Darwin vs. the Progressives

I may be one of the only scholars to escape Claremont without being or becoming obsessed with the Progressives.  As a result, I have never paid much attention to John Dewey or Woodrow Wilson or the rest of that lot.  The general idea, if I get it, is that the Progressives wanted to empower the people and get rid of silly constitutional limitations on the popular will‑guided, of course, by experts in the sciences of politics and economics. 

I have just finished reading a paper about the use of “Darwinism” by the Progressives.  I can’t site the paper, because it is a draft of what will be presented at the panel I am chairing at the meeting of the International Political Science Association in Brisbane, Australia.  By the way, that’s Brisbin to those in the know.  It is a wonderful introduction to Progressive thought, so now I know more than I really want to know. 

This is my summary of the paper, for which the unnamed author bears no responsibility.  The Progressives believed that modern science could produce much more efficient societies, free from the old evils of factionalism, greed, etc., if only it could get complete command of the powers of government.  Standing in the way of that complete command were the constitutional devices—separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, etc. 

To fully empower government to do what the Progressives thought it could do, they had to get rid of those obstacles.  To do that, they had to discredit the philosophical principles on which the constitutional order was based.  The Founders believed that they understood human nature.  The believe that human tendencies toward corruption and self-destruction could not be eradicated, they could only be ameliorated.  That is what limited government was designed to achieve. 

The Progressives attempted to undermine the Founding principles by attacking the idea of a fixed human nature.  The Founder’s work made sense by the light of late 18^th century science, they argued, but science has moved on.  We now know that human nature changes just like everything else does.  We can mold ourselves into new and better beings, free from the moral infirmities of our predecessors, if only be can break free of the shackles they put in place. 

This is where Darwin comes in.  At the very least, Darwinian evolution allowed the Progressives to argue that human nature was not something fixed; therefore, a political doctrine based on the idea of natural rights was untenable.  However, Darwin didn’t give the Progressives what they really needed.  They needed the idea that history had a direction from the primitive and bad toward the advanced and good.  They got that, more or less consciously, from Hegel and Marx.  Without the latter, the idea of a changing human nature provides no comforts, let alone a promise of liberation. 

If I get all this right, Darwinism was little more than a gloss—if a very useful gloss—on Progressive doctrine.  It allowed them to dismiss the idea of human nature without much serious thought.  They didn’t have to understand it; they just needed to employ it as a slogan. 

To put it charitably, the Progressives’ view of Darwin was a little more sophisticated than Adolph Hitler’s understanding of genetics.  In Mein Kampf, which I haven’t read and neither have you, Hitler apparently argued that if someone from a superior race mates with someone of an inferior race, you get children who are mediocre.  The problem, of course, is that genetics doesn’t work that way at all.  Breeding a tall animal with a short one might get you middle sized offspring, but it also might give you some tall offspring and some short ones.  Genetics is digital rather than analogical. 

The problem with the Progressives’ view of Darwinian theory is threefold.  The most important problem is that evolution by natural selection is not fundamentally progressive.  It shapes organisms for their respective ecological niches, but that can mean simpler, dumber creatures as often as more complex and smarter creatures. 

It is true that there is a progressive dimension in the history of evolution.  All organisms are autonomous in the sense that they resist the influence of environmental forces.  That is what it means to be alive.  The increases in organic complexity over time map onto increases in autonomy: warm blooded animals segregate their organs from one another and maintain their body temperature in order to (adaptationist language here) be more independent from the local environment. 

The second problem with the Progressive view of Darwinism is that it completely ignores the relevant time frames.  Yes, the human species has changed over time; however, it matters how much change and how much time we are talking about.  According to most current accounts, human beings have been pretty much the same animals for at least fifty-thousand years.  Have we changed enough since Romulus and Remus, let alone Jefferson and Madison, to make a practical difference for political theory?  No.  If the Founder’s theory was good enough for human beings two hundred and forty-two years ago, no contemporary evolutionary theory will undermine it. 

The final and most important problem is that species do not change in all parts of their organic structure at the same rates and some parts of them do not change much at all.  While the simplistic model of the triune brain—reptilian, mammalian, and neomammalian—may be discarded, the basic idea is sound: evolution doesn’t work transforming existing organisms into brand new ones, but by reorganizing what it has already got and keeping what works.  

Human beings may be more than animals (I think we are) but we are at least animals.  Almost all of what our ancestor was before she split into Pan and Homo lines is still in both of us.  Most of the earliest mammal is still in our neocortex.  The reptile was not purged; he was reassigned. 

Human beings are such interesting and promising creatures precisely because we carry within us the history of our organic predecessors, back to the Ur organism and yet have achieved a human world.  The organic burdens are part and parcel of the organic promise.  We still come into this world, eat and defecate, and go out of it the same way our dogs do. 

The political principles of the Founding recognized both sides of the coin.  We are capable of living beautiful lives; yet to do this, we have to manage our animal nature.  The Founders were wise and mature in their thought.  The Progressives were naïve and simple minded. 

A Horse is Of Course

I was interviewed today by David Tucker, Senior Fellow at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University.  The interview will be posted soon and I expect that it will be available to anyone (I didn’t exactly ask!).  If so, I will post a link here. 

Our topic was Darwin and the Declaration.  While I was preparing for the interview, something occurred to me that might be worth further thought.  I am thinking it through here for the first time. 

One of the greatest innovations in Aristotle’s writing concerned a way of confronting apparent paradoxes.  A paradox occurs when something appears to be two things at the same time and the two things are apparently contradictory. 

To take a simple example, consider an oblong table not quite so wide than your hips and longer than the reach of both arms.  Standing at one end, it appears narrower than you.  Now walk around it and look at it from its middle.  From this point of view, it is wider than you.  That is the paradox: “narrower than you” and “wider than you” are contradictory propositions.  It can’t be both at the same time; and so, the table is impossible.  If this seems silly, more intelligent people than you or I have been driven to distraction by such things.  The obvious solution (once it occurs to you) is that the table is at least a two-dimensional object.  Its multi-dimensionality allows it to be both narrower and wider at the same time. 

Using this kind of strategy, Aristotle solved a wide range of problems in philosophy.  How is it possible that a baby can be both entirely material (the stuff of flesh) and also entirely formal (it’s a baby and not just a lump of stuff)?  Because organisms (and indeed all lumps) have these two dimensions‑material and form.  To complete the explanation, Aristotle added efficient cause (the baby is being pushed out of its initial state by its phusis, or nature) and it is growing toward maturity (the telos or end of its growth). 

Now consider a mature animal, say a horse.  How do we understand what this is?  On the one hand, it is one thing: this here animal.  “This here” is frequent Aristotelian terminology; it points you toward the thing to be examined.  On the other hand, it is many things: a head and a haunch, an outside with hide and eyeballs and an inside with organs.  We can keep searching down to cells, subcellular devices, complex and simple molecules, etc.  It is one thing and many at the same time. 

We can also go in the other direction.  The horse is one horse but there are other horses.  While it is one thing, standing alone in the pasture, it is part of one larger thing: the species Horse.  And Horse is one distinct thing and yet a part of a larger thing: Mammal, etc., etc. 

Here is what occurred to me today: horse and Horse are not quite the same thing.  To speak of a horse is to say that this here animal is horsy.  It has traits that we recognize and that allow us to place it in a larger category.  To speak of Horse is to speak about something just as real but rather larger: the collection of all the existing horses. 

Aristotle got hung up on this, and had a difficult time deciding whether horse or Horse was the real object of theoretical understanding.  Much the same thing happened in the philosophy of biology.  Some have thought that Horse is an individual, bounded in space and time and therefore just as much an individual as the horse I am riding on. 

We have here a paradox.  A species is something attributable to this here animal; yet, it is also a larger thing and, more interestingly, a thing that not only extends across space but also backwards in time.  Biological classifications are categories, conceptual boxes into which we place specimens; yet Horse is also a real object that occupies both local and temporal space, back to the ancestor of all horses. 

What is the real thing, the individual animal or the species extending backward and forward (hopefully) in time?  The task of philosophy is to explain how the answer can be yes.  

Darwin & the Declaration 2

In the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress appeals to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”.  Is a doctrine of natural law and natural rights compatible with a Darwinian account of the evolution of human beings? 

The most common argument to the contrary can be found, eloquently and intelligently presented, in S. Adam Seagrave’s “Darwin and the Declaration” [Politics and the Life Sciences, Spring 2011]. 

The proposition ‘‘all human beings equally possess certain basic rights,’’ or the distilled Declaration, necessarily assumes two important points: 1) that there is a group of beings called ‘‘human’’ whose members are specifically different from other organic beings; and 2) that each individual within this specific group of beings equally possesses things we call ‘‘basic’’ or ‘‘human rights.’’

By contrast: 

Taking Darwin’s arguments bearing on the specific differences defining human beings in the Descent and the Origin together, the steps of this argument may be represented as follows: 1) specific differences in general are vaguely and arbitrarily defined, since they actually differ only in amount or quantity from mere individual differences; 2) the entirety of organic nature presents an ‘‘insensible’’ or continuous series rather than a discrete one, since all differences between individual organic beings are in principle commensurable; and, 3) human beings are not exempt from this situation.

According to Seagrave, the doctrine in the Declaration requires an essentialist theory of species.  Every species is defined by a specific set of traits such that every member of the species has that set of traits and every individual who has that set of traits is a member of that species.  From the traits that define the human species, one can derive natural rights. 

In Darwin’s view, the species are distinguished only in matters of degree (some are bigger, some more intelligent, etc.)  So one species differs from another as the set of numbers from 13 to 50 differ from 45 to 76.  The distinctions between species are largely arbitrary, so there can be no essential natural rights belonging to such a messy smear of organisms. 

Darwin has been dead for 135 years, but let us assume that this is his view (I agree that it is) and that it represents the current state of Darwinian theory (it does not).  Is it true that there can be no specifically human rights if human beings differ from other animals only in degree?  No. 

Consider two rights: the right to vote and the right to drive.  Suppose that intelligence is a measurable factor and that we can place all mammalian brains on a scale from one to one hundred.  Suppose, moreover, that we determine that the capacity to make a choice and vote accordingly requires an intelligence of 67 or above.  Is it not obvious that all human beings would be above the line and all non-human organisms far below it?  The mental capacity required to participate in the franchise is like one of those height lines at the entrance to a Disneyland ride: you either get to ride or you don’t.  Taller people don’t get any advantage.  Animals don’t get on.  Likewise, being a stunt driver doesn’t get you more rights to drive than the average Joe.  Differences in degree could be the basis for specifically human rights even if that is all we have. 

The essentialist account of species has been rejected by modern biology because the latter wants a definition that covers all species great and small.  The if traits Y then species A just doesn’t work in a lot of cases of mammals, let alone plants and bacteria.  Wolves can mate with coyote; one species or two?  Horses and Donkeys can have sons but not grandsons.  Human beings qualify as species under all basic definitions: we breed only with each other and we represent the sole surviving branch on the hominin tree.  No one doubts that this is a real distinction. 

Just because the essentialist account of species doesn’t work with most species doesn’t mean that it never works.  Let us define a species by the following traits: it is a mammal and it is capable of powered flight.  That describes bats and only bats.  Let us define a species this way: one member can draw a stick figure on a white board with five lines and a circle.  A group of conspecifics can recognize that the figure indicates one of them.  That describes human beings and only human beings.  I suggest that what I just demonstrated is the power of logos.  All undamaged sons and daughters of sons and daughters have it. 

Let’s try another.  One animal watches two others.  One of the observed helps the other and the other refuses to return the favor.  The observer is offended.  I can’t be certain, but I expect that this is something all human beings and only human beings are capable of.  We are capable of conscious, deliberate, moral responsibility.  It is in that capacity that the rights mentioned in the Declaration are grounded. 

Aristotle advised us that we can’t expect the same precision in moral reasoning that we can expect in mathematics.  That doesn’t mean we can’t make rational moral judgments.  Biology is messy, but not incoherent.  Human beings are more than animals.  We are, however, at least animals.  There is the direction political theory most face.  

Darwin & the Declaration

I am participating in a webinar next weekend on “Darwin & The Declaration.”  I will also be delivering a paper on the same topic in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.  Or at least I will if the panel proposal has been accepted.  I haven’t heard for sure yet.  I am even contemplating a book on the same topic.  Offered here are some preliminary thoughts. 

The Declaration of Independence is the founding document of a republic, styled the United States of America.  That document has the purpose of defending the separation of the colonies from the mother country; its importance lies, however, in the principles on which that defense rests.  Here is the central passage.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Charles Darwin, who was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln and came into his own at the same time, is the author of The Origin of the Species.  Darwin asked two fundamental questions: why do living organisms display such an astounding variety of forms and how is that these forms are so manifestly adapted to the tasks of surviving and reproducing in their environments? 

He answered the first question with descent with modification.  Just as a pair of breeding beagles produces a litter with diverse offspring, so an existing species can produce a litter of diverse subspecies.  Some of these will become distinct species in their own right. 

The answer to the second question, his fundamental breakthrough, is natural selection.  Individuals and species that are well adapted to their respective environments continue to branch out on the tree of life.  Those that are ill-adapted are culled from the tree by a failure to leave descendants.  As the tree branches out into all the available ecological niches we get not only a bewildering collection of creatures but also a progressive assortment of levels of organization, from the simplest single celled creatures to centipedes and certified public accountants. 

It is not immediately obvious how the document and the theory relate to one another.  The one speaks of inalienable rights, governments, and consent.  The other of biological descent and the struggle for survival and fecundity.  There is a common assumption, however, that the two are mutually irreconcilable.  The Declaration is a political document based on moral principles.  Descent with modification and natural selection are, to be sure, amoral processes.  If, as may be, homo sapiens inherited the earth by eradicating a considerable number of hominin species, there doesn’t seem to be anything moral about that. 

To see what is at stake here, we need to return to the Declaration.  This is what precedes the passage quoted above.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

That famous phrase, the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, is pregnant with meaning.  “Nature’s God” indicates an appeal to divine authority, but only such as can be read from the Creator’s work.  The “Laws of Nature” are a valid standard only if they are in fact laws of nature. 

Confronted with Darwin’s interpretation of the laws of nature, a defender of the Declaration has three choices.  First, she could reject evolutionary theory altogether.  That would mean rejecting modern biology, as evolutionary theory is its central theory.  It would probably mean rejecting geology as well (google “young earthers). 

Second, she could argue that moral and political laws are entirely distinct from the laws of biology, much as sociologists distinguish between sex (biological concept) and gender (socially constructed).  That would mean that there are two distinct laws of nature, one supported by science and the other…by what?  Without a theological basis, the Declaration’s laws of nature become mere cultural artefacts, like a preference for pastel colors in architecture; with a theological basis, in what sense are they natural? 

The only viable alternative is to show that the laws of nature as they are articulated by modern biology in fact support the principles articulated in the Declaration.  This is what I propose to do.  I will argue that the liberty spoken of the document is another iteration of the principle of autonomy, which is itself a fundamental principle of all life.  I will argue moreover that the moral equality spoken of in the document is an emergent feature of human evolution.  I hold that modern evolutionary theory powerful supports the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence.  Stay tuned. 

Reply to Bonnie on Evolutionary Explanations

Bonnie’s recent comment involved more than the topic of the last post.  To provide the context for the rest of the comment, my friend Ron posted this:

The problem with all teleological explanations is that many natural phenomena pursue multiple purposes. Although the "purpose" of the human eye is to see... we all look at each other's eyes to form judgments about personality... especially reproductive judgments. The Roman Catholic Church is especially intent on assigning reproductive purpose to monogamous marriage while ignoring friendship as a goal. THUS the question of whether one purpose is more "ultimate" than another purpose is often contingent upon contextual considerations.

This was in response to my recent post explanation and teleology2. I replied as follows:

If by ultimate we have in mind the proximate/ultimate distinction, it seems easy to sort out in case of eyes. Their ultimate function is clearly vision. This is powerfully reinforced by the observation that eyes are temporally and genetically prior to human eyes. Our ancestors had eyes long before the human species emerged.

That we have large whites around our corneas may be an adaptation. It allows us to tell when we are looking into one another's eyes and so facilitates communication. Since chimpanzees don't have such eyes, it is very probably a recent adaptation as runaway selection for intelligence and cooperation shaped our species. At any rate, it seems quite easy to assign these various features to primary and secondary functions.

I won't speak for the Catholics, but Aristotle (who has some purchase with them) also recognized reproduction as the primary function of marriage. This seems to me to be obviously true. It doesn't obviate (in fact it may comprehend) the function of friendship.

Bonnie in turn as this:

On eyes the ultimate (why) final cause of eye as vision could include seeing material objects and forms in the world. If one has an affinity with the poetic understanding of eyes as windows to the soul there are other questions. The ultimate evolutionary purpose of the white of eyes as an adaptive mechanism is purely speculative theory unless tested by scientific method. The science that studies sight at the most refined level is neuroscience.

I reply that the final cause of eyes as vision devices obviously includes seeing material objects and forms in the world.  Cats are looking for prey and prey are looking about for cats.  To test this, I need merely observe the cats and rabbits in my back yard.  The cat moves very slowly, because sudden movement is more visible to rabbits.  The rabbit responds to the cat by freezing, because movement is more visible to cats.  I am sure that the eyes of cats and rabbits are windows to their souls.  Most of what their souls are about is eating and not being eaten. 

What happens in human beings is a lot more poetic, I suspect; but then I am not a rabbit.  When I look at a painting by Joseph Turner, I am not trying to survive or mate.  I am pursuing beauty, which my evolutionary heritage has allowed me to pursue because all the necessary things have been provided.  My agenda is not the same as the agenda of my genes.  Much the same thing is happening when I watch the rabbits play with one another.  They leap at each other and seem to dance.  This may have some adaptive function, but it looks like simple fun.  A cat toying with a mouse is another example.  Good training for hunting, most likely; but a lot more fun for the one than the other. 

Yes, it is speculative that the large whites of human eyes may function to facilitate communication.  It is much easier to tell if a human being is looking at me because I can see the direction of her gaze.  Evolutionary explanations can rarely be tested in the same way that water can be tested for bacteria.  Mostly we have to make do with reverse engineering.  Why the large whites of the eyes?  It might be an accident of eye evolution.  Even if it is, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t adaptive for another purpose once it was in place.  It might be adaptive for another reason, but the same holds.  All we can say for sure is that it doesn’t look like a complete accident that a species that benefits from interpersonal cooperation has eyes that allow one individual to tell when another is paying attention to her. 

Finally, there is this comment:

If the Greek translation of Aristotle’s ultimate theory carries any weight one might leap to conclusions about the composition of genes. In this era of biotechnology that is a big deal. The courts have wrestled with the question AMP v. Myriad 2013 and have settled upon a kind of genes are like chemistry analogy. It serves Occam’s Razor to simplify its work in resolving disputes between corporate and others interests. According to this analogy the simplest explanation is that genetic information is linear and their coded information is deterministic. Research scientists whose motives exclude the allure of profit and fame as primary incentives, increasingly theorize that a better analogy for the behavior of genes is more quantum physics. Their actions are less predictable than the simplified linear understanding that applies to chemistry. If I am correct, this fits Ron’s remarks about contextual influences.

I have been aware of this for a long time.  Since the discovery of genes, it has been tempting to believe that genes are legible: each codes for one trait and the code can be deciphered.  Once we decipher it, we can edit the code to produce the traits we desire.  I don’t think that anyone in the relevant fields believes that there is a simple, deterministic relation between genes and traits.  A single gene may code for many traits in the body, from the brain to the brawn.  Moreover, many genes depend on environmental inputs for their operation. 

Our genes code for flexibility.  When a cat decides whether to chase a rabbit or a fisherman whether to cast his line, each is making choices.  As I have argued in these posts, evolution works through animals by allowing each to pursue its own agenda.  A bull elk in a rut is not trying to produce the next generation of elk.  He is trying to beat the snot out of other bulls.  When I make dinner for my wife, I am not trying to get my genes into the next generation.  I am trying to make her happy.  That is how the beautiful emerges from the merely necessary.  

What is the human thing? 2

I have been reading Aristotle’s Categories tonight.  I first read it as an undergraduate philosophy major at the University of Arizona.  As always when I return to this master I am again astonished by the power and durability of his thought.  Twenty-three centuries after his death, he continues to illuminate and be illuminated by the efforts of those who try to become wise by asking one question after another. 

I confess that I did not know until tonight that his word for categories is the same word that is frequently used for an accusation.  To categorize someone, in common language Greek, was to accuse him of a crime.  So to identify Donald Trump as a man is to accuse him of something.  This is the sort of thing that Martin Heidegger would have written a whole, incomprehensible book about. 

The Categories begins with a basic fact about language.  We use some words as homonyms, which sound identical but mean entirely different things.  Think of baseball bat and vampire bat.  I got that example from a fellow grad student Kevin Long.  Sometimes we use words as synonyms, as when we speak of sexually reproducing organisms and asexually reproducing organisms.  Finally, we sometimes use words as paronyms, as when we say that someone who does politics is a politician.  That last term, unfortunately, never made its way into English. 

From that point of departure, Aristotle dives deep into metaphysics.  Consider this statement: “the leaf on the tree is green”.  Green is what we say about the leaf.  The leaf is what we say green about.  Aristotle uses that distinction as the basis of what is more or less real.  The things that are most real are the things that are never said about anything else.  We might say that a tree leafs out, but we never say that this here tree “that here leafs”.  The leaf is a real thing which can be green and fresh or brown and withered.  The latter terms are meaningful and true only if they describe something real. 

The term for real thing-ousia in the Greek-is usually translated as substance, and for a very good reason.  The same words in both languages indicate both a substratum that undergoes change (the iron that goes from black and cold to red and hot in the blacksmith’s forge) and the property of a “man of substance.”  See note on Heidegger above. 

For Aristotle, the only genuine, “primary” substances are individual things.  His examples are always organic: this here human being or this here horse.  His real things are the real things in the common sense meaning of the words, the things we can see and touch.  Aristotle is presumably arguing with his equally famous teacher, Plato, who taught that apparently more abstract things like beauty, truth, and goodness were the real things. 

Having made this point, Aristotle immediately qualifies it in Plato’s direction.  He does so by making a distinction between primary substance (this here horse) and secondary substances like horse and animal.  The latter are secondary (and hence not quite genuine) substances because they can be said about something else.  So one can say that Ken Blanchard is a human being and an animal but one never says that this is a Ken Blanchard or that this Ken Blanchards about anything but yours truly. 

We do, however, speak about species and genus (horse and animal in his examples) the same way that we speak about individual creatures, as when Aristotle says that the human being is the political animal.  In this case, the human being is what political animal is said about.  This gives Aristotle a way to stack the candidates for genuine substance in order of reality.  Species (horse) is more real than genus (animal) because the latter can be meaningfully predicated of the former (a horse is an animal), yet less real than Seabiscuit, which cannot be predicated of anything.  

The problems that Aristotle is addressing here continue to haunt biology to this day.  What is the biological substance?  David Hull and Michael Ghiselin have argued that a species is not a class but an individual.  I am the particular person I am not because I look like my father but because my mother and father begat me.  Dogs are dogs not because they have this or that definitive trait but because they were sired by other dogs. 

While I don’t necessarily buy into this, I think they are onto something.  Evolutionary biology fleshes out Aristotle’s thinking by extending it backward into organic time.  Organisms branched off into plants and animals.  Animals split into distinct species.  Yet all of this depends, at every actual moment, on actual organisms, then and there, surviving, being fruitful and multiplying.  Aristotle’s candidates for substance are ranked as they are in evolutionary history.  Pretty good for a guy who never looked into a microscope. 

I will close this post with a little quote from Aristotle (Categories sec. 5). 

It seems that no substance is more or less [what it is]… I mean that no substance can admit of degrees in itself.  For example, the same substance, a man, cannot be more or less a man as compared to another.  One man cannot be more a man than another, in the same way that one that one white thing can be whiter than another white thing or one beautiful thing more beautiful than others. 

Take that, my Southern ancestors!  Aristotle recognized, a good two thousand years before Jefferson, that all men are created equal.  Darwin may or may not have been motivated towards his work by an opposition to slavery, in fact confirmed Aristotle’s reasoning.  No human being is more human or whiter than another.  

Plato, Aristotle, Darwin & Indirect Reciprocity

My strategy for pursuing political, moral, and biological questions consists of three basic steps in the following order.  The first is Platonic.  I look for the idea that is expressed in a wide range of phenomena across time and space.  The second is Aristotelian.  I look for the way in which the idea answers different questions in different contexts.  The third is Darwinian.  I look for how the idea might emerge in the evolutionary history of the organisms in which it is expressed. 

Consider the wing.  We recognize wings in a wide variety of animals.  In all cases, it is a biological appendage that allows the creature to gain altitude by beating the air.  In a fundamental sense, the wing of a bat, a bird, a pterodactyl and a dragonfly, are all the same thing.  Plato (or his Socrates) would be pleased.  The wings are very different, however, in their basic design.  One has to lift a heavy reptile; another, a creature as light as a feather.  Aristotle would point this out to his teacher.  The various wings are also examples of convergence.  This is a term in Darwinian explanations that indicates an independent evolution toward a common trait as opposed to homology, which indicates a trait shared because it is inherited from a common ancestor.  Bats and birds don’t have wings because they inherited them from a common ancestor, but because they worked out the same basic mechanics on their own. 

I have found this strategy to be fruitful when applied to my primary interest, morality and politics.  My work on autonomy (which I hope to be published soon) is an example that is illustrated in previous posts.  Here I apply it to reciprocity, one of the basic foundations of cooperation in animals (including human beings).  When some party X pays a cost on behalf of some other party Y because there is a reasonable expectation that the cost will be repaid with profit, that is reciprocity.  That this is a genuinely Platonic idea is indicated by the abstraction of the terms.  It can apply to two teams of dolphins cooperating with one another of different days and to a fellow tipping big at a local restaurant.  Obviously the mechanisms are different.  Less obviously but very likely, they both owe their operation to evolved dispositions. 

Reciprocity is a powerful engine for cooperation, but in its direct form (an exchange between two parties) it is limited to specific exchanges.  When we’re done we’re done.  Indirect reciprocity, by contrast, can knit together much larger communities of cooperators.  This is when an individual is influenced by observing third party cooperation.  In such a case, the cooperator benefits by building a reputation as a good partner.  The observer benefits by recognizing the altruist as a promising partner. 

Tonight I read two accounts of indirect reciprocity.  One was a study of cleaner fish and their clients (Bshary & Grutter, “Image scoring and cooperation in a cleaner fish mutualism”, Nature 22 June 2006).  Cleaner fish feed on ectoparasites in the mouths of much larger fish.  This is a classic example of reciprocity in a morally charged context.  If the cleaner fish eats ectoparasites, it will benefit its larger client.  However, it prefers mucus, if it has a choice.  Eating mucus does not benefit the client.  So the cleaner is tempted to cheat.  In some cases, the client fish is also tempted to cheat by eating the cleaner; however, in most cases the client fish do not prey on other fish.  So how are cleaner fish encouraged to be honest? 

The answer seems to be that client fish pay attention.  They recognize which cleaners are good cooperators and which are not.  They allow the one but not the other to service them.  The cleaners then have an interest in appearing to be good cooperators.  They are more likely to restrain their appetites and eat only the less preferred food (ectoparasites) when they are observed by other potential clients. 

I am pretty sure that there are no moral theorists among Laborides dimidaiatus.  Nor do these tiny denizens of the deep reflect on their behavior.  Their behavior is nonetheless logically moral. 

That this is an expression of a Platonic idea is indicated by the fact that it occurs in very different species.  James R. Anderson et. al., have found it in capuchin monkeys [Cognition 127 (2013) 140-146].  “

Here we show that capuchin monkeys discriminate between humans who reciprocate in a social exchange with others and those who do not. Monkeys more readily accepted food from reciprocators than non-reciprocators or partial reciprocators.

Hitomi Chijiiwa et al found much the same among domestic dogs [Animal Behavior 106 (2015) 123-127]. 

To put it mildly, cleaner fish and their clients, capuchin monkeys, and lapdogs occupy very diverse branches on the tree of life.  It seems likely this is a case of convergence rather than homology.  That makes the case for Plato stronger.  The same basic idea (indirect reciprocity) is expressed independently in a number of distinct cases.  Aristotle would remind us to pay attention to the differences.  Capuchin monkeys and beagles are psychologically social species.  They have, no doubt, a pallet of emotions that from which they paint out their behavior.  As for fish, probably not so much.  Darwinian theory helps us understand how this Platonic idea arises in each case.  

Plato and Aristotle were right, even when they disagreed with each other.  Both of them need Darwin to complete their accounts.  Aristotle understood that teeth make chewing possible is essential to explaining what teeth are.  Darwin explain how chewing explains teeth.  Plato understood that shark’s teeth and his teeth were the same thing.  Darwin explains why Plato was right.