Social Construction & Biology

One of the key ideas in modern sociology is social construction.  This indicates that a person’s perception of reality is to a large extent constructed by the society in which that person lives.  For example, if I perceive the people downstream to be untrustworthy, that may have nothing to do with how they actually behave; it is all to do with how my own people teach me to look at them.  

When the biopolitical sciences emerged in the 1970’s, they seemed to present a stark alternative to that idea.  The way we perceive reality is largely conditioned by natural selection.  My genes determine how I will react in any context because those genes were selected for: the coded traits are the ones that got their genes into my mother and father. 

It has been clear for some time that this dichotomy was an obstacle to the truth.  In even the simplest creatures, genes code for a range of responses to the environment.  Even a tree can learn when to shed its leaves by responding to the coming of winter. 

As I noted in a previous post, cleaner fish are more likely to be honest when they are observed by a number of potential client fish.  The client fish want a cleaner who will confine his appetites to the ectoparasites, thus performing the cleaning.  Doing just that when potential clients are looking on is a good business model. 

That is social construction.  Their perception of the situation is constructed, to some degree, by the social situation.  In this case, the social situation includes non-conspecific organisms. 

I have been reading recently about Norwegian rats (Rattus norvegicus).  These rats are very good at gauging reciprocal exchanges.  They share food, but are more likely to share with an individual depending on the quality of food that the latter shared in the past.  If he/she gave me good stuff last time, he/she is worth repaying. 

That is direct reciprocity.  You return a favor based on your record of past exchanges.  Another kind of relationship is indirect reciprocity.  If C sees A doing a favor for B, C is more likely to do a favor for A.  A is a standup guy.  We see something of this in the cleaner fish example.  Strong reciprocity adds an element of punishment.  If A doesn’t play by the rules, I won’t play with A.  That seems to be at work in vampire bats who refuse to share with a stingy roost mate. 

But there is another kind of reciprocity that is very interesting because it makes fewer demands on the cognitive development of the participants.  In all of the above cases, you have to have a brain sophisticated enough to keep track of individual encounters.  It is difficult to see how that develops unless there is already a lot of cooperation going on. 

Perhaps an easier route to reciprocity is just to measure the general level of cooperation in the group that you happen to be in at the time.  The more cooperative partners you encounter, the more you cooperate and vice versa. 

That is generalized reciprocity, and it has been observed in rats.  In a piece by Claudia Rutte and Michael Taborsky, female rats where more likely to cooperate if they had received help in the past, regardless of the identity of the potential partner.  Once they sensed they were in a good neighborhood, they became good neighbors.  Of course, if the neighborhood is bad…

It struck me tonight as I was reading a very interesting book‑Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith‑that this an example of the primary social mechanism in living organisms.  Godfrey-Smith offers the example of a glowing squid.  Luminescence provides a big advantage to this creature.  It allows it to blend in with the moonlit background (upground), so that its shadow doesn’t warn its prey.  How does it manage this trick?

The squid provides a home to bacteria that can luminesce.  That, however, is expensive, biologically speaking.  There is no point in bothering if there aren’t enough of your clones around to produce a descent bit of light.  The bacteria rely on their ability to both sense and produce an “inducer” molecule.  That allows each little bacterium to tell how many of his fellows are around.  This is called quorum sensing, a remarkably political term.  When the inducer molecules reach a certain density in the local environment (the Hawaiian squid) the bacteria turn on their lights. 

The rats are much more advanced creatures than the bacteria but the mechanism seems only a little more advanced.  What the rat needs to know isn’t how big the local population is but what is its moral character?  Its own moral behavior (cooperate or not) is determined by its finding.  This doesn’t require anything more sophisticated than the ability to sample and effectively draw conclusions. 

The social construction of individual character is pervasive among living organisms.  It is clearly developed in a high degree in human organisms.  The sociologists were right to put a strong emphasis on social construction.  They were wrong to suppose that this mechanism somehow freed human beings from biological causation or that it could be properly understood without biology. 

I fear that it will take a change of guard across the social sciences for the full integration of biology and the former to more fully and fruitfully integrate.  The general fields of sociology and political science are still very resistant to this type of research.  This may amount to a tragedy.  Higher education is changing in ways that are not favorable to either the social sciences or the humanities.  It would be a tragedy indeed if the former would diminished just when the greatest potential for discover and application was at hand.  

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.