From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Aug 06 2002 - 22:14:17 MDT
Herr Von gts wrote
> Lee Corbin wrote:
> [Someone wrote]
>> True altruists do not exist, in my view, but it's certainly true that
>> our genes make certain that most of us we feel good when we *act* like
>> one of these mythical creatures.
>[Lee then asked]
>> How do you explain Ridley's example of tipping in a restaurant
>> that you know you'll never visit again, or my example of letting
>> someone out ahead of you from a crowded parking lot when traffic's
>> really bad?
> I explain both behaviors as being motivated by the desire
> for the subjective experience of reward that accompanies
> socially constructive behavior.
This is almost "reasoning by tautology", in my opinion. So
the hijackers sacrificed themselves for the fleeting feeling
of joy as they crashed their planes into the buildings? Here
is the problem with that: the brain is a machine, and nature
will find the simplest ways to get the organism to achieve
some end. Indeed, the reward centers are tied into *everything*
one does. The next keystroke on your keyboard will satisfy in
some small sense the reward portion of your brain. Now, since
everything is driven by this mechanical feature, we lose
explanatory power by appealing to it. It doesn't really
address the question "why" if for every little thing that
someone does we reply, "because it made him feel good".
If you had asked the hijackers, "why are you doing this", admit
it, you'd fall off your chair if one said, "for the momentary
subjective experience of reward". (I'm not, of course, saying
that verbal reports can be trusted, or that people *always*
know why they're doing what they're doing.)
> As I wrote previously, we are a social species. In terms of
> genetics, to say we are a social species is to say that we
> carry genes that promote constructive social behaviors.
That is correct.
> If we carry genes that promote constructive social behaviors
> then we should expect to feel a sense of reward when expressing
> those behaviors. And this appears to be the case.
Yes, but it doesn't *explain* the emergence of altruistic
behavior. Theories of sexual selection (such as in "The
Mating Mind" by G. Miller) or of hunter/gatherer reliance
and reciprocation getting built into the genes (as in Ridley's
"The Origins of Virtue") offer explanations.
> The sense of reward, by the way, appears to be focused in
> a part of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens. The
> experience of reward happens when this part of the brain
> is flooded with the neurotransmitter dopamine. In lab
> animals, rewarding experiences are associated with behaviors
> such as eating, mating, and finding shelter. Researchers
> used tiny probes to measure the flow of dopamine into the
> nucleus accumbens of live rats as they expressed these behaviors.
Yes, thanks for the nice description of how the machine works.
> It's my contention here that socially constructive behaviors
> are among the behaviors that stimulate the release of dopamine
> in the nucleus accumbens of homo sapiens.
Yes, but anti-social behaviors also provide a sense of reward.
Even brushing your teeth provides a small amount of gratification.
Lee
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