The Varieties of Altruistic Experiences

Altruism is a very heavily loaded word  in evolutionary psychology/ biology and I would not add to the confusion by defining the term myself. Suffice it to say , that I will use it in all of its various intuitive and theoretical usages.

The evolution of biological Altruism is generally considered as a challenge to Darwinian evolution and there are thought to be two main theories of how Altruism is possible or has evolved. These are Hamilton's Kin-selection and inclusive fitness theory and Trivers' Reciprocal Altruism theory, though some prominent people disagree that there are indeed two separate phenomenon at work and try to argue that they are one and the same phenomenon. 

I would argue instead that there are more varieties of Altruism than the above two- and that it may also be beneficial to decompose the phenomenon of kin selection and reciprocal altruism into their sub components and to to derive/ elucidate the proximate mechanisms that are involved in these phenomenon as opposed to a single-minded focus on the ultimate explanations of why and how such models can give rise to altruism.

To that effect I would like to separate the parental-investment and parent-child 'kid-selection' effects from other genetic relatives or 'kin-selection' effects. The reason I believe they are separate is because having a child or Kid involves bringing in a new relative with 0.5 relatedness in this world , so the cost to bring in to the parent can be very high as post facto (childbirth) the inclusive fitness becomes 1.5 +0.5b-c (cost) while earlier it was only 1.  Thus, the act can be undertaken if 0.5 +0.5b>c.  In the kin selection case however the inclusive fitness is 1-c +0.5+ 0.5*b after the altruistic act vis-a-vis 1.5 before the act ; so  the act can only be undertaken if 0.5b>c . the addition of a constant 0.5 to the first equation changes the dynamics to a large extent and thus my idea to keep the two phenomenon separate.

Also, reciprocal altruism can itself be broken into some differing phenomenons. The first phenomenon is generalized reciprocity (which is even found in rats , see also this) and others are direct, indirect and strong reciprocity. To summarize form an earlier post:

As per what is know about the evolution of Altruism, it is surmised that co-operation in groups emerges based on four types of reciprocity- direct, indirect, strong and generalized.

In direct reciprocity, one helps another person/animal because the other animal has helped oneself in the past. This requires cognitive capacities to recognize different individuals and require social memory as to which member of the group had helped and which had defected or free loafed. While some animals like the Elephant have good social memories and the ability to remember and recognize different individuals, most animals fall short on these traits.

In indirect reciprocity, one helps another because one has observed the other guy to have helped someone else. This again requires cognitive capacities to recognize and also to remember This is more so based on a reputation system, wherein you start trusting someone more if you observe him doing good deeds. In return you are likely to help the do-gooder , when he is in time of need.

In strong reciprocity, people punish the defectors or free-loafers or non-cooperators. This requires sophisticated cognitive abilities to recognize the defectors and a willingness to undergo cost to oneself while punishing the defector. This too, along with the above two, has rarely been observed in animals apart from humans.

Finally, generalized reciprocity happens when one indulges in good deeds towards a stranger just based on the fact that one has in the near future received such help from other strangers/ con specifics. There are variations on this theme, whereby if people have been put in a good mood (which is a substitute for having received a good deed) they are more likely to indulge in altruistic acts like picking up books dropped by a confederate. This type of reciprocity does not make very strong cognitive demands as one just has to remember the summary of whether the environment is cooperative or not, to produce the right kind of behavior.

So based on above I would like to differentiate between two clusters of reciprocity: Generalized reciprocity not requiring sophisticated cognitive mechanisms, but requiring global assumptions about the social environment; and strong, direct and indirect reciprocity - all involving sophisticated cognitive mechanisms but not dependent on assumptions about the global social environment.

With this I would now like to move to my main thesis. I argue that altruism is a social and group phenomenon and to understand all the proximal mechanisms that are involved in altruistic acts we have to appreciate the mechanisms and drives that lead to group formation, group cohesion and expansion and finally group thriving or differential success from other similar groups based on selection of members belonging to the group such that their is non-zero sum benefits of being in the group.

I would argue that all of the above can be understood in the eight stage framework, with the first three stages related to group formation; the next two related to investment in group (expanding or making it cohesive) and the last three related to populating the group with better individuals/ creating a suitable group that has maximum payoffs for all.

To start with , let us revisit the eight basic adaptive problems as elaborated here and here.

1. The first problem to be solved 'foe' is also the first primary driver for the evolution of groups. Groups or herd evolve per se, because a solitary creature is more vulnerable to predation than as part of a group. This is how herding evolved. The proximate mechanism working at this level is that of merging with a group. 
2. The second problem to be solved 'food' is the secondary driver for evolution of groups. It is envisaged that hunting/ gathering as part of a group leads to better  and bigger catches than are individually possible. this provides the incentive to work with other group members to hunt/ forage. This introduces the problem of who would eat the catch when one of them kills, but others are part of the raid party. The solution to the above problem is achieved using the mechanisms of sharing of the spoils. Thus, the proximate mechanism working at this level is a tendency to share the food / resources when begged for by those who are of the same band/ herd/ raiding party.  
3. The third problem to be solved is 'friends' or con-specifics themselves. As all the group members  are competitors in the same niche, they have to learn to form alliances and co-operate in non-zero sum games with other partners when such co-operation does not entail a price and leads to mutual benefit.the example here would be that of grooming. A bird cannot remove lice from the top of its own head , but can do so easily if another friend removes the lice for her. This is a nonzero sum game. by co-operating both gain and nobody loses. The grooming can happen simultaneously so there is no reciprocity or memory involved. The proximate mechanism here is that of grooming or befriending (spending time with other just to make the alliance better).
4. The fourth problem to be solved is that of 'kids' and how to help those vulnerable, but related individuals. The kid-selection and parental investment concerns dominate here and lead to emergence of altruism directed towards ones offspring. Now the proximate mechanism devised to help in kid selection is that of care or empathy and this extends to all those who are sick,  vulnerable, infirm or unable to fend for themselves. The care ethic is born and is most visible in contexts where the mother-child or provider-infirm relationship can be activated. Help in rearing infants by related aunts etc is an example of this mechanisms.
   
5. The fifth problem to be solved is that of 'kin' or all the other related individuals in the group. Kin selection comes into picture, but for it to work one has to properly identify 'like' people, who are likely to share genes. It is presumed that selection favored those who can judge likeness of phenotype from likeness of genotype and a a simplistic scenario could be that all the group members are considered as like and one tries to identify with them. This is as opposed to trying to differentiate from them and treating them as not-like. Thus, the proximate mechanism involved could be that of loyalty to the group and identification with the group as opposed to rebelliousness/ unconventionality/ differentiation from the group. The drive to find 'like' and 'related' individuals could easily lead to the ethic of community/ loyalty towards the self identified group. Also, forgiveness instinct towards those considered part of group and hence pertaining to valuable relationships that should be maintained despite small annoyances.
   
6. The sixth problem to be solved is that of 'selecting' a partner/ partners with which one could indulge in altruistic games. Here the payoff to another would be at a cost to oneself and hence it is not a simple case of co-operation or mutualism in which both parties would benefit. Ideally, when partners have not been determined a priori and one has to discover the characteristics of the majority of the partners (or the population)  and at the same time not harm oneself by unconditional altruistic costs, the viable strategy would be to play with many diverse individuals and play using a generalized reciprocity scheme. At the end of many iterations, one can look at ones strategy and depending on how much altruistic or selfish it is, determine the characteristics of the population. This requires minimal cognitive demands as in not requiring the ability to remember individual interactions. In simple words this can be dubbed as Trust. You trust other people as you do not really know them, except in so far as they are part of the group and hence likely to have a majority group characteristic.  thus, a typical example would be ultimatum game. though the person with which you may playing may be stranger, you know a few things from your generalized reciprocity interactions with other individuals to know that majority of them are fair (make offers at 50 %) and also punish small splits. Thus, based on how you yourself have been given endowments in the past (and how others have rejected endowments given by you) you can reasonably play an ultimatum game with a stranger with same population wide results. Thus, the proximate mechanism here is that of Trusting others to be like the general population stereotype. thus, in humans, most of us are 'altruistic'/ 'good' and hence we trust well rather than be suspicious.             
7. The seventh task is that of seducing or attracting the right kind of partners so that the payoff the group, and hence yours, increases. Three separate mechanisms are at work here. Direct reciprocity harnesses our ability to remember individuals to pay them back in the future. Gratitude is the proximal mechanism that ensures that we do indeed pay back when time comes. Strong reciprocity ensures that we pay back, in another sense of the term, to the free-riders / defectors. By having punishment in the system one can ensure that the group is not overtaken by free-riders and defectors. The proximal mechanism active here is that of vengeance and not letting the culprits go off scot free. Indirect reciprocity on the other hand works on third party interactions and is based on respect , that is a generalized reputation of an agent to be 'good'/'bad' and acting towards them based on their reputations rather than their immediate behaviors. The proximate mechanism active here is respect/ authority. 
8. The eighth task is to secure the group or keep the group well-knit and isolate form other 'corrosive' groups. One problem that poses a hurdle to group securing is unexpected payoffs (like war loot) and how they are handled by the group. They may be distributed to everyone equally, distributed as per a hierarchy or consumed by a few dominant individuals.Here the ethics of fairness and equality is the proximate mechanism that is used to settle matters. Another important factor here is not to let other group members infiltrate the successful group and subvert it from within. This gives rise to the ethic of purity and sanctity : the group is considered pure and sanctimonious and only other pure individual are allowed to join the group. The perverts within the group may be destroyed/ redeemed/ salvaged.                     

Thus, in my view, altruism involves all these proximal mechanisms: merging, sharing, grooming and befriending, caring, loyalty (identifying and forgiving), trusting; justice as in gratitude (positive justice),vengeance (negative justice) and respect (generalized justice); and finally the ethics of fairness/equality and purity /sanctity. Some of these can be easily mapped to Haidt's five basic moral foundations.

In a follow-up post I will try to show how these eight altruistic proximate mechanism are reflected in personality traits especially with reference to HEXACO personality model to which one of my readers pointed me to.

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Autism / Psychosis: Agency and Joint Attention

A recent study by Tomosello's group indicates that children with autism, can help a stranger pick a pen (and thus can apparently infer goal and intentional states of others), but cannot indulge in co-operative behavior that may involve shared goals and shared attention.

As per Translating Autism blog:

This fresh-off-the-press article comes to us from Dr. Michael Tomasello’s group at the Max Planck institute in Germany. The authors present the results of two studies looking at helping and cooperation in children with autism. The first study compared 15 children with ASD (14 with Autism and 1 with PDD-NOS) with 15 children with other non-ASD developmental delays (40 months of age average). During this study the children were place in situations that either called for helping behaviors (such as picking up a pen that the researcher dropped and could not reach) or a similar situation that did not necessarily call for helping behaviors (such as when the researcher threw the pen on purpose and did not attempt to pick it up). Both groups (children with Autism and children with other developmental delays) showed more helping behaviors when placed in the situation that called for such behaviors. That is, when the experimenter was “trying” to reach an out-of-reach object, both groups were more likely to help than when the experimenter was not trying to reach for the object. The authors concluded that these behaviors showed that both groups understood the adult’s goals and were motivated to help her. In the second study, the same children were placed in situations that called for “cooperative” behaviors, such as a task requiring them to work with the researcher by simultaneously pulling at two cylinders to reach a toy. The results showed that children with autism were less likely than kids with other developmental delays to successfully complete the cooperation tasks. Furthermore, the children with autism were less likely to initiate additional attempts to complete the task when the task was interrupted. The authors concluded that, at least at this developmental period, children with autism seem to understand the social components of situations that call for “helping” behaviors and engage in helping behaviors, but only when such help does not require interpersonal cooperation. However, when cooperation is required to complete the task, these children are less likely to correctly engage with another partner, possibly because the unique “shared” component of cooperation. That is, cooperation requires shared goals, shared attention, and a shared plan of action, processes that seem to be affected in children with autism.

Here is the abstract of the Tomosello paper:

Helping and cooperation are central to human social life. Here, we report two studies investigating these social behaviors in children with autism and children with developmental delay. In the first study, both groups of children helped the experimenter attain her goals. In the second study, both groups of children cooperated with an adult, but fewer children with autism performed the tasks successfully. When the adult stopped interacting at a certain moment, children with autism produced fewer attempts to re-engage her, possibly indicating that they had not formed a shared goal/shared intentions with her. These results are discussed in terms of the prerequisite cognitive and motivational skills and propensities underlying social behavior

From the above it is clear that children with Autism lack shared attention: a pre-requisite for language and their language impediments may also be due to this fact. If we contrast this with Schizophrenia/ Psychosis ( and assuming they are at opposite ends) it is not hard to see that with too much shared goals/ intentions/ attention, one may likely confuse between one's own goals and those of others and in a joint scenario be more susceptible to delusions of control/ though insertion, wherein the shared space has become so vast that one seems to be controlled by the other or intruded by the other. thus , I propose that children susceptible to psychosis should show enhanced cooperating behavior indicating an overactive shared goals/ attention module.

Another interesting study I would like to discuss is the recent reporting of a dysfunctional 'self' module/model in a Trust game as compared to the 'other' module/ model. Here is how the Science Daily describes the Trust game that was used in the game.

In the trust game, one player receives an amount of money and then sends whatever amount he or she wants to the other player via computer message. The amount sent is tripled and the player at the other end then decides how much of the tripled amount to send back. The game has several rounds.

The 'self' module was identified as the brain areas (cingulate cortex) involved when making the decision to share the initial amount of money with another person. The 'other' module was defined as network region activated when the decision of the other player was revealed to them.

It was found that autistics showed lowered activity in the 'self' module. The authors construe this as evidence that they have a defective self concept.

"To have a good self concept, you have to be able to decide if the shared outcome is due to the other person or due to you," said Montague. "If people can't see themselves as a distinct entities at deeper levels, there is a disconnect."

I beg to differ. In my view the findings can be explained using the joint attention / goal/ outcome defect outlined above. Although I believe that their explanation that people with autism may have a diminished sense of self or Agency also makes intuitive sense and I have argued the same previously. I contrast that with the Psychotic case where one attributes too much agency- even to inanimate objects or animals for example. However, in this case a more parsimonious explanation can be that the autistics were not able to model the others goal as their own (the familiar simulation argument) and could not indulged in joint goal intention and thus failed to optimally use the 'self' module i/e failed to take whatever actions were needed for a co-operative and trustful behavior .

The Friths adequately sum that up:

In a preview in the journal Neuron, Chris and Uta Frith wrote, "This is an exciting result because it suggests that some mechanisms of social interaction are intact in these high-functioning cases. What is the critical difference between the self phase and the other phase? We believe that the simple distinction of self versus other is not adequate. "It involves higher-order mentalizing: you care what another person thinks of you, and even further, you care that the other person trusts you. You would not do this when playing against a computer. In autism there is no difference," wrote the Friths, who are at University College London.

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Neural correlates of trust

This is the title of a new paper in PNAS by Krueger et al, that tries to find the neural correlates of conditional and unconditional trust using the sequential, reciprocal trust game. The authors premise is that conditional trust is more costly strategy compared to unconditional trust and might utilize different brain areas as well.

Conditional trust assumes that one's partner is self-interested and estimates the expected value of one's strategy with respect to the benefits of cooperating, the risk of defection, and the future value of past decisions; it causes less balanced goodwill and results in greater variance in cooperative decisions and, therefore, is cognitively more costly to maintain. In contrast, unconditional trust assumes that one's partner is trustworthy and updates the value of one's partner with respect to their characteristics and past performance; balanced goodwill occurs more quickly, allowing the partners to attain high levels of synchronicity in their decisions and, therefore, is cognitively less costly to maintain. In this work, an examination of functional brain activity supports the hypothesis that the preferential activation of different neuronal systems implements these two trust strategies.

The results of their experiments supported their initial hypothesis and they found that while Para Cingulate cortex (PcC) activation was necessary for menatlizing and initial building of trust; later unconditional and conditional trust strategies deployed different brain areas viz Septal Area (SA) and Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) respectively.

Unconditional trust assumes that one's partner is trustworthy. During the building stage, first movers in the nondefector group showed higher activation in the PcC compared with first movers in the defector group. Through mentalizing, partners of this group verified their prior trustworthy assumption, updated the value of one's partner's strategy with respect to their past performance, and maintained a balanced goodwill toward each other, allowing them to avoid defections. By developing "better" mental models in this early stage, partners in the nondefector group accumulated sufficient mutual goodwill to become socially attached to each other and adopted an unconditional trust strategy.

During the maintenance stage, the nondefector group showed a higher activation in the SA compared with the defector group. Across groups, pairs who showed the highest trust-reciprocate history in their decisions also showed the highest activation in this region. Furthermore, analyses of pre- and postscan behavioral ratings confirmed that only nondefector pairs felt significantly closer to each other and ranked themselves as being more of a partner to the other person after the experiment. Through early mentalizing, partners in the nondefector group must have balanced goodwill more quickly, allowing them to become synchronized in their decision patterns. Brain-to-brain correlations only increased in the SA region for the nondefector group across stages, and only partners in the nondefector group became synchronized in their SA BOLD amplitudes as first movers in adjacent trials of trust games. Synchronization in the SA led to social attachment associated with a significant decrease in activation in the PcC during the maintenance stage. By adopting this cognitively less costly strategy, decision times became significantly faster for the nondefector group across stages of the experiment.

Conditional trust assumes that one's partner is self-interested. During the building stage, first movers in the defector group showed less activation in the PcC compared with the nondefector group. Through less mentalizing in the building stage, partners in this group produced higher errors in the inferences of second movers' goodwill toward them, resulting in less balanced goodwill and, therefore, in less overall trust compared with the nondefector group. More importantly, they started to trust more in the low-payoff games and less in the high-payoff games. This decision pattern implies that defectors were adapting a conditional trust strategy by evaluating the expected value of one's strategy with respect to the risks and benefits of cooperation.

During the maintenance stage, the defector group showed higher activations in the VTA compared with the nondefector group, a region linked to the dopaminergic mesolimbic reward system providing a general reinforcement mechanism to encode expected and realized reward . Across groups, pairs who shared the lowest trust-reciprocate history in their decisions also showed the highest activation in this region. By adopting a cognitively more costly strategy, partners in the defector group showed a significant increase in activation in the PcC over the experiment. Through more mentalizing in this late stage, first movers in the defector group tried to develop more accurate models about the likelihood of their partner's choices so that they could make a more advantageous decision about when to trust. The conditional trust strategy paid off less over time as total earnings decreased for the defector group (but increased for the nondefector group) across stages.

Thus, it seems that SA, based on oxytocin and vasopressin and social bonding is a more cost-effective strategy than the VTA based on dompainerigic system based on reward monitoring.

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Science and Religion revisited: a case for a universal spiritual grammar?

I have earlier commented on how Science and Religions may be alternate frames via which we try to make sense of our lives and the world and how autistic thinking may be more related to scientific leanings; while a schizophrenic thinking style more prone to religiosity/ spirituality. I have also commented recently how one may view mind as composed of Agency and Experience; while a brain as composed of no agency/ experience; thus again bifurcating our concepts about self along religious/ scientific lines. One may add to this too much causal reasoning about the world as opposed to belief in randomness; and extend this to the earlier observations on Autistic and Schizophrenic thinking styles:

To recap:

• Autistic/ scientific thinking style attributes too less of agency or intentionally (to even fellow human beings), while a schizophrenic/spiritual thinking style attributes too much agency (to even non-living things).
• Autistic thinking is more correlation-is-not-causation type and makes sense of the world via statistical inferences and reasoning (I am not using probabilistic reasoning by purpose as there is difference between a probabilistic reasoning based on understanding of events involved (say the fact that a die has six faces and it is equally probable that it lends on either face ) versus a reasoning based on just number crunching on past data set (say given the outcomes of a number of such die throws statistically calculating the chances of the next throw value)); while the schizophrenic thinking style is more jumping to conclusions and more of causal (cause-and-effect) type of reasoning.
• Autistic thinking is more of attributing no-experience-of-feelings-beliefs etc to fellow humans mind blindness), while a schizophrenic style is marked by a felling that one can intuit thoughts, feelings of others and a converse belief that one;s thoughts, feeling are being broadcast etc that is belief in too much of experience by self as well as others. The theory of mind or mirror neurons may go on overdrive in a psychotic episode.
• Autistic thinking being more realistic/ literal; while schizophrenic thinking being more symbolic/ metaphorical. one could summarize this as too much meaning on one hand (there is meaning to life etc), while a nihilistic attitude on the other hand (evolution has no meaning and neither is evolution progress).
  

I read a recent NYT article by Robin Marantz Henig, that seems to nicely summarize the major arguments on why religion evolved and whether it is a spandrel or an adaptation. I would now like to quote from that article on one theory of how religion evolved as a spandrel:

Hardships of early human life favored the evolution of certain cognitive tools, among them the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm, to come up with causal narratives for natural events and to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions. Psychologists call these tools, respectively, agent detection, causal reasoning and theory of mind.

These map very well to our Autistic/ scientific vs schizophrenic/religious/ artistic dichotomy. It is interesting to note that evolution itself decreed that we have capacities for agent detection, causal reasoning (though in a scientific sense we should have statistical or probabilistic Bayesian reasoning) and theory of mind capacities. Schizophrenic are the evolutionary cost for having these capacities. Later in the article it is also mentioned that making sense of death and life may be one region religion evolved. But first the importance of each of these abilities:

Agent detection evolved because assuming the presence of an agent — which is jargon for any creature with volitional, independent behavior — is more adaptive than assuming its absence. If you are a caveman on the savannah, you are better off presuming that the motion you detect out of the corner of your eye is an agent and something to run from, even if you are wrong. If it turns out to have been just the rustling of leaves, you are still alive; if what you took to be leaves rustling was really a hyena about to pounce, you are dead.

So if there is motion just out of our line of sight, we presume it is caused by an agent, an animal or person with the ability to move independently. This usually operates in one direction only; lots of people mistake a rock for a bear, but almost no one mistakes a bear for a rock.

What does this mean for belief in the supernatural? It means our brains are primed for it, ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic. “The most central concepts in religions are related to agents,” Justin Barrett, a psychologist, wrote in his 2004 summary of the byproduct theory, “Why Would Anyone Believe in God?” Religious agents are often supernatural, he wrote, “people with superpowers, statues that can answer requests or disembodied minds that can act on us and the world

A second mental module that primes us for religion is causal reasoning. The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no matter how apparently random. “We automatically, and often unconsciously, look for an explanation of why things happen to us,” Barrett wrote, “and ‘stuff just happens’ is no explanation. Gods, by virtue of their strange physical properties and their mysterious superpowers, make fine candidates for causes of many of these unusual events.” The ancient Greeks believed thunder was the sound of Zeus’s thunderbolt. Similarly, a contemporary woman whose cancer treatment works despite 10-to-1 odds might look for a story to explain her survival. It fits better with her causal-reasoning tool for her recovery to be a miracle, or a reward for prayer, than for it to be just a lucky roll of the dice.

A third cognitive trick is a kind of social intuition known as theory of mind. It’s an odd phrase for something so automatic, since the word “theory” suggests formality and self-consciousness. Other terms have been used for the same concept, like intentional stance and social cognition. One good alternative is the term Atran uses: folkpsychology.

Folkpsychology, as Atran and his colleagues see it, is essential to getting along in the contemporary world, just as it has been since prehistoric times. It allows us to anticipate the actions of others and to lead others to believe what we want them to believe; it is at the heart of everything from marriage to office politics to poker. People without this trait, like those with severe autism, are impaired, unable to imagine themselves in other people’s heads.

The process begins with positing the existence of minds, our own and others’, that we cannot see or feel. This leaves us open, almost instinctively, to belief in the separation of the body (the visible) and the mind (the invisible). If you can posit minds in other people that you cannot verify empirically, suggests Paul Bloom, a psychologist and the author of “Descartes’ Baby,” published in 2004, it is a short step to positing minds that do not have to be anchored to a body. And from there, he said, it is another short step to positing an immaterial soul and a transcendent God.

The adaptive advantage of folkpsychology is obvious. According to Atran, our ancestors needed it to survive their harsh environment, since folkpsychology allowed them to “rapidly and economically” distinguish good guys from bad guys.

This is an interesting line of argument and later in the article one also find mention of group selection and co-operation being important for evolution of religiosity.

The bottom line, according to byproduct theorists, is that children are born with a tendency to believe in omniscience, invisible minds, immaterial souls — and then they grow up in cultures that fill their minds, hard-wired for belief, with specifics. It is a little like language acquisition, Paul Bloom says, with the essential difference that language is a biological adaptation and religion, in his view, is not. We are born with an innate facility for language but the specific language we learn depends on the environment in which we are raised. In much the same way, he says, we are born with an innate tendency for belief, but the specifics of what we grow up believing — whether there is one God or many, whether the soul goes to heaven or occupies another animal after death — are culturally shaped.

This bodes for a more fuller post detailing and chalking the universal religious/ spiritual grammar, similar to the exercise I did for Universal moral grammar. Wait a little for that post!! For now on to the religion is an anti-dote to death anxiety argument:(which covers out fourth difference between Autistic and schizophrenic centered on meaning (or lack of it)):

Fear of death is an undercurrent of belief. The spirits of dead ancestors, ghosts, immortal deities, heaven and hell, the everlasting soul: the notion of spiritual existence after death is at the heart of almost every religion. According to some adaptationists, this is part of religion’s role, to help humans deal with the grim certainty of death. Believing in God and the afterlife, they say, is how we make sense of the brevity of our time on earth, how we give meaning to this brutish and short existence. Religion can offer solace to the bereaved and comfort to the frightened.

Now for the adaptionist arguments:

Intriguing as the spandrel logic might be, there is another way to think about the evolution of religion: that religion evolved because it offered survival advantages to our distant ancestors.

So trying to explain the adaptiveness of religion means looking for how it might have helped early humans survive and reproduce. As some adaptationists see it, this could have worked on two levels, individual and group. Religion made people feel better, less tormented by thoughts about death, more focused on the future, more willing to take care of themselves.

There is ample research that religious people are happier and live longer that atheists, so religion still has evolutionary advantages. It makes sense a being religious and believing in omnipotent god can contribute towards longevity in multiple ways: abstaining from alcohol/ tobacco and reducing death-anxiety being a few that come to mind.

Still, for all its controversial elements, the narrative Wilson devised about group selection and the evolution of religion is clear, perhaps a legacy of his novelist father. Begin, he says, with an imaginary flock of birds. Some birds serve as sentries, scanning the horizon for predators and calling out warnings. Having a sentry is good for the group but bad for the sentry, which is doubly harmed: by keeping watch, the sentry has less time to gather food, and by issuing a warning call, it is more likely to be spotted by the predator. So in the Darwinian struggle, the birds most likely to pass on their genes are the nonsentries. How, then, could the sentry gene survive for more than a generation or two?

To explain how a self-sacrificing gene can persist, Wilson looks to the level of the group. If there are 10 sentries in one group and none in the other, 3 or 4 of the sentries might be sacrificed. But the flock with sentries will probably outlast the flock that has no early-warning system, so the other 6 or 7 sentries will survive to pass on the genes. In other words, if the whole-group advantage outweighs the cost to any individual bird of being a sentry, then the sentry gene will prevail.

There are costs to any individual of being religious: the time and resources spent on rituals, the psychic energy devoted to following certain injunctions, the pain of some initiation rites. But in terms of intergroup struggle, according to Wilson, the costs can be outweighed by the benefits of being in a cohesive group that out-competes the others.

There is another element here too, unique to humans because it depends on language. A person’s behavior is observed not only by those in his immediate surroundings but also by anyone who can hear about it. There might be clear costs to taking on a role analogous to the sentry bird — a person who stands up to authority, for instance, risks losing his job, going to jail or getting beaten by the police — but in humans, these local costs might be outweighed by long-distance benefits. If a particular selfless trait enhances a person’s reputation, spread through the written and spoken word, it might give him an advantage in many of life’s challenges, like finding a mate. One way that reputation is enhanced is by being ostentatiously religious.

This brings us to controversial group selection part and some recent research ahs suggested that group selction after all does work.

The study of evolution is largely the study of trade-offs,” Wilson wrote in “Darwin’s Cathedral.” It might seem disadvantageous, in terms of foraging for sustenance and safety, for someone to favor religious over rationalistic explanations that would point to where the food and danger are. But in some circumstances, he wrote, “a symbolic belief system that departs from factual reality fares better.” For the individual, it might be more adaptive to have “highly sophisticated mental modules for acquiring factual knowledge and for building symbolic belief systems” than to have only one or the other, according to Wilson. For the group, it might be that a mixture of hardheaded realists and symbolically minded visionaries is most adaptive and that “what seems to be an adversarial relationship” between theists and atheists within a community is really a division of cognitive labor that “keeps social groups as a whole on an even keel.”

Symbolic systems having group selection advantages fits with our symbolic/ realistic dichotomy. On this note I'll like to end our discussion and ask readers do they see a need for religion/ spirituality now, or do they still prefer the realistic, scientific method as the only true method, even at the cost of robbing us of meaning.

Tags: schizophrenia, autism, religion, altruism

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Language and Co-operation: Kin Selcetion and 'Group' Selection

A recent study has the potential to flare the 'Is Group selection real?' debates all over again.

As per the press release, it seems that when mutating robots were subjected to environmental pressures and evolution took place, then they evolved a communication system in all cases except the case where the selection was on individual level and the robots were not related.

In the case where robots were related to each other, a communication system evolved. This is interesting finding as the robots apparently have no way to detecting similarity or kinship; so the evolution of communication could only be on the basis of the fact that similarities in kinship led to their having a high probability of using the same sort of symbols to represent the words and a similar type of grammar. This could turn the kin selection on its face as most of the kin selection examples can now be farmed in terms of similarity or kinship endowing the people with similar shared propensities and thus for co-operation to emerge.

The fact that robots that underwent 'group' selection also evolved a communication system is a very fascinating finding that gives back the field of group selection some of its legitimacy and glamor. It has long been theorized that co-operation or altruism occurred in humans because of group selection; but there have been hardcore opponents to this theory who either explain group selection in terms of kinship; or provide alternate explanation involving retribution and punishment for social cheaters. The details of the paper are available here, and the the group selection did not involve punishment of cheaters or social loafers.

Also interesting is to note that in the population of robots that were subjected to individual selection , a primitive form of communication involving deception occurred.

This study has already led to an article relating this to evolution of language in humans. I believe human language evolved in an EEA that involved both Group/ kin selection as well as individual selection; that is why we sometimes use language for miscommunication. I am sure this study will fuel a lot of debate - especially in the Altruism and co-operation evolution blogosphere.


Update : The Panda's thumb has a good article about similar emergence of co-operation in a different experimnet. Read it to get more in-depth analysis of co-operation ecolution.

Tags: language, evolution, altruism

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