NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/bit/listserv/csgl/2027

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Date:         Sat, 2 Jan 1993 07:18:15 -0600
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From:         "Gary A. Cziko" <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Evolution of Beliefs
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[from Gary Cziko 930102.0341 GMT] (I typed "92" again and had to change
it):

First a quote from Ashleigh Brilliant which is especially for Ed Ford:

"DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND MY CONTROL, I AM MASTER OF MY FATE AND CAPTAIN
OF MY SOUL."

===============================================================

Now some quotes from Don Campbell concerning culture and beliefs from an
evolutionary perspective (preceding numbers are page numbers. paragraph
numbers).  I will leave it to other's participating in the "beliefs" thread
to comment as they may wish:

  091 (from abstract) "All archaic urban, division-of-labor social
organizations had to overcome aspects of human nature produced by
biological evolution, due to the predicament of genetic competition among
the cooperators.  The universal norms found in archic moral systems are
seen as curbs to this human nature, reinforced by beliefs in invisible
sanction systems and rewarding and punishing afterlives (as in heaven or
reincarnation).  Perhaps the ubiquity of lavishly wasteful royal funerals
is to be explained as contributing to this function."

  092.2 "I argue on evolutionary grounds that it is just as rational to
follow religious traditions which one does not understand as it is rational
to continue breathing air before one understands the role of oxygen in
bodily metabolism."

  093.1 "I want to disseminate a scientific understanding of the
restraining, inhibitory, counterhedonistic, and repressive content in
religious, ethical, and moral teachers:"

  094.3 "We need to regard it as an unproven conjecture needing study that
the social efficacy can be achieved without the transcendent belief.  Legal
approaches to social control cannot be effective in the absence of support
from internalized self-monitoring.  [095.1] But an effective superego or
conscience may not be achieved by simply preaching scientific analyses
proving that everyone would be better off if everyone abided by restraints
and social duties.  Even if convincingly conveyed, this message would still
leave it in the rational best interests of any individual to be a "free
rider" or to cheat on the system."

  096.4 "Most sociobiologists see cultural evolution as selecting only for
behavior patterns that promote individual biological inclusive fitness.
Boyd and Richerson (1983) and I are nearly alone in positing that cultural
evolution can override biological evolution and lead individuals to do
things that are biologically stupid in terms of _individual_ inclusive
fitness."

  096.5 "I [097.1] posit for the cultural evolution of religious beliefs,
ideologies, and moral norms a nonbiological selection by functioning social
unit."

  097.3  "But I surmise that, for intellectuals who retain supernatural
religious belief, an implicit _argument from the design of the moral order_
is involved.  Their intuitions about moral oughts are compelling, and the
truth and origin of these oughts are so hard to explain naturalistically.
Rather than forego these moral intuitions, rather then deny their
authority, one believes in a God that ordained them.  "If God is dead, all
immoralities become permissible." to paraphrase Dostoevsky and Nietsche.
Somehow, in an ambivalent Promethian impulse, I would like to extend
Darwin's achievement, to explain naturalistically the design of the moral
order."

  097.4 "Complex division-of-labor protocivilizations seem to have emerged
independently the world over:  ancient Egypt, Sumer, and Babylon; [098.1]
along the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in ancient China; along the Indus and
Ganges rivers in ancient India; along the desert rivers in ancient Peru;
among the Maya, Almecs, and Aztecs in Mexico."

  098.2 "1. All these protocivilizations were accompanied by political
centralization, coordination, leadership, and hierarchical downward-command
structures headed by a single person.  All were well-organized tyrannies,
or despotisms."

  098.3   2. all had similar "moralizing preachments"

  098.4   3. all supported preachments with a "supernatural cosmology"

  089.5   4. comsmologies were very heterogeneous which "argues in favor of
the multiple independent invention of these archaic city-states." (puzzle
of diversity)

  089.6   5. pantheons and cosmologies were more incredible (literally)
than previous non-centralized beliefs

  090.2   6. "Ubiquitous in these religious cosmologies were rewarding and
punishing heavens, hells, and reincarnations."

  090.3   7. "Also ubiquitous were wasteful royal funerals."

  104.2  "For the theory that follows, we must posit that the individually
adaptive products are so valuable that a general tendency towards blind
conformity has a _net_ individual inclusive fitness advantage, even though
many of the results of that conformity are _individually_ disadvantageous."

  105.4 Cultural unity on a trait need not be interpreted as a product of
adaptive selection.  Cultural differences between nearby tribes need not be
interpreted as adaptations to different ecologies.  This is a great
emancipation for the believer in cultural evolution.  Previously (e.g., in
my 1965 model) my anthropology friends would challenge me. "In our people,
twins are put to death at birth.  In the neighboring people, twins are
given special treatment and reared for shaman roles.  Both live in the same
mosquito-ridden yam culture.  Are you going to claim that this can be
explained as different adaptations?" (Nancy Leis and Philip Leis, personal
communication).  Cultural evolutionists have been at least as much burdened
by excess adaptationism as the sociobiologists criticized by Gould and
Lewontin (e.g., 1984).  Indeed, such excesses in the interpretation of
culture have been the major reason for the rejection of the older
functionalism in sociology and anthropology."

  107.4 "From this point of view, the accidental in-group homogeneities
produced by conformant cultural transmission play a role comparable to that
of the unique nest and hive odors of ants and bees.  They provide signals
as to who is to be admitted and who excluded.  The complexity and
integration of the in-group cooperative system seem to require sharp group
boundaries.  As a result, the in-group homogeneities (and, therefore, the
sharpness of the intergroup differences) are no doubt sharpened beyond what
conformant transmission would produce, further enhancing the possibilities
for cultural group selection, to which we will turn."

  110.2 "...it seems to me plausible that any conformant transmission event
that ended up containng part of the universal moral norm package would have
some systematic tendency to be selected, however slight, and that the
ubiquitous common set of moral norms is in genral what is under selection
pressure.  Ideologies will be selected not for their own content, but
incidental to their support of these norms.  It seems that there are many
specific cosmologies, origin myths, and pantheons that will support the
moral norms.  There seems to be little shared selection pressure on the
specific content, explaining the great heterogeneity of such beliefs."

  111.3 "Biological evolution has, presumably, selected our erogenous sense
organs, our hedonistic sweets and bitters, pleasures and pains, in such a
way as to increase genetic inclusive fitness in the original ecology of
evolution.  It has no doubt also selected from the tendency for more
long-term rational hedonic calculation, which weighs future rewards and
punishments against present temptations.  If cultural evolution through
credulous believing can lead individuals to extend this hedonic calculus to
include rewards and punishments in an afterlife (heaven, reincarnation),
this supports obedience to commands even in the face of death, and
obedience to prohibitions on pleasures even in the absence of observers and
sanction systems."

Campbell, Donald T. (1991). A naturalistic theory of archaic moral orders.
_Zygon_, _26_(1), 91-114.







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