Moorcock's Metaphysics (2): Law and Chaos
Olympic Politics

You and Your Genes

Your genes aren't you, they just built you and urge you to let them make more things like you. You, however, are more than just your genes... you might say you inhabit a body that your genes built, I suppose, were in not for the fact that it was your mother's body that built you - and her genes were just part of the valuable protein blueprints you inherited from both your parents. Your culture, your community, your friends and family and ultimately your experiences - they all helped you become who you are as much as, or even more than, the biological factory your genes work for. Your genes are a part of you, they made and maintain the extraordinary machine you live in, but it is your will, your consciousness, your spirit, which animates it.

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My brief initial thought as a devil's advocate is that there is significant evidence to suggest that genes effect a significant part of every choice you make. What's your favourite colour? Genes inform you. What subjects interest you? Genes inform you. What makes you tick with other people? Genes inform you.

We maybe hard pushed to find an element of life that is unaffected by genes. Please proove me wrong.

I hope to post an elaborated version later, but for now, ciao.

A chimpanzee's genes are a part of it, they made and maintain the extraordinary machine the chimp lives in, but it is the chimp's will, the chimp's consciousness, the chimp's spirit, which animates it.

But which part of the chimp is not a reaction/combination of the environment and the genes? What else is there?

Well said. I've always leaned heavily on the side that nurture is more influential than nature as well

You seem to be assuming there's some meaningful degree of choice in "your will, your consciousness, your spirit, which animates it", which is a product of "Your culture, your community, your friends and family and ultimately your experiences."

You are the ghost in the machine, the memes that have invaded the wetware, the lie you tell yourself so you can feel the world has some interest in your existence. Much of this determinism is hidden from view, which is the only reason you can pretend that you have free will: Because the eye cannot see itself, the consciousness cannot deconstruct it's own operation.

If there was some part of your behaviour that was *not* the deterministic result of your genes and memes, it would be either completely random, or completely insane (and still not conscious).

--Dave

Short of time but some thoughts:

Domke: all organisms consist of two elements, which we can call for convenience their biology (which we can simplify to 'genes' - somewhat unfairly, but it'll do for now) and their culture (also a simplification). You can't eliminate the cultural element - even in very simple organisms such as ants (although "ant culture" means something very different to how we would usually use the term!)

It is very easy to overstate the influence of genes - yes, when you make decisions you use your orbitofrontal cortex and this is made of protein and thus built by genes, and your decision may indeed by influenced by other genetic traits. But ultimately, the decisions the ortitofrontal cortex makes are driven by information held in your neural patterns - your memories. These are *not* influenced by your genes directly, although you can make an indirect influence argument.

The idea, for instance, that the works of Shakespeare can be explained genetically is absurd - language and culture was the substrate which generated these works of art, and this is just one example of many. We habitually over-emphasise genes, perhaps because of the emphasis on reductionism in modern science. But phenomena are not always best explained by the smallest element - one has to be wary of this kind of simplification.

Isegoria: absolutely. Did you cite this to disprove my claim? Because I'm quite comfortable with extending it throughout the animal kingdom. :)

The same argument can be extended to all mammals and birds easily, and probably into the reptiles and possibly as far even as the insects. At the insects, however, the influence of genetics has become nearly total - yet even here, it is not complete. Consider that the behaviour of bees still depends upon flowers... this is the "insect culture" element I alluded to above.

Dave: "You are the ghost in the machine, the memes that have invaded the wetware, the lie you tell yourself so you can feel the world has some interest in your existence."

You assume that you can factor out the effect of experiences by collectively calling them "memes". But this doesn't actually work - not only is 'meme' at best a metaphor (it is far from a well-founded scientific concept), but shifting the perspective outside of the personal is just a game of viewpoint. It doesn't actually change the fundamental experience for the individual.

Your position - that of biological determinism - is a belief system like any other, and depends upon perspective for its validity. If I choose between Chinese take away and pizza for my evening meal, I make that choice as an individual. You claim, from your perspective, that this choice was deterministic - and I accept that there will be a perspective where this claim will hold. But none of this changes the fact that *I* still make a choice between Chinese food and pizza.

The most amazing thing about the "meme meme" is the extent to which people are willing (for whatever reason) to let this belief system overwrite their instinctive sense of self - to dismiss "I" as an illusion. I accept that there is an illusion in consciousness - the Buddhists and Hindus were onto this millennia ago - but things that are illusory from one perspective are still tangible from another. Finding a way to render consciousness illusory is neither a new idea, nor a definitive disproof of self.

I wrote this piece because there is something in the zeitgeist which is spreading the message that we aren't in control of our lives - that other things genes (which are real, but not as influential on behaviour as supposed) and memes (which are a metaphor) control us. This leads to a weird self-fulfilling prophecy where people cede their sense of control.

But it's all an illusion - your consciousness occurs at the confluence between your wetware (which is genetic) and your memories and experiences (which is not); it is a real phenomena: there is such a thing as making a choice, and it is irrelevant to this claim whether the underlying mechanics are deterministic (further discussion on this point would mean digging into Hume, though - I don't think we want to go there now!)

See also my earlier discussion of Fate.

Where you might say a decision is a deterministic product of factors, I respond by saying: yes, but a large element of those factors is your memories and experiences - and that element is essentially what you call yourself. You can redefine yourself as a collection of memes - but you are still you. ;)

---

Thanks for the comments everyone!

I didn't think that conversation would get so involved - it seems rather tautological what you're saying.

For instance, how can the machine of the body react to the environment with the same responsiveness as the mind?

"your consciousness occurs at the confluence between your wetware (which is genetic) and your memories and experiences (which is not); it is a real phenomena: there is such a thing as making a choice"

I have to say to this: HELL YEAH!! :)

Also, one more comment on what Chris said about reductionism & simplification. Determinism implies (to me at least) there is some kind of God or higher power to do the determining. In my opinion, the concept that all knowledge and the information about every future event is stored in some single location seems infinitely more complex than the simple idea that every creature acts independently.
So if, as you say, there is a tendency towards simplification, it actually opens a new, much more complex, can of worms.

Slightly off-topic for the original subject, but since determinism has come up... if you assume both of:

1) Every piece of the universe operates according to a fixed set of rules; there are no sources of randomness after t=0;

2) Mind is simply the manifestation of physical processes and has no other, non-physcal factors at work.

then the question becomes how the universe is anything other than deterministic. Bloody complex, sure, and unpredictable at any but the most gross or superficial levels by anything within the universe - but deterministic.

Of course, if one can find a hole in 1 or 2, one has a get-out clause :-). I can't see a way of constructing experiments to disprove any significant predictions from either, so I have this feeling it's going to remain metaphysical!

zenBen: It's all a question of perspective, and some tautology probably seeps in somewhere... I'm just keen to speak out against viewpoints that claim to eliminate self in the name of science. Now oddly, I'm all for this in Buddhist or Hindu metaphysics - but here, one eliminates self and finds something greater and more mysterious. Eliminating the self and replacing it with genes/memes seems to me a misleading perspective shift - the self is defined out, and one is left with a depressing (and largely inaccurate!) perspective - a scientific superstition, I suppose. :)

I may have missed something in your specific comment as I can't quite come back on your second sentence, which seems to be crying out for a treatment. But, possibly tangentially, bacteria - the real masters of our planet - respond to the environment with nothing at all like what we would call mind. ;)

DJ I/O: "Determinism implies (to me at least) there is some kind of God or higher power to do the determining."

Well I'm not sure this is the case any more - plenty of scientific materialists who have no belief in a higher power hold a belief in determinism. Determinism at heart says: if we did it again, it would play the same way. As I discussed before in the piece on Fate, it's a wholly metaphysical proposition as we can't actually test it. :)

I suppose if there was a depositary of all information in a materialistic paradigm, it would be the four dimensional totality of the universe - all time and space. Which, not coincidentally, would be God to a pantheist. ;)

Peter: "then the question becomes how the universe is anything other than deterministic."

Well this is how Hume comes at it. He basically says "you know what, mental processes *better* be deterministic because otherwise our behaviour is random!" I have great sympathy for this viewpoint.

Determinism isn't as scary as it sounds - I covered this in the piece on Fate. You need a "God's eye view" to see the deterministic universe; from our perspective our decisions are still meaningful, and it doesn't actually matter whether they are deterministic or not - all this would mean is (a) we would make the same decision under the same circumstances the same way every time (determinism) or (b) we might make a different decision under the same circumstances. It seems that (b) is plausible if and only if there is some element of chance involved in cognition - and there could be, without this destroying any important ideas about consciousness.

Consider that when you are locked in a deadlock, not quite able to make a decision, what breaks it? The static influence of new information, or a fluid process that eventually moves from deadlock to a decision? Either is plausible.

We like to see "determinism" as meaning "our decisions are made for us" - but the thing that makes our decisions for us is *ourselves*, it is only determinism if we claim we would always make the same decision in the same circumstances. It doesn't challenge *our* role in making those decisions, if you see what I mean.

"I can't see a way of constructing experiments to disprove any significant predictions from either, so I have this feeling it's going to remain metaphysical!"

Yes, this is the claim I made in the piece on Fate - belief in or against determinism must be metaphysical as you would need to step out of the universe to check it! :)

Thanks for the comments everyone!

One to toss into the pot: why is random behaviour considered "bad" (for some value of bad)? I'm genuinely curious; I'd merely note that it was random and examine the possible consequences. I suspect that extreme random behaviour would typically get the organism killed in some way, somewhat faster than more controlled behaviour; so I suspect with no evidence that organisms that had processes to moderate the randomness of behaviour would be somewhat more likely to survive in most environments.

I'm using "typically" and "in most environments" - it's interesting to note that English and American society is now set up so that extremes of behaviour that would previously be fatal now have few negative effects on the person concerned. It's been this way for at least two generations, possibly three - possibly more in some parts. Is the apparent increase in "anti-social" behaviour in these societies merely due to the lack of negative effects on the people who behave this way?

Peter: "why is random behaviour considered 'bad'"

Presumably because it undermines our notion of free will to think that some aspect of our behaviour is random. Personally, I think some aspect of our behaviour *is* effectively random - not all decisions can be consciously tracked (although they can be consciously *justified*, which is very different). But I also believe that chance is divine so I find nothing negative in this claim.

"Is the apparent increase in "anti-social" behaviour in these societies merely due to the lack of negative effects on the people who behave this way?"

I am sceptical that there is a trend towards anti-social behaviour on a grand scale of time (a millennial scale, say) but I accept it may seem this way when looked over the last fifty years, say. But I think, perhaps, that if I was to identify a driver for this it would be the collapse of collective standards of behaviour (in part because of the fragmentation of religion, and the growth of acceptable "unbelief" without the creation of new ethical traditions to accompany these new perspectives).

I also suspect that we will begin to develop transcultural codes of behaviour to push against this 'trend' - that is, to develop ethical systems that are trans-tradition (they exist between traditions, and thus allow for participation from people who have no ethical tradition of their own). But here, I am into deep speculation. :)

Best wishes!

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