Wednesday 22 February 2012

Altruism, deceit and ethics

Something nice happened to me at the weekend. No, honestly, it's true!

I lost my wallet and, at the very instant that I slipped a hand into my pocket and discovered the loss, my mobile phone rang. It was a policeman calling to say that some lost property belonging to me had been handed in at Bath police station and would I like to come and collect it? So before my shit-happens-primed brain could scream the words 'identity theft' into the uncaring void, the ball of stress coalescing in my sternum dissipated.

The woman who'd handed in my wallet had left her name and address. I went immediately to a florists' and ordered an extravagant bunch of flowers to be delivered to her on Monday with a message that ended 'give yourself a big hug'. I meant it too. Rarely have I felt so well disposed towards a total stranger and never pre-coitus. I was back in the same florists' today, buying a bunch of flowers to go on the kitchen table and, while she was tying an elaborate bow around the bouquet, the woman behind the counter asked 'You're the guy with the wallet, aren't you?' 'You've obviously been talking to my builder.' Is what I should have said but instead admitted I was the same guy. 'So, did she call?' She asked.

Now I hadn't spent more than five minutes considering whether I should append my phone number to the note with the flowers and I had been in no way influenced in my decision not to do so by the fact that my benefactor had given her name as 'Mrs...' but it amused me to discover that florists must get a little kick from the thought that many a relationship has been launched on the rocky road to ruin and recriminations by an extravagant hand-tied bunch of flowers prepared by their own fair hands.

In truth, all that I really know about Mrs... is that she isn't a thief and that she approximates sufficiently closely to a typical Homo sapiens that the following equation is satisfied in respect of our relationship.



If you are unfamiliar with the equation and the meanings of the terms I refer you to the marvelous paper by Robert Trivers in which it was first published, available here, for free - and that's a bargain). 

Understand this equation, which is so simple that even my mathematically challenged brain can grasp its meaning intuitively, and you will have seen something lovelier than the combined magnificence of all the illuminated manuscripts in all the libraries of theology in the world. 

In a sense, this is the equation that states the conditions under which it is possible for something like a human being to evolve. What it says, to paraphrase, is that, in a highly social, intelligent animal species, where members of the species possess memory of social interactions and meet one another frequently, natural selection can favour the evolution of reciprocal altruism. In other words, it can produce human beings. Or Vampire Bats. Vampire Bats are very much like human beings when it comes to reciprocal altruism in that they possess the same salient traits - sociality, intelligence, memory - that we do. A Vampire Bat that returns from a night's unsuccessful foraging will soon die but is often saved by an unrelated bat - a good sanguinarian? - regurgitating some blood into its friend's mouth. The system evolved because Vampire Bats remember who has saved them from certain death in the past and apportion their altruism accordingly.

It is an interesting feature of reciprocal altruism in humans that we seem prepared to act altruistically towards strangers that we have never met and likely never will (as in me and Mrs...). It's an open question, I think, whether this feature of our behaviour is an adaptation or an example of cultural evolution temporarily (I am thinking millennia, not decades, here) out-manoeuvreing natural selection.

I presume that anyone reading this will be either familiar with Trivers' equation or too lazy (or tired, or fried, or whatever) to bother with reading a succinct explanation of the mystery that religion has been trying pointlessly to solve for ever: why are we so damned nice? If you set a million monkeys to masturbating in the corners of their lonely wire cages, the results could not be sadder nor less fruitful than the speculations of Aquinus or Augustine or Mohammed. Give a slightly crazy genius an insight into natural selection, a pad of paper and a pencil, on the other hand, and you get revelations.

Robert Trivers, according to Wikipedia, went bonkers trying to make sense of Wittgenstein, which is an excellent reason not to read Wittgenstein. Having revolutionised his adopted field of evolutionary biology in the 1970s, Trivers disappeared from view until very recently, when he published 'Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others' (buy it here).

What seems to have motivated Trivers to write this book is the desire to answer the question why that, whereas there are obvious benefits (to the deceiver) of deceiving others, the same does not apply to deceiving oneself. When I described this puzzle to a philosophically-minded friend, he denied the possibility of self-deception (how can one both affirm and deny a certain proposition simultaneously, he asked). So I'd better be clear what I (and I think Trivers) means by self-deception: interpreting sense data in a way that conforms with pre-conceived notions of truth, when an unbiased interpretation of the same data would result in a contradiction.

Trivers' claim which, so far as I know, is original is that natural selection can favour the spread of self-deception in species in which there exists an arms race between deceivers and deceiver-detectors. Imagine the following conversation between a husband and wife.

[Husband, staring into the middle distance.]

Wife: 'What are you thinking, darling?'

[Husband suspends contemplation of sex with the au pair; blushes slightly; suppresses blush.]

Husband: 'I was thinking about how much fun we had together before X and Y were born. Why don't we ask your parents to babysit and go on a cruise together?'

[Wife thinks: 'Yeah, I wasn't born yesterday, you wanker; who is she?']

Wife: 'Sometimes you still surprise me, darling. That's a lovely idea.'

[Husband resumes contemplation of whether doggy-style or reverse cowgirl would be more enjoyable, for him].

Wife: 'I'll call my parents tomorrow and ask when they can come over for a week.'

[Husband: Hmm, the au pair is half my age and a third my weight. Perhaps the cruise is a good idea.]

Husband: 'I love you, honey.'

Now I'm not suggesting, and I doubt Trivers would either, that this sort of dialogue is typical. However, I don't think it is particularly unusual either. There are two possibilities: my heterosexual male friends are a strange, sexually-fixated subset of the (otherwise balanced) population; or, all heterosexual men would really like to fuck the au pair, provided there were no consequences. What is more interesting, however, is to notice that, at the end of the hypothetical conversation, the hypothetical wife believes that the hypothetical husband loves her and, more pertinently, the hypothetical husband believes it too. If he didn't, the extraordinarily sensitive deception detector that is the human female brain would have seen the contents of his pitiful sex-crazed brain and left.

Why? I mean, why would any sensible British man (I am speaking from my own, limited, experience; I'm quite sure analogous arguments could be made for any gender, orientation or nationality) risk marriage, reputation, family and fiscal independence for a few brief thrusts into the vagina of an economic refugee from Poland? The answer, of course, is that ancestors in a lineage stretching four billion years into deep time have persisted by, so to speak, coercing Polish refugees into having sex.

Do you not find this fascinating? I mean, perhaps I am telling the story badly, but isn't it the most interesting story of all? What are we and why are we as we are? Come hither...

...to a book that I've recently finished: 'An Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics' by Scott M. James. Philosophers write very carefully. That is what they do: they rephrase more carefully what the enthusiasts on the frontiers of discovery have reported. So I must state in words of as few and unambiguous syllables as possible my opinion of the book: dismal. 

How is it possible that, in 2012, an influential moral philosopher can publish a book, three-quarters of which is wasted on convincing its audience that evolution actually happened? The temptation to mock the imbeciles who haven't yet clocked this fact is almost irresistible. I suppose that I should admire Scott M. James for his dogged determination to explain, in Bowdlerised form, the theory that has informed all reasoned discussion since 1853 to persons too stupid or willfully ignorant to have taken it on board yet. But I don't. Why? James, when he finally allows himself to come to the point, argues that the case for what he calls 'moral anti-realism' - aka the truth - is more-or-less accepted. Except for his own theory, on which he will no doubt build a pointlesss career.

Look. Our ancestors, before primates; before mammals if you want to go that far back, did not contemplate right and wrong. Jellyfish, the descendants of our (common) ancestors, do not worry whether they have offended their brother-in-law. But neither did they owe him a small fortune. We are descended from animals that had no moral sense. We have one. Ergo, it evolved. I don't expect to convert anyone with this argument but one can hope.

If we admit that our moral sense evolved, it is worth considering two subsidiary possibilities. Morality could be a property of the universe, like viscosity or gravity. If we ever drag our sorry asses off this planet and discover examples of life on other planets, we can be confident that 'birds' will fly, 'fish' will swim and 'bodies' will fall. Does anyone really think, however, that aliens will avow that sex before marriage is a sin? No, really - do you think this is likely? The other possibility is that morality is a word for the codes that enable society, given the genetic and cultural inheritance of a particular species. As Montesquieu said, triangles would worship a three-sided god and despise rectangles. If ants had a god, the caste system would be morally obligatory.


When you feel the tug of conscience, it isn't god whispering into your ear. It's billions of dead ancestors, all of them evolutionary successes telling you that if it works...






Saturday 11 February 2012

Windows onto the mind of God

It is a source of immense frustration to biologists that the physics department's budget typically has several more zeroes on its end. What is more, biologists are scientifically-minded folk who weren't clever enough to study physics, which hurts. In the end though, the budget gap is due less to the relative profundity of the two disciplines than to a missed marketing opportunity on the part of biologists. Whereas physicists can speak without blushing of striving to understand the mind of god; of reaching for a 'theory of everything' or of 'unifying' the 'fundamental' forces, biologists' grant applications concern the mating system of the Dunnock or the function of the stripes on a zebra's arse (I am not kidding: see here). Ironically, it is biology that shines the brightest light into the mind of god - obviously one and the same thing as the mind of man - and while it might not have a theory of everything, at least has a deeply satisfying explanation for all of life, in its wondrous diversity, which is more than can be said for physicists and their zoo of possibly but probably not fundamental particles.

As my friends know very well, I am a living library of wasted opportunities. The first truly great opportunity that I squandered (ignoring the offer of a blow job to be administered by J, which I fluffed on account of nerves and alcohol) was the possibility of a lifetime spent as an academic biologist, studying tropical rain forests, Dunnock mating systems or pretty much anything I found interesting. My PhD was supervised by Nick Davies, who literally wrote the book on Dunnocks, and who is nevertheless one of the most original scientists alive. He practically invented the field of behavioural ecology, the study of the evolutionary basis of animal behaviour. With hindsight it is almost impossible to imagine asking questions about animal behaviour except in light of this approach. Nick was one of the first to apply it and is one of the keenest observers and among the most brilliant theorists.

In the preface to his book about Dunnocks, Nick quotes Reverend Frederick Morris, who admired this archetypal little brown bird for its apparently unimpeachable moral probity: 'Unobtrusive, quiet and retiring, without being shy, humble and homely in its deportment and habits, sober and unpretending in its dress, while neat and graceful, the dunnock exhibits a pattern which many of a higher grade might imitate, with advantage to themselves and benefit to others through an improved example.'

As it turns out, Dunnocks are among the most sexually wanton vertebrates ever studied in detail. The average human threesome is positively suburban in comparison with a polygynandrous dunnock family, in which both male and female surreptitiously cuckold the other. In a delightful inversion of orgasm, the female is often induced to eject the sperm of the male who previously inseminated her by her current paramour's 'cloacal pecking', a distressingly clinical term for oral sex, bird style. It's easy to mock Rev. Morris, which obviously isn't going to stop me doing just that. The problem for RM and all previous and subsequent admirers of god's handiwork is that The Maker appears to have been a bit of a sicko.

I have mentioned elsewhere my fascination with what Christians, Muslims or other creationists think the exploding penis of the honey bee reveals about the mind of god. I'm not sure why this particular example of nature's perversity captivates me except perhaps that I cannot help but wince at the thought of my bollocks exploding across the quivering buttocks of some drunken bird in a pub car park. It would certainly make you think twice about that second Bacardi and rum. It is frequently said that Charles Darwin finally abandoned his belief in god as a result of contemplating Ichneumon Wasps, which lay their eggs in the living bodies of other insects. The larvae consume their hosts from within. It's hard to reconcile the existence of such a 'creature' with a creator overflowing with kindness. Mice are occasionally infected by a parasite that causes the infected mouse to lose its fear of cats because the parasite requires a cat's intestine to complete its life cycle. Certain primates tend to leave more grandchildren if they trade their faculty of reason for membership of a cult. One could go on.

God is most certainly dead but the news hasn't reached everyone yet. My friend R has coined the perfect slogan to describe the struggle ahead: one believer, one bullet. I'll see you in hell.


Sunday 5 February 2012

The dangers of materialism.

'Earth, man. What a shit hole!'

Johner, a character in Alien Resurrection.


'What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.'

Shakespeare, Hamlet


'All sex is bestiality.'

CW, in an email

Despite having grown up on a diet of E.O. Wilson and Gerald Durrell, Johner's assessment of our beautiful pale blue dot succinctly expresses my feelings on the subject of the home planet. From the scum that floats in a greasy layer on our poisonous oceans to the scum who peddle porn, religion and other drugs to our not-yet depraved children, our world is surely a shit hole sans comparaison.

Saturday dawned bright, cold and crisp. I know this because, highly uncharacteristically, I was awake and alert at dawn, packing up my papers after a week spent trying to bash a round peg into a computationally square hole (more of which in another post). Saturday, I need hardly add, was the day of the first snowdrop sale of the season, at Myddleton House. What do you mean, you hadn't heard? Myddleton House is the former home of E.A. Bowles, one of those almost impossibly lucky healthy, wealthy and clever nineteenth century English gentlemen-of-leisure whose passion was plants. Myddleton House is now in Enfield (the house hasn't moved but Enfield has). Need I go on?

Snowdrop sales ought to be the subject of some social-wannabe-scientist's PhD thesis because they are little maelstroms of human vice, with greed, lust and envy to the fore. I was fourth in the queue when the gate was opened at 10.30am and by 10.33am I had bought about 30 new snowdrops, mostly from the incomparable Glen Chantry nursery. Even so, several that I'd wanted had sold out by the time I'd  fought my way to the front of the line at stalls I visited after cleaning out Glen Chantry. Those of you who know me will not need to be told that this is my idea of fun. I can't remember the last time I experienced 15 minutes of such unalloyed pleasure. Two of my purchases, 'Big Boy' and 'Fanny', are illustrated below. So far as I know there isn't yet a snowdrop named 'Cunt' or 'Knob' but surely it's a matter of time before someone with a sufficiently developed sense of irony comes along.

Galanthus 'Fanny'

 
Galanthus 'Big Boy'

 Coming 'home' is almost always guaranteed to extinguish any glow of warmth that has, against the odds, been kindled in my increasingly ample breast. On this occasion, my evanescent glimpse of happiness was snuffed out by a particularly surly greeting from my wife (who has been pushed beyond the brink of reason and reasonableness by me and whom I do not in the least blame) and an email from an old friend, announcing that his partner had died after four years with motor neuron disease. 'It is good news really although it does not feel like it yet', he said, and I wanted to cry.

In 'The World According to Garp', John Irving describes how his fictional mother's funeral is hijacked by her feminist friends and he ends up dressing in drag to gain admission. I have thought about whether it is fair to write about the private tragedies of friends in a public forum, however unlikely it is that anyone will ever read this. In the end I decided that John - 'no man is an island' - Donne had it right when he argued that we are all diminished by and perhaps complicit in every tragedy and that speaking out is the right thing - or at least an acceptable thing - to do.

As it happens, X's death (or rather her illness) is one of a trio of tragedies, soon to be joined by a fourth, that I have become aware of in the last couple of weeks. Motor neuron disease is a foul condition, reducing most sufferers to mentally alert prisoners in a physically inert shell. By the end of her life, X retained control over only a single muscle in her body - that in one eyelid. Before the onset of the disease, X was a brilliant and successful linguist. Her partner, my friend, nursed her in their home, at great personal cost, throughout her illness with a devotion that beggars belief.

The second death was reported to me by a mutual friend of mine and the man whose son, T, had died. The boy, who I suppose must have been five or six, had been diagnosed at birth with severe epilepsy and was given a prognosis measured in weeks or months. In the end, as the moving email circulated by his father described, he died quietly within a few yards of his oblivious parents who could not literally chain themselves to his bedside and so were not there when he had his final seizure.

A few days ago I had an email from another friend, reporting that a man I knew slightly had committed suicide. I had stayed with this man and his male partner in the USA a few years ago and had been shown immense hospitality, though I was practically a stranger at the time. Who knows what S was thinking when he shot himself dead but I am reasonably confident that his sexuality, or more precisely, the dissonance his sexuality caused in him and those he was close to, was to blame.

How on earth is one supposed to react to these three events? A brilliant academic, in the prime of her life, is struck down by motor neuron disease and gradually reduced to a brain-in-a-jar, so that her death, when it comes after years of suffering, is universally perceived as a 'blessing'. A boy dies, silently screaming for help, which his parents, only a few yards away, are too late to give. He never knew fully what it is to be human. A young man, tortured by who-knows-what demons, walks into the woods and blows his brains out, leaving a note for his bewildered and unsuspecting partner.

None of these events is surprising, if one is a materialist. In fact, one expects the temporary defiance of entropy that we are pleased to call 'life' to end miserably and without warning. The single most mystifying aspect, to me, of this sordid, everyday story of human affairs, is the final sentence of the email from T's father, a man who was once a good friend of mine: 'Blessed be the name of the Lord.'

There is really nothing funny about any of this, yet I am irresistibly drawn to the (true) story told by the philosopher Daniel Dennett about a recent brush with death. He had a major heart attack and survived only thanks to some cutting-edge and swift surgery. While he was recovering in hospital he wrote an article designed in part to disarm the inevitable suggestions that he had recanted his atheism while in extremis. Some of his friends, he wrote, had said they'd prayed for his recovery. 'Thank you.' He was too polite to reply. 'Did you sacrifice a goat too?'

Dennett is one of those supremely rare people - how I envy him - who really gets how the world works and yet seems to be having an enormous amount of fun. My old friend W, confronted with the unspeakable and ineluctable reality of human experience, has tied himself in knots to deny the truth that is staring back at him from his late son's blank eyes. We are animals. We are born without reason; we live without purpose and we die, alone. Materialism is austerely beautiful but it isn't comforting.