SEPT 12

5: SEP 12

Assigned

• Haidt, Chapter 2, "The Intuitive Dog and It's Rational Tail" (25)
• Sapolsky, Chapter 10: The Evolution of Human Behavior 328-387 (59). For this class read only pages 354-374.
• Prisoner's Dilemma. Short video [1]

In-class topics

• Note from last class
• Small group: Haidt’s social intuitionist model

• ”Why do we take advice more easily from friends?”

• Second look: What does the prisoners' dilemma show about the problem of reciprocal altruism and the emergence of cooperation?

Summing it Up: What does the prisoners' dilemma show us about the problem of reciprocal altruism and the emergence of cooperation?

• Reciprocal altruism emerges in our species when we use our big brains to decide when it is rational to incur a fitness cost to help others in expectation of a fitness benefit from their future cooperation. It is rational for us to try to optimize our fitness by benefiting from cooperative relationships. The big questions here is: When and with whom should I cooperate?

• In the Prisoner's Dilemma, there is a discrepancy between the "rational" outcome (defect, rat the other guy out) and the optimal outcome (both stay quiet). The discrepancy is caused by uncertainty about the other person's behavior. Will they cooperate? Will they make me a "sucker"? Will I get the optimal benefits of cooperation?

• Resolving this uncertainty is one of the core ethical problems humans face. It's a problem that can be addressed by values. Values like promising, sincerity, reputation, accountability, punishment (talking stink about defectors) are all means by which we try to realize the benefits of cooperation. We create expectations (values) and we enforce them, socially and sometimes legally.

Sapolsky, Chapter 10: The Evolution of Human Behavior 354-374

• How can cooperation get started and become stable? 353-

• In other words, how does "tit for tat" survive among defectors? Coalitions, green beard effects.
• Sometimes natural events cut a group off. Inbreeding promotes stronger kin bonds. That group may outperform others once they out migrate. (Give example from Henrich of Inuits with meat sharing behaviors. A better "cooperative package".)
• Effects of ind. selection, kin selection, and reciprocal altruism:

• Tournament vs. Pair bonding - lots of traits and behaviors follow from sexual dimorphism. This also happens in degrees.
• Parent-Offspring competition - in spite of kin selection, there are some "zero sum" situations bt parents and offspring. parent-offspring weaning conflict and mother-fetus conflict. Over insulin. Dad even has a vote through paternal "imprinted genes," which promote fetal growth at expense of mom. (Intersexual Genetic Conflict)

• Multilevel Selection MLS

• Remember the "bad" group selection from the beginning of the chapter? Group selection returns in the last few decades. (Tell story of visits with Bio prof friends over the years.)
• Genotypic and Phenotypic levels of explanation - unibrows.
• Organism (expressed individual) is a vehicle of the genome, but the genome has alot to say about how the organism turns out. .
• Big debate in Biology. Three positions: 1. Dawkins took the "selfish gene" view that the best level of explanation is individual genes. 2. Others say the genome - "a chicken is an egg's way of making another egg" (It's the whole genome travelling through evolutionary "space".); finally, 3. Others like Gould take the phenotype. After all, it's visible to the world. Selection could operate on a single phenotypic trait or the whole individual. Dawkins cake metaphor. 362. (So that's really four levels of selection.)

• Four levels and counting. Theorists might favor one or more levels as relatively more important than others. Each level involves possible selection pressure or adaptive value in meeting a pressure. The peacock’s plumage is both.

• 1. Genetic traits. Single selfish genes use us to get into the next gen.
• 2. Genome. The recipe is what’s passed on, so focus on that.
• 3. Phenotypic trait. Individual expressed traits (potential to make money).
• 4. Phenotype. It’s the “whole package - whole person” that we choose.

• Fifth level: Neo-group selection - the idea that some heritable traits are maladaptive for the individual, but increase the group's fitness (note difference from the bad old group selection).

• Examples:

• Encouraging patriotism might lead you to enlist, taking a fitness risk that we benefit from.
• Jailing someone for their reproductive life is a serious fitness hit, but we're better off with murderers locked up.

• Neo-group selection happens when groups impose fitness costs or benefits on members or sub-groups.

• Positive (fitness benefits): zags helping zags, (but is that totally positive?).
• Negative for some, positive for others(fitness costs): Slavery, racism, class bias, criminal punishment, patriotism, heroism, priests.

• Some scientists agree that neo-group selection can occur, but think it's rare. Sapolsky points out that it is not rare in humans, due to Green Beard effects.

• Remember "Green Beard" effects from p. 341 -- a thought experiment in extending/recognizing kin. With neo-group, we go further, and hypothesize that we can form groups around almost anything (sport teams in an imaginary baseball league). Human mind does not limit partiality or commitment to kin or even social group.

• Where do we fit in? AND US?

• We're bit of chimp and a bit of bonobo. Men 10% larger, 20% heavier than women. Slight dimorphism. Not quite pair-bonding, not quite tournament
• US and Individual Selection: Example of divorce: natural experiment when cultural taboos are lifted. Note that increased divorce rates are confined to the same percentage of population. Lift culture and you get to see who the "less pair-bonding" people are! Likewise with historically powerful (and not very romantic) rulers. Point: with absolute power, tyrants often adopt extreme reproductive behaviors with many hundreds of women, if possible.
• US and Kin selection: Still very powerful, most feuds are clan based, but we can go to war against kin, and we give to strangers. We can be disgusted by people who betray their families: Story of Pavlik Morozov, 368. 368: study about preferring dog to x, y, z. vmPFC involved.
• Why do humans deviate from kin selection so much. Biologists also want to find mechanisms. Animals recognize kin by MHC or imprinted genes. We do it cognitively. Much more flexibility.

Haidt, Chapter 2, "The Intuitive Dog and Its Rational Tail"

• Some complaints about philosophers

• Philosophy's "rationalist delusion" ex. from Timaeus. but also in rationalist psych. -- Assuming reason is our perfection. Desire is a necessary evil for mortals. Desire is a slave to reason.
• Three models for the relation of reason to desire:

• Plato - Reason ought to be the master of emotions. (Timaeus myth of the body - 2nd soul(emotional)), but also image of human as charioteer holding the reigns on desire (the horses). The "ultimate rationalist fantasy" is to believe that passions only serve reason, which controls them.
• Hume (Reason is slave of passions) Examples: Reason comes in to justify emotion. Inner lawyer.
• Jefferson (The Head and The Heart model. Nature has made a "division of labor" - Haidt thinks Jefferson got it right.). Jefferson’s racy trip to Paris.

• The troubled history of applying evolution to social processes

• A brief history of attempts to apply Darwinian thinking to social life (and morality).
• Darwin - a nativist - thought nature selected for moral emotions like sympathy and concern about reputation. First wave: Late 19th century: “Social Darwinism” (not Darwin’s conviction). (Note that it violates Sapolsky’s warning about evolution being prospective.)
• Second wave 60s (hippie/boomer) ideology suggesting that we can liberate ourselves from our biology and traditional morality (as contraception appeared to). Resists idea, for example, that men and women might have different evo strategies. Resists culture and authority as oppressive.
• Example: Resistance to E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology. Wilson advanced the claim we saw in Sapolsky: Evolution shapes behavior. But he dared to apply it to humans.
• Wilson also suspected that our rational justifications might be confabulations to support our intuitions. Roughly, we are disgusted by torture so we believe in rights. Read at 32: “Do people believe…?

• The emotional nineties (Third Wave)

• Even though Wilson was shouted down and “de-platformed”, history proves him right.
• de Waal, primatologist, who studied moral behavior in primates. Monkey fairness.
• Damasio's research on vmPFC disabled patients. They could watch gruesome images without feeling, but had trouble planning. (Phineas Gage) Lesions shut down the "valence" (flashes of positive neg emotions) encoded in memory. (Quick examples.)
• Point: Reasoning about practical matters requires feeling.

• Why Atheists Won’t Sell Their Souls
• Evolutionary Psychology in moral psychology: Dual Processing model. [2]

• Do we make moral decisions under controlled or automatic processing? No problem making moral decisions under cognitive load. Suggests automatic processing. Note this also suggests that we shouldn't think of our "principles" as causal.
• Can we see automatic processing when reasons are missing?

• Roach-juice
• Soul selling
• Incest story (Harmless taboo violation). Note how interviewer pushes toward dumbfounding.

• How to explain dumbfounding: Pattern matching v. Reasoning

• Margolis: seeing that (pattern matching - automatic) vs. reasoning why (controlled thought); we have bias toward confirmation, which is seen in the mistake people make on the Wasson Card test. "Judgement and justification are separate processes." At least sometimes, it appears the justification is ex post facto. (Reason a slave to the passions.)

• Rider and Elephant (System 2 (reason) and System 1 (passions; emotions)

• Important to see Elephant as making judgements (Emotions are epistemic), not just "feeling" (Hard for traditional philosophers to do.) (Pause for examples of "intelligent emotions")
• 45: Elephant and Rider defined. Emotions are a kind of information processing, part of the cognitive process. Not just “gut feeling”. Intuition and reasoning are both cognitive.
• Values of the rider: seeing into future, treating like cases like; post hoc explanation, but "expensive" in terms of attention and time. (Like education itself!)
• Values of the elephant: automatic, valuative, ego-maintaining, opens us to influence from others.
• Note Carnegie's advice -- fits with Haidt's model. If you want to persuade people, talk to the elephant. (Note: If the elephant is very afraid and powerless, this can lead to bad outcomes.)

• Social Intuitionist Model

• How does Rider and Elephant interact socially? Examples from everyday life: Who do you take advice and criticism from? People who’s elephants you like and like you.

• Bring up Repligate issue. [3]