Genes Do Not End At The Neck

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This debate is old. Some of the more radical scientists (particularly geneticists and psychologists) have been trying to convince us that gene X encodes behaviour Y for decades. Every single time (no exception) they were proven wrong shortly after, but the debate raged on anyway. What we do know is that certain specific mutations can lead to certain specific behavioural symptoms, but this doesn't mean that the gene codes for this or that behaviour.

 

I'd recommend reading some Dawkins or something and definitely Descarte's Error by Antonio R. Damasio, a neurologist. And after that, revise your thinking about nature vs. nurture.

Damn those popularists that make it seem so simple as you could say either/or.

Free will is a current day mythology we like to believe in because it makes us feel better. For further reading on what I mean, check out Doris Lessing's 'Prisons We Choose To Live Inside'.

Does it really make any difference whether our will is free or not? Does it change any of the consequences? Wouldn't it be better to know exactly what conditions us and to what extent, so that we could have some influence to our behaviour?

Our genes, our nurture, our peers, the societies we live in and the current situation with its variables determine how we behave. None of these should be excluded in determining what exactly effects on how a person acts.

 

The environment, training and conditioning, the type of education received, religion and cultural background, physical and psychical trauma... all can help to form and/or modify a person's behaviour.

A dog can be trained not to bark, bury things, or poo wherever it wants. A horse can be trained to get used to carry people and goods on its back. A wild squirrel can get used enough to humans as to eat from their hands. A person who's scared of heights since childhood can overcome his/her fear with therapy, medication, or need.

Trying to tie behaviour just to the gene pool is simplistic.

[ August 22, 2006, 09:06: Message edited by: Colthrun ]

 

Exactly, and trying to tie it only to nurture is as simplistic. Behaviour is tied to both, but it's important to remember that as we can learn out of some genetically imprinted behaviour, it is still within us. Given the right sircumstances for hereditary behaviour to emerge, it will.

We excrete saliva when we're hungry, we get more easily infatuated with people with enough different genetic makeup, fight or flight reactions, social conformism and grouping, facial expressions. The list could go on and on. This should not be forgotten, but it does not mean that genes would dictate our behaviour and that we'd blindly obey. By acknowledging that genes do affect our behaviour we can control that part of our actions better.

The nature vs. nurture, genes vs. upbringing is a problem only if mind-body -problem is one. But as current day neurology, biology, psychology and medicine do, or are at least starting to realize, mind and body are not separate entities. Aristotle couldn't have been more right saying that 'men are social animals'. We have every characteristic of animals but our culture is something else. This does not however negate that we'd be animals at the same time we have all these marvellous achievements culture has provided us.

It's not downscaling us humans how many people's perspective should change, it is by upscaling animals and their behaviour we might get a better ability to understand ourselves. Partly because of christianity we see animals having lower capabilities that they actually have and us humans having better capabilities than we could rightly take credit for. This silly hubris should end.

 

@T2Bruno:

I agree genes shouldn't make an excuse if there's a choice involved. However, should genes really remove the ability to make a conscious choice, then they should make an exculpation. But exculpation means you can't go to prison, while it doesn't say you can't go to psychward. In any case a convict wannabe is found inaccountable for his actions, he goes to psychward. There might be a reason not to jail some rapists or murderers, but they don't have any kind of right to continue doing what they have been doing. Of course, you will always find some complete *******s of defence lawyers who will say their client should go to neither place.

 

This reminds me of an article I ran across while writing a biology term paper. There is a wasp, I forget the exact name, but regardless, there is a wasp that sticks its egg upon the back of a specific spider, and this egg hatches on the back the unsuspecting spider. Now here is where it gets interesting: the wasp larva secretes chemicals---drugs---which cause the spider to spin a web very different from the shape it normally does---it spins a nursery for the larva! And once done, it remains standing nearby so that it may be consumed by the growing larva!

Fascinating stuff! Kind of scary too!

Our decisions are at the ultimate level a physicality, and as such, they have physical precursors (causes).

 

That brings up some interesting questions. Do you believe people are different from other animals? Do you believe we have souls or free will?

Me? I think the only way people are significantly different from animals is free will, or the ability to defy our instincts and genetics and whatever other influences there may be.

There are smart animals, I swear my cats are all smarter than most people. Animals have emotions and emotional connections (again, my cats are great examples), but animals cannot go against their natures. I believe humans can.

This also brings up the question, do these genes cause certain behavior, or are they merely activated when the being that posesses them chooses to use that behavior?

 

I'm sorry, but this is going to be a long one...

The thought that an animals nature is constricting is part of an old tradition that is fading away. Free will can be considered only as a rhetorical question, as semantics and it's slowly losing the connotations and it's importance that it has had for at least little over two thousand years.

The line between free will and determinism is eroding, becoming meaningless as in other complex issues with arbitrary lines between two things. Even in the old tradition of thought free will in itself is very problematic and no permanent solution has been reached. It's a problem that cannot be solved without cutting the whole frame of thinking apart like a Gordian knot.

As to what comes to souls, it's a question how you define a soul. I know it to be true that there is no death and that there indeed is life after death. This life after death is not however not life of my own, current self, but neither is the life of the person that I was or will ever be. After I die there will, however, no longer be this body carrying my name and whatever will become of me after that, will no longer cling to those things that I cling to in this life. This is not contradictory with christian tradition, but what I'm thinking is closer to buddhism and taosim. It still should be noted that there is no major contradiction between these traditions of thought in this issue.

Other animals can defy their instincts as well, but maybe not quite as well as we can. But as complicated organisms go, we're really not that different from other animals. We're even have amazingly much in common with fruit-flies and nematodes! And there's so much to learn of the behaviour of even simpler organisms.

Yes, we can decide better what we do with our lives, and we can even consciously decide what we do with most of the lives of the plants and animals that inhabit this planet. Knowledge is power and concerning free will it has been at least ever since Plato that for a choice of free will having knowledge on what affects your actions is imperative. We have knowledge and gain more of it all the time. Knowledge about our genes is something we need in order to make conscious decisions about our lives.

When appropriate conditions are met, certain patterns have a tendency to emerge. Our actions are determined to a certain degree of probability and/or fuzziness. If everything is not determined as a clockwork, then everything is not chaotic and random. There is no complete chaos, for the world consists of things that have values towards a certain type of behaviour. There is chaos, for all of these values cannot be fully and completely known at any given single moment. I like to think that the relation between genes and behaviour has a lot of common with this.

We can choose a certain path, but we will never know how that journey will go or will we ever get to our goal. As on any trip, for the least you need yourself to take a trip. It's also nice to have some preparations made, like food and maybe something to travel with. A choice is a trip, you don't go bumbling in the dark without light and expect to find yourself from where you set out to. Some things are essential for a trip to succeed and some of these things are something you can't live without, no matter how much they'd affect on the trip itself. But if you take them into account, you'll be well prepared and set to go.

 

Once, man walked this Earth as a natural man. He did not have to guess about animal behavior or the purpose of creatures and plants. He knew all these things because he was a part of thier world, they were his world. If we live long enough science will determine that man has great commonality with every living thing on the Earth. So then, is it genes that drives our behavior or nature? Are they not one in the same? Where does instinct come from? Nature. How can mankind ever be seperated from nature? So then what dictates mankinds behavior? His nature. Can Man defy his nature? If so, how? Man(woman) is a glorious creation with the devine privilege to defy his corupt nature. What determines if a man will use this privilege? Well, now we are back to his nature, genes if you will. What does that leave us with? External forces, things such as nurtue as Carcaroth mentioned or a lack there of. How will you responde to these things? Again your nature, it will dictate all that you do in this world. It is your freewill, mankind's gift to it's self. Science my try to manipulate this kowlage such as it is, but you can no more control a mans nature than you can juggle the Sun and Moon. So in a way your gense control your fate. The only variable is external forces. I think Iku-Turso said it pretty well, combine his thoughts with the fact that like all creatures,we are a slave to habit, (behavior dictated by your gense or "nature"). "Good or bad, you will go the way of all flesh". A profound truth. "Life is strength, you live you affect your world". And there it is, your life would be etched in stone if not for those external forces. But since you genes dictate how you will meet these forces isn't it etched in stone anyway?

[ August 31, 2006, 03:42: Message edited by: Bassil Warbone ]