The Symbolic Gene

Everyone has heard of the genetic code. Here is a typical statement from Wikipedia: “The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material (DNA or RNA sequences of nucleotide triplets, or codons) into proteins…The codons specify which amino acid will be added next during protein biosynthesis”. Notice the heavy use of semantic notions in this formulation: code, rules, translate, information, encoded, specify. Other formulations use the concept of language explicitly and speak of “instructions” that “tell a cell how to make a specific protein”. What are we to make of these formulations? Are we to suppose that DNA contains symbols with meaning and reference? Evidently, we are to suppose this; there is no hint of metaphor in these words—no suggestion that it is merely as if genes have semantic properties. Still, someone might protest that metaphor must be what is meant, because it would be anthropocentric to project our mastery of language onto mere molecules. DNA doesn’t utter words, communicate, or perform speech acts! That’s a specifically human ability. There is much that is wrong with this protest, which I won’t go into (what about whales and dolphins?), but I do want to make a more general point about the attribution of such concepts to non-human subjects. Consider the concept of the selfish gene: this is often regarded as a mere metaphor and must be meant as such, useful or not. But that is surely wrong: genes really do operate in ways that closely mirror ordinary human selfishness, thus deserving the appellation “selfish”. To be selfish is to favor one’s own interests over the interests of others, not taking those interests into consideration. A dog or cat will eat all the food put in front of it without regard for what another cat or dog might desire or need. It does not consider the interests of others. It is not always selfish, though, because it considers the interests of its offspring (its genetic relatives). Sometimes it exhibits selfish behavior and sometimes not. And the same is true of animal species in general, going right down the phylogenetic scale. Of course, there are differences between the different species (animals are not blameworthy for their self-centered behavior whereas humans are), but the common pattern justifies applying the concept in this extended way. This isn’t mere metaphor; it is rooted in the behavior and dispositions of the animal in question. Animals are literally selfish (sometimes), self-centered, self-interested, self-promoting—despite their differences from humans. In the same way genes are selfish, literally, non-metaphorically: they act in ways that favor their own survival at the expense of others. They don’t do so intentionally, consciously, with malice aforethought; but they still do it. They thus resemble consciously selfish agents in significant respects, and that is what grounds the ascription to them of the word “selfish”. Is it a metaphor that computers compute? It used to be that only humans were called “computers”, which seems quaint now, but when machine computers were invented their similarity to human computers warranted the extension of the term to them. This doesn’t require us to suppose that computers are conscious, only that their behavior resemble that of human computers. The same applies to the current use of “smart”—smart phones, smart TVS, smart cars. When someone writes a book called The Intelligent Eye,[1] we don’t immediately impute metaphor but recognize that eyes act with many of the attributes characteristic of human intelligence (The Intelligent Eyelash would not invite the same semantic tolerance). There isn’t some kind of fallacy involved in using words like this; it is entirely reasonable in the light of the facts. So, the title The Selfish Gene wasn’t simply a category mistake or fanciful trope; it was the literal truth given the facts expounded in the book. And everyone can see this (aside from captious critics). Similarly for the phrase “the symbolic gene”: the biological facts justify this coinage—as with whale and dolphin language. Compare “the language of thought”: you may or may not agree that such a thing exists, but it is not a category mistake to talk that way—it all depends on whether thought is sufficiently similar to speech. These are all natural biological kinds and have their extension fixed by the facts not by supposed paradigms. If that is so, we have an interesting question about symbolic genes: do they thereby have a mind? Isn’t a symbolizing entity necessarily a mental entity? It is supposed by some that we have a second mind located in our bowels,[2] given the neural activity at that locale; do we have a third mind located in our genes? The idea should not be dismissed out of hand; again, we must beware of linguistic parochialism. We don’t need to assume that genes are conscious in order to believe they are endowed with mind, so long as they have intentionality (just like the unconscious); and the usual way of talking encourages this supposition. The symbols in the genetic code stand for different amino acids, so there is intentionality built into the system—reference, representation. The genes instruct genetic mechanisms to assemble amino acids in certain places in a certain order, so they must contain the semantic machinery required for such instruction. Indeed, they must have a semantics: an assignment of entities from a domain and rules for determining conditions of satisfaction. The entities are amino acids and the rules fix conditions under which the instructions have been correctly carried out: “Put such and such an amino acid in such and such a place” is satisfied if and only if that acid is put in that place”, or some such thing. That is, the genetic code and its instructions have a semantic interpretation in the classical sense—if (but only if) it is right to attribute a language to the genes. But then, we have enough to warrant an ascription of mentality. Clearly this mind (like the gut mind) is very different from our head-centered mind, but it would be narrow-minded (!) to exclude such minds from the general category of mindedness. We have finally got used to ascribing minds to our fellow animals, despite their differences from our minds; it shouldn’t be too great a stretch to grant this license to sub-personal systems. And aren’t genes fully deserving of such largesse given their extraordinary generative powers? They can make whole complex organisms, which no brain-centered intelligence can do: they are clever, resourceful, sophisticated (what other words can we use?) Embryogenesis is a remarkable engineering feat of nature, requiring complex ingenious machinery; it seems petty and self-aggrandizing to deny them the honorific label “mind” (or “intelligent”, “clever”, “inventive”). True, they mimic the impressively intelligent Mr. Spock in their lack of affect, but no one has ever denied that he has a mind, in some ways superior to the affect-laden human mind. Minds come in many forms and we shouldn’t take ours to be the measure of all of them. The octopus, as we now know, has a mind suited to its anatomy and needs, and the same might be true of the molecule made of DNA. Also, can we really exclude the possibility of consciousness here? Our knowledge is limited, panpsychism might have some truth to it, and conscious minds can be very alien—so it is possible that genes have some sort of consciousness. But even if they don’t, that doesn’t preclude them having an unconscious mind. So, maybe mind appeared on earth a good deal earlier than it is commonly supposed, with the advent of DNA (itself a remarkable evolutionary product). We might think of it as the brain behind evolution by natural selection, its sine qua non. The selfish gene, the symbolic gene, the intelligent gene, the cerebral gene: DNA is more than just a chemical double helix.[3]

[1] R.L. Gregory (1970). The book deals with the perception of ambiguous figures and other sorts of visual interpretation. Nowadays it would not be out of place to speak of the “genius eye” given what we know of the eye’s feats of reconstruction from the retinal image.

[2] See Michael Gershon, The Second Brain (1998).

[3] The same is true of the brain: if you look at it from outside, or under a microscope, it looks like a mere collection of spindly cells, but it has many characteristics not so revealed—including selfishness, symbolism, intelligence, and consciousness. Why should the same not be true of the genes? They may have emergent properties not revealed by simple inspection. It all depends on what theory demands and reason recommends.

A Causal World

There are two ways to think about causation: either it is something that exists in addition to an antecedent reality of objects and properties or it is constitutive of reality. According to the first way, if you removed causation from the world, you would be left with constant conjunction, a real world of recognizable things; according to the second way, you would be left with nothing, since causation is what reality fundamentally is. The first way is dominant in our intellectual tradition, which is why some people contemplate doing without causation in our conception of the world. Causation is mere icing on the cake (a dubious icing according to some). Reality is not fundamentally and inherently causal reality. After all, we don’t see causation, or if we do it is not ubiquitous, not omnipresent. Empiricism militates against causal foundationalism. Yet there have been voices that champion causation-based metaphysics: Schopenhauer and Shoemaker, in particular (with their similar-sounding names). True, Schopenhauer preferred to speak of Will, but his general conception is causal in thrust; Shoemaker just comes right out with it—properties are causal powers.[1] I will explore this idea further. The metaphor I like compares causation to fungi: fungi are everywhere, they are basic to life, but underappreciated because of their general invisibility. They largely live underground, only peeping above ground for purposes of reproduction. They were there before plants and animals and allowed these parvenu life-forms to come into existence (on land anyway). They are root causes, so to speak. The general idea of causal metaphysics is that everything in the physical and psychological world is a cause—an active, generative producer—and that is all that reality is. There is nothing more to things than causes. Reality reduces to causation (“causal reductionism”). That was Shoemaker’s radical message: he was a functionalist about properties in general—properties are defined by their causal roles. A property like shape is a causal power. It isn’t something separate and distinct (he is an identity theorist about properties). An object, then, is a bundle of powers—a congeries of causes. Causation is not a part of (concrete) reality; it is the whole of it. Reality is composed of causes. It isn’t that causation coexists with non-causal inactive components of reality; it constitutes all of reality. Shapes are causes, and so are colors (possibly mental causes, if you are a subjectivist about color). Forces are obviously causes, but so are the things that forces act on—planets, for example. Causes cause other causes. It’s causation all the way down—pan-causalism, nothing but causes. This view is apt to seem hyperbolic, if not patently false: for that is not how we see the world, how it seems to us. It might be noumenally constituted by causes, but it isn’t phenomenally purely causal. The world seems innocent of causation for long stretches and short ones: inactive, unchanging, inert, stable. How then can it be constituted by causal interactions? Sometimes nothing moves, nothing happens—isn’t that because there is nothing causal going on? We are not observing any effects, so causation is taking a break from its usual exertions. However, this view is deeply mistaken, as science has shown: we are subject to illusions of inactivity. We are simply not witnessing the ever-present fact of causal activity. Take the motion of the earth: it seems to us that the earth is not moving and not under the influence of a force, but it is—we just don’t experience it. The earth is caused to move by the sun’s gravitational force—at every second and for all of its existence. Likewise, when objects on the earth’s surface are stationary (relative to the earth) they are held there by earth’s gravitational field; they are caused to stay still by a force we don’t see. Most strikingly, the coherence of physical objects is not the result of zero causal activity but of counterbalancing forces at the atomic level—the positive and negative charges of protons and electrons, respectively. Objects are caused not to fly apart; they don’t remain stable spontaneously. We are thus victims of a widespread illusion, making us think that nothing causal is going on, when in fact the world is pulsing with non-stop causation. It’s as if we could only see beehives from a distance and formed the idea that nothing is going on inside them, whereas in fact they are centers of buzzing activity. True, we don’t perceive the ceaseless causality of the world, but it is there nonetheless, under the surface. In fact, it is doubtful that we ever really see causality (as Hume pointed out), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the foundation of everything we do see (along with its characteristic type of necessity). We thus don’t appreciate the omnipresence of causality and miss its foundational status. But actually, as Shoemaker realized, it is impossible to sever the connection between properties and powers, no matter what the appearances may be. Causation is the fungus of the universe; its hidden driving force. Or better: all is fungus, when you get right down to it.[2] A.J. Ayer used to like to say that causation is just one damn thing after another; the truth is that things are just causation manifesting itself. The world is Will, Force, Activity, Necessary Connection, Influence, Push and Pull. Causation is in every nook and cranny.[3]

[1] See his Identity, Cause and Mind (1984).

[2] Of course, it is not true that all is fungus in botany, poetically apt as that might sound; but in metaphysics all might be causation (causal fungus). This is perfectly compatible with the Humean thesis that we don’t really know what causation ultimately consists in; in particular, we don’t know what causal necessity is (objectively, intrinsically).

[3] A few decades ago, it became fashionable to propose causal theories of many things: perception, knowledge, reference, action, memory. But no one ever proposed a causal theory of everything—the whole world. If causation is a notion in good order, however, it becomes attractive to consider the possibility that all properties, objects, and facts are causal in nature. Thus, causal metaphysics: causation is ontologically basic. (I’m not supposing ethical and mathematical facts are causal, if such there be; I’m discussing only concrete facts that enter into causal relations.) Hume described causation as the “cement of the universe”; according to causal metaphysics, it is the universe.

Political Evil and the Family

What is the psychology of political evil, including political violence? By “political evil” I mean evil directed towards groups, as opposed to specific individuals: races, nationalities, religions, party affiliation, educational attainment, style of dress, etc. This kind of evil has a distinctive intentionality: whereas individual-directed intentionality takes in a concrete individual, an object of perception, group-directed intentionality posits a generalized, abstract, stereotypical type, often an object of fantasy. It is a kind of reified meta-individual, created in the mind from disparate sources, seldom rooted in fact, cartoon-like. It is possible to entertain this curious object of thought without knowing any individual instance of its purported type. It is a sort of fiction, though masquerading as fact. It is depersonalized, dehumanized, a symbol more than an actual person (often animal imagery is invoked to accentuate it—pig, dog, rat, cockroach, etc.).[1] The nature of this intentionality allows people to perpetrate evil with less ambivalence, because it doesn’t present its object as a three-dimensional human being with specific characteristics. This may be the result of cognitive limitations: it is difficult for the human mind to represent a multitude of objects in all their specificity; it’s much easier to boil it all down to a few easily remembered features, especially if those features reflect prejudices and predilections. In any case, restraints on evil actions stemming from recognition of a common humanity are removed or reduced by such ways of thinking. This is the power of the stereotype, the meme, the caricature. Political evil thrives in such a psychological environment, especially when driven by external forces (fear-mongering, propaganda, indoctrination)). All this is familiar stuff, one aspect of evil’s notorious banalities; and it is sound psychology as far as it goes. But it doesn’t explain why people engage in evil to begin with: why this need (for that is what it appears to be) to select a group and persecute members of that group? What is the root cause of political evil? Why is the human psyche so prone to it? One naturally turns to the family: is there anything about family relations that could underlie the tendency towards political evil (animosity, violence, oppression)? Family dynamics often leave a mark on the adult psyche, scarring and shaping it—this is a platitude of developmental psychology. The first point to note—and I am not alone in observing it—is that the family is a proto-political system, a mini-society. It is a group of individuals, locked in a power structure, vying for dominance, or at least a piece of the pie. There is much rivalry and resentment, particularly in children. In some families, violence is the outcome, in others strict discipline, in others simple neglect. Families are not all harmony and light (surprise, surprise). There are asymmetries of power: parents beat children but not vice versa. There is a good deal of hatred swirling around the family unit (homicidal, according to Freud). But there is also love mingled with the bad stuff: you love the ones you also hate (resent, envy, dislike). This produces cognitive dissonance: the same object invites opposite feelings, thus giving rise to a sense of intolerable disharmony. The sufferer accordingly seeks dissonance reduction, possibly by denying the love or rejecting the hate, neither being easy. However, there is a third way: sublimation—direct the bad feelings elsewhere. At any rate, point some of the antipathy at someone else, as much as possible consistent with the reality principle. This could be a fantasy object—a bogeyman, a villain encountered in books or films or oral tradition, or some other tribe. Think of it as a negative-affect proxy-object—like a wall you hit when you can’t hit what you really want to. So: family dynamics, cognitive dissonance, sublimation, proxy objects. The psyche is searching for an object of resentment to substitute for the father (say) and it lights upon whatever serves that purpose; what better than an imaginary group that embodies features of the family hate-object? The group may symbolize power, strength, wealth, potency, authority, intellectual superiority, immovability—thus replicating the features of the father (or mother or older sibling). You can hate or attack this group as you cannot hate or attack your family members. The greater the oppression within your family the stronger will be your animosity towards the chosen group. So, it is not so much the broken family that fuels political evil as the intact family—not the dissolution of the family but its continuing stranglehold. When you can’t escape its clutches your need for a sublimated outlet will be at its strongest. Thus, we can predict that young people will be the most vulnerable to engaging in political evil, because they are the most enmeshed in family power dynamics; they are ripe for “radicalization”. And this will be accentuated according to the degree of control and oppression existing within the family. Hatred of out-groups will be higher in societies with oppressive family structures—in what we now think of as traditional families. For example, racism will be more prevalent (other things being equal) in societies that beat children for minor infringements (I’m thinking of eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain). The psychological mechanism is clear: family power dynamics, resentment, cognitive dissonance, sublimation, proxy objects, racism (or any -ism that comes to hand). The psyche will be only too happy to latch onto anything that will reduce the cognitive dissonance produced by the traditional family. But notice that there is no easy way out of this problem for the psyche, since families have to impose some sort of dominance hierarchy (just as in animal families). There is really no other way to bring children up; it’s built into the family unit. This explains the persistence of political evil: power asymmetry is a universal property of families, and cognitive dissonance is a psychological fact, so sublimation onto proxy objects will always be an attractive option (even a necessary one). Combine this with the depersonalizing peculiarities of group-directed intentionality and you get a potent psychological brew for breeding political animosity. People will readily hate the neighboring tribe as long as they have been subject to family oppression, but oppression within families comes with the territory (or at least felt oppression). Still, we can predict that minimizing the oppression, especially actual violence, will work to moderate political hatred, though it cannot eliminate it. Also, explaining the source of political hatred might help mitigate its hold over people, because it reveals its irrational roots; it isn’t that the hated group really warrants the hatred. Such hatred will be less contagious the better it is understood, because its true nature has been exposed.[2]

[1] Notice how common it is to describe the “enemy” as “animals”: this enables people to deny that they are targeting actual human beings. The tendency is well satirized by Monty Python in the Holy Grail film when John Cleese, as a Frenchman, taunts the British soldiers as “pig dogs”: this is puzzling to them because it has never occurred to them that they might be regarded as sub-human. The French meanwhile are regularly described by the English as “frogs”, because they actually eat such things! This is all grist for the manufacture of dehumanizing stereotypes, which are invaluable in licensing political evil. Such are the powers of human intentionality.

[2] This essay was prompted by recent events, but I have intentionally avoided discussing actual historical examples of political evil so as not to get distracted by complex and controversial factual and ethical questions. It should be obvious what kinds of events I have in mind. Of course, many factors enter into the causation of human actions situated in historical contexts; my purpose has been to identify the central psychological mechanisms. In a fuller account, behavioral contagion and other forms of conformity would also be added to the picture. It is undeniable that stereotypes spread with the greatest of ease. Why?