Re: Can cognition override natural selection?

>> GH:-
>>If I read your question correctly, you are asking whether anybody thinks
>>that natural selection at the level of the gene has significant effects in
>>biological evolution.  The answer is clearly YES.  Many evolutionary
>>biologists think that this is the primary level at which biological
>>selection happens.  Dawkins is an extremist and a leading voice in this
>>crowd.  For example, he refers to individuals as "vehicles", and suggests
>>that they are merely convenient constructions by genes, which are used to
>>promote the selfish interests of the genes.

PR:-
Sexually reproducing organisms, in particular, are not replicators since
what they "reproduce" are far from exact copies of themselves.  On the
other hand, genes can remain relatively constant over generations, although
even here phenotypic effects of a gene can vary depending on the
particular combinations of other genes in the vehicle.  I suspect this
more than anything is why organisms are referred to as vehicles rather
than replicators.

JE;-
Evolution by natural selection requires
defined, contesting fitnesses. Even if
"genes can remain relatively constant
over generations" the real fitnesses by
which each genomic gene is selected, do not.
Real gene fitnesses are all epistatic, i.e.
each genomic gene is _dependently_ selected as
a combination of many gene fitnesses not as
just a single, independent, gene fitness.
The view that an independent gene level
of selection exists is not sustainable even
when meiotic drive genes are included.

Your view that "phenotypic effects of a gene""
(note: all genes are selected via their phenotypes,
no exceptions) "can vary depending on the
particular combinations of other genes in
the vehicle" is absolutely correct and is
totally incompatible with a view that
suggests if individual genes remain
mostly the same then fitness remains
relatively constant over generations.

All epistatic effects are non additive i.e.
geometric. Tiny differences in gene epistasis
can and does, have very large fitness effects.
Common, misused, Neo Darwinian models that
are all massive over simplifications of
testable reality delete all genetic epistasis
including all gene fitness epistasis. Why?
Because Fisher defined all epistatic effects
as "inherited" but "non heritable" and thus "non
selectable" at the very start of population genetics
theory in his Herculean attempt to fuse Mendel's genes
with  Darwin's theory. Since then this modelling definition
has been poured like quick setting concrete over all of
evolutionary THEORY.

>>GH:-
>>This view is inconsistent with
>>multilevel selection theory, which is in my view the essence of
contemporary
>>selection theory and provides a more balanced and logical perspective on
>>natural selection.
>>

PR:-
....folks will want to invoke higher
levels of selection to countenance observable features in nature that
often appear to have been group selected, but which the models simply
can not currently accomodate (e.g., 9/11 terrorists, rescue workers, etc.).
IOW, group selection offers an easy way out, but not all the problems in
science have an easy way out.

JE:-
I totally agree. The root of the
above is just simplified model misuse
which in turn is grounded in a
false epistemology. What is missing
today is a rigorous discussion of
fitness mutualisation. This
only requires a single level of
selection, i.e. it does not require
any ad hoc addition to Darwin's original
assumption of just a single level
via an additional level of selection
as group selection and Neo Darwinist
independent gene selection, require
(the former one level above and the
latter one level below, the Darwinian
level).

In any argument it is always much easier
to increase complexity by an ad hoc
addition to accommodate what may, just to start
with, appear to be a difficulty with a theory.
Darwin did not just ad hoc his view every time
difficulties with it (inevitably) arose,
because he and the view he provided, had a
rational _integrity_. Such a concept does
not even exist today because everything in
evolutionary theory is just a disposable,
ever changeable, "model". Today's throw away
"McDonalds" society is deadful because it
is based on a dreadful lack of integrity.

PR:
Sometimes they might even require looking
about for hidden assumptions that lie just below the surface that are
making one's theory appear to be in err...

JE:-
Yes a view should never be discarded unless
it is formally refuted. Every view _must_
provide a _formal_ test for its verification
and refutation as Popper insisted. These
requirements have been junked today because
simplified mathematical models have replaced
theory, within evolutionary theory. Such models
are accepted "as long as they work" i.e. rigorous
testing is no longer required.

The Darwinian view is formally refuted
when a Darwinian fitness can be demonstrated
within nature to be _selected_ to be lowered.
This test requires a rigorous definition
of what Darwinian fitness, is. Most people
do not have a clue as to;-
1) The supremacy of the fitness concept
to any testable evolutionary theory.
2) How to define Darwinian fitness.

thus, they cannot test Darwinism.
Mostly, fitness is still banded about as
some sloppy concept that informally
combines "survival" and "reproduction".

> BOH:-
> I've not read any Dawkins for a few years, so I wouldn't want to comment
> on what he himself believes, but I disagree that the idea of vehicles is
> inconsistent with multilevel selection, all it means is that there are
> different levels of vehices - ferries carrying cars if you will
> (incidentally, Hamilton was one of the first to derive a model with
> these ideas in them).  Someone mentioned Laurent Keller's book, and he
> deals with this in the introduction - basically pointing out that the
> problem is solved, and we should get on with dealing with more
> interesting questions (like those in the rest of the book).

PR:-
Agreed.  The problem which is NOT solved, however, unless one buys into
some variation on the theme of group selection, is that same old "central
theoretical problem of sociobiology" (Willson) that's been with us from the
start, i.e., ye old altruism problem (biological altruism, that is,
altruism that can not be accomodated under the banner of inclusive fitness).

JE:-
Yes, it ALL pivots on Hamilton. I have
been saying this for over 4 years. This
is why I insist that Hamilton's view
must always be approached with maximum rigor.

___________________________________________________
I demand that the supporters of Hamilton's view
define how many composite rb units of kin
fitness = 1c unit of Darwinian fitness; this they
refuse to define. Thus, it is utterly impossible
to ever know when rb>c ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Hamilton's view
is non testable without such a definition because
it can mean just about anything you like.
___________________________________________________

When BOH suggests: "different levels of vehicles -
ferries carrying cars if you will (incidentally,
Hamilton was one of the first to derive a model with
these ideas in them)" he failed to even suggest
how these supposed different levels could  actually
be selected. It is one thing to propose a multi level
"solution" but quite another to make it testable
science.

PR:-
While the formal models developed by Hamilton, Smith, Price, et al
have done a marvelous job of accomodating altruistic anomalies in
NON-HUMAN SPECIES, most of the behavior in man is still far from
explained,...

JE:-
I disagree. These models are all deficient because
Hamilton was deficient and they are all based on
Hamilton. What Hamiltonian's keep calling "fitness altruism"
requires an ad hoc fitness level to be added below
the Darwinian level. It can be replaced with fitness
mutualisation which does not require any such ad hoc
addition. It appears many/most people cannot differentiate
between a cost for a gain that may just happen to take loss
at some stage (fitness mutualism) and a cost that
was always intended to make a loss (fitness
altruism). Everything is an investment. Not all
investments make a profit, ALL of the time (this
often comes as a complete surprise to the political
hard left) and not ALL investments are sound (this
is mostly "corrected" by the hard political right via
totalitarian dictate). The same logic applies
to nature.


PR:-
 and which was what I thought this thread was supposed to
be about (i.e., the role of cognition in usurping some of the older
mechanics of natural selection).  Indeed, if anything, the formal
models have only served to deepen the mystery, so much so as to
require a full fledged addendum to the theory of natural selection
(memetics), as Dawkins makes clear in his last chapter in 'The
Selfish Gene':

   As an enthusiastic Darwinian, I have been dissatisfied with
   explanations which my fellow-enthusiasts have offered for
   human behaviour.  They have tried to look for 'biological
   advantages' in various attributes of human civilization.  For
   instance, tribla religion has been seen as a mechanisms for
   solidifying group identity, valuable for a pack-hunting
   species whose individuals rely on cooperation to catch large
   and fast prey.  Frequetnly the evolutionary preconception in
   terms of which such theories are framed is implicitly group-
   selectionist, but it is possible to rephrase the theories
   in terms of orthodox gene selection.  Man may well have
   spent large portions of the last sseveral million years
   living in small kin groups.  Kin selectio and selection in
   favour of reciprocal altruism may have acted on human genes
   to produce many of our basic psychological attributes and
   tendencies.  These ideas are plausible as far as they go,
   but I find they do not begin to square up to the formidable
   challenge of explaining culture, cultural evolution, and the
   immense differences between human cultures around the world,
   from the utter selfishness of the Ik of Uganda, as described
   by Colin Turnbull, to the gental altruism of Margaret Mead's
   Arapesh.

   I think we have got to start again and go right
   back to first principles.  The argument I shall advance,
   surprising as it may seem coming from the author of the
   earlier chapters, is that, for an understanding of the
   evolution of modern man, we must begin by throwing out the
   gene as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution.  I am an
   enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a
   theory to be donfined to the narrow context of the gene.  The
   gene will enter my thesis as an analogy, nothing more.
   (Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p. 205).

JE:-
Darwinism never was, and has never been, about
"the gene as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution"
i.e. the gene as an INDEPENDENT unit of selection, it
has ALWAYS been about heritable epistatic gene
fitness "as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution"
re: what is inherited and what is selected as an
INDEPENDENT unit of selection. Over simplified models
of evolution are not equivalent to, and cannot replace,
any testable theory of evolution from which they were
derived.

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

[EMAIL PROTECTED]