Unicolonial Ants Pose Challenge to "Selfish Gene" Theory 1) The first that must be stated unequivocally is that, for my part at least, I do not believe there is much evidence to suggest that there is a "selfish gene"--- other than basic physiological drives for survival (which may or may not be acted upon).
2) Now, having said that, I think that you (CB) have basically attempted to confront the now-dominant manner of scientific discourse by adopting the very presuppositions of this hegemonic perspective. Following Whitehead and Husserl, I would posit that the very ontological framework of the Newtonian and positivistic natural sciences is wholly bankrupt. Scientific materialism (a vulgar sort of materialism) reduces the human being to a 'thing', to an 'object', to an 'animal' (determined by a subconscious play of forces that the individual himself/herself cannot even come to appreciate). This sort of Newtonian alienation is precisely what Husserlian phenomenology (see "The Crisis of the European Sciences") and the Whiteheadian philosophy of science (see "Modes of Thought") attempted to combat. Enzo Paci (an Italian Marxist in the tradition of Antonion Gramsci) reconciles these fundamental phenomenological and ontological insights provided by Husserlian thought with the vitality and essential spirit of Marx's writings. I feel, by speaking of genes, we automatically reduce the human to a biological computer--- something whose behavior we could predict in a controlled setting, as if it was already predetermined. This, naturally, leaves no room for self-determination and human freedom. However, rather than confront the metaphysical, ontolgoical, existential, and epistemological questions involved here--- viz., questions about very ourselves--- your commentary takes the easy route of using one set of 'scientific' facts against another. Yet, as Husserl advised us, such a mode of inquiry will never answer the truly human questions of life; rather, what we need, for such questions, is not more vulgar (scientific) materialism, but deep, rigorous philosophical investigation. 3) Tjirdly, I'm astonished that, on a site about Marxist theory, we have devolved into a scientific discourse about ants (and, even worse, have begun to anthropomorphisize them by comparing 'their genes' and 'our genes', their sociality and our sociality as coterminously related, et al., etc.). And, so, you note among many other correlations that you draw, that "There is no worker aggression, and there is free movement among nests on a vast scale. The energy that might have been put into fighting and territoriality flows into the common good, more ants." Presumably, again, you are drawing correlations between "worker ants" and Marxist class analysis, which, is my opinion, may be well intentioned, but it is far from being grounded in Marx's thought. After all, I hope you don't advocate that we have "multiple queens" as well! Why abstract and draw some correlations, but not others? I mean, you even go on to identify possible political implications for HUMAN societies: "Such a concept, a form of genuine anarchism in the animal world, was > thought to be impossible given existing theory...each ant worker is > mostly surrounded by total strangers that share none of their genes. > Only one other species has ever been known to organize themselves in > such a fashion (and if you're reading these words right now you know > who you are)." Thus, while in my first point I agree with you (I believe there is no deterministic gene which makes us selfish), in my second point I disagree with the ontological and epistemological perspective which you employ to confront such scientific determinism (and that method of yours, once again, is nothing other than scientific determinism itself!). However, with respect to this third point of mine, the problem, CB, with making these sorts of inferences is that you have made a number of conclusions about ant-sociability which have been applied (and without much rigour) to human-sociability. Moreover, whilst reducing the call for anarcho-socialism to another mode of scientific determinism, you seem to have, at the same time, forgetten Marx's own writings about ants and their sociality. 4) Thus, my final point brings me to these writings. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844-45, Marx penned that: "The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or, rather, he is a conscious being i.e., his own life is an object for him, only because he is a species-being. Only because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labour reverses the relationship so that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity, his essential being, a mere means for his existence. The practical creation of an objective world, the fashioning of inorganic nature, is proof that man is a conscious species-being i.e., a being which treats the species as its own essential being or itself as a species-being. It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and dwellings, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only their own immediate needs or those of their young; they produce only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need; they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature; their products belong immediately to their physical bodies, while man freely confronts his own product. Animals produce only according to the standards and needs of the species to which they belong, while man is capable of producing according to the standards of every species and of applying to each object its inherent standard; hence, man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm This whole notion was most likely appropriated by Marx from his Idealist predecessors, Kant and Hegel. In his Critique of Judgment, Kant had written that "By right we ought only to describe as art, production through freedom, i.e. through a will that places reason at the basis of its actions. For although we like to call the product of bees (regularly built cells of wax) a work of art, this is only by way of analogy; as soon as we feel that this work of theirs is based on no proper proper rational deliberation, we say that it is a product of nature (of instinct). (Kant 1961, pp. 145-6) from http://www.capabilityapproach.com/pubs/4_1_Winslow.pdf However, this whole German idea--- as Professor Winslow notes in the above reading of Kant--- is itself merely a sublation and development of classical Greek (philosophic) anthropology. Aristotle, for instance, observed that there are many types of "political animals" (Zwon Politkon; 'lives with a city'): "Furthermore, the following differences are manifest in their modes of living and in their actions. Some are gregarious, some are solitary, whether they be furnished with feet or wings or be fitted for a life in the water; and some partake of both characters, the solitary and the gregarious. And of the gregarious, some are disposed to combine for social purposes, others to live each for its own self. Gregarious creatures are, among birds, such as the pigeon, the crane, and the swan; and, by the way, no bird furnished with crooked talons is gregarious. Of creatures that live in water many kinds of fishes are gregarious, such as the so-called migrants, the tunny, the pelamys, and the bonito. Man, by the way, presents a mixture of the two characters, the gregarious and the solitary. Social creatures are such as have some one common object in view; and this property is not common to all creatures that are gregarious. Such social creatures are man, the bee, the wasp, the ant, and the crane. Again, of these social creatures some submit to a ruler, others are subject to no governance: as, for instance, the crane and the several sorts of bee submit to a ruler, whereas ants and numerous other creatures are every one his own master." http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=AriHian.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div2 In his Politics, Aristotle reaffirmed the notion, but cautioned, with added emphasis however, that while all of these creatures can be classed as consonant with humans insofar as they are 'Zwon Politikon', at the same time, they are entirely different modes of life--- for the human presents himself as distinct from all others in his sociability (simply by the innate virtue of our capacity for reason): "Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state. Further, the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that. But things are defined by their working and power; and we ought not to say that they are the same when they no longer have their proper quality, but only that they have the same name. The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society." http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html When Kant and Marx wrote, they were clearly making appeals to this Aristotlean conception of Man. In his essay, an "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View," Kant implicitly appealed to Aristotle (and his teleological theory of species-endowment--- which, in our case, entails the "function" [ergon] of Mind/Reason [logos]....see the acorn and oak tree analogy). Kant, sounding like Aristotle, penned that "All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve to their natural end...An organ that is of no use, an arrangement that does not achieve its purpose, are contradictions in the teleological theory of nature. If we give up this fundamental principle, we no longer have a lawful but an aimless course of nature, and blind chance takes the place of the guiding thread of reason. In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed in the race, not in the individual...Nature here follows a lawful course in gradually lifting our race from the lower levels of animality to the highest levels of humanity." See "On HIstory," 'An Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,' pg. 12-13, 21. No doubt, Marx was clearly appealing to this very same teleological theory of human nature as well when he constructed his "Grundrisse:" "The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clan. Only in the eighteenth century, in civil society, do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations. The human being is in the most literal sense a Zwon politikon [Marx used Greek script here, but my email program doesn't have such fonts] not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm Chris, _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
