Jonah Goldberg has an excellent post over at the Corner that deftly eviscerates John Derbyshire's genetic determinism. It makes me wonder in what sense Derbyshire is a conservative. In fact, I wonder if Derbyshire is not actually a post-modernist in conservative drag.
Take this article at Taki's magazine linked to from the corner. At first blush, it looks like a strong statement of the "rational right" position on Israel. But look a little closer at Derb's reasons for supporting Israel. He writes of our attachments rippling "out in overlapping chains of diminishing concentric circles: family, extended family, town, state, religion, ethny, nation." The Israelis are closer to us in these concentric rings than say, the Congo, because we share a tradition with them as well as beliefs in things like democracy and the rule of law. Israel is organized on principles that Derb "agrees with", and is "inhabited by people I could leave at ease with."
Derb is such a gifted and smooth writer that it is easy to overlook the precision with which he writes. But it's what Derb has successfully avoided saying that is significant. He hasn't said that the traditions and principles that we share with Israel are objectively true; or reflect a transcendent order that judges not only the USA and Israel, but all nations, including Israel's Arab enemies. No, his point is entirely subjective, and is made in terms of our experienced affinities, severed from any rational foundation (a foundation that, given Derb's genetic determinism, I suspect he does not think exists.) There is a crucial difference between supporting Israel because we "agree" on certain principles that have no further significance than our agreement, and supporting Israel because we recognize that transcendent principles of justice and duty demand that we do.
Really, Derb's support of Israel is post-modern in character. Academic post-modernists "see through" all traditions, deny any rationally knowable transcendent order, and so undermine any reason we might have to prefer our own civilization to another (or even to barbarism.) But if we no longer have reasons, we still have affinities. If there is no reason to prefer one culture to another, then my pre-rational inclinations are elevated to decisive significance. We should support Israel because the Israelis are sort of like us and therefore we have tender feelings for them (or more tender than we do, say, for the Congo.) Derb has simply taken the post-modernist position more seriously than the post-modernists, without the sentimentality.
But it is in no sense "conservative", if by that term we include the notion that there is some good worth preserving; a good that endures across time, space and opinion... in other words, a transcendent good, which is just what the post-modernist denies. The post-modernist can't be a conservative because he allows nothing that might be conserved.
Showing posts with label determinism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label determinism. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Humility and Eugenics
This is a continuation of my commentary on Jim Manzi's article from the June 2, 2008 National Review.
In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton remarked that the problem with the modern world is not that it is vicious, but that its virtues have been "let loose", and "the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrific damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone." With respect to the virtue of humility, Chesterton says this:
"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giant unless they are larger than we... But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason."
Traditionally, humility followed from what man knew. He knew that there is a God; he knew that his own existence is but an undeserved gift from God. He knew that besides God, there are gods, and some of these gods are hell-bent on his destruction. In other words, man knew himself to be a "middle creature," greater than the beasts but less than the gods and certainly less than God. His "middleness" was also characterized by the peculiar synthesis of good and evil in man. Man was capable, like an angel, of the greatest goodness; but he was also capable, like a demon, of the basest evil. Most peculiarly, the individual man himself, through sin, embodied the dialectic between good and evil. The humble man did not doubt that all this was true. In light of its truth, what he did doubt was his own ability to "make a difference in the world", or "make the world a better place" through his own personal vision and work. For man's vision and work is always infected by sin, and it is not man but God Who makes the world a better place, through man's humble and faithful submission to God.
What I have just written may strike the ear of the reader as antique, obscurantist, and even a little blasphemous. A dogma of the modern world is that we can and should charge out and "make the world a better place." Our Churches have even embraced this vision; how many times have I heard in song and sermon that on leaving Mass, I should "make a difference" in the world? What has happened in the modern world, as Chesterton says, is that the virtue of humility has left the organ of ambition and settled on the organ of conviction. We doubt the existence of God or of any beings greater than man; this leaves man the greatest thing in the world, with no giants or gods to look up to. And we have left off doubting our own ambition, our ability to "make a difference in the world." And why not? If man is the greatest thing there is, how will things get better if not through his vision and work? And if man is to improve things, then certainly improving man himself will top the list... which brings me to eugenics.
Eugenics is wrong because man is a middle creature, one who did not create himself or determine his own destiny, and one who is thoroughly infected by sin. Eugenics is the attempt to usurp the role of the Creator, to create man in man's own image and establish his destiny as a matter of arbitrary will. It is a consequence of the sin of pride, and as an attack on the fundamental ontological relationship between God and man, can only have the most evil and serious consequences.
The argument I have just made is a "positive" argument; it is an argument that eugenics is positively wrong based on philosophically known truth. But suppose we wish to make an argument against eugenics that will appeal to the "modern" ear. The modern mind doesn't put much stock in philosophy; it finds it ambiguous and "iffy." What the modern mind believes in is science. Can we make an argument against eugenics in scientific rather than philosophical terms?
Jim Manzi attempts such an argument in his June 2 article, in the only way possible. Such an argument can only be an argument from ignorance rather than an argument from knowledge. For in a world where science is held to be the final arbiter of truth, the greatest thing in the world is necessarily scientific man, the voice of science and therefore of truth. What will be the brake on the ambition of scientific man? The traditional brake is gone, for scientific man is not a "middle creature;" his science acknowledges nothing greater than itself and therefore nothing greater than the scientific man who thinks it. We can only propose to scientific man that he doesn't know all he thinks he knows, and hope that the sense of his own ignorance will temper his ambition. In other words, we will move the virtue of humility from the organ of ambition to the organ of conviction. Jim formulates the argument this way:
"Despite their confidence in predicting future discoveries, however, our ignorance about humanity runs deep, and the complexities of mind and society continue to escape reduction to scientific explanation. This ignorance is one of the most powerful arguments for free-market economics, subsidiarity, and many of the other elements of the conservative worldview. Science may someday allow us to predict human behavior comprehensively and reliably, so that we can live in Woodrow Wilson's 'perfected, co-ordinated beehive.' Until then, however, we need to keep stumbling forward in freedom as best we can."
Put simply, the argument is that we should not conduct eugenics because we do not (yet) know enough to do it right. I noted in an earlier post that the freedom supported by this argument is merely a "freedom of the gaps", a temporary and illusory freedom that will disappear as soon as science has filled in the blanks in determinism. Neither is the humility supported by the argument true humility, but a "humility of the gaps." For it is not based on a positive appreciation of our place in the universe, but merely on our temporary inability to fulfill our eugenic ambitions.
But the problem with eugenics is not that, in our present ignorance, we are incapable of wisely conducting it. The problem is that the eugenic vision is itself one of Hell rather than Heaven. Woodrow Wilson's vision of a 'perfected, co-ordinated beehive' should fill us with a deep horror, not wistful longing for that which we cannot currently obtain. (The classic, schlocky 1976 sci-fi "B" movie Logan's Run plays on the theme of the eugenic utopia that is really a hell.)
The unfortunate fact is that eugenics works. And you don't need a deep knowledge of genetics to make it work. Man has been successfully selectively breeding animals for thousands of years, most of that time in utter ignorance of genetics. There is no doubt that man can selectively breed himself as well. You breed tall men with tall women and you get tall children. You breed intelligent men with intelligent women and you get intelligent children. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the eugenicists of the early 20th century were not wrong because their eugenics program didn't work; they were wrong because, even if it did work (and it does), the attempt itself is damnable. The reasons it is damnable, however, are philosophical and not scientific.
There is no scientific argument against eugenics, for even if we are too ignorant right now to make eugenics work, we may be knowledgeable enough in the future. Rather than retarding eugenic efforts, the appeal to ignorance is a spur to investigate them further, for science thrives on the challenge of the unknown. Ignorance is no barrier to eugenics; the only true barrier is knowledge, a knowledge of man's true place in the cosmos, and for that we finally need philosophy and not science.
In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton remarked that the problem with the modern world is not that it is vicious, but that its virtues have been "let loose", and "the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrific damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone." With respect to the virtue of humility, Chesterton says this:
"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giant unless they are larger than we... But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason."
Traditionally, humility followed from what man knew. He knew that there is a God; he knew that his own existence is but an undeserved gift from God. He knew that besides God, there are gods, and some of these gods are hell-bent on his destruction. In other words, man knew himself to be a "middle creature," greater than the beasts but less than the gods and certainly less than God. His "middleness" was also characterized by the peculiar synthesis of good and evil in man. Man was capable, like an angel, of the greatest goodness; but he was also capable, like a demon, of the basest evil. Most peculiarly, the individual man himself, through sin, embodied the dialectic between good and evil. The humble man did not doubt that all this was true. In light of its truth, what he did doubt was his own ability to "make a difference in the world", or "make the world a better place" through his own personal vision and work. For man's vision and work is always infected by sin, and it is not man but God Who makes the world a better place, through man's humble and faithful submission to God.
What I have just written may strike the ear of the reader as antique, obscurantist, and even a little blasphemous. A dogma of the modern world is that we can and should charge out and "make the world a better place." Our Churches have even embraced this vision; how many times have I heard in song and sermon that on leaving Mass, I should "make a difference" in the world? What has happened in the modern world, as Chesterton says, is that the virtue of humility has left the organ of ambition and settled on the organ of conviction. We doubt the existence of God or of any beings greater than man; this leaves man the greatest thing in the world, with no giants or gods to look up to. And we have left off doubting our own ambition, our ability to "make a difference in the world." And why not? If man is the greatest thing there is, how will things get better if not through his vision and work? And if man is to improve things, then certainly improving man himself will top the list... which brings me to eugenics.
Eugenics is wrong because man is a middle creature, one who did not create himself or determine his own destiny, and one who is thoroughly infected by sin. Eugenics is the attempt to usurp the role of the Creator, to create man in man's own image and establish his destiny as a matter of arbitrary will. It is a consequence of the sin of pride, and as an attack on the fundamental ontological relationship between God and man, can only have the most evil and serious consequences.
The argument I have just made is a "positive" argument; it is an argument that eugenics is positively wrong based on philosophically known truth. But suppose we wish to make an argument against eugenics that will appeal to the "modern" ear. The modern mind doesn't put much stock in philosophy; it finds it ambiguous and "iffy." What the modern mind believes in is science. Can we make an argument against eugenics in scientific rather than philosophical terms?
Jim Manzi attempts such an argument in his June 2 article, in the only way possible. Such an argument can only be an argument from ignorance rather than an argument from knowledge. For in a world where science is held to be the final arbiter of truth, the greatest thing in the world is necessarily scientific man, the voice of science and therefore of truth. What will be the brake on the ambition of scientific man? The traditional brake is gone, for scientific man is not a "middle creature;" his science acknowledges nothing greater than itself and therefore nothing greater than the scientific man who thinks it. We can only propose to scientific man that he doesn't know all he thinks he knows, and hope that the sense of his own ignorance will temper his ambition. In other words, we will move the virtue of humility from the organ of ambition to the organ of conviction. Jim formulates the argument this way:
"Despite their confidence in predicting future discoveries, however, our ignorance about humanity runs deep, and the complexities of mind and society continue to escape reduction to scientific explanation. This ignorance is one of the most powerful arguments for free-market economics, subsidiarity, and many of the other elements of the conservative worldview. Science may someday allow us to predict human behavior comprehensively and reliably, so that we can live in Woodrow Wilson's 'perfected, co-ordinated beehive.' Until then, however, we need to keep stumbling forward in freedom as best we can."
Put simply, the argument is that we should not conduct eugenics because we do not (yet) know enough to do it right. I noted in an earlier post that the freedom supported by this argument is merely a "freedom of the gaps", a temporary and illusory freedom that will disappear as soon as science has filled in the blanks in determinism. Neither is the humility supported by the argument true humility, but a "humility of the gaps." For it is not based on a positive appreciation of our place in the universe, but merely on our temporary inability to fulfill our eugenic ambitions.
But the problem with eugenics is not that, in our present ignorance, we are incapable of wisely conducting it. The problem is that the eugenic vision is itself one of Hell rather than Heaven. Woodrow Wilson's vision of a 'perfected, co-ordinated beehive' should fill us with a deep horror, not wistful longing for that which we cannot currently obtain. (The classic, schlocky 1976 sci-fi "B" movie Logan's Run plays on the theme of the eugenic utopia that is really a hell.)
The unfortunate fact is that eugenics works. And you don't need a deep knowledge of genetics to make it work. Man has been successfully selectively breeding animals for thousands of years, most of that time in utter ignorance of genetics. There is no doubt that man can selectively breed himself as well. You breed tall men with tall women and you get tall children. You breed intelligent men with intelligent women and you get intelligent children. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the eugenicists of the early 20th century were not wrong because their eugenics program didn't work; they were wrong because, even if it did work (and it does), the attempt itself is damnable. The reasons it is damnable, however, are philosophical and not scientific.
There is no scientific argument against eugenics, for even if we are too ignorant right now to make eugenics work, we may be knowledgeable enough in the future. Rather than retarding eugenic efforts, the appeal to ignorance is a spur to investigate them further, for science thrives on the challenge of the unknown. Ignorance is no barrier to eugenics; the only true barrier is knowledge, a knowledge of man's true place in the cosmos, and for that we finally need philosophy and not science.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Determination, Genes, and Explanation, and Eugenics
I commented on an online article by Jim Manzi here. Jim has another recent article, this time from the June 2 edition of the paper version of National Review, which you can get (if you pay for it) here.
The June 2 article has the promising title "Undetermined: There is danger in assuming that genes explain all." The title may lead the reader to suspect that the article will refute genetic determinism. While the article does punch holes in certain grandiose claims made in the name of genetic science, it unfortunately does not really address determinism at all; and this because it conflates the notions of determined and explained.
Something is determined when its nature and destiny are entirely the result of non-rational, physical causes. Given a certain physical state of a system and the universe in which it exists, the future state of the system follows of necessity from the initial state (at least in a statistical sense.) Something is explained (in a scientific sense) when its present or future physical states can be analyzed and predicted in terms of its past states. It is possible for something to be determined yet unexplained. This happens when the problem of analysis becomes intractable.
Such intractability happens all the time. In fact, in physics and engineering, the vast majority of physical problems are intractable. Take a simple coin toss. The trajectory of the coin is entirely determined by the physical forces on the coin. Yet predicting the result of a coin toss based on analysis of the forces is extremely difficult. There are just too many factors involved and even tiny variations in the parameters of the problem can change the result. So, as far as predicting the result of a coin toss, we are at no advantage to ancient Greeks who never heard of Newton. They knew as well as we do that a coin toss is a 50/50 proposition; but we cannot predict the result of an individual coin toss any better than they could. The intractability of many simple physical problems is what keeps Las Vegas in business. Casinos allow players to place roullette bets even after the ball has been sent rolling on the rim and the wheel spun. Given the velocities and locations of the ball and wheel, shouldn't a player be able to predict where it will land? In theory, yes; in practice, no. The problem is way too sensitive to the precise parameters involved and what happens when the ball falls off the rim and bounces around the number slots. The roullette wheel is entirely determined but also entirely unpredictable.
What about determinism with respect to ourselves? Jim Manzi talks particularly about genes, but the philosophical problem is the same whether it is proposed that we are determined by genes, the environment, some combination of the two, or even if we take the ancient view that we are determined by the stars. (Determinism is thought of as a modern philosophical development, but it is really a return to an ancient mode of thought.) If we are determined by non-rational causes (genes, the environment, evolution, the stars, black cats, etc.), then our nature and destiny are entirely functions of those causes. Whether we can explain or predict our destiny by analysis of those causes is entirely another question. A demonstration that such prediction is practically impossible does not answer the claim that we are determined.
The popular belief in genetic determinism, Manzi tells us, comes from the media loosely speaking "of things such as a 'happiness gene', a 'gay gene', or a 'smart gene.'" The inference that there are genes for every aspect of our nature, and that our nature can be engineered through those genes, naturally follows. "Seeing this momentum, it is natural to assume that eventually we will have explained all human behavior, not just diseases caused by one or a small number of interacting genes." But Manzi cites two reasons why such a conclusion is unjustified. One reason is the "correlation vs. causation" problem. The causal relation between two things does not follow directly from their correlation. In Bertrand Russell's famous example, it would be a mistake to conclude from the correlation of umbrellas opening and rain falling that opening umbrellas causes rain to fall. In the genetic case, a gene may be correlated with a certain trait yet not be the cause of it. Chinese people, for example, may possess a certain gene and also be susceptible to a particular disease, but the cause of the disease may be due to peculiarities of Chinese culture rather than genes. It is very difficult to disentangle environmental from genetic causes because of this problem. This point is of little moment, however, because the precise physical basis of determinism is incidental to its philosophical implications. Whether it is environment, genes, or the stars, the philosophical implications of determinism remain the same.
The more interesting reason Jim cites is something called "epistatic interaction", or the fact that many traits are caused by interactions between several genes rather than a single gene. Some traits are caused by the interaction of many genes. It doesn't take many genes interacting to make the problem of prediction intractable, as Jim points out:
"Consider a simplified case in which some personality characteristic - aggressiveness, for example - is regulated by 100 genes, each of which can have two possible states ('on' or 'off'). The combinatorial math is daunting: There are more than a trillion trillion possible combinations of these gene states. Thus we could sequence the DNA of all 6.7 billion human beings and still not know which genes are responsible for aggressiveness."
What Jim has shown, of course, is that genetic explanation may be impossible; what he has not shown is any reason to dismiss genetic determinism. Indeed, the tone of the article seems to concede determinism without a fight. He ends the article with the following:
"Science may someday allow us to predict human behavior comprehensively and reliably, so that we can live in Woodrow Wilson's 'perfected, co-ordinated beehive.' Until then, however, we need to keep stumbling forward in freedom as best we can."
Determinism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for physical explanation. That is, we "may someday" be able to predict human behavior comprehensively only if human behavior is in fact determined, whether we can explain it now or not. And if human behavior is determined, then we are not free, whether anyone can predict our behavior now or not. If scientists someday come up with that comprehensive and reliable explanation of human behavior, they will not kill freedom at the moment their theory is complete; they will have shown that freedom was an illusion all along. But it isn't even necessary for scientists to come up with that comprehensive theory for freedom to die. The acknowledgment of the possibility of such an explanation is already to concede the philosophical battle to determinism, for such explanations are only possible if human behavior is in fact determined. The truth of determinism is the ground of the possibility of a comprehensive scientific explanation of man.
Jim's argument amounts to a "freedom of the gaps." The reader may recall the famous "god of the gaps" - the god who is conceded to exist as an explanation for those things science has yet to explain. As science advances, the god of the gaps recedes, for there is less and less for him to do. Jim grounds our freedom on the present ignorance of science, and hopes that science will not advance sufficiently to wipe out freedom completely. But the freedom of the gaps, like the god of gaps, is a poor imitation of the original.
Freedom is philosophical, and the reasons for sustaining true freedom in the face of determinism are philosophical rather than scientific. Human nature and behavior cannot possibly be determined by any set of non-rational causes (the only causes of which science is cognizant), for the simple reason that we are rational, or knowing, beings. Through knowledge, we transcend what we know, and break free of its determinations. Science, for instance, is itself an example of human behavior. Any scientific theory that attempted to comprehensively and reliably explain human behavior would have to include scientific behavior itself in the account. It would have to predict the behavior of scientists in their laboratories and in their theorizing. But such prediction assumes that the scientists can't discover anything radically new that is not already accounted for in the deterministic theory. In other words, the only way a comprehensive and reliable prediction of scientific behavior is possible is if science has come to an end, for only if it is at an end can we be sure that a scientist won't discover something that upsets our comprehensive deterministic theory of man. The comprehensive deterministic theory of man, then, must be the Final Theory of Everything, leaving nothing in the universe out of account that might possibly be a discovery of the future.
But even if someone managed such a Final Theory of Everything, he would still find one thing left out of his theory: Himself. His theory cannot account for his own understanding of the theory, for his understanding of the theory doesn't exist until he has finished it. And once he has finished it, he has created a novel human behavior that is not yet accounted for by the theory; the discovery of this particular Final Theory of Everything. So there cannot possibly be a comprehensive and reliable deterministic explanation of man, for the explainers themselves will escape the deterministic explanation.
The argument can be put another way: Any claim of determination must cite the non-rational causes that are the ground of determination. We are determined by genes, evolution, the stars, whatever. But the very argument for non-rational determination is itself an example of rational causation that transcends the set of non-rational causes. The geneticist may propose a "happiness gene", but he never proposes a "genetic theory gene"; in other words, a gene that causes someone to propose the very genetic theory he is proposing. But unless there is such a gene (or epistatic interaction of genes), then his deterministic theory cannot be a comprehensive explanation of man.
In the end, I agree with Jim's title. We are indeed "undetermined." But the reasons we are undetermined are philosophical, not scientific, and the best Jim's scientific argument can show is that we are (currently) "unexplained", not that we are "undetermined."
The title of this post mentions eugenics, but I will save that for a coming post...
The June 2 article has the promising title "Undetermined: There is danger in assuming that genes explain all." The title may lead the reader to suspect that the article will refute genetic determinism. While the article does punch holes in certain grandiose claims made in the name of genetic science, it unfortunately does not really address determinism at all; and this because it conflates the notions of determined and explained.
Something is determined when its nature and destiny are entirely the result of non-rational, physical causes. Given a certain physical state of a system and the universe in which it exists, the future state of the system follows of necessity from the initial state (at least in a statistical sense.) Something is explained (in a scientific sense) when its present or future physical states can be analyzed and predicted in terms of its past states. It is possible for something to be determined yet unexplained. This happens when the problem of analysis becomes intractable.
Such intractability happens all the time. In fact, in physics and engineering, the vast majority of physical problems are intractable. Take a simple coin toss. The trajectory of the coin is entirely determined by the physical forces on the coin. Yet predicting the result of a coin toss based on analysis of the forces is extremely difficult. There are just too many factors involved and even tiny variations in the parameters of the problem can change the result. So, as far as predicting the result of a coin toss, we are at no advantage to ancient Greeks who never heard of Newton. They knew as well as we do that a coin toss is a 50/50 proposition; but we cannot predict the result of an individual coin toss any better than they could. The intractability of many simple physical problems is what keeps Las Vegas in business. Casinos allow players to place roullette bets even after the ball has been sent rolling on the rim and the wheel spun. Given the velocities and locations of the ball and wheel, shouldn't a player be able to predict where it will land? In theory, yes; in practice, no. The problem is way too sensitive to the precise parameters involved and what happens when the ball falls off the rim and bounces around the number slots. The roullette wheel is entirely determined but also entirely unpredictable.
What about determinism with respect to ourselves? Jim Manzi talks particularly about genes, but the philosophical problem is the same whether it is proposed that we are determined by genes, the environment, some combination of the two, or even if we take the ancient view that we are determined by the stars. (Determinism is thought of as a modern philosophical development, but it is really a return to an ancient mode of thought.) If we are determined by non-rational causes (genes, the environment, evolution, the stars, black cats, etc.), then our nature and destiny are entirely functions of those causes. Whether we can explain or predict our destiny by analysis of those causes is entirely another question. A demonstration that such prediction is practically impossible does not answer the claim that we are determined.
The popular belief in genetic determinism, Manzi tells us, comes from the media loosely speaking "of things such as a 'happiness gene', a 'gay gene', or a 'smart gene.'" The inference that there are genes for every aspect of our nature, and that our nature can be engineered through those genes, naturally follows. "Seeing this momentum, it is natural to assume that eventually we will have explained all human behavior, not just diseases caused by one or a small number of interacting genes." But Manzi cites two reasons why such a conclusion is unjustified. One reason is the "correlation vs. causation" problem. The causal relation between two things does not follow directly from their correlation. In Bertrand Russell's famous example, it would be a mistake to conclude from the correlation of umbrellas opening and rain falling that opening umbrellas causes rain to fall. In the genetic case, a gene may be correlated with a certain trait yet not be the cause of it. Chinese people, for example, may possess a certain gene and also be susceptible to a particular disease, but the cause of the disease may be due to peculiarities of Chinese culture rather than genes. It is very difficult to disentangle environmental from genetic causes because of this problem. This point is of little moment, however, because the precise physical basis of determinism is incidental to its philosophical implications. Whether it is environment, genes, or the stars, the philosophical implications of determinism remain the same.
The more interesting reason Jim cites is something called "epistatic interaction", or the fact that many traits are caused by interactions between several genes rather than a single gene. Some traits are caused by the interaction of many genes. It doesn't take many genes interacting to make the problem of prediction intractable, as Jim points out:
"Consider a simplified case in which some personality characteristic - aggressiveness, for example - is regulated by 100 genes, each of which can have two possible states ('on' or 'off'). The combinatorial math is daunting: There are more than a trillion trillion possible combinations of these gene states. Thus we could sequence the DNA of all 6.7 billion human beings and still not know which genes are responsible for aggressiveness."
What Jim has shown, of course, is that genetic explanation may be impossible; what he has not shown is any reason to dismiss genetic determinism. Indeed, the tone of the article seems to concede determinism without a fight. He ends the article with the following:
"Science may someday allow us to predict human behavior comprehensively and reliably, so that we can live in Woodrow Wilson's 'perfected, co-ordinated beehive.' Until then, however, we need to keep stumbling forward in freedom as best we can."
Determinism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for physical explanation. That is, we "may someday" be able to predict human behavior comprehensively only if human behavior is in fact determined, whether we can explain it now or not. And if human behavior is determined, then we are not free, whether anyone can predict our behavior now or not. If scientists someday come up with that comprehensive and reliable explanation of human behavior, they will not kill freedom at the moment their theory is complete; they will have shown that freedom was an illusion all along. But it isn't even necessary for scientists to come up with that comprehensive theory for freedom to die. The acknowledgment of the possibility of such an explanation is already to concede the philosophical battle to determinism, for such explanations are only possible if human behavior is in fact determined. The truth of determinism is the ground of the possibility of a comprehensive scientific explanation of man.
Jim's argument amounts to a "freedom of the gaps." The reader may recall the famous "god of the gaps" - the god who is conceded to exist as an explanation for those things science has yet to explain. As science advances, the god of the gaps recedes, for there is less and less for him to do. Jim grounds our freedom on the present ignorance of science, and hopes that science will not advance sufficiently to wipe out freedom completely. But the freedom of the gaps, like the god of gaps, is a poor imitation of the original.
Freedom is philosophical, and the reasons for sustaining true freedom in the face of determinism are philosophical rather than scientific. Human nature and behavior cannot possibly be determined by any set of non-rational causes (the only causes of which science is cognizant), for the simple reason that we are rational, or knowing, beings. Through knowledge, we transcend what we know, and break free of its determinations. Science, for instance, is itself an example of human behavior. Any scientific theory that attempted to comprehensively and reliably explain human behavior would have to include scientific behavior itself in the account. It would have to predict the behavior of scientists in their laboratories and in their theorizing. But such prediction assumes that the scientists can't discover anything radically new that is not already accounted for in the deterministic theory. In other words, the only way a comprehensive and reliable prediction of scientific behavior is possible is if science has come to an end, for only if it is at an end can we be sure that a scientist won't discover something that upsets our comprehensive deterministic theory of man. The comprehensive deterministic theory of man, then, must be the Final Theory of Everything, leaving nothing in the universe out of account that might possibly be a discovery of the future.
But even if someone managed such a Final Theory of Everything, he would still find one thing left out of his theory: Himself. His theory cannot account for his own understanding of the theory, for his understanding of the theory doesn't exist until he has finished it. And once he has finished it, he has created a novel human behavior that is not yet accounted for by the theory; the discovery of this particular Final Theory of Everything. So there cannot possibly be a comprehensive and reliable deterministic explanation of man, for the explainers themselves will escape the deterministic explanation.
The argument can be put another way: Any claim of determination must cite the non-rational causes that are the ground of determination. We are determined by genes, evolution, the stars, whatever. But the very argument for non-rational determination is itself an example of rational causation that transcends the set of non-rational causes. The geneticist may propose a "happiness gene", but he never proposes a "genetic theory gene"; in other words, a gene that causes someone to propose the very genetic theory he is proposing. But unless there is such a gene (or epistatic interaction of genes), then his deterministic theory cannot be a comprehensive explanation of man.
In the end, I agree with Jim's title. We are indeed "undetermined." But the reasons we are undetermined are philosophical, not scientific, and the best Jim's scientific argument can show is that we are (currently) "unexplained", not that we are "undetermined."
The title of this post mentions eugenics, but I will save that for a coming post...
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