Posted: Mar 15, 2014 12:17 pm
We are biological robots, and like all living things we’ve evolved as if to maximise our inclusive fitness, that is, the number of our own genes in future generations.
Humans are also highly unusual in that we have evolved to cooperate tightly in effective groups while at the same time competing vigorously as individuals within the groups. Other organisms that have evolved to cooperate as very effective groups, such as eusocial insects or multicellular animals, have far less competition inside the groups (most of the individual co-operators like worker ants or somatic cells don’t breed).
Cooperation between human groups tends to be markedly different from competition within the groups. One separate group, such as a tribe or a nation state, can happily wipe out another group and take over their resources; competition between groups is often lethal. Within a functioning group, competition is still intense but doesn’t usually take the form of trying to remove competitors, because that would weaken or break up the group. Instead, we compete for status, to divert as high a proportion as possible of group resources towards self and family while being careful to keep the group effective. As everybody is doing the same, this often means settling for roughly equal status. It’s in this context of intense but limited intragroup competition that evolved emotions like pride, shame and remorse are relevant.
Humans’ unique form of cooperation is linked to Theory of Mind, our unique evolved ability to guess each other’s thoughts by automatically running offline simulations which assume (usually correctly) that the other person’s brain processes are much the same as one’s own. We are machinery, and these simulation processes are entirely physical and biological, but the result of using them is that we see each other as essentially non-mechanical, as centres of experience (when we simulate what they are sensing or feeling) and as having free will (because the simulations are in the end only guesses, they are very useful but often wrong).
Although science has shown that we are machinery, science is so far nowhere near being able to predict or control that machinery in detail. We are, in the end, machinery without free will, and in the end neuroscience may well enable us to predict and control each other in that way, with far more accuracy than is possible with Theory of Mind guesswork. But for the time being our fantastically complicated brains are for all practical purposes black boxes, and our only effective way of predicting each other is still the prescientific evolved trick of Theory of Mind, which is a series of only moderately accurate guesses. Scientifically, we haven’t got free will; for practical social purposes, we have.
If, or when, neuroscience succeeds in understanding, predicting and controlling the machinery in our brains, social life is likely to change radically, free will could be lost for practical as well as theoretical purposes, and our social emotions may become redundant or be engineered out. For the time being, however, free will is still a useful practical assumption, and emotions such as pride, shame and remorse are still our most effective guide to managing the uniquely human combination of cooperation and competition within the group.
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Humans are also highly unusual in that we have evolved to cooperate tightly in effective groups while at the same time competing vigorously as individuals within the groups. Other organisms that have evolved to cooperate as very effective groups, such as eusocial insects or multicellular animals, have far less competition inside the groups (most of the individual co-operators like worker ants or somatic cells don’t breed).
Cooperation between human groups tends to be markedly different from competition within the groups. One separate group, such as a tribe or a nation state, can happily wipe out another group and take over their resources; competition between groups is often lethal. Within a functioning group, competition is still intense but doesn’t usually take the form of trying to remove competitors, because that would weaken or break up the group. Instead, we compete for status, to divert as high a proportion as possible of group resources towards self and family while being careful to keep the group effective. As everybody is doing the same, this often means settling for roughly equal status. It’s in this context of intense but limited intragroup competition that evolved emotions like pride, shame and remorse are relevant.
Humans’ unique form of cooperation is linked to Theory of Mind, our unique evolved ability to guess each other’s thoughts by automatically running offline simulations which assume (usually correctly) that the other person’s brain processes are much the same as one’s own. We are machinery, and these simulation processes are entirely physical and biological, but the result of using them is that we see each other as essentially non-mechanical, as centres of experience (when we simulate what they are sensing or feeling) and as having free will (because the simulations are in the end only guesses, they are very useful but often wrong).
Although science has shown that we are machinery, science is so far nowhere near being able to predict or control that machinery in detail. We are, in the end, machinery without free will, and in the end neuroscience may well enable us to predict and control each other in that way, with far more accuracy than is possible with Theory of Mind guesswork. But for the time being our fantastically complicated brains are for all practical purposes black boxes, and our only effective way of predicting each other is still the prescientific evolved trick of Theory of Mind, which is a series of only moderately accurate guesses. Scientifically, we haven’t got free will; for practical social purposes, we have.
If, or when, neuroscience succeeds in understanding, predicting and controlling the machinery in our brains, social life is likely to change radically, free will could be lost for practical as well as theoretical purposes, and our social emotions may become redundant or be engineered out. For the time being, however, free will is still a useful practical assumption, and emotions such as pride, shame and remorse are still our most effective guide to managing the uniquely human combination of cooperation and competition within the group.
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