Genetic determinism

[bhamgeezer]

OTOH, as I said in one of my previous posts, there are good political reasons for viewing this particular scientific controversy as being important. So while my critique is based on scientific and analytical-philosiphical criteria, the reasons for my bothering to argue about the issue in the first place have more to do with politics.

I think you're making a mistake right there. I would really like know how you figure the political implications of the degree to which genes play a role determining how an individual developes. Whatever political implications you are associating with with the purely scientific question regarding genetic determinism I can assure they are purely your subjective interpretation. Personally I see a scientific question such as this as politically and philosophically irrelevant, although I am aware that historically many have not.

I have the, perhps incorrect, impression that your radical critique of mainstream evolutionary biology seems to be mainly based on (continental) philosophical/socio-political concerns rather than scientific ones.

I agree, and whilst Caecilian identifies with the analytic tradition I fear this particular argument somewhat over steps conceptual analysis

 

[Caecilian]

I think you're making a mistake right there. I would really like know how you figure the political implications of the degree to which genes play a role determining how an individual developes. Whatever political implications you are associating with with the purely scientific question regarding genetic determinism I can assure they are purely your subjective interpretation. Personally I see a scientific question such as this as politically and philosophically irrelevant, although I am aware that historically many have not.



I agree, and whilst Caecilian identifies with the analytic tradition I fear this particular argument somewhat over steps conceptual analysis

Read my posts #62 and #67.

 

[bhamgeezer]

Read my posts #62 and #67.

I see, so you seem to have fallen into the trap of noting how a scientific theory as been abused historically to support a political/social theory and assumed that consequentially the scientific theory must inherently support the political/social theory?

The political (mis)uses of this sort of analysis should be obvious- 'Blacks are genetically determined to be less intelligent than whites'; 'Criminality is a genetic not a social problem'; 'The class system is a reflection of the superior genes of the rich' and similar bullshit.

But as you already hinted this (social darwinismesque) political interpretation is misuse of the science. It seems clear that to me that the error in such interpretations is an ethical one as opposed to a scientific one. I don't really believe that anyone reading this thread thinks that genetic determinism really does lend support to such theories. As I said the question is politically and philosophically irrelevant.

 

[Caecilian]

I see, so you seem to have fallen into the trap of noting how a scientific theory as been abused historically to support a political/social theory and assumed that consequentially the scientific theory must inherently support the political/social theory?



But as you already hinted this (social darwinismesque) political interpretation is misuse of the science. It seems clear that to me that the error in such interpretations is an ethical one as opposed to a scientific one. I don't really believe that anyone reading this thread thinks that genetic determinism really does lend support to such theories. As I said the question is politically and philosophically irrelevant.

You obviously don't understand the point that I'm making.

I'll try again:

1. Genetic determinism is not good science.

2. In addition to this, it lends itself to extremely dubious political uses.

therefore

3. There are important political reasons for making an effort arguing against it.

Note that 1 and 2 are quite separate points. There scientific results that are unpalatable (e.g. the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority), but the fact that they are unpalatable in no way diminishes their scientific validity.

Any arguments against genetic determinism need to be grounded in science and/or philosophy of science. Which mine are.

 

[IMR]

Genetic determinism is not good science.

Surely that depends on whether the explanation offered is true or not, or whether the correct level of explanation is being advanced.

It would seem to me entirely reasonably to put forward a genetically deterministic account of why Smith has curly hair and Jones has straight hair, or an environmentally deterministic account of why Smith has two legs, and Jones only has one.

 

[bhamgeezer]

You obviously don't understand the point that I'm making.

I'll try again:

1. Genetic determinism is not good science.

2. In addition to this, it lends itself to extremely dubious political uses.

therefore

3. There are important political reasons for making an effort arguing against it.

Note that 1 and 2 are quite separate points. There scientific results that are unpalatable (e.g. the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority), but the fact that they are unpalatable in no way diminishes their scientific validity.

Any arguments against genetic determinism need to be grounded in science and/or philosophy of science. Which mine are.

The fact that you mention political reasons at all suggests that you see them as relevant in some respect. Good science doesn't require you to make a guarded effort, the guarded effort should be toward the extreme political views and not the science those that hold such views use as justification. Whatever point regarding genetics you are making, it is in no sense strengthened by involving socio-political issues.

 

[Caecilian]

Surely that depends on whether the explanation offered is true or not, or whether the correct level of explanation is being advanced.

It would seem to me entirely reasonably to put forward a genetically deterministic account of why Smith has curly hair and Jones has straight hair, or an environmentally deterministic account of why Smith has two legs, and Jones only has one.

Genetic determinism and environmental determinism are not the only alternatives.

Which is just as well, because they're equally wrong.

 

[Caecilian]

The fact that you mention political reasons at all suggests that you see them as relevant in some respect. Good science doesn't require you to make a guarded effort, the guarded effort should be toward the extreme political views and not the science those that hold such views use as justification. Whatever point regarding genetics you are making, it is in no sense strengthened by involving socio-political issues.

You're still completely missing the point. Never mind.

 

[IMR]

Genetic determinism and environmental determinism are not the only alternatives.

Which is just as well, because they're equally wrong.

I like reading science blogs and mags and have always been interested in evolution, and recently came across a link to this paper about evolution in sticklebacks.

If you don't have a Science subscription, you can read this page written by the leader of the research group David Kingsley. It's entitled 'Genetic Control of Vertebrate Evolution'.

Would you identify Kingsley et al's research as genetically determinist, and if so, what's wrong with their work? What would an alternative approach look like and how would it shed light on the mechanisms underlying the kind of morphological changes seen in sticklebacks?

(I don't pretend to understand a lot of what they're going on about, but it struck me as more engaging to see a vertebrate animal model used for exploring regulatory genes, rather than fruit flies.)

 

[kyser_soze]

Hmmm...large elements of this thread feel like a certain P.Dwyer Esq. has swallowed a book on DST and incorporated it into his worldview regarding evolutionary theory generally, and specifically because DST enables him to shoe-horn his hatred of Dawkins as some kind of modern demon specifically, for some reason, but let's take our new snake-like amphibian-monikered poster as a true noob...

I agree with Knotted and several others that in part this sounds like an idea driven by a worldview looking for scientific validation (or at least in the way it's expressed on this thread, hence my mentioning of PhilD), rather than a research-led emergent theory. It's claims don't seem to be wildly out there tho, and as other's have said, I suspect that within the scientific community (as opposed to badly reported popular science) the differences will be less clear-cut.

Good thread so far, altho I do get the feeling it's an argument in search of a counterpoint...

 

[bhamgeezer]

You're still completely missing the point. Never mind.

No you have explained your two points quite clearly, they are simply completely unrelated.

 

[bhamgeezer]

You're still completely missing the point. Never mind.

No you have made your points quite clearly. It's accusations such as

2. In addition to this, it lends itself to extremely dubious political uses.

This is clearly a false statement, you can't just make a claim like this and not back it up. Give me any scientific theory and with some time I will bend it to extremely dubious political uses, of what significance is the fact a theory can be abused.

therefore

3. There are important political reasons for making an effort arguing against it

Against the scientific theory itself? That is about as reasonable as citing the westboro baptist church when making a case against the study of theology. All the arguments against the theory relate entirely to the truth of statement 1. and not 2. or 3.

If you mean that we should make an effort to argue against the extreme political views themselves then 3. can be deduced from the fact that we know from 2. that the political uses are "extremely dubious". The question is relevent to the truth of 1, they are not dubious because 1 is the case.

I understand you're not making a political argument against genetic determinism, but you are not properly distinguishing the scientific and the political.

 

[Caecilian]

Hmmm...large elements of this thread feel like a certain P.Dwyer Esq. has swallowed a book on DST and incorporated it into his worldview regarding evolutionary theory generally, and specifically because DST enables him to shoe-horn his hatred of Dawkins as some kind of modern demon specifically, for some reason, but let's take our new snake-like amphibian-monikered poster as a true noob...

I agree with Knotted and several others that in part this sounds like an idea driven by a worldview looking for scientific validation (or at least in the way it's expressed on this thread, hence my mentioning of PhilD), rather than a research-led emergent theory. It's claims don't seem to be wildly out there tho, and as other's have said, I suspect that within the scientific community (as opposed to badly reported popular science) the differences will be less clear-cut.

Good thread so far, altho I do get the feeling it's an argument in search of a counterpoint...

I have no idea who 'P. Dwyer Esq.' is, and frankly I don't care either. Please don't impute that I'm someone who I'm not. Its rude, to say the least.

For the record, I disagree with Dawkins on a number of major issues (notably his view of genes, but also, for instance, on memes), but I certainly don't hate him. His view of the extended phenotype is very interesting, and has been further extended by Turner (The Extended Organism) in an even more interesting way. Also, Dawkins has done a lot of good PR work for Atheism, and as a hardline atheist I commend him for that.

As for the scientific status of DST, my best advice would be to check out some of the major texts. A good starting point might be Susan Oyama's The Ontogeny of Information, the book that is generally credited with founding DST. The volume of essays Cycles of Contingency (edited by Oyama, Griffiths and Gray) is also very good, as is pretty much anything by Richard Lewontin.

 

[Caecilian]

I like reading science blogs and mags and have always been interested in evolution, and recently came across a link to this paper about evolution in sticklebacks.

If you don't have a Science subscription, you can read this page written by the leader of the research group David Kingsley. It's entitled 'Genetic Control of Vertebrate Evolution'.

Would you identify Kingsley et al's research as genetically determinist, and if so, what's wrong with their work? What would an alternative approach look like and how would it shed light on the mechanisms underlying the kind of morphological changes seen in sticklebacks?

(I don't pretend to understand a lot of what they're going on about, but it struck me as more engaging to see a vertebrate animal model used for exploring regulatory genes, rather than fruit flies.)

No, I wouldn't see the work that you cite as genetic determinism. I'd see it as a very interesting bit of empirical work. I agree that its nice to see vertebrates rather than fruitflies or e coli used as models. Thanks for the link.

Genetic determinism, like DST, is a higher-level theory- what Dawkins calls a 'a way of seeing biological facts' (see ch1 of his The Extended Phenotype) i.e. a way of making sense of the results of lots and lots of lower-level empirical studies. And as such, its probably more Philosophy of Biology than Biology.

Empirical results aren't in themselves genetically determinist or otherwise. They can, however, make higher-level theories such as Genetic determinism more or less plausible. So when I say that Genetic Determinism is 'bad science', what I mean is something like: 'the balance of empirical evidence plus some theoretical/ conceptual considerations leads me to conclude that this theory is not a useful or productive way of looking at the biological facts'.

 

[kyser_soze]

As for the scientific status of DST, my best advice would be to check out some of the major texts. A good starting point might be Susan Oyama's The Ontogeny of Information, the book that is generally credited with founding DST. The volume of essays Cycles of Contingency (edited by Oyama, Griffiths and Gray) is also very good, as is pretty much anything by Richard Lewontin.

Public domain, or all scholarly works only? Any laypersons précis in these?

Ah-ha...Ontogeny of Information on google books

I have no idea who 'P. Dwyer Esq.' is, and frankly I don't care either. Please don't impute that I'm someone who I'm not. Its rude, to say the least.

Have a look-see around some threads in this forum and you'll see why I asked the question. It's the tying of the evolutionary paradigm to capitalism really, one of his parlour tricks...

I see from Wiki that Lewontin is strongly opposed to sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, so in some respects his work (and subsequent to that Oyama) is directly political in that particular science row.

Not that I have anything against DST TBH; it appears to answer a lot of issues I have with the general dichotomous nature of much debate, in science and elsewhere, in our society, and has the feel of a 'truth' to it, insofar as it's not a simplistic answer...altho it remains to be seen (by me) if it's explicable to laypersons easily, which is a personal thing - if a complex idea cannot be made simple enough in explanation to be meaningful to the great majority of people, it fails as knowledge and probably, somewhere, it's deeply flawed or the person explaining it isn't a good storyteller and should probably get someone who is to explain their great idea. An example is QM - altho it's a 'hard' concept, it can be explained without recourse to metaphor or jargon, the main barrier to understanding then being that you have to bend your head at a right angle to 'get' how it works, and then unhinge your head to accept it

 

[Knotted]

Empirical results aren't in themselves genetically determinist or otherwise. They can, however, make higher-level theories such as Genetic determinism more or less plausible. So when I say that Genetic Determinism is 'bad science', what I mean is something like: 'the balance of empirical evidence plus some theoretical/ conceptual considerations leads me to conclude that this theory is not a useful or productive way of looking at the biological facts'.

You're probably right, but I wish you wouldn't use the term "genetic determinism" - it's far too strong a term to describe Maynard Smith or Dawkins. It is this sort of rhethoric that will be picked up on by creationists.

 

[Knotted]

I agree with Knotted and several others that in part this sounds like an idea driven by a worldview looking for scientific validation (or at least in the way it's expressed on this thread, hence my mentioning of PhilD), rather than a research-led emergent theory.

I wouldn't say that. I think it's more to do with serious scientists and philosophers trying to come up with a new perspective on ontogeny but there seems to be a bit of turf war. They really don't like any information talk a la Maynard Smith.

So all in all DST looks like a refreshing new perspective on things, but I suspect that some of the rhethoric is just a product of bickering with other, related disciplines.

 

[Knotted]

Here's an interesting discussion over at Pharyngular.

 

[Caecilian]

You're probably right, but I wish you wouldn't use the term "genetic determinism" - it's far too strong a term to describe Maynard Smith or Dawkins. It is this sort of rhethoric that will be picked up on by creationists.

Yeah, you've got a real point here. Normally, I wouldn't- its just that 'Genetic Determinism' was the title of the thread.

'Gene-centic' is probably a much better term to use.

 

[Caecilian]

Public domain, or all scholarly works only? Any laypersons précis in these?

Ah-ha...Ontogeny of Information on google books



Have a look-see around some threads in this forum and you'll see why I asked the question. It's the tying of the evolutionary paradigm to capitalism really, one of his parlour tricks...

I see from Wiki that Lewontin is strongly opposed to sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, so in some respects his work (and subsequent to that Oyama) is directly political in that particular science row.

Not that I have anything against DST TBH; it appears to answer a lot of issues I have with the general dichotomous nature of much debate, in science and elsewhere, in our society, and has the feel of a 'truth' to it, insofar as it's not a simplistic answer...altho it remains to be seen (by me) if it's explicable to laypersons easily, which is a personal thing - if a complex idea cannot be made simple enough in explanation to be meaningful to the great majority of people, it fails as knowledge and probably, somewhere, it's deeply flawed or the person explaining it isn't a good storyteller and should probably get someone who is to explain their great idea. An example is QM - altho it's a 'hard' concept, it can be explained without recourse to metaphor or jargon, the main barrier to understanding then being that you have to bend your head at a right angle to 'get' how it works, and then unhinge your head to accept it

Its true that at least some of the motivation behind DST is political (especially in the case of Lewontin). That, however, has no real bearing on its scientific status, since the arguments are all scientific and/or philosophical.

I don't know of any popular science books on the subject. All of the literature on DST that I'm aware of is pretty academic.

Paul Griffiths, one of the leading lights of DST has some on-line papers here.

 

[IMR]

No, I wouldn't see the work that you cite as genetic determinism. I'd see it as a very interesting bit of empirical work. I agree that its nice to see vertebrates rather than fruitflies or e coli used as models. Thanks for the link.

Genetic determinism, like DST, is a higher-level theory- what Dawkins calls a 'a way of seeing biological facts' (see ch1 of his The Extended Phenotype) i.e. a way of making sense of the results of lots and lots of lower-level empirical studies. And as such, its probably more Philosophy of Biology than Biology.

Empirical results aren't in themselves genetically determinist or otherwise. They can, however, make higher-level theories such as Genetic determinism more or less plausible. So when I say that Genetic Determinism is 'bad science', what I mean is something like: 'the balance of empirical evidence plus some theoretical/ conceptual considerations leads me to conclude that this theory is not a useful or productive way of looking at the biological facts'.

Thanks for that answer. After reading this thread I dug out Maynard Smith's little book 'Shaping Life: Genes, Embryos and Evolution', which is interesting to read again in the context of what's been discussed here.

 

[bhamgeezer]

More Irreductionism

 

[IMR]

More Irreductionism

Not sure what you mean, Maynard Smith spends part of the book explaining why he tends to favour reductionism.

 

[bhamgeezer]

Not sure what you mean, Maynard Smith spends part of the book explaining why he tends to favour reductionism.

I'll have to take your word for it knowing so little about biology

 

[IMR]

I don't know much about it either, but it interests me. You sound like you've got the hump.

 

[bhamgeezer]

I don't know much about it either, but it interests me. You sound like you've got the hump.

Sorry if I gave that impression I really don't know that much about Biology and have a list of books I should have read by now so actually reading anything is out of the question. From what little I understand DST seems to draw an ontological distinction between a system and its components, obviously that is why I thought of irreductionism, an inconsistent idea in my opinion. However then again it is a scientific approach, I can see how removing ontological bias might help from a practical perspective, really I don't know enough now to hold an opinion of value.

 

[IMR]

I don't really know anything at all about philosophy - I've lost count of the number of times I've had to look up the word 'ontological'!

It looks like another holism-reductionism squabble. Stuff like that usually goes over my head.

There was a similar row in the 1980s and 90s between proponents of brain models involving neural networks and ones invoking a modularised, Jerry Fodor style view of the brain.

That eventually died down and there was (it seemed to a layman like me) some kind of incorporation of ideas from both sides.

 

[kyser_soze]

I've a book called 'The Bluffers Guide to Quantum Physics' and there a passage in it about reductionism vs holistics that states that both sides inevitably end up becoming each other anyway - at some point the reductionists have to take a holistic view in order to see how all the small things they see interact in a wider environment, and the holistics have to zoom in on specific interactions in order to see how they affect the whole picture

Which is why the two terms are a bit silly - both elements are a requisite of a fully rounded hypothesis.

 

[bhamgeezer]

I don't really know anything at all about philosophy - I've lost count of the number of times I've had to look up the word 'ontological'!

It looks like another holism-reductionism squabble. Stuff like that usually goes over my head.

There was a similar row in the 1980s and 90s between proponents of brain models involving neural networks and ones invoking a modularised, Jerry Fodor style view of the brain.

That eventually died down and there was (it seemed to a layman like me) some kind of incorporation of ideas from both sides.

Ha yes I'm reading alot of philosophy of mind right now, although not quite as recent as what you mention. I might be seeing such squabbles everywhere now

 

[bhamgeezer]

I've a book called 'The Bluffers Guide to Quantum Physics' and there a passage in it about reductionism vs holistics that states that both sides inevitably end up becoming each other anyway - at some point the reductionists have to take a holistic view in order to see how all the small things they see interact in a wider environment, and the holistics have to zoom in on specific interactions in order to see how they affect the whole picture

Which is why the two terms are a bit silly - both elements are a requisite of a fully rounded hypothesis.

I can see how that may be the case, but my problem isn't with the holistic perspective itself as a means, but with the attribution of some additional causally efficacious property to higher level systems which supervenes on its components.