, ALB (#36, 38).  I’ll chew them over.  :o)In the meantime, lest I leave the impression that I am uncritical of Pinker – I am not, I just don’t think he is a genetic determinist.Of course Pinker should be criticised.  In his book “The Better Angels of our Nature”, as one of his reasons for us allegedly having become more peaceful, he talks about something he calls “Gentle Commerce”.  Try telling that to the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy or the relatives of the people who died in Dhaka, Bangladesh, when shoddy clothing factory collapsed on them – or to the millions of others who have suffered in their capacity as wage slaves worldwide.He doesn’t really seem to be fully aware of the role of the US war machine since its ascendancy, or of its way of working “by proxy”.  This criticism is put forward with force in a review in the International Socialist Review which really puts the booth in; the best complement they can give Pinker is that he is a “transparent, but apparently unconscious, ideologue”.For example, what about the new, American, “Ethical Marine Warrier”?“Perhaps the most revealing piece of war and violence apologetics can be found in Pinker’s discussion of the new morality of the US military in Iraq—less name-calling in contrast with Vietnam, and a “new code of honor, the Ethical Marine Warrior,” whose “catechism” is that the warrior is a “protector of life,” including not just that of his fellow marines but “all others.” Pinker says that “the code of the Ethnical Warrior, even as an aspiration, shows that the American armed forces have come a long way from a time when its soldiers referred to Vietnamese peasants as gooks, slopes, and slants and when the military was slow to investigate atrocities against civilians such as the massacre at My Lai.” Pinker provides no evidence that US soldiers don’t refer to Iraqis with derogatory terms, or that civilian atrocities are investigated more aggressively (he never mentions Fallujah or Haditha), or that this “new code of honor” is “indoctrinated,” let alone taken seriously.  “http://isreview.org/issue/86/steven-pinker-alleged-decline-violenceThe philosopher John Gray comes at it from a slightly different angle in his critique of the same book.  He questions the figures Pinker presents:“The picture of declining violence presented by this new orthodoxy is not all it seems to be. As some critics, notably John Arquilla, have pointed out, it’s a mistake to focus too heavily on declining fatalities on the battlefield. If these deaths have been falling, one reason is the balance of terror: nuclear weapons have so far prevented industrial-style warfare between great powers. Pinker dismisses the role of nuclear weapons on the grounds that the use of other weapons of mass destruction such as poison gas has not prevented war in the past; but nuclear bombs are incomparably more destructive. No serious military historian doubts that fear of their use has been a major factor in preventing conflict between great powers. Moreover deaths of non-combatants have been steadily rising. Around a million of the 10 million deaths due to the first world war were of non‑combatants, whereas around half of the more than 50 million casualties of the second world war and over 90% of the millions who have perished in the violence that has wracked the Congo for decades belong in that category.”And as regards the state, “Leviathan”, as Pinker calls it, and which he thinks has been a force for reduction of violence, Gray says:“It may be true that the modern state’s monopoly of force has led, in some contexts, to declining rates of violent death. But it is also true that the power of the modern state has been used for purposes of mass killing, and one should not pass too quickly over victims of state terror. With increasing historical knowledge it has become clear that the “Holocaust-by-bullets” – the mass shootings of Jews, mostly in the Soviet Union, during the second world war – was perpetrated on an even larger scale than previously realised. Soviet agricultural collectivisation incurred millions of foreseeable deaths, mainly as a result of starvation, with deportation to uninhabitable regions, life-threatening conditions in the Gulag and military-style operations against recalcitrant villages also playing an important role. Peacetime deaths due to internal repression under the Mao regime have been estimated to be around 70 million. Along with fatalities caused by state terror were unnumbered millions whose lives were irreparably broken and shortened. How these casualties fit into the scheme of declining violence is unclear. “The Cuban missile disaster, says Gray, was not averted because of Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s enlightened, modern outlook and their understanding of “game theory”, but because a Soviet submariner, Vasili Arkhipov, “a single courageous human being”, refused to obey orders to launch a nuclear torpedo.Gray does not believe that “Slowly, over time, the world is becoming a better place”.https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wrong-violence-war-decliningLet us suppose that the detractors from Pinker’s theory that we are becoming a more peaceful, enlightened world are correct – in spite of the invention of the printing press, great leaps forward in literacy and education, the greater say of women at all levels of society, the invention of the internet and the mobile phone, etc. – should we be happy that nothing has really changed, that there has been no mind shift at all, that we are just as “bad” as we have always been?Where does this leave us in hoping for a change of consciousness so that one day people will be able to carry out a socialist revolution?Maybe in that case, the best we can hope for is what Gray says in “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals”: "death brings to everyone the peace Buddha promised only after lifetimes of striving" (p129).

[ALB]

Found that quote from Dawkins. It wasn't in a note to the first edition but in the text of the opening chapter and retained in later editions:

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The individual-selectionist would admit that groups do indeed die out, and that whether or not a group goes extinct may be influenced by the behaviour of the individuals in that group. He might even admit that if only the individuals in a group had the gift of foresight they could see that in the long run their own best interests lay in restraining their selfish greed, to prevent the destruction of the whole group. How many times must this have been said in recent years to the working people of Britain? (emphasis added)

It is in the endnotes to the 1989 edition that he explains:

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I must add that the occasional political asides in this chapter make uncomfortable rereading for me in 1989. 'How many times must this [the need to restrain selfish greed to prevent the destruction of the whole group] have been said in recent years to the working people of Britain?' (p. makes me sound like a Tory! In 1975, when it was written, a socialist government which I had helped to vote in was battling desperately against 23 per cent inflation, and was obviously concerned about high wage claims. My remark could have been taken from a speech by any Labour minister of the time. Now that Britain has a government of the new right, which has elevated meanness and selfishness to the status of ideology, my words seem to have acquired a kind of nastiness by association, which I regret. It is not that I take back what I said. Selfish short-sightedness still has the undesirable con­sequences that I mentioned. But nowadays, if one were seeking examples of selfish short-sightedness in Britain, one would not look first at the working class.(emphasis added)

[Anonymous]

Hi ALBThanks for finding that quote.  Interesting.  I haven’t thumbed through my copy yet to read the whole thing in context, but no doubt will at some point.I still don’t think he’s a genetic determinist, and I still agree with the summing up of his ideas in the link I posted in an earlier post (more or less).At least he is admitting that his previous wording was clumsy and perhaps not what he intended.  Dawkins is not an infallible hero to me – nor is anybody; Dawkins, Darwin, Marx…..I think his two most famous books in this area (The Selfish gene and The Extended Phenotype) will stand the test of time.  I’m not saying that people won’t find things to criticise, of course.  And of course the science of biology, including genetics, is expanding; more knowledge is added all the time.Anyway, I’ll file this quote away for now.Meel

[Author]

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