Purposes
Robin:
Today, I suggest we talk about purpose.
Agnes:
OK.
Robin:
And what I have in mind is the conflict between the purposes we describe
ourselves as having, or choose for ourselves based on looking at ourselves and
how we feel about people around us and what other people say. That's all on
the one hand. And then on the other hand, the purposes we infer that we would
have by being the result of biological evolution. That is the sort of things
evolutionary psychology might say about our purposes. And these have long been
in conflict. So much so that people were reluctant to believe that biological
evolution applied to people because the purposes they felt like they had were
such in conflict. So if we believe biological evolution is actually the source
of our purposes, then how do we reconcile that with all of the other things we
see inside ourselves? And is it that the things we seem to see are illusions
and behind all of that really is the biological purposes? Or, is there room
for deviation? And when we look into the future, to what extent should we
think about purposes that would fit with biological evolution, or can we just
ignore that and choose entirely different purposes without much of a problem?
Agnes:
Yes. So I wonder... this might be a terminological issue, but it's like I
would distinguish between motivation and purpose, right? And it seems clear to
me that we have desires, inclinations motivations, that, then you could tell
an evolutionary story about the origins of those desires, and inclinations and
motivations. But a purpose, so I would give some synonyms of that as like, you
know, that for the sake of which the end, the goal, right? And, as far as I
can tell that's a normative concept, it would be something like the good that
is set to be achieved by a given course of action, or a given disposition or
whatever, right? And it isn't clear to me in that sense that there are any
purposes that could be inherited evolutionarily, though, there certainly could
be motivational tendencies and patterns of inclination and desire that would
be inherited evolutionarily.
Robin:
So evolution, mainly just needed to guide your behavior to induce behavior, it
had many different mechanisms available to that. So, if you were a creature
just who responded to your desires and immediate impulses, then it would be
trying to shape those desires and impulses. But if you're a creature who looks
for the good, and tries to choose what's good, then evolution will need to
shape your concept of the good. So, the difference between desires and the
good, don't seem to change the basic issue that whatever you think of those
things, you should expect them to have been shaped by evolution, for its
purposes of getting you to reproduce and have descendants.
Agnes:
I mean, say, you've got a hill, right? And then, you know, you have sort of
towards the bottom of the hill, you have things that overtime rolled down to
the bottom of that hill. And they are sort of things that were, you know,
maybe rounder, and kind of had less friction, right?
Robin:
OK.
Agnes:
And maybe even over time, things that hung out in the hill for a long time
sort of got into that more rounder shape, and then ended up at the bottom of
the hill. Like, I would say, you know, you could see how the shape of the hill
would have an impact on the distribution of objects along the hill...
Robin:
Exactly.
Agnes:
...and the shape of the objects, right. But it would be weird to say that the
hill was trying to shape any objects, and that anything was the goal. The
hill’s goal isn't that stuff end up at the bottom of the hill, as opposed to
at the top of the hill. The hill really just can't have goals. It's not the
right sort of thing to have goals. And I'm not sure that evolution is in any
better position to have goals than a hill.
Robin:
No, but you have goals.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
You have purposes and you were created by evolution. So we should expect that
the goals and purposes that you have would be the sort of goals and purposes
that evolution would create. So if rocks at the bottom of the hill had goals,
we should expect those to be the sort of goals that rocks who would fall down
to the bottom of the hill would have, that have goal – rocks at different
parts of the hill have different goals, then we can use that to predict which
rocks have which goals.
Agnes:
Right. And so maybe, to put your point, you probably could put it this way.
Suppose the rocks were conscious, and they were at the bottom of the hill, and
really we all know, they just roll into the bottom of the hill. But they said,
"Yes, our goal was to get to the bottom of this hill, good thing we're here."
And we can say, "Well, actually, the reason that you're down there is you just
rolled because of the hill."
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
And so then the thought would be the rocks could engage in this inquiry as to
whether their goal, but now what I would say is like, is it really a goal? Or,
is it simply a result that... like that is sort of the predictable upshot of a
certain process? Just like landing up at the bottom of the hill is a
predictable upshot of gravity and the shape of the hill.
Robin:
Yes. Indeed.
Agnes:
And so, the question is really about to what extent our goals even operative
in...
Robin:
So that's exactly the conflict here, which is exactly why it's so wrenching
for people for many centuries now. Because in your mind, you have this idea of
a goal. And a goal isn't in your mind, just something that's a result of a
natural process that has no goals. But nevertheless, there you are, a creature
that is the result of this natural process that has no goals, but it gave you
your goals.
Agnes:
I mean, I think that a really big part of a goal is the, let's say, the
normative appearance like, that something seems good to you, right? And...
Robin:
And evolution gave you those. Your... things like that came from this long
evolutionary process, and we can use this process to predict what those would
be, those would be the sort of goals that would induce you to the behavior
that evolution needed you to do, to reproduce and multiply.
Agnes:
So it seems to me that we can distinguish between a kind of impulsive, like,
movement in a direction of something like, if you're hungry, you feel like
eating or something. And Plato says, it's like, the soul is nodding, yes, in
answer to a question. Like, when you're hungry, you're like, "Yes, I want
that." But it isn't really an answer. You don't really say, "Yeah." That's why
you're just kind of – you're kind of driven to go in that direction. And you
can take a step back and you can say, "Yeah, but is it good for me to eat?"
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
And now your thought is, yeah, but even at that step back level, your judgment
that it is good for you to eat, you're sort of what you take to be your
rational reflective judgment, that it's good for you to eat, that too is akin
to the original impulse, the inclination.
Robin:
In sense of its origin. That is, if it has details that could be different,
the particular details that it has were shaped by that evolutionary selection
process.
Agnes:
I mean, it's like, it's a little hard, you know, in a sense, right, everything
– we don't have to talk about evolution. Everything in your life is the
product of like, some kind of initial programming of your brain, and then the
set of interactions with your causal interactions with your environment,
right? And...
Robin:
Sure.
Agnes:
So you could say, "Oh, you think you have these purposes, but actually,
they're just a function of how your brain started out being wired when you
were born, and that this set of interactions." Why is that any – why is that
less threatening reductive approach than the evolutionary approach?
Robin:
The story that you are just the result of physical pressures doesn't sort of
contradict or have a strong conflict with the goals you think you have. You
might say, I want to be beautiful, or I want to create beauty. And you think,
yes, in order to think that I'd have to be a machine of a biological machine
of sorts that could conceive of the concept of beauty and could ask the
question. And I would have had to come from an origin of a small creature that
was born that had the structures that evolved to be that. But none of that
tells me that I'm wrong or misled about this goal to have to want to see
beauty because that's – history doesn't challenge that assumption.
Agnes:
I guess it's not clear to me that the other one tells you that you're wrong or
misled either.
Robin:
So what happens as we get into the details of what we should expect evolution
to want to have you do. So, once we ask what exactly would evolution want you
to do? Then we say, "Ah, well, evolution would want you at some point to have
children. And it would want you to raise those children so they would have
more children. And it would want you to survive long enough for that to happen
and want you to eat and therefore stay protected and stay away from predators
and maybe move when the environment changes. And it would – if you're in a
social group, evolution, wants you to gain respect of other people in the
social group so maybe you can attract a higher quality mate, maybe you have
people who can defend you against hostile enemies." These would all be the
sort of things that evolution would be trying to get you to do in order to
have many descendants. And then we look at things like, literature or reason
or beauty. And we ask, how does that fit in to this story? So, the usual
problem is we do see desires not to starve, not to freeze to death, to have
children. But we also seen people having plans and concept of the good and
goals that are oriented around some pretty abstract, pretty grandiose things
that don't seem very connected to the obvious agenda that evolution would
have. And that's the puzzle, that's the problem to come to terms with. How
illusory are those? Do I really have those goals? Or do I just sort of think I
do because evolution is trying to trick me into something else?
Agnes:
I mean, I guess it's interesting to me, because in a certain way, it seems to
me that the... so let's say we have two kind of potential, reductive,
demystifying kinds of explanation. The one is just the physicalist causal
story of I'm a machine interacting with my environment. And the other is the
evolutionary story. In a certain way, the evolutionary story should – it's
sort of less dismissive, less demystifying, less productive. Because we can
talk about evolution as though it had like goals and intentions and as though
we were like, at war with it, or something, you know, and it's like this. And
I mean, but like a lot of the things you're saying where it's like, does the
evolutionary story make us doubt that these things like reason, and art and
etc, that we elevate as being so high and valuable, like, maybe they really
not? I mean, I think you could have those doubts due to the physicalist story,
right? Like, here's what the world really is. And we imagine that there are
things like friendship and art and reason. And we are just in– those are just,
that's just stuff we made up. And you might say, "OK, there's room for those
things." But like, what kind of room? It seems to me maybe more like that it's
somehow easier to avoid this – it's easier to think about physicalism, but
just like not think about these questions of cultural artifacts and reason and
intentionality, just to avoid that. Whereas with evolution, it's maybe harder
to avoid the fact that the two things are trying to occupy the same space, but
they are still trying to occupy the same space in both cases, it seems to me.
Robin:
But the first set of doubts seem to me about whether the things we have value
or have as goals exist at all. Can there possibly be beauty? Can there be
truth? Could there be glory? Could there be friendship, love? You might say,
in a world of atoms in the void, where is love? And therefore we couldn't have
love as a goal because we can't find it.
Agnes:
Mm-hmm.
Robin:
The second approach says, "No, love exists. It makes perfect sense as a thing,
but why would we expect you to want it, or you to have it as a goal, or for
you to value it?"
Agnes:
Yes.
Robin:
OK. And so I think it is correct that, in fact, love can exist, and beauty can
exist, they can exist as patterns of the atoms that you know, satisfy certain
features. And there's a long sort of history of trying to describe what those
patterns are. They aren't, you know, what the dead matter cares about. Dead
matter doesn't recognize love or beauty, but we do, and it's enough that we
do. But nevertheless, we might wonder how much we actually care about them.
Because evolution says, well, it would create creatures that could understand
love or understand the concept of beauty, but whether it would create
creatures that care about them and put a lot of effort and resources into
their pursuit, that's the doubt that evolution brings in.
Agnes:
Well, I mean, it evidently did create creatures that...
Robin:
Right. Yes, of course. But – so there's several... so right, so there's
several different resolutions hear. One is to find a sort of a direct
practical benefit for each of these things. Let's say fiction, people might
say fiction involves rehearsing realistic stories that will give you
experience and the more things you could ever see yourself through many quick
stories and therefore, fiction is a quick, efficient way to tell you about a
lot of different things that happened in the world. That would be a story this
is trying to give you a direct evolutionary functional resolution to say,
"There is no conflict because look how practically useful these things are for
the things evolution cares about." That's one possible resolution. Another
possible resolution is to say, "Well, we think we care about these things, but
we don't actually care about them quite in the way we think." So for example,
what we care about with beauty is showing off our beauty to other people so
that other people are impressed by this, and want to meet with us or be our
allies. Or, we want to show off our ability to discern beauty, which is our
ability to discern other people's better capabilities such that we might want
to associate with them. The art itself is just an indirect way to achieve that
other goal. And we are somewhat misled about our goals.
Agnes:
I mean, there's a lot of cultural variation in, say, art, in the kinds of art
that exists, and in, you know, the importance that the art has in the culture
and who's producing it. Is it like experts? Or is it everyone?
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
And how it's appreciated? And so, why not think that like, evolution leaves a
lot of like free rein, right, that there are some constraints. But then there
are other – there are ways in which these constraints are going to be filled
in that are – it's neither the case that you can explain the way they're
filled in as being practical or useful for what evolution wants. Nor, is it
the case that evolution dictates that it went this way for other reasons. It's
just that evolution underdetermines cultural development. And that's why we
have a massive diversity of cultures.
Robin:
It certainly is true that we have a diversity of cultures. And it's certainly
true that that means basic evolution under-determinism. The question is, which
dimensions of variation could be explained by that versus not? So for example,
you know, in different places, we might have different colors that were
popular, or different hair length, different ways to do your boots, or
certainly language can be constructed in different ways, different sounds can
represent different things in different places. You know, we could – cut a
hole in your nose as a ritual, certainly, once we're sort of doing costly
signaling on that and we have this wide range of what do you use as a cost to
show you're finally an adult and you're loyalty group, right? And so there's a
huge range of costs we could bear to show that we are loyal to each other,
various kinds of pains, we can endure, or various kinds of modifications we
could do yourself just to show we were willing to do it as a loyalty signal.
So there's a large range there. But if we look at something like fiction, say,
or art, we see just a huge area of effort there, that we need to see some
payoff from it. That would make sense evolutionarily. That is, we can't
explain all possible behavior just merely by cultural variation. So a standard
story, in game theory is the idea of multiple equilibria. That is, there can
be different equilibria to a game, and we can think of cultures as different
equilibria to sort of the social game. But you can't have any arbitrary
behavior be an equilibrium. There's rules to the game of what counts as an
equilibrium, and we want to see that each set of behaviors were matching each
other as an equilibrium.
Agnes:
Right. But I guess, in terms of the function of art, it just seems like it
could have a variety of different functions in different cultures.
Robin:
Sure, but now we might want to know, OK, in our culture, which is here, which
is the most common one?
Agnes:
Oh, absolutely.
Robin:
And, you know, since you and I are not artists, this is less at stake for us.
But if you and I talked about, say, intellectual pursuits...
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
We might start to say, "What's evolution stake in that? Why would we reason
about these very abstract, very distant from practical application things?"
Agnes:
But like, so just in terms of the worry that you get started here with where
we are worried about ourselves, that are self-described purposes aren't, so to
speak, our evolutionary purposes. And I have some more questions about that
worry. But like, suppose that with respect to a given domain, your purposes in
that domain, are very much characteristic of the people in your culture. And
they're very different from the people in other cultures, like how – so like,
we're American intellectuals.
Robin:
Right. Sure.
Agnes:
And it's suppose that we were to learn that like British intellectuals and
German intellectuals have whole different types of norms, they have different
ways of understanding purpose they have different... blah, blah, blah, right?
And so then would we feel a lot better, because we know that it's cultural and
that it varies and thus that it isn't going to be determined by evolution, are
we now relieved to learn this? But are we relieved by the cultural contingency
of our purpose because we solved your problem? Because that just seem like
that would be relieving, that's why I'm asking.
Robin:
I don't think it is. So, we want to explain the data and the data are, you
know, how each culture behaves, and how people in each culture behave.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
And the data includes the variation and the average. So, my usual heuristic is
the first thing I want to explain is sort of the middle of the distribution of
behavior across space and time, just what are the typical things people do.
And then if I have time, I want to go to explain the variation, why do some
people do it different than others. And I'm happy to eventually get there. But
even if you look at the middle of the distribution, we can say, look at all
these people everywhere are doing a lot of art. Yeah, they do it different in
different places, or look at all these people spending a lot of time in
conversation, or looking all these different people in different places,
spending a lot of time doing up their hair, or whatever else it is. You want
to say, "Why is there this overall pattern of a lot of costly effort going
into particular areas?" And so then we want to think about the different
possible explanations. We could say, "Well, doing up your hair is useful, it
keeps the bugs out." Or we could say, "Doing up your hair is impressive, and
everybody wants to impress each other with their hair." Or we could say, "Hair
tends to be useful sometimes to strangle people." Again, we were looking for
explanations, but the mere fact that people have do their hair differently in
different places, isn't enough to say, but yes, but everywhere people are
doing a lot with their hair.
Agnes:
Yeah, but like, I mean, it seems to me that you were worried that the
self-described purpose would be undermined by the evolutionary explanation.
But if my self-described purpose is described in a pretty fine grained way
that is fine grained enough to pick out my culture, right?
Robin:
Yeah.
Agnes:
Then... and so, you're like, "Ah, so you're into doing your hair?" And I'm
like, "No, no, I'm not into that in general. I'm not into every – I'm just
into like this particular version of dyeing my hair." Right?
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
And, in my society, it's like, I want my close female friends to notice that I
like – my hair looks nice. And that's like, that's the thing. And you're like,
"Oh, in my culture, the women don't care what the other women think about the
care the women hair care about whatever, right?" And so I have this like,
pretty culturally-specific purpose, right? My purpose isn't my hair.
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
Like simpliciter, it's, you know, having my close girlfriends notice that my
hair looks nice. And...
Robin:
So let's just go to some very generic ways to explain behavior, all behavior,
any sort of behavior. So we've been talking about explaining behavior in terms
of evolutionary pressure, but we have some other options available. So one
option is just error. We could say, "Well, everybody can't exactly achieve
evolutions purpose. Evolution can't be that good. So that with deviations
between any one behavior in any one context and this evolution purpose." And
so that's an error explanation. And the explanation can explain sort of random
variations that's relatively uncorrelated. But the more we see a pattern in
the error, or correlations between different people in places or a tendency in
one particular direction, then error is going to be less attractive as an
explanation, but it is a standard explanation. And we do explain many things
people do our mistakes. And that's a real thing that affects behavior. But
it's a limited explanation, but it does apply to some things. Another favorite
explanation is conformity. People say, "Well, look, you need to get along with
your culture, your culture wants X, so you got to do X." So cultures can vary
in their acts. Different cultures want different things, and you got to go
along with your culture. So that explains ways which people within a culture
all do the same thing. And then different cultures do different things because
of cultural conformity, pressures. And there really are cultural conformity
pressures. But again, this isn't the, you know, it looked... I think that
explains everything. You can't explain all possible behaviors merely with
cultural conformity pressures.
Agnes:
Right. I mean, so the reason why I'm bringing up this cultural thing is that
if I think about your problem, let's call it the gainsaying purpose problem,
right? So the problem where somebody says, "Here's my purpose." But you're
like, "Ah, no, actually, here's your purpose." Right? And they are made
uncomfortable by the fact that you have contradicted their self-avowed
purpose. I think the gainsaying purpose problem gets much worse when you get
culturally-specific, not better, which suggests that we're actually not that
disturbed by evolutionary modes of gainsaying our purpose, we're a lot more
disturbed by cultural modes. So like, if you tell me that some mode I have of
being an intellectual is just how all the American intellectuals do it.
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
And then I'm like, "Oh, I thought that was like... I thought I was doing it in
like the good way, but it turns out, I'm just conforming to like how other
American intellectuals are."
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
Then that's more upsetting for me than if you tell me, "Oh, the reason why you
want to have sex is like your evolution says you have to reproduce." I'm like,
"Yeah, OK, we're all like that. That that's just less..."
Robin:
Right. So, in some sense, all explanations are disturbing. Like even the
randomness explanation is disturbing. If you say, you know, if you say, "I've
always felt that, like, the moon looks just perfect this time of the year."
And somebody says, "That was just a random genetic mutation. Your grandfather
had that too." You know, it's nothing special, right? And that could be very
deflating as well. And certainly, the idea that what your behavior is
explained by cultural conformity, it tends to be upsetting because most people
don't want to admit that their behavior is conforming to some cultural
pressures, conformity pressures, that's just also deflating. And so, I'm not
sure how we can find explanations are anything more reassuring to people.
Other than you made it up yourself, and nobody's ever seen this before, and
what a great innovation you pulled off.
Agnes:
I mean, so that's interesting like that in and of itself, right, is kind of
interesting, that, in effect, I think, it's that people think of themselves as
authorities on themselves. So, it's relevant here that we're talking about
explanations for people's behavior, and desire and dispositions and all of
that, right.
Robin:
Yeah.
Agnes:
So, I think if you were like giving me an explanation for why, like the leaves
are falling in that way, I don't feel similarly invaded, right?
Robin:
Right. No, no. And even, you know, you have physical constraints, your arms
are only this long, for example, that's why you can't reach some things, you
kind of accept those things.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
But you know, inside yourself, there's this purpose you have, and you feel
like you were the author of that "I chose my purpose," or nobody chose it for
me at least, or maybe my parents or teachers influence so people might be
willing to accept that sort of cultural pressure early on. But now, they are
the author.
Agnes:
Well, part of it, right, is that, what does it take to view yourself as
responsible for the things that you do? Like, morally responsible to be
credited, to be blamed, to be praised, being able to held accountable, right,
to be held accountable. And, like, arguably, and I say, arguably, it's a big
argument. But arguably, if you do something, you engage in some behavior for
the sake of some purpose to achieve some goal, and you didn't choose that
goal. Suppose somebody brainwashed and...
Robin:
Right. Exactly.
Agnes:
And put, you know, just inserted that goal into your head and like, made you
robotically inclined to like pursue it, then it looks like you're not
responsible for the thing you did, right? Because really, you didn't do it,
really the person who inserted that purpose into your head did it. And so it's
not just that, we would like to flatter ourselves by thinking of ourselves as
creators of, authors of, in a gentle relation over our purposes. It's that we
are very insistent that other people see themselves that way too. Because we
otherwise it's not obvious how we can hold one another morally responsible.
Robin:
So as I specialize in law and economics, I would say that in liability, in
general, we have many people we can hold responsible and who we choose to hold
responsible is a choice we make based on what would seem to be the most
effective. So, we often have cases where many people caused an event. And we
can either hold them all responsible, we can find one to hold most
responsible, and then it's an issue of, if we hold that person more
responsible, will doing so have good effects on their – adjusting their
behavior? So in that sense, I'd say if another person put that purpose in your
head, well, if we hold them responsible, and they know that ahead of time,
that might adjust their behavior to choose the purpose as well, to put in your
head. But if it's the universe putting this in your head, and we cant go, "Oh,
you don't have any incentives to affect them, then we're just going to, we're
going to hold you responsible." So in general, we hold things responsible
when, if they knew we were holding them responsible, they would adjust their
behavior, and we choose the parties to hold most responsible such that we
would have the biggest effect from, that we're opportunistically deciding who
to choose to respond, who to make responsible. And so in this case, we could
hold you responsible, we might just prefer to hold somebody else responsible,
if that would be more effective, but we could hold both of you responsible.
Agnes:
Right. But I mean, suppose that, you know, you knew full well that I, you
know, I was just brainwashed by this evil scientist. But that if you hold me
responsible that will affect the evil scientist’s actions, because he'll see
what happens to me and then he'll program it differently next time around.
Robin:
Right. In that case, it would be sufficient to hold you responsible.
Agnes:
Right. So, like when you say like, you know, this is what we do. Like, I don't
know who you're speaking for, but I think a lot of people would say, "No, it's
not morally OK to just opportunistically hold people responsible in order to
bring about the best effects." You're really only allowed to hold someone
responsible for something that they can be plausibly construed as responsible
for. Right? And so, like, if for instance, you know that I was like at – it
was actually a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation where I was like, "I was not
in my own right mind and this other– the evil scientist was like totally
controlling my body and I was like a zombie whenever..." And then you're like,
"Yeah, we're going to like torture her to send that scientist a lesson." Like
that just seems wrong?
Robin:
Well, so this is actually interesting parallel to the basic topic here. So the
basic topic here was you were formed by evolution. You have your purposes, but
evolution had its different purposes. How you sure can you be about your
purposes?
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
A similar structure happens in society with law, in the sense that when people
live in a society with laws, they internalize these laws as moral norms. And
they basically treat it as if that's just sort of the reality of morality.
And, in fact, societies evolve in their moral norms, through various
pressures, and law and economics is trying to describe those pressures and
trying to explain that society is in fact, over time opportunistic about who
it holds responsible, but it's hiding that from you somewhat. And that when
you are reacting to how someone behaves, say, and demanding that they be held
morally responsible, you're sort of taking these morals in your society as
given, and not appreciating the cultural selection pressures that produced
your society's moral norms. And so, with the same biological selection
argument, we can also talk about cultural selection arguments. People in a
society see that they have these purposes. And they say, "Well, that's just my
purpose because I'm in the society, it seems obvious." And you don't realize.
"No, your society had an evolutionary past. It went through a series of
societies that had different norms at different times. And this heritage
shaped your society's moral norms. And therefore, maybe you should accept that
you think this is just morally wrong, but in fact, some larger calculation was
saying this was the most cost-effective way to produce better behavior."
Agnes:
But now, you know, the idea, like that sentence that you just uttered, only
has any tension in it if you think two things can come apart. One, is what's
moral? And two is like, costs in producing, and I take it what you mean by
better behavior is just like, behavior that's going to lead to this
satisfaction of more people's preferences or something like that, right?
Robin:
Something like that, yeah.
Agnes:
And I take it that the people who advanced this framework are also the people
who really don't– can't get any daylight between those two ideas. And so
they're going to actually for them, what this– it's just straightforward moral
progress every time these norms evolve, right? Because it's the satisfaction
of more preferences.
Robin:
Right. So I think there's an interesting parallel here, but I think it does
better to focus on the biological case, because it's more stark, and you have
fewer moves to evade it, in some sense. So if we focus on this moral norms and
the law history, I think it's harder to make the case. I think you can
eventually, but that's why I would rather focus on the, you know, your
purposes, in terms of your biology and the evolutionary heritage. So...
Agnes:
Let me interrupt you for a second. We'll go back. So we'll go back to biology
in a second, but the thing I wanted to sort of note here is that, it seems to
me often in these arguments, there's like a both giving and taking of multiple
kind of like normative concepts or something. And it's often not as easy to
say, well, like that there really is a space between those concepts. So like
that there is some concept of purpose where evolution is giving you purposes.
And then some other concept – and then within that same concept of purpose
over here, where you are taking certain things to be valuable. Like in order
to set up this paradox, or this tension, you need that, you need it to both be
purpose and so that their intention with one another, right? As opposed to two
different things, which is more like the causal mechanism case, right? And
similarly with the law, right? It's the same structure where it's like, you
want to say, "Ah, look, morality can come into conflict with this cost
benefit." And then I'm like, "Well, wait a minute, aren't you the people who
think that those are actually the same concept? And now there isn't a
conflict, right?" So I'm fine. Let's go back to biology. But that is I think
the pattern that one has to attend to is like, so are you creating as much
normative space as you think you are?
Robin:
So, in that case, we could say that you and your community share a moral norm
when you see if somebody did something that you would know who to blame about
it and how, right? So, you could say we're in a community that agrees on its
moral norms, if we know who to blame, how, for what? And then we could say,
those norms, for example, might not be exactly the most cost effective way to
discourage bad behavior. Or, they might be. Or they might plausibly just look
like they – look like there's a tension you're not sure. So that's more of the
analogy with the individual biology. You are a creature evolved from biology.
And you do like to comb your hair. And we might say, if we don't see a reason
why an evolved creature would comb their hair, then we are puzzled by this
conflict. But we can either come up with an explanation "Oh, combing your hair
is useful for this purpose." Or, we can find a more indirect explanation, "Oh,
you look pretty when you comb your hair and looking pretty as more useful,
etc." So that's the kind of issue but the point is, it's very stark with the
individual biology. That is, people, when they think of their own purposes,
they often want to write a novel, they want to enjoy the Grand Canyon view,
they want to travel more, they want to write more books, those sort of
purposes people will talk about, they want to remind seem quite a distance
from the evolutionary goals that evolution will have or her in view with you.
So that's why it's this especially dramatic. Now, that doesn't mean it's
actually in conflict, that is, we can try to come up with ways to resolve
those conflicts.
Agnes:
Well, so first of all, I have to say, it's very ironic to use this example of
the hair because I never – I haven't combed my hair in maybe several years,
three or four years, but today, yesterday, I did. And so now my hair looks
terrible, it looks frizzy, because I forgot why I don't comb it, which is that
it looks better when I don't come in. But anyway, that's not – luckily, this
is only audio, so people can't see my frizzy hair.
Robin:
We'll take a picture.
Agnes:
But, the distant purpose is –, so, you know, you could think, like, here would
be like a very one-size-fits-all way to square these things. Like you could
think that evolution would want us to be innovators, or like to think big, or
something, in some kind of indeterminate way. Right? That we are, you know,
our descendants, overall in a long term way are more likely to survive if we
are such as to be in some way open and sort of self-disturbing creatures,
right? Always on the lookout for new possibilities or something. That could
just be a thing that's programmed into us by evolution. And then that's on the
one hand, another hand, it's like, yeah, and also we think that's good. So
great, super, right? It turns out evolution is hand in hand with what we
actually independently judged to be a good thing. Then we wouldn't be too, you
know, uncomfortable with that, that it would not seem very demystifying,
right?
Robin:
That's exactly one of the approaches to take is to take these behaviors that
seem not to have evolutionary payoffs, and identify apparent, you know,
proposed evolutionary payoffs. And that's one of the standard moves in this
game. I would say that people are often reaching a little too quickly for
explanations. For example, they might say it's good for all of life on Earth,
or good for the species, or good for some diffused...
Agnes:
It clearly can be good for all life on Earth, because most organisms don't
know how to adopt a strategy. So...
Robin:
Right, but so we might say, well, you know, evolution will need it to be more
specifically good for that person's lineage, not just good in general, from
some broad thing. And so that would be more of a challenge to come up with why
those particular behaviors would have that kind of concrete effect for them.
Because, again, they are spending resources on this that they could be
spending on other things. They could be collecting more food or building a
bigger wall, so they don't freeze to death or other sorts of things.
Agnes:
Yeah, I mean... I guess like, I can't get around this, I know, this must be
some – this must be a very dumb thought. But I can't get around the thought,
like evolution is kind of modest, in what it wants from us. Like if we think
about, look, like, it would want us to reproduce, right, and to take care of
our children, and put something towards the preservation of our grandchildren.
And it's like, I feel like I can do that with about a quarter of my time or
something, or even less than that, right? And so then I got the rest and
evolution is not going to tell me what to do with the rest. So what's the...
what's...
Robin:
That's because we're living in this unusually rich era, where most everyone is
rich in that way. And that's a strange feature about our era. And so, we don't
really intuitively feel the pressures of evolution so much in our world in our
era because we're rich.
Agnes:
Right. And but, I mean, maybe we don't feel them because they're not there.
That is because...
Robin:
Well, I mean, so, you know, counterfactually, you could have three times as
many kids as you'd had. Like, if you, from the very young age, felt this
driving urge to have as many kids as you could, you could have had far more
kids.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
So I mean, by this point in your life, maybe it's too late to go back and undo
those changes. But even now, you could be really encouraging your kids to have
kids and setting them up with dates and promising to pay and help for
childcare and right, you could just be going wild, really pushing your kids to
have kids.
Agnes:
Right. So this is why I feel like evolution is, it's got a little bit of a
light touch, you know, like it's telling me some stuff to do, but it's leaving
me lots of freedom.
Robin:
But that's the puzzle, right? It seems to be giving you freedom.
Agnes:
But your thought is that the freedom, the freedom that it seems to be leaving
me, I mean, you know... Yeah. And why not think that like some of what culture
is, is kind of re– it's like upcycling our evolutionary instincts into
different sorts of goals, right? And so, there's a great passage in– there's a
great passage in Plato's Symposium where he talks about how the lower sort of
person has kids, and they aim for immortality through their kids, right? But
then there's like the higher sorts of people, the poets, they aim for
immortality through their poems. And their poems are like children to them,
and they love them in the way that people love their children. And there's the
law makers, right, who aim immortality by creating laws and... and so you
might think that like, what is – Freud uses a word like sublimation or
something for this, right? Like where we're in effect there is a desire or an
impulse, but it can be... I think upcycling is the most natural term to, you
know, use towards a different purpose. And so, you end up with people who
don't have as many kids and who are pursuing these other goals that don't have
a direct evolutionary payoff.
Robin:
So in that case, we would expect this other thing to be reproducing. So it is
true that culture can change a lot faster than genes can these days, and so
that we expect most evolution recently to be cultural evolution. But we still
might expect cultures to be trying hard to reproduce. So that cultures would
be really pushing you to do whatever it takes to reproduce that culture.
Agnes:
But they kind of are, right? I mean, we even try to export our culture to
other countries, and...
Robin:
But we could try a lot harder.
Agnes:
I mean, I feel like we're trying pretty hard.
Robin:
But again, you said you had you know all this extra free time, if you do what
you want.
Agnes:
Well, what I'm doing, what am I doing? You can ask what am I doing with that
free time, right?
Robin:
Yeah.
Agnes:
And like, like, say I'm writing a book on Socrates, right? What is that? I'm
kind of, I'm trying to propagate a certain culture, namely, the philosophical
culture, and the ancient culture, and the culture of refutation. I'm trying to
propagate it in the world and spread. So I am doing this thing cultural
reproduction.
Robin:
So what really should be happening is genetic cultural co-evolution. And
that's, in fact, what really does happen. So all the different things that
encode who we are, that get passed on to future generations, all of those are
evolving together. And they will use whichever pathways can be most effective
to do that. But, you know, we should still not expect the genes to be
suffering a lot from culture. We would expect culture to be a way that genes
are using to promote more genes. And similarly, cultures, like, you know, over
all the people who live in a particular area who interact a lot, that's kind
of unit of culture, these artistic projects, whatever they should be helping
those unit of cultures reproduce. But for example, the United States
population is declining, its cultural influence is also somewhat declining. So
in some sense, as these larger units were somewhat failing to promote
reproduction of them. Again, you know, if the US people will just have a lot
more kids, the US culture would also grow. Right? I mean, so...
Agnes:
So here's, I mean, it seems to me there's a really interesting, like, there's
a way of thinking about this, where the culture itself constitutes something
like an upcycling of what is there to be reproduced, right? So, you might say,
humans, you know, insofar as they were just very, very indistinguishable from
non-human animals were mainly doing what non-human animals do, but you know,
back in the day, right? And fundamentally, what was getting reproduced was
genetic material. But that part of what culture is, is a substitute in terms
of what is getting reproduced. The genes are also getting reproduced, right?
But over time it becomes more and more something like the reproduction of the
genes is like a vehicle, a bearer for the culture. And, you know, there's a
question here, when you look at this whole story, there's a question of sort
of where you put the throw-weight or something. And I think something that's
distinctive about your way of thinking about this, and probably an
evolutionary biologist would think about it this way is, would always put the
throw-weight at the gene. That is there's a kind of reductive stickiness
there. But if you don't think about it that way, and you think that the
cultural evolution, then you would think that once this process gets, so to
speak, leveled up at the level of culture, evolution is going means something
slightly different. And in particular, like say, if we take me, right,
propagating philosophical refutation, Socrates, et cetera, through writing a
book about it, I don't think that what I'm doing is just taking a code and
like, creating more copies of that code in the way, that's how genes
reproduce, it's just create more copies, right? But another way you can sort
of reproduce something is to be always aiming to produce the better version of
the thing. So we could call it like aspirational evolution or something,
right? Where my hope is not, like, suppose that after I write this book, you
know, it just goes crazy. Everyone reads the book, everyone's copying the
book, everyone teaches it to their kids, you know, 200 years from now, this
book is like a kind of Bible, that people are reciting...
Robin:
Just how it's going to happen.
Agnes:
Right. No, for me, that's some kind of hellscape, right? It's like that better
not happen for a number of reasons. But like, the main one being like, "Well,
no, I want to put these ideas out there. And then I will be able to improve
upon them, I take myself to be improving upon, right?" So that's a very
different, that's a very different way of how evolution works.
Robin:
Well, let's take the example of say, a car firm. A car firm can grow. And it
could also have descendants, like spinoffs. And the car firm has many
different parts of it, right? There's marketing, there's manufacturing,
there's design, there's distribution, there's management. And in order for the
car firm to grow, basically, all these parts are going to have to grow.
Because it can't just grow the manufacturing part without growing the rest.
And so, any sort of things that grow and evolve over time, you know, they have
different parts of them, and then all of them will have to come along. Now, a
car firm, for example, that didn't have much marketing, like maybe the first
car firms do might grow, but then other firms come along, and they add
marketing, then your firm needs to add marketing or it can't compete. And so
you could think about the ways in which culture adds on. You could say, well,
so you have a package of people, they don't have much culture, they just
reproduce their genes, but they get out beat by some other group of people who
have some culture, and that helps them grow. And now you will see the total of
that thing growing because they have all the different parts that are
necessary to grow well. And so, a car firm can add trucks, and now it can grow
more, because it has trucks. And then other firms might need to add trucks if
they want to compete. And so we do want to think of larger systems that
co-evolved together, but we still want to see them growing. And we still have
this principle of evolution that applies to them in the sense that we can
roughly predict their goals from this need to reproduce and to have
descendants. And so, even humans with culture need to reproduce their humans
and the culture in order for that package to grow.
Agnes:
Absolutely. But if you think that, like fundamentally, and by the way, I don't
think there's any reason to feel so sure that culture is the end of this
story, right?
Robin:
No, of course.
Agnes:
It could be gene goes to culture, and culture goes to something else, right?
But just for the moment, let's stick with the culture. Like, it's clear that
what it is for the gene to reproduce, it's just for their beat to be more
instances of it, right. And then, you know, in the long term, way, more and
more of them, and then kind of exponentially. But it's not at all clear that
when the culture is trying to reproduce itself, that there's going to be some
kind of like, linear relation between the reproduction of the culture and the
reproduction of the genes of the bearers of the culture, right? So you might
not think, like, you might think, for instance, that suppose that the culture
has to make a choice. Either we can double the number of people who have our
culture, or we can double like the share of the world that has our culture.
Right? And suppose that in the second scenario, fewer people actually have the
culture, OK, this, just imagine counterfactually.
Robin:
Right. Right.
Agnes:
And like, it's at least it's like, plausible to me that, like the logic of
cultural reproduction would go for the second over the first. Like, I'm not
even saying it's intuitive that it was, I'm just saying that the thought like,
yes, there needs to be some reproduction. And I think that like, if, for
instance, like we just saw nobody having children or something, and like, you
know, maybe only like one and 100 people were having children all across
America, I think there'll be a panic, and I think it will be a cultural panic
of our culture not reproducing. But if it's just like a little bit less like,
"Hey, there's lots of Americans somewhat, you know, reproducing somewhat
slower, who cares?" Like that, that clearly doesn't seem to be an – that
clearly doesn't seem to be the impediment for the reproduction of the culture.
Robin:
I would say it seems pretty obvious that behavior today just isn't remotely
near what would be maximizing, you know, long term production of people plus
culture, as a culture or as a person, you were just not remotely near that
maximum. So that's a somewhat separate issue than the fact we started out
talking about it, which is the goals in your head don't quite match the goals
that evolution seems to have for you. Those are not quite the same issue, but
they're related. But you know, I would say, "Sure, it's worth sacrificing some
degree of fertility or number of children for some degree of cultural increase
causes cultural influence, but we're just crazy far from that optimal choice."
This is not anywhere near that.
Agnes:
Well, I mean, it's, it's very, very hard to see what the optimal choice would
be, just given the fact that part of what culture is doing now is like
competing with other cultures, right? So, and there's competing, and there's
incorporating too, right? And that's a very difficult negotiation of who do we
want to be, given these other options that we see, that we see we can sort of
take up some of cultural incorporation. So maybe a lot of our energy is going
into questions of negotiating cultural competition and cultural incorporation.
And that that's what we're doing with a lot of our time. It seems plausible to
me that that's what we're doing with a lot of our time, reading all this stuff
from different places, learning about all these different places, going and
visiting all these different places.
Robin:
Or we could do nearly as much of that and have twice as many kids.
Agnes:
Right. But like... look, I mean, you seem to be stuck on this having a lot of
kids thing. From the point of view of spreading the culture, it's just not
obvious to me that it matters that much, how many kids you have.
Robin:
It does. It matters a lot.
Agnes:
Well, you – but we haven't defined in any clear way what it is for the culture
to propagate. Like, maybe what it fundamentally is like to strive to be a uni
culture.
Robin:
Because we have models of, you know, genes and culture co-evolving. And what
that means is you end up with more descendants who have the culture, but you
know, you can't win by having a lot more culture and far fewer descendants
that...
Agnes:
I think you totally could if the – so that's kind of what more is, right?
Robin:
Relative to other groups.
Agnes:
Like... well, right. I mean, so but like, but that's why I say it's not just
relative to other groups, because we are actually in competition with those
groups. And some of these choices are competitive choices, right? And so we're
deciding, so, you know, I'm deciding, do I go to war with your people? And
it's like, if I go to war with your people, I'm going to have fewer
descendants, because some of my descendants’ decisions are going to die in the
war, right? But like, there's clearly a kind of, you know, cultural evolution
pro, I think of the war. I mean, if there's been negative, which I could lose,
and you could eliminate me, you know. But that's like, this is how the Greeks
and the Trojans saw it as like, it's a battle of the cultures, and we're going
to erase even the memory of your people, right? So the thought there is like,
you know, it's just less about having descendants, and more about establishing
the hegemony and the reproduction of that culture, which requires descendants
as a necessary condition. But it doesn't at all suggest that you would want to
maximize your descendants. And I mean, look in the same way that like, we need
money in order to survive, right? We need money to have food or whatever.
Robin:
Yeah.
Agnes:
And like, but neither of us is really engaged in maximizing the amount of
money that we have that is we could design our lives so as to make more money
than we do that would require other sacrifices, right? And you're just like,
"Yeah, but anything you do you need money for it. So why aren't we just
spending a lot more of our time and energy making more money? Money is useful
for everything." And it's like, "Yes, that's true, right. But that kind of
trade off doesn't always mean that you're going to pursue money." And
similarly, I don't think you're always going to pursue descendants for the
same reason.
Robin:
So, there are clearly like some cultural markers that you could try to spread
that really wouldn't have much of a payoff for your genes. Like, for example,
say pink and purple. Say, you just want more people to wear pink and purple in
the world, right?
Agnes:
Mm-hmm. And I do.
Robin:
And say you become part of a coalition that pushes more pink and purple in the
world.
Agnes:
I wish, I wish there were more of me, but I sadly, it's one-person coalition.
OK.
Robin:
And exactly. Well, so far but soon maybe this change, right? And you could
succeed in pushing pink and purple into the world.
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin:
But it might be that your genes just don't get much man benefit from that,
right?
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
That is, if you were famously the originator of the pink and purple movement,
and people celebrated you for that and wanted to have sex with you and have
your babies, et cetera, then your genes might gain or they wanted to feed you
and celebrate you at meetings where they pay you a lot of money to come talk
to them about pink and purple. You see, now your genes can be benefiting from
this cultural winning. But merely pushing pink and purple in a way that nobody
knows it was you but you managed to make the world more pink and purple. You
should expect behaviors, sort of genes that would induce you to have that sort
of behavior, those would lose. They would be discouraged by evolution. That is
because it's not feeding back into the genes. So genes will encourage culture
when culture feeds back into the genes. Ways in which genes would encode a
habit of promoting a kind of culture that would not reward the genes, we
should expect decay of the gene. So the kinds of cultural evolution we should
expect to see are the kinds of cultural evolution that tend to feed back and
reward genes.
Agnes:
OK. So like the speech you just made is a perfect reflection of the thing I
said earlier about you presupposing that the genes are the throw weight. And
what I wanted to suggest is like the genes aren't the thing that matters
anymore, they were the thing that mattered, right? But until they got us to
culture, and now genes are just kind of a vehicle. It doesn't actually matter
and it's because culture takes over, and because it evolves much more quickly
than genes, right? It doesn't matter whether my descendants are...
Robin:
The same arguable type of cultural elements, right? If we have a culture, and
say there's a culture, maybe your hometown.
Agnes:
Yeah.
Robin:
And your hometown has a culture of promoting pink and purple, but your
hometown doesn't get credit, or rewards for promoting pink and purple, then
the culture that is, the culture of your small town, would get discouraged and
not rewarded compared to other cultures. That is other towns that promoted
things that rewarded their town again, would be gaining out – their cultural
habits would be gaining out against this habit of your town that was promoting
pink and purple, but not promoting your town.
Agnes:
But it's – like suppose that my town really didn't care about its other habits
besides the pink and purple thing, we're really, we're one cause town, right?
Robin:
OK.
Agnes:
And suppose that we succeed in promoting pink and purple and lots of other
towns take it up, and like lots of people are wearing pink and purple, right?
And nobody remembers my town. And in fact, my town is annihilated. But
nonetheless, our culture has gotten transmitted and is being transmitted in a
large scale.
Robin:
Only this one piece of your culture was transmitted.
Agnes:
Right.
Robin:
And all the rest was lost. So whatever cultural structures, there would have
been, that would have allowed your town to exist to promote this behavior,
that cultural structure will be discouraged by this evolution.
Agnes:
Right. So I think that's right. And so that's why what you would expect, as
sort of culture takes over as the throw-weight, that you would expect that it
would become very important to be propagating all of the elements of the
culture that are seen as the significant elements of the culture.
Robin:
As a package together.
Agnes:
Either as a package or independently, but to propagate all of them. I mean,
you see people...
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
I think a place where you see this very strongly is in the questions over the
canon, right? The literary...
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
What are the great books? OK? That's – it's like an evergreen topic for
Twitter, right? And the idea that such and such a novel is a great novel. It's
like, there's this pressure, and you could almost – you could think of it as a
cultural evolutionary pressure to propagate Middlemarch as a great novel. So
when I on Twitter, show up and can say, "I find this kind of boring." People
are like, "No, no, no, this... we need to propagate this."
Robin:
Right, right. So a standard story is that organisms are packages of genes that
are cooperating together, right?
Agnes:
Mm-hmm
Robin:
Individual genes can be out there competing, but they don't work very well
unless they have these packages, organisms are packages. Similarly, culture
comes in packages, too. Individual cultural elements would be like the
promoting pink and purple, those really can't win against packages of culture
that support each other. So what we should expect are cultural packages
supporting each other. So but again, when we think about how can cultural
packages support each other, if we think that is what's structuring your
purposes, and then we look at your actual purposes, we could still see
disconnects there, we could still have this problem of, "I think I want to do
this, but I don't see how that promotes a cultural package."
Agnes:
Right. So I think I am much more on board with and clearer on the problem if
we understand it as a cultural propagation problem than a genetic propagation
problem. That is, if you ask me, like, you know, like, the aesthetic that I
like in coffee shops or something. Like there's a weird, very specific kind of
airspace aesthetic, that people who like the kind of coffee I like, also like
the aesthetic in a coffee shop. And it's like, Why do I... and I like it, like
lots of people hate it, but... I think some of them are pretending to hate it,
or they don't like the coffee because somewhat goes together with liking
coffee that you like this aesthetic. But if you actually think about, like,
how are these things connected? They're not connected at all, right? But it's
clear that you've been sold on this package, right, of this good coffee goes
together with this, you know, third wave decor.
Robin:
OK. So there's a coffee package style.
Agnes:
Yeah, exactly.
Robin:
That can propagate itself but it will need to have the support of other
cultural evidence, including people's work – the people who go there, they'll
need to, like have jobs maybe and get medicine and not kill themselves, right,
and not take drugs and die, right? In order for that to promote, it's not just
enough that they have a coffee that matches an architectural style.
Agnes:
Right. Right. No...
Robin:
They're going to need a whole bunch of other cultural packages that go with it
that are also promoting winning behavior. And one of those parts of the
packages will be fertility, that is in the long run, if they don't have
fertility, they will go away.
Agnes:
Sure. I feel like this is one of these things. It's like the status thing in
our last conversation where it's like, there's like a gravitational pull of
like the importance of fertility that's not strictly related to this topic,
right? But in a way, the reason I brought up the coffee shop thing was I
wanted to say, to sort of acknowledge that it's like uncomfortable for me to
raise the question, why do I like about this aesthetic?
Robin:
Right.
Agnes:
Right? Where in effect what I have done is...
Robin:
How was it reproducing itself in me.
Agnes:
I have bought a package, right, a cultural package. And...
Robin:
And you understand all the parts.
Agnes:
And... right, I didn't evaluate all of the parts independently. I think that
that's right. I think that we do that all the time though I actually do think
that those sorts of things are subject to inquiry like they're...
Robin:
Of course, sure.
Agnes:
They're subject to critique and then subject to change, but I do think we just
do buy the packages in that way.
Robin:
And I think we should end that here. So thanks for talking, Agnes.
Agnes:
Yeah.