The Selective Universe

In The Origin of Species Darwin introduces the concept of natural selection via the concept of artificial selection. His idea is that nature operates in a manner analogous to human actions of selective breeding and cultivation. Variety is generated by both processes. Some breeds or phenotypes or species are favored by the two processes, leading to their survival, while some are disfavored, leading to their removal or extinction. However, Darwin doesn’t generalize the concept of selection further: he stops at the selective action of nature on living things. I am going to describe a further type of selection. We will need some terminology (in an area where terminology can be a problem[1]): I will speak of intentional selection and nomological selection. Intentional selection is the most familiar and easy to understand: it is a matter of conscious choice, usually on the part of humans but not restricted to humans (we must consider intelligent aliens too). In this kind of selection an agent intentionally selects a type of entity that he or she wants to bring into existence—say, a certain variety of dog. I don’t say “artificial” because there is nothing necessarily “contrived or false” (OED) about it: it is perfectly genuine and natural, because intention is a natural phenomenon. Nor is it “insincere or affected”—it isn’t fake in any way. It is simply a matter of decision, foresight, planning, choice. This is not what “natural” selection is supposed to be—hence the process is analogous to intentional selection but not a case of it. Natural selection is blind, unwilled, unplanned, not chosen—it is “mechanical”. It results from impersonal forces of nature not conscious choices. That is why I call it nomological selection: it is selection according to the laws of nature, not the laws of man (psychological or legal). It is selection by natural laws not by intelligent minds—by things like temperature and gravity. I will be suggesting, then, that nomological selection is a broader concept than Darwinian natural selection, though that phrase would not be semantically incorrect—laws of nature are certainly “natural”.

There are two directions of generalization I want to pursue. The first is that intentional selection applies to more than selective breeding and cultivation: many things can be intentionally selected—clothes, husbands, cars, hairstyles, words, musical notes, food, paint, accents, pets, countries. Where there is intention there is selection: intention is inherently selective. All of it is “artificial” in the sense that it isn’t the result of impersonal forces of nature. Art, in particular, is the result of intentional selection—selecting words (literature), audible notes (music), dabs of color (pictorial art). One might even say that dog breeds are artistic products, if the breed selected is chosen on the basis of aesthetic criteria. Intentional selection is selection from a range of possibilities according to certain ends, and this includes artistic works. Thus, we should include under that heading not just cultivated living things but also artifacts of all kinds. A huge amount of the human environment is the result of intentional selection—the action of human intention on the world. Intention is a powerful engine of creation that has transformed the world around us (also within us). It brings things into existence, and also lets things languish and die. Things are born and survive (or perish) according to human intention—fashions, machines, art works, political systems. A large part of the human world is the upshot of intentional selection. That is what culture is. In the case of nomological selection, we likewise have a natural direction of generalization to consider: the composition and structure of the physical universe is the result of it. The things that exist do so by virtue of the laws of nature: planets, mountains, valleys, stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, etc. Without the laws of nature being what they are we would not have these entities (the law of gravity plays an obvious formative role). The laws of nature create and they destroy, which is why stars are said to have a “life” and to “die”. Glaciers can come to exist and cease to exist according to the ambient temperature. Deserts can be created and disappear depending on the climate and other factors. This is analogous to what happens to species and individual animals: they too can be created by courtesy of the environmental physical conditions and made extinct by them. In this respect dinosaurs are like stars: both can exist for a period and then fade away—by environmental catastrophe or internal dynamics. This is why I introduce the phrase “nomological selection”: I want to mark the similarity to Darwinian natural selection, on one hand, and the dissimilarity to intentional selection, on the other. Of course, Darwin’s natural selection includes genes and reproduction, which are absent from the physical universe of stars and planets, but still the analogy exists and is appropriately labeled “nomological selection”. Selective breeding of plants and animals also involves genes and reproduction, but that doesn’t undermine the analogy with art and artifacts. We are talking about the basic structure of the creative processes involved, not the specific mechanisms, which are peculiar to the case at hand. The important point is that the universe divides into two sorts of selective process: intention-guided and law-guided, personal and impersonal, agential and non-agential. True, laws are like intentions (as intentions are like laws) in that both determine the future: you can predict the future from them. They both act causally, creatively, transformationally—but the two are not identical. We are dealing with two distinct natural cosmological kinds—law-governed creation and mind-governed creation, the unwilled and the willed. Everything you see around you (and don’t see) is the result of one or the other type of selection—hence “the selective universe”. Darwin divided animal creation into two categories—the artificially selected and the naturally selected; I am dividing the whole universe into two categories—the intentionally selected and the nomologically selected. I see this as an extension of Darwin’s basic conception. Everything is about selection under pressure, differential survival, forces of creation and destruction. Our world is a selected world. If God were behind it, it would be a chosen world. This would be supernatural selection.

I intend this as a type of metaphysics—a general conception of reality as a whole. We might call it “selection philosophy” (compare “process philosophy”), or simply “selectionism”.  If I were to draw a diagram of this theory, it would look like the following: at the top we have “Selection” with two arrows pointing to “Intentional Selection” and “Nomological Selection”; then two arrows under each of these pointing to nodes labeled “Aesthetic Selection” and “Non-Aesthetic Selection”, and “Animate Selection” and “Non-Animate Selection”, respectively; these would then branch out into varieties of each category (e.g., music, dogs, and planets). This is how the universe gets carved up. Everything is a variation on the selective theme. It would be possible to adopt different views on priority within this scheme: you might take intentional selection as basic, evincing idealist predilections; or you might take nomological selection as basic, perhaps for physicalist reasons; or you might view the two as mutually irreducible. You could regard intention itself as law-governed or not law-governed. You could have varying views about the nature and status of laws. I would say that intentional selection is a result of nomological selection, because natural selection favored it. You could claim that no coherent universe could exist that was not nomologically selective. You could speak of two types of evolution, both properly so called: biological evolution and cosmological evolution—both types of evolution working by natural (nomological) selection. The galaxies evolved, and so did animal species. You could even argue that both evolutions involve progress or improvement of sorts. You could ponder brain teasers such as whether it would be metaphysically possible to invert the two categories: could the actual results of one sort of selection be exchanged for the other sort? Could art objects have arisen by purely nomological selection and planets evolved by intentional selection? Is the type of origin necessarily linked to the essence of the objects produced? A lot of metaphysics could be constructed around these questions; many doctoral theses could be written debating them. Interdisciplinary work in Selection Science could flourish. Is selection fundamentally dualistic, as Darwin apparently believed concerning his distinction, or is it possible to construct a unified theory of selection in general? Could there be selection in an immaterial universe? What kind of selection would it be if God engaged in his own type of selection? Presumably God selected the laws of nature, so that he is more selectively basic than they are—unless there are laws governing God’s nature. Etc. And what exactly is thisselection we so breezily talk about? Isn’t that a mentally tainted notion? Can it be “naturalized”? All good philosophical questions. Selection metaphysics could be the next Big Thing (heaven help us). Is the actualization of the merely possible the most fundamental kind of selection? How is a possible world to be selected as actual? Is it in the nature of reality to be essentially selective? Is a non-selective reality possible? Is the world the totality of selected facts? Are mathematical and moral facts selective? Contingent truths are selective, but are necessary truths? Thus, the philosophy of selection in all its variety (or uniformity).[2]

[1] I discuss this in “The Language of Evolution”, in Philosophical Provocations (2017).

[2] It might be said that Darwin put the concept of selection on the scientific map, along with gravity, electricity, mass, and motion. We need the concept to do biology. The laws of biology cannot be stated without it. It is the cornerstone of biological science. But he didn’t generalize it beyond the biological world, even though selection involves (among other things) the action of the non-biological world on living things. I am suggesting that universal selection is latent in Darwinian biological science, as universal gravitation is explicit in Newtonian physical science. Gravity operates everywhere, in the large and the small, and so does selection, biological and non-biological, mental and physical. Gravity is itself a selective force, because it causes matter to concentrate and thereby become the objects that define our universe—it selects stars, planets, and galaxies. Then it selects life forms that can exist alongside it. Everything in the biological world is naturally selected; everything in the physical world is nomologically selected, according to the constituents and forces of nature. Selection is a universal (and unifying) principle of nature. Granted, seeing this requires an imaginative leap, but then so did Darwin’s theory. Selection is a ubiquitous active ingredient in the universe—not unlike gravity, in fact. We just need to accept a bit of conceptual extension.

Bend Sinister

Nabokov’s harrowing novel of that name is about political leaning to the left (“sinistral”). Bending sinister is supposed not to be a good thing to do (communism etc.). But we might also use the phrase to describe something more literal—leaning to the left hand. I have been bending sinister regularly. I am a case history in bending sinister, and this is an update (for those who care). First, tennis. I have been recovering from surgery (neck, cancer) for nineteen months—recovering my tennis. My right arm was affected and I decided to try to play with both hands, which meant learning to play with my left hand. I did this practicing against the tennis wall at the Biltmore tennis center nearly every day for approximately forty minutes. It wasn’t easy. However, I had an inkling from early on that two-handed play might prove superior in the end. I think I can now announce that it is. Yesterday I played my regular tennis partner (and friend) Eddy and played better than I ever have before. My left hand is no longer a liability. It feels natural now; I wouldn’t have it any other way. I also wouldn’t have believed it possible nineteen months ago. The backhand has gained considerably in power and accuracy. I bent sinister and it worked out. Knife throwing has also proved feasible using the left hand. Again, that took some time (several months—I’ve lost count). Each time I throw it is a little better than before. I can stick it most of the time from twelve feet. My left arm feels like it owns the knife now; it isn’t an alien presence. This is a source of considerable satisfaction to me (I told my surgeon about it the other day to his amazement). Drumming and guitar-playing have followed suit, surprisingly. I no longer bend dextral. All because my right arm was partially incapacitated. In table tennis I have not needed to recruit my left hand; my right hand is perfectly adequate for that. It is true that I can now play lefthanded as well (though relatively poorly), but my right hand is still my weapon of choice. Here I want to emphasize what I have urged before—practice your serve! Develop a variety of serves: different spins, depths, speeds. Right now, I am working on a type of serve I have not seen used before, though it is fairly obvious. You stand way over to the side of the table so that you are not even standing behind it (forehand or backhand). Then you use a soft backspin to send the ball sharply across the table so that it bounces just over the net on the opposite side, as close to the far edge of the table as possible. The opponent has to reach way over to the side even to make contact with the ball. If he decides to place himself there in anticipation of the shot, you simply propel the ball straight down the opposite side, which he will be unable to reach. I’m not bending sinister with this serve, but the opponent will find it sinister anyway. The moral: try something different, don’t give up, work at it, never say die. And unlock your sinister side.

Garbage and “Garbage”

Biden has a ready and plausible answer to criticism of his “garbage” comment, viz. the use-mention distinction. He was quoting someone else’s use of the word not using it himself non-quotationally. He was enclosing it in what philosophers call scare-quotes. We could paraphrase him thus: “The only so called ‘garbage’ here are Trump’s supporters”. He is not the one describing people as “garbage”; he is picking up on someone else’s use of that word. He would prefer to say “misguided people” or “unethical people”, but he wants to refer back to another person’s despicable use of this word. As to the question of whether he was condemning Trump voters en masse, the answer is that he was not: he meant to refer to the people at the rally and elsewhere who defend and enable Trump’s worst tendencies. If he meant voters, he would have said “voters”. Was it a wise thing to say in the circumstances? No, but it didn’t evince the belief that half the population is garbage. In speech, quotation is not clearly marked, but that was his intention. Plus, he is old and a bit doddery, so cut him some slack. Here we see how a bit of philosophy of language can help.

Kamala Harris

I like Kamala, I really do. I think she is a highly intelligent capable person, and even quite likeable (I used to find her off-putting). I badly want her to win. I think she will make a fine president. But there is something she says regularly that really irritates me: she is forever saying, as a mantra, that “the government has no right to decide what a woman can do with her body”. She seems to think this is a clever and decisive argument against “pro-lifers”. It isn’t. I wish she would stop saying it. Of course the government has a right to decide what a woman (or any person) does with her body—such as commit crimes with it. If anyone uses their body to harm others, the government has a right to intervene. And that is precisely what pro-lifers believe, since the fetus’s body is not the mother’s body. It is simply inside her body. What needs to be argued is that the fetus has no rights vis-à-vis the mother’s actions. Note that the fetus is inside until it is outside—so is abortion okay up until the last second? Is it the mother’s body up till then, and henceforward not? These points are familiar, if neglected. What annoys me about Kamala’s comment is that she doesn’t seem to understand that government interference in what a person “does with her (or his) body” is precisely what the law is. Doing such-and-such with your body is against the law—such as murdering with it, or stealing, or speeding. You might think that some bodily behavior is surely free of moral or legal regulation, e.g., cutting your nails or taking a nap. But even that isn’t true universally: you can’t cut your nails next to a person eating if the nails go into the food, and you can’t take a nap while your child is sitting in a hot car. Surely Kamala knows this—she is a lawyer, after all. So why repeat it as if it is a decisive argumentative point? It just makes people think she is a fraud, a spouter of nonsense. I don’t know why someone doesn’t tell her. I can’t think of a single type of action which is neversubject to justifiable legal or moral constraint—even blinking.