The final section of the book is about various “Hot Button” topics: politics, violence, gender, children, and the arts. These chapters show how the doctrines of the blank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine have been imagined to ‘explain’ or justify such behaviors, why they are wrong, and how the understanding of evolutionarily derived human nature can better account for the reality of our behaviors.
I’ll summarize less than in previous post, and perhaps sprinkle some bolds in to highlight key points. And spread these last few chapters over several posts.
Earlier posts about this book: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5.
Part V: Hot Buttons
Here we have topics where people debate but rarely change their minds when their arguments are refuted. Typically these are the issues that divide liberals and conservatives. Many of these topics hinge on empirical questions in biology or psychology; but instead of changing minds, people are apt to suppress the facts and cling to what they hold sacred. Often there is common ground, and disagreements are matters of emphasis.
–Ch16, Politics
Liberal and conservative political attitudes are largely heritable. They appeal to people with different temperaments. The two philosophies were articulated in the 18th century. The two sides are rooted in different conceptions of human nature. Evolutionary psychology and similar studies are widely seen as falling on the political right. [[ This is surprising but makes sense; these studies have identified a human nature, which conservatives believe in though think flawed; the political left has aligned with the Blank Slate idea precisely because that allows them to mold human minds toward a more perfect society. Still, from the beginning, it never occurred to me that evolutionary psychology was in any way political. ]] EO Wilson was surprised by this. But the alignment is far less clear today.
There are two political hot buttons here: one is how we conceive of ‘society’. The ‘sociological’ tradition sees society as an entity and individual citizens as parts. Thus the ideas of Plato, et al, up to postmodernism. Another, the economic or social contract, tradition, is that society is an arrangement negotiated by rational, self-interested individuals. This is in Plato’s Republic, and writers up to Smith and Bentham. Evolution falls into the social contract tradition. Reciprocal altruism in the same as the social contract. The difference only roughly aligns with the political left and the political right.
The second button involves how collections of apparently separate beliefs seem to align. [[ This alignment of apparently unrelated attitudes is the theme of that table I began on May 11. ]] Examples 286.5 Why is this? The labels we use are of no help. Thomas Sowell identified two ‘visions’, which author will call the Tragic Vision and the Utopian Vision. In the first, humans are inherently limited in wisdom and virtue, and must acknowledge such. List of names who are associated with it. In the second, limitations are artifacts that come from our social arrangements, and we should not let them keep us from seeking a better world. Quote from Adam Smith about the Tragic Vision, about a catastrophe in China. In the Tragic Vision human nature has not changed, and so attempts to change must be suppressed what has worked. Also, we can’t *solve* social problems, just adjust trade-offs. Quote from Burke. In the Utopian Vision human nature changes with social circumstances, and traditions must be stated and rejected as necessary, 289.7. [[ Yes, as I’ve discovered. The answer to this general quandary is that neither side is completely right, as in most things. ]] These two visions line up on opposite sides of the many issues that seem to have little in common. The Utopian vision targets these issues directly; the Tragic Vision worries about the consequences. The Tragic Vision instead looks to market economies with no mastermind in charge. The invisible hand of the marketplace. Utopian Vision folk point to market failures and inequality. And so on.
Thus: big versus small government, higher versus low taxes, and so on 291m. Judicial restraint v activism. Examples. The political orientation of universities. Crime and war.
Into this battlefield came E.O. Wilson, whose ideas seemed to insult the Utopian Vision—which was based on the Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine, 293m. Was he and other scientists saying that the Tragic Vision was right? Author’s view is that the new sciences of human nature do vindicate some version of the Tragic Vision, and undermine the Utopian outlook. Many of their discoveries make the Utopian vision unlikely, list p294, including nepotism, violence, ethnocentricity, etc. [[ But this is exactly what I’m calling tribal morality, which necessarily will, and is, giving way to a more cosmopolitan perspective, with expansion of the moral circle. Pinker here wrote before other books recently that discuss this. ]]
We can look at historical incidents for evidence, p295. The French Revolution. The Russian Revolution. And Chinese. All idealistic or utopian in one way or another. All gave way to strong men. [[ And now the the American Revolution with its Constitution is succumbing to Trump and MAGA…? (Who *say* they venerate the Constitution but manifestly do not.) ]] Marxism is a hybrid of the two visions, one for the past, one for the future. [[ Is this why conservatives so reflexively detest Marxism? As an attempt at change? ]] Now recognized as an experiment that failed.
Then came democracy and the American Revolution [[ as I just said… ]] . Seems to be the best form of large-scale social organization our species has come up with so far. 296.4. The Constitution was designed to implement goals of reciprocal altruism. Details. Including checks and balances. Separation of powers. The War Powers Clause. Freedoms of speech, etc. Yet the moral circle of the day was small.
Recently (citing both Singer and Arnhart) both the right and left have been embracing evolutionary psychology. Beliefs on left and right – see 299 para1 – giving way to science.
…it shows two things. One is that biological facts are beginning to box in plausible political philosophies. The belief on the left that human nature can be changed at will, and the belief on the right that morality rests on God’s endowing us with an immaterial soul, are becoming rearguard struggles against the juggernaut of science. A popular bumper sticker in the 1990s urged, QUESTION AUTHORITY. Another bumper sticker replied, QUESTION GRAVITY. All political philosophies have to decide when their arguments are turning into the questioning of gravity.
[[ Yes — just as the history of philosophy has largely been one of failed proposals about how the universe works, is now being succumbed by actual science, that looks out at the world rather than merely pondering it. ]]
And
For all its selfishness, the human mind is equipped with a moral sense, whose circle of application has expanded steadily and might continue to expand as more of the world becomes interdependent.
[[ Again, yes — this is how you bridge the divide between that Tragic Vision and the Utopian Vision. The world becomes increasingly interconnected, and people by nature or instinct expand their moral circle of inclusion. And those who resist this gradual change, as they’ve resisted so much other changes, we call conservatives. Or tribal moralists. Trying to live in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. ]]
Thus some traditions have become obsolete. Author thinks political beliefs will cut across the Tragic/Utopian divide.
Author then provides a tour of some of the modern thinkers on the left. Peter Singer (mentioning a little book of his called A Darwinian Left that I have right here on my to-read shelf). Singer’s left is not the defeatist Tragic vision. Noam Chomsky. IQ tests and the left. Herrnstein and Murray. Thaler, Akerlof, et al including Tversky and Kahneman, on human thinking and decision making. Robert Frank on economics and status. And on economic inequality, Bowles and Gintis. Even if everyone is better off now that the elite of a century ago, inequality still drives hurt feelings, and even crime. So: The Darwinian Left has abandoned the Utopian vision… Political ideologies should change the more we learn about human beings.
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Topic for next post: Violence. Are humans inherently violent, or is it ‘taught’ somehow. And if inherent, why?
