From: Ray Recchia (rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com)
Date: Thu 22 May 2003 - 22:53:21 GMT
The other day I finished up "Darwin's Cathedral" by David Sloan Wilson
(2002). I've also read the excellent review by William Benzon at
http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep012841.html I think it is a good
book and should be on the reading list of anyone interested in memetics and
religion.(Keith Henson are you reading this?) Whether Dr. Wilson calls
what he is doing memetics or not, he is clearly examining a very specific
element of culture through the lens of evolution.
Wilson is a proponent of group selection theory and I'm still a bit
ambiguous on whether this concept is valid. The thrust of his argument is
that groups will be selected for when the advantages of being a free rider
are outweighed by the overall negative impact of free riding on the
group. Thus if free riding would make it more likely for a genetic type to
survive within the group by a factor of two, but the negative impact of
free riding decreases the survival of the group as a whole by a factor of
say six, the net result is a decrease in the overall frequency of free
riders thus allowing for group selection. I think criticisms concerning
group boundaries are valid. If an element can escape the group and
reproduce independently or in another group then group selection
fails. The only aggregate organizations I can think of in nature are
things like multicellular organisms and insect hives in which the elements
are limited by group only reproduction. (ie. the hive queen, and gametes in
multicellular organisms)
I do like his notion of treating religion as a sort of tool to create
responses from humans that are different than those our natural tendencies
would result in. If you accept the ideas of evolutionary psychology, our
emotions and psychological response systems were set up for a species of
tribal hunter-gatherers. In my own way of thinking anger, lust, and love
can be seen of as tools that cause us to do things in a way that promoted
our survival in the specific environments our ancestors lived in. Religion
can allow us to get past the limitations of our own motivations by creating
supernatural systems that act as a sort of extra layer on top of our
regular motivations. Thus the promise of a reward in the afterlife can
cause Christians to give assistance to one another to an extent they
otherwise wouldn't. Although a particular set of religious beliefs may not
be true it may cause those hold advantages by modifying behavioral
responses so that they are more effective tools for survival.
Wilson's main focus then is on religions as complex tools for creating
behavioral modifications within groups of people. In keeping with his
group selection theory he is interested in how religions cause people to
act as groups. Thus he looks at how religions treat people inside and
outside the group differently, and how punishment and forgiveness are used
to prevent free riding within the groups.
And he really has done his research. He claims that he spent three years
working on this book and the effort shows. He analyzes several tribal
groups, Judaism, early Christianity, Calvanism, and Korean immigrant
Christianity in the U.S. He also alternatively attacks and praises
different the theories of different sociologists and anthropologists,
reviving a functionalist theory currently out of favor while using the data
supplied by those who count themselves as among its detractors. As an
example he explains how recent research has shown that a worship of water
gods in Bali has helped create a very efficient system for managing
agriculture, with temples as acting as local distributors of water. The
internal belief systems alter motivation to make the whole thing run smoothly.
I think that Wilson would have benefited from conceptualizing
memetically. It hard to tell at times whether Wilson talking about
enhanced survival of cultural institutions or the people who form the
membership of those religions. A discussion of the differences between
vertical and horizontal transmission of religion as a meme would have been
useful. In cultural evolution group selection would occur on a collection
of memes not on a group of people. Unless the particular genes of the
people having a religion predisposes them towards religious belief of a
certain sort, it is the memes that are being selected for and not the genes.
On the internal, external meme discussion I believe that Wilson's book
clearly demonstrates the advantages of considering an internal
model. Wilson sees religion as advantageous because it alters and conforms
psychological motivation, something that would be difficult to study using
a purely behavioral model. The difference in behavior results from a
belief in allegedly imaginary beings that exist within the minds of
worshippers.
I may more to say on this book later but I think I'll stop here for the moment.
Ray Recchia
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